God at Work

The last book of the New Testament has evoked more fascination than most of the others. Scholars are fairly confidant in dating the text to around the year 95 A.D., and in asserting that it was written on the island of Patmos. The John who wrote it is the same John who wrote the fourth book of the New Testament and who also wrote the three epistles which bear his name. Philology confirms his authorship of all five texts by means of statistical analysis of his vocabulary.

The question which one may pose to the text is this: what is God doing?

The text states that God gave this revelation, that God is showing what must take place, and that God made this content known by means of an angel. The text gives a noteworthy title to Jesus: the faithful witness. Often texts tell of people who are witnesses to, or witnesses about, Jesus. But in this case, Jesus Himself is the witness. About what, or to what, is He a witness?

Further, the text states that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth, that He loves us, that He has freed us, that He has made us to be a kingdom, and that He has made us to be priests. Richard Lenski writes:

In Revelation the Apostle John presents the prophetic visions that were given him to see and to hear on a certain Sunday in the year 95 while he was in exile on a the small island Patmos opposite the southern coast of the Roman province Asia, toward the end of the reign of the great persecutor of the church, the Emperor Domitian. The apostle wrote Revelation by the Lord's own order (1:19); divine Inspiration guided his pen.

At the beginning of the text, John states one of the themes which recurs throughout its twenty-two chapters: "He is coming." Jesus is on His way. In the text, God also says of Himself that He is the "Alpha and the Omega," "who is, and who was, and who is to come." God emphasizes His all-encompassing nature in order to contrast Himself with the Roman emperor. While Emperors like Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan might work to project an image of power and authority, they are, in fact, infinitesimal on God's cosmic scale.

God is communicative. He says things; He sends angels with messages. The Greek and Hebrew words rendered as 'angel' in English mean, non-metaphorically, 'messenger' in those languages.

After the introductory chapter come the seven letters to the churches. He praises the deeds of the Ephesian church, saying that the people in that church work hard and persevere; the Christians in Ephesus "cannot tolerate wicked men" and investigate and examine the concepts presented by false teachers. They persevere, endure hardships, and do not grow weary. But, given that all humans are born with original sin, and all humans further commit their own sins, what does it mean, not to "tolerate wicked men"? Perhaps this indicates those who bring nothing positive to the fellowship, but maliciously, or at least negligently, detract from the church's efforts at charity.

To the church in Smyrna, Jesus says, more than once, that He "knows" them and their conditions. He knows their difficulties and knows that they publicly ridiculed. He reminds them, however, that they have received spiritual blessings (cf. Romans 15:27 and Ephesians 1:3).

In Pergamum, Jesus says, His followers are dwelling among great evil, yet remain true to Him. They have not renounced Jesus, even though at least one of them has been martyred.

As in Smyrna, so also in Thyatira, Jesus reports that He "knows" about His people - He knows their deeds, love, faith, service, and perseverance - and that they "are now doing more than" they did at first. The repetition of the theme of 'being known' emphasizes the importance which humans attach to it: people seem to want to know that somebody somewhere is aware of them and of their circumstances, and that somebody somewhere cares about them.

Jesus addresses stern words to the church in Sardis: only "a few people" have remained faithful to Him.

For the church in Philadelphia, Jesus says that He is holding open a door which nobody can shut. His followers in that city have kept His word despite their weakness: the have endured "patiently."

The Christians in Laodicea, Jesus states, are largely useless.

After assessing each of these churches for strengths and weaknesses, Jesus speaks of future blessings. To the Ephesians, "the right to eat from the tree of life." To His followers in Smyra, He says that they "will not be hurt at all by the second death." To those in Pergamum, Jesus promises mysterious blessings: "hidden manna" and "a white stone with a new name written on it." To the church in Thyatira, He promises "authority over the nations" and "the morning star." To His few isolated followers in Sardis, Jesus says that they "will walk" with Him, dressed in white, and that He "will never blot out" their names from the book of life, "but will acknowledge" them before the Father. To the Philadelphians, He promises that each one of them will be "a pillar in the temple of" God, and that He will write on each of His followers "the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven," and that He "will also write on" each of them "my new name." To the Laodiceans, He promises that, if they repent, He will give them "the right to sit with me on my throne."

There is a pattern, for the churches, in the way Jesus speaks: first, an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses; second, instructions, imperatives, and commands; third, promises of future blessings. Some churches have strengths, others have weaknesses, and some have both. The church in Laodicea, which receives the sternest evaluation, also receives the most powerful promise.

Some of the symbolism here is obscure. The hidden manna may evoke the jar of manna preserved in the ark in the temple; the temple having been destroyed by the time of John's writing, this manna would be in an undisclosed location - known only to God. Whether on earth or in heaven, this manna would be God's alone to dispense; if in heaven, it represents the eternal feast. Banquet imagery permeates the entire text. The white stone on which is written a name may represent the follower's new identity; written in stone, it is permanent, and supersedes all other previous identities. To give the morning star as a gift may mean to impart glory; starlight and sunlight symbolize God's glory throughout Scripture.

A group of cousins and siblings, all bearing the surname Zahn, have contributed greatly to textual scholarship. Citing the work of Theodor von Zahn, Richard Lenski writes:

John had lived and labored in and out of Ephesus since the days of the Jewish War which destroyed the Jewish nation. Domitian died September 18, 96. This date makes it necessary to place the visions of Revelation in the year 95. John was not exiled by the emperor himself; he was condemned to exile by the proconsul of Asia, "who would not have been able upon his own authority to punish in this way a preacher of the gospel and an adherent of the Christian faith if he had not felt himself authorized so to act by some decree issuing from the Imperial Government, or some regulation tolerated by it, by which the propagation of the Christian religion was to be checked by the courts or the police," Zahn, Introduction III, 409. How long the exile continued we do not know. There is nothing to prevent us from dating Revelation in the year 96, the actual year of Domitian's death. Nerva ruled until 98, then followed Trajan. John was released after Domitian's death and died during Trajan's reign.

The challenge for the reader, in examining John's Revelation, is to be vigilant against the all-too-human tendency to read legalism into the text. When Jesus cites the strengths of the seven churches, these are not accomplishments achieved by human effort, but rather gifts which have been given to these churches, given by Jesus through the Holy Spirit. When Jesus cites the flaws of these congregations and commands repentance, He is issuing an imperative which human effort can never satisfy; only the Holy Spirit working inside the believer can create obedience. God is never satisfied with human feats. The promised blessings for the churches are not rewards for their exertions, but rather confirmations for the activity of the Holy Spirit in and among them.

A careless reading of John's Apocalypse will yield works righteousness. But the reader must ever bear in mind that the purpose for which the Revelation was given to John was comfort. Legalism does not comfort. Grace does.

Jesus Uses Irony

Irony is a well-documented and much studied phenomenon. There are many types and definitions of irony. For the present meditation, irony is understood as words being used to indicate something other than their literal meanings, and words being used to refer to something which may even be in tension with their literal meanings.

The New Testament contains irony, and one who fails to recognize the irony will be misled in the task of understanding the text. Some commentators seem to have never entertained the idea that Jesus occasionally speaks ironically.

Consider the following narrative from Matthew. It seems to contain multiple ironies. The man addresses Jesus with the title "Teacher," but perhaps does not want to be taught. He poses the question, "what must I do?" to gain eternal life, yet the mega-text informs the reader that the proper question to ask to Jesus is "what can you do?" that the supplicant might have eternal life.

For an ordinary human to ask, "what must I do to gain eternal life?" is to elicit the answer "nothing." There is nothing he can do to gain eternal life, because it is impossible for him to gain it. God can give it, but man cannot achieve it.

So two ironies already lie in the man's first utterance.

Jesus, seeing through the apparent urgency in the man's question, deflects it with an ironic non-answer. Note that Jesus answers a question with a question. "Why?" - Christ's question goes to motive. Why would the man ask if he already has an answer in mind, if he is not eager to learn, and if his question is so ill-formed that no reasonable answer is possible? The questioner perhaps considers himself to be good; in that case, why bother Jesus with a question? The question would be insincere.

Jesus deflates the man's ego a bit by reminding him that only God is good. Jesus then offers ironic advice. Jesus, and the reader, know from the mega-text that "keeping the commandments" is impossible. Whether one is speaking of the ten commandments, the 613 commandments, or natural law, humans are incapable of perfect implementation. The man, however, is oblivious to the irony, which only heightens the irony.

An absolutely impossible command is ironic; the failure to see such a command for what it is generates humor. Had Jesus issued a command to drink the entire ocean, or draw a square circle, the effect would be the same.

Incognizant of the irony, the man pursues the matter: which commandments must he keep? As if, to the ironic command to draw a square circle, he'd responded with a request for clarification about whether he should draw it with a pencil or a pen. The humorous effect is prolonged by the question.

Jesus patiently begins a list of commandments. It doesn't really matter which ones He mentions, because sinful human nature is incapable of faithfully following any of them, or any set or subset of them.

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

The man's oblivious naivete is matched only by the inflated opinion he has of himself. To claim to have faithfully followed the law, no matter which variation of 'law' is meant, is to claim perfection. The ironies here are multiple: to claim perfection and then request guidance - if the man were really that good, he wouldn't need to ask Jesus for instruction. More basically, there is irony in the claim to have followed the law. It is axiomatic to the mega-text that such perfection is unachievable by human effort.

Having claimed perfection, the man asks what he still needs. This is a self-contradiction. If he were as good as he claims to be, he would need nothing. He undermines his own claim to moral superiority. "I have everything: what do I still need to obtain?"

Christ's answer contains several unspoken premises: "if you would be perfect - but you can't get there by doing things - here's what you must do." Alternatively: "if you would be perfect - but didn't you only now imply that you were morally perfect? - here's what you must do." Jesus is patiently answering the man, but to humorous effect to the knowing reader.

Jesus then gives an ironic imperative: give away all your possessions. If this were truly what was required to obtain eternal life, then the rest of Matthew's text, and the rest of the New Testament, would be useless and futile. Two thousand years of Heilsgeschichte would be unnecessary. Christ's painful suffering and death would be unnecessary.

The three final thoughts in the narrative depart from irony. Jesus tells the man that it is possible to have treasure in heaven. Jesus is not being ironic, but the man's limited imagination and limited perspective create irony. Then Jesus tells the man to follow; the man who approached Jesus and called him 'Teacher' and who asked what must be done is, as Jesus and the reader know even before the man has finished hearing the final imperative, not interested or willing or able to follow Jesus.

No human can, of his own volition, follow Jesus. Rather, people follow Jesus only as the Holy Spirit calls and enlightens them, sanctifies them, and preserves them in faith. All people lack the ability to follow Jesus, or to decide to follow Jesus - but most especially one like this man, who considers himself to be morally perfect.

The denouement reveals that the man, whose moral estimation of himself was so high, is merely a crass materialist. Irony is located in the tension between the high-sounding salutation and question which he first addresses to Jesus at the beginning of the narrative and the man's baseness as the end of the narrative.

If we contrast Mark's version of the narrative to Matthew's, the irony continues, as in Mark's version, the man addresses Jesus not only as "Teacher" but "Good Teacher." While the man addresses Jesus as 'good', he in reality considers, consciously or subconsciously, himself to be good, apparently unaware of both his original sin and his committed sin. Considering the phrase text-critically, if Matthew worked from Mark, he may have felt it sufficient to recount merely an excerpt from the salutation rather than the longer version given by Mark.

Matthew also omits the fact that the man knelt. The greeting, as given in detail in Mark, emphasizes the homage which the man pays to Jesus, a homage made ironic by the fact that the man understands neither his sin or nor his inability to do anything about his sin. Mark gives a slightly different version of the man's question: not, what must I do to "have" eternal life, but to "inherit" it. There is a tension between 'do' and 'inherit' - in order to inherit something, one must do nothing; rather, someone else must die.

Mark's version of Christ's response is also more detailed: again answering a question with a question, Jesus asks "why do you call me good?" Again the question goes to motive. Is the man's act of honoring Jesus sincere? Or does the man seek self-justification? Does the man realize that, despite himself, he has affirmed Christ's divinity?

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Commented on Mark's version of the events, Richard Lenski writes:

The man does not ask how he may obtain life eternal as if he were at a loss as to the way and the means. On the contrary, he thinks he knows quite well how, namely, by his doing something, some one good thing.

Like all humans, he finds it difficult to believe and consistently internalize that salvation is God's action, not man's, in which man is passive and God is active. It is fallen human nature which wants somehow to believe that it at least cooperates with God in salvation, if it does not accomplish the matter entirely on its own. Lenski continues:

In the question: "What shall I do?" there lies, of course, the assumption that the questioner has the necessary ability and may easily reach the goal that Jesus has reached. All he needs is to know the thing that is to be done.

Lenski briefly considers the tension between 'do' and 'inherit' in the man's question, but does not extract the full ironic contradiction from it, preferring instead to see 'inherit' as a synonym for 'obtain' and leaves it at that. Further, Lenski sees Christ's imperative to give his wealth to others as a call to internal repentance. Lenski does not see the command as ironic.

Yet, considered as a literal answer to a literal question, irony seems the more plausible reading. The question is already ironic, "what must I do to have eternal life?" - because the action is God's, not man's. Consider the question, "what must I do to ensure the continuation of Jupiter in its orbit around the sun?" - what man would be foolish enough to imagine that he can 'do' anything about that?

But even if we grant the question, Christ's answer remains ironic. Go, sell your possessions, and give to the poor: good and God-pleasing actions, but nobody will find admission into heaven based upon them. Rather, such actions are performed out of gratitude for the salvation which God has already given.

Lenski fails to see the degree and amount of irony in Christ's words, and strives to make literal sense of them.

Luke's version of the matter adds only a generalized comment about wealth. Yet this comment sheds a bit of light on the matter:

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Those who witnessed the exchange between Jesus and the man understood: taken literally, the words would indicate that salvation is impossible. So they say, "who then can be saved?" - a rhetorical question, roughly, "so, nobody can be saved, right?" Jesus points, as ever, to the fact that God saves; man does not save, but rather man is saved. Man is passive, God is active. Therefore, salvation is 'impossible' with human effort; but it is "possible with God."

Is Wright Right?

The English scholar Tom Wright, better known as N.T. Wright, has attracted both attention and controversy. Jason Byassee describes Wright's aims in publishing:

Wright's goal in his teaching and writing is to massively revise the way Christianity has been articulated for generations. Christian faith, for Wright, is not about going to heaven when you die. It is not about the triumph of grace over the law of the Old Testament. He says its key doctrine is not justification by grace alone, the cornerstone for the Protestant Reformers. The church has misread Paul so severely, it seems, that no one fully understood the gospel from the time of the apostle to the time a certain British scholar started reading Paul in Greek in graduate school.

The reader is faced with a number of interpretive questions: is Byassee's description of Wright accurate? If so, what exactly is Wright presenting as long-lost core of the Christian faith? Is Wright arguing that recent centuries have misplaced the real meaning Christianity? If so, what is that real meaning?

According to Byassee, Wright's examination of the Pauline epistles is a historical one. Wright invented a phrase, the "new perspectives on Paul" approach, to emphasize that he would work from primary documents and historical data, and read Paul in manner which deliberately attempt to avoid two millennia of accumulated commentary and theology. Wright claims to peel back the layers of tradition and find the real historical Paul.

Historians can identify a long line of thinkers, dating back at least to Martin Luther, and arguably as far back as the later prophets of the Old Testament, who have stated that their task was to uncover the original and forgotten meanings in sacred texts. In this way, Wright is not new. Byassee summarizes some of Wright's work this way:

Theology, argues Wright, is something Paul pioneered. Jews and Romans could talk about spiritual matters such as fortune, or unseen powers that require our placating. But theology does work among the earliest Christians (and us) that it never had to do for their predecessors. Theology does the work for Paul that circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath did for the old Paul, the zealous Jew Saul of Tarsus. It marked out a community as distinct from the world. It still does — just not nearly as biblically in most cases as Wright thinks it should.

Arguing that he's uncovered the real Paul, Wright's thoughts become more interesting when he states what Paul's real theses are. According to Byassee's analysis of Wright,

Paul was not worried about where believers' souls would go after death. Christians of the late medieval period were worried about hell and felt they had to earn entry to heaven with works. This is the theology Martin Luther taught and wrote against, helping to ignite the Protestant Reformation.

Luther rejected the notion that individuals had to work and earn salvation. If we accept Byassee's interpretation, Wright rejects the notion that individual salvation is the central topic at all. Byassee continues:

But Jews of Paul's time were nowhere near so individualistic, so obsessed with the next life, so unfamiliar with grace as were the late medieval Christians. Instead of teaching about souls being saved from hell, say Wright and others, Paul is centrally teaching about God's faithfulness to Israel. He is showing that Yahweh is a God who keeps his promises, and so can be trusted to fulfill his promises in history.

Wright and those who've gathered around the rubric "new perspectives on Paul" offer a proposal about what Paul's main point is. Neither the 'individual' nor 'salvation' capture, Wright and his fellows claim, Paul's central topic.

In the long view of the Heilsgeschichte, Wright believes, according to Byassee, that

the works commanded in the law are good gifts from God. Paul doesn't say not to do them because you'll go wrong and think you're earning salvation. He says not to do them because the Messiah has come and the world is different now. All people can worship Israel's God and should do so together without ethnic division.

Wright seems to argue that Paul's message is not about individual salvation at all, and only secondarily about corporate salvation. Wright's Paul presents a type of salvation by belonging - Jews are saved because they are God's chosen people; Gentiles are saved because they have been adopted into the family of Israel. But salvation, of whichever type, is not the main theme of Wright's Paul.

Some readers have accused Wright of denying the immortality of the soul, because he argues that salvation is not the main message of the New Testament. Other readers see Wright as leaving the immortality of the soul intact, but simply asserting that it's not important.

Wright seems to be pointing us toward our calling as God's people, whether we are genetic Israelites or ingrafted Gentiles. Wright's Paul is telling us what our mission is, not how to be saved. Wright emphasizes the corporate, but, he says, he does not exclude individual considerations. Speaking of those readers who accuse him of collectivism, Wright responds that

it is simply not true, as people have said again and again, that I deny or downplay the place of the individual in favor of a corporate ecclesiology. True, I have reacted against the rampant individualism of western culture, and have tried to insist on a biblically rooted corporate solidarity in the body of Christ as an antidote to it. But this in no way reduces the importance of every person being confronted with the powerful gospel, and the need for each one to be turned around by it from idols to God, from sin to holiness, and from death to life.

If we strive for a sympathetic reading, we can note that it's not an either/or matter; it's not a case of binary opposites. Rather, it's a questions of emphasis. God deals with humans as individuals, and He also deals with them as groups. Both are always in play. The question is the mix or balance. When is God dealing individually? When corporately? Commenting on the third chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, Wright notes that

Paul makes what most commentators in the reformation tradition regard as a strange shift in verse 29, when he asks ‘Or is God the God of the Jews only?’ (Notice how the NIV, for instance, omits the word ‘Or’.) If he had been talking all along simply about individual sinners being put right with God, we should indeed regard this as a sudden intrusion of ethnic questions. But he hasn’t. As chapter 4 will reveal, when we allow it to play its full role, he has been talking about God’s faithfulness to the covenant with Abraham, and about God’s creation of a single family from both halves of sinful humanity. God’s declaring that sinners are now in a right relation to himself and God’s declaring that believing Jews and believing Gentiles belong in the same family are inextricably bound up with one another.

Another way to understand the controversies surrounding Wright is to ask, what is the definition of the word 'gospel'? Wright's answer does not deny, but de-emphasizes, the notion of salvation:

When Paul refers to ‘the gospel’, he is not referring to a system of salvation, though of course the gospel implies and contains this, nor even to the good news that there now is a way of salvation open to all, but rather to the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord. ‘The gospel’ is not ‘you can be saved, and here’s how’; the gospel, for Paul, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’.

The closer one examines both Wright and what others say about him, the more numerous and complex the questions become. If right sees salvation in a corporate light, what does that do to grace? It's possible to formulate a theology of unmerited favor in a corporate setting as well as in an individual setting. A field of investigation lies in the fact that the English words 'you' and 'your' cover, rather than disclose, the distinction between singular and plural, while the Hebrew and Greek words make explicit this difference.

Imagine if English-speaking Christians had to choose between singular and plural versions of 'you' and 'your' when they uttered formulaic expressions like "for you" and "for your sins."

Paul's words to the Ephesians make some of Wright's assertions plausible and perhaps even persuasive:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Note first that the occurrences of 'you' and 'your' are plural in verse eight of chapter two. Note secondly that conjunction 'for' indicates that we were created and saved in order to do good works. Salvation was merely a preliminary move on God's part: first, He saved us; then, He puts us to work. Wright's books and articles are too numerous, too long, and too complex to be easily sorted out. Generations of scholars will probably examine his work for years to come, and endless numbers of debates will be organized to attempt to finalize what Wright meant.

N.T. Wright has authored texts which are long, complex, and numerous. A detailed analysis of his work would take years, and such analysis would itself be long and complex. We can, however, identify two directions in which such analysis would proceed: first, the definitions of 'salvation' and 'gospel'; second, the interplay between individual and corporate. Such an analysis would ask whether Wright sees more than 'entry into the afterlife' as belonging to the definitions of 'gospel' and 'salvation' and, if so, what that "more" might be. An analysis would also ask to which extent each of the two dimensions - corporate and individual - figure in the definitions of 'salvation' and 'gospel' and conceptual framework which each of those words represents.

Is salvation, for Wright, more than simply getting into heaven? Is the gospel more than simply the information that one is getting into heaven? And does that "more" - whatever it may be - perhaps figure around our corporate identity as much as, or even more than, our individual identity? If being 'saved' means being used by God to work out His plans on earth, could it be that we do that work more corporately than individually? Is eternal life merely the first part of the gospel, in which Jesus tells us that we don't need to worry about getting into heaven and then tells us about how He wants us to live as His people on earth?

The lasting value of Wright's work has yet to be established, but it will depend on this: to which extent does Wright drive his reader back to the actual text of the Old and New Testaments? To which extent does Wright nudge his reader closer to Jesus? These questions will determine the final net worth of Wright's activities.

Conspiracy Theory

History is full of conspiracies, real and imagined. To this day, scholars discuss and debate the extent to which Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or acted in concert with others, in his assassination of JFK. Much more clearly, and beyond any doubt, is the fact that John Wilkes Booth was part of a large conspiracy to not only assassinate President Lincoln, but also to murder other key figures in the United States and possibly overthrow the government.

Likewise, the execution of Jesus was part of a conspiracy. There was an organized effort to get a guilty verdict and a death sentence for a man who had committed no crime. In his account of the matter, Matthew writes that

the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”

The conspiracy was to be carried out with stealth - another translation offers the adverb 'sly' - and among the conspirators, Matthew notes elders and chief priests. This was a conspiracy among the powerful, not among the common people. In his narrative, Marks adds the scribes to the list of conspirators:

the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him, for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”

This conspiracy would seek to have Jesus arrested in a low-profile manner: a public arrest in front of crowds was not their goal. Once arrested, the conspiracy would stir up public opinion against Jesus, and pressure on the Roman governor to issue a death sentence - this, despite the lack of any reasonable or valid charge against Jesus in terms of Roman law.

Now, however, the events take a bizarre turn. The conspiracy is not well thought-out. Governor Pontius Pilate sees that Jesus is innocent, and is not easily swayed to give orders for His execution. At the end, it seems that this conspiracy might fail, until it receives assistance from an unlikely source. Although the conspirators do not know it, Jesus has been aware of their plot since its beginning - indeed, since even before its beginning. And it is Jesus Who will assist the plot and finally bring about its success.

In the final analysis, the conspirators were incompetent. Jesus, seeing their plans unravel, realizes that if He is going to receive the death sentence He is trying to get, will have to intervene on their behalf. Jesus is manipulating His own trial to ensure that He is executed. At several points in the narrative, a few words from Him would have secured His release. He must calculate His words, and His silences, to obtain death. Although the conspirators do not know it, Jesus has become part of the conspiracy.

Just as there was a conspiracy against Jesus 2,000 years ago, so there is also a conspiracy against us today - a conspiracy against you and against me. Who are the current conspirators? Sin, death, and the devil; in addition, the world, and our own sinful natures.

They conspire to cause us to lose sight of Jesus and His central role in our lives and in the world. They conspire to get us to think that life is about getting an education, getting a good job, and being relatively happy and content. They conspire to prevent us from spending time with God; they conspire to prevent us from helping others.

This conspiracy has a number of tactics it uses against us; one of them is busyness. If we are busy, we won't take the time to talk to God, to listen to Him, and to meditate on His Word. Having not done those things, we won't spend time helping others, either.

Against this conspiracy, we are powerless. In fact, we are part of the conspiracy against ourselves. Jesus, however, stands powerfully and effectively against this conspiracy. He rescues us. As John writes, addressing us,

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

There was an organized conspiracy out to get Jesus. It wanted Him dead. It succeeded, but only because He caused it to do so. And in succeeding, it failed, because the conspirators did not know that after killing Jesus, He would rise from the dead, unleashing His amazing power to transform people and transform the world. In killing Jesus, the conspiracy set into motion a process which would ultimately install Jesus as supreme and ultimately erase the conspiracy.

There is an organized conspiracy out to get us. It wants us dead - spiritually dead. Our own sinful nature is part of that conspiracy. But Jesus stops the conspiracy. Jesus breaks into the conspiracy, and into our lives, and shatters the plans which would lead us away from Him. Foiling this conspiracy, Jesus leads us to the truth. Conspiracy is always about deception; Jesus is always about the truth.

Doctrine vs. Ethics

The tenuous relationship between doctrine and ethics in the Christian faith has long demonstrated ambivalence. On the one hand, no good doctrine can be so purely abstract as to lack practical application; on the other hand, the prescription of specific habits in the physical world takes on, at some point, a degree of specificity which lacks the peculiarly general nature which is a mark of doctrine.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died around 428 A.D. and who was a friend of John Chrysostom, wrestled with theological abstractions, and yet did so in the concrete practice of his monastic life. John of Damascus wrote his abstract work, The Source of Knowledge, but wrote a concrete text, Sacred Parallels as a companion text to it; he died in 749. Peter Lombard wrote a medieval classic called the Sentences; in it, propositions of theological doctrine stand next to propositions of practical ethics; he died in 1164.

Despite impressive intellectual horsepower being devoted to integrating doctrine and ethics, strong forces were at work to separate them. The history of ideas, or the history of thought, is a tangled web; one interpretation sees humanism as a force which worked to separate doctrine from ethics. While this assertion is controversial, it has at least some plausibility. A scholar named Christian Callisen argues that Georg Calixtus (also known as George Calixtus) was in some sense an extension of humanism as it arose in the forms of Petrarch and Angelo Poliziano. Calixtus lived in Germany and died in 1656. According to Callisen,

The movement was characterized by the rediscovery and reconsideration of ancient texts - Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - within which was sought "the answer to all social, political, artistic, and ethical problems."

The quote marks indicate that Callisen used a phrase from a book by S. Harrison Thomson.

While Callisen's characterization of Renaissance humanism is a bit naive - he appears to accept uncritically the propaganda put forth by the Renaissance writers themselves, propaganda in which they claim to have "rediscovered" the heritage of Greco-Roman classicism, even though medieval thinkers had access to these texts - he nonetheless properly notes that some humanists hoped to offer solutions to a wide variety of questions, including ethical questions, but notably not listing doctrinal questions. If Calixtus is part of this Renaissance humanist movement, his theology may be one of the forces separating doctrine from ethics. Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

Already in the early centuries, Christian thinkers began to distinguish between that instruction which was intended “to make known the word concerning Christ, and the mystery regarding him” and that instruction which was intended “to point to the corrections of habits.” At least in part, the distinction was suggested by the procedure of the New Testament itself. Theodore of Mopsuestia noted that both in the Epistle to the Romans, and in that to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul first set forth “dogmatic sermons,” defined as “sermons which contain the account of the coming of Christ, and indicate the blessing which he has conferred upon us by His coming,” and then went onto “ethical exhortation.” The great commission in Matthew 28:19 likewise was seen as a division of Christian discipline into two parts, “the ethical part and the precision of dogmas,” the former being contained in the commandments of Jesus, and the latter in the “tradition of baptism.” This meant that “the method of Godliness consists of these two things, pious doctrines and virtuous practice,” neither of which was acceptable to God without the other. Both forms of instruction belonged in the pulpit and in books about Christian teaching. The standard manual of doctrine in Greek Christianity, the Orthodox Faith of John of Damascus, discussed not only the Trinity and Christology, but also such matters as fear, anger, and the imagination. Its later counterpart in the Latin church, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, included in its third book a treatment of the virtues created by Grace. The two branches of theology were not permanently separated until the work of the seventeenth-century Protestant theologian, George Calixtus, but the distinction between doctrine and life had been in force long before that division of labor was effected.

The Christian faith certainly cannot be reduced, or seen as equivalent to, a moral code. Indeed, moral questions are secondary or peripheral to the core of faith. Yet Christianity does demand some ethic - and not merely any ethic. Jesus devoted effort to the discussion of ethical matters - even as He reminded His listeners that moral laws were not the core of His message. Christian doctrine may be seen as meta-ethical: setting not detailed moral precepts, but establishing a broader framework in which possibly several competing moral systems might be constructed, yet which also rules out other possible moral systems.

Beyond the 'what' of ethics, Jesus also addresses the 'why' - not merely what I ought to do, but what will motivate me to do it. Perhaps this is closer to the core of Christ's message - striving to be moral is, by itself, a nearly worthless activity. Human efforts at morality are useless and vain, and when most convincing are most dangerous. But divine inspiration to morality - when the effort is not a human one, but one driven by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - is simultaneously a manifestation of God at work and an expression of gratitude toward God.

If a truly ethical act can only be the result of the Holy Spirit at work inside a human being, and can never be the result of a purely human effort, and if the only possible motive for such an act is the response of gratitude from a human being who has received unearned and unmerited grace as a freely-given gift, then we might begin to see how Hegel saw the universe as the process of God's self-knowledge.

The Mind, the Heart, and the Hands

Approaching the topic of Christian doctrine, noted scholar Jaroslav Pelikan worked first to place doctrine within its larger context. Doctrine can be over- and underemphasized. Borrowing from a long tradition - Pelikan was a Lutheran for most of life, converting shortly before his death to Eastern Orthodoxy - he identifies doctrine as the content of the church's believing, teaching, and confessing. These beliefs, teachings, and confessions are based on the text of Scripture. In short, doctrine is the "what" of the church's written and spoken expressions.

It is worth noting that, according to Pelikan's definition, doctrine is corporate and not individual; it is the "we believe" and not the "I believe" - the usual texts of the Apostolic Creed and Nicene Creed begin with credo - "I believe" - but the Athanasian Creed includes a credamus - "we believe." Even with the first person singular of the credo, the set text and the corporate recitation of the text give a corporate aspect.

Although Pelikan made a career out of doctrine and theology, he notes that doctrine is not the main function of the collected followers of Jesus. Christians serve mankind, worship God, work to improve this world, and anticipate the joys of the next world: none of those functions are doctrinal. Yet all of those functions are informed by doctrine. Christians serve mankind, being instructed to do so by their doctrine; and the ways in which they serve mankind are shaped by doctrine: Christians must show charity to all people impartially. Christians worship God, identifying Him by their doctrine and praising His properties as those properties are set forth in doctrine. Christians work to improve this world, guided by peculiarly Christian doctrines which value peace over war, which value every human life, and which value each individual and his freedom - even if that individual opposes Christianity and uses his freedom to do so. Christians anticipate the joys of the next world, knowing by means of their doctrine that such joys are an utterly unearned and unmerited gift bestowed by a loving and gracious God.

Doctrine may not be eternal. Once this world has passed, we will have no need of doctrine, for, as Paul writes,

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

When we know perfectly and see perfectly - when we have an experience of the direct unmediated presence of God, an experience which in our present state we can neither imagine nor comprehend - doctrine will be superfluous and unneeded. Doctrine is provisional; it serves us as long as we are in this life. Once I have been brought to my destination, I no longer have need of the schedules and maps which showed me the route. Doctrine will end:

where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

Despite its provisional nature, doctrine is important, because it shapes the church's ministries. Teaching doctrine is therefore a good and necessary task, not for its own sake, but in the service of the larger nature of Christ's corporate body on earth. Pelikan writes:

What the Church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of the word of God: this is Christian doctrine. Doctrine is not the only, not even the primary, activity of the church. The church worships God and serves mankind, it works for the transformation of this world and awaits the consummation of its hope in the next. 'Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" - love, and not faith - and certainly not doctrine. The church is always more than a school; not even the age of Enlightenment managed to restrict or reduce it to its teaching function. But the church can not be less than a school. Its faith, hope and love all express themselves in teaching and confession. Liturgy is distinguished from ceremonial by a content that is declared in the Credo; polity transcends organization because of the way the church defines itself and its structure in its dogma; preaching is set apart from other rhetoric by its proclamation of the word of God; biblical exegesis avoids antiquarianism because it is intent on discovering what the text teaches, and not merely what it taught. The Christian church would not be the church as we know it without Christian doctrine.

Its corporate nature is one thing, among several, which makes doctrine what it is. Theology can be the work of an individual: the history of Christian thought illustrates this. But doctrine is the collective expression of those who follow Jesus. Jaroslav Pelikan has done well to bring this to our attention.

Paul's Concern for Unity in Galatians

Pauline epistles continue to serve, after two thousand years, as points of departure for numerous lines of thought. In the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians, the reader encounters a narrative which can be construed as a tale of signs which have been detached from the their original purposes and meanings. Once thus unfastened from their original contexts and denotations, they cause trouble.

Daily life, in any era, is filled with symbols. Over time, some of those symbols become disconnected from their initial functions and significances. Many people wear baseball caps who neither watch nor play baseball. One type of earring, which once signified slavery, is now worn as fashion. Many modern shoes have patterns of dots which were originally designed to drain excess moisture from the shoe after stepping in puddle; now those dots are understood as decorative in purpose and few wearers are aware of the original task of the perforations.

In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he mentions in the second chapter two symbols which had lost their meanings: circumcision and communal dining. Nicholas Thomas Wright discusses the adventures of Nigel Barley among the Dowayo people of Cameroon. Barley, a sociologist and anthropologist, carefully observed, recorded, and analyzed the culture of the Dowayo. Wright summarizes Barley's findings:

Social psychologists can and do come up with theories as to why circumcision plays such a large role in certain cultures. The ritual seems to highlight both the importance of the reproductive function and the fact that sexual appetite is a force that must somehow be controlled (though from Barley's accounts of Dowayo life this aspect is decidedly more symbolic than actual). Its origins are lost in the mists of time, through the Bible speaks of one occasion on which God commanded Abraham that he and his household and could be circumcised as a sign of the covenant God had made with Abraham and his family (Genesis 17). The Jews were by no means the only people in the ancient world to wear this badge, just as they are not alone in this respect today.

In many cultures, circumcision had a specific meaning or meanings, purpose or purposes, and context or contexts. The Hebrews were not the only nation to attach significance to this ritual. But over time, the initial functions of circumcision - to remind the Hebrews that their covenant with God was hereditary and therefore linked with the act of reproduction; to remind the Hebrews that the human sexual drive was a powerful force requiring discipline and judiciousness - were gradually less and less linked to the ritual itself. Circumcision became a ceremony disconnected from its primordial purpose. Floating free, as it were, a symbol without a referent, people found other alleged meanings for it. Circumcision came to be seen as a distinguishing mark, one which created two classes: the circumcised and the uncircumcised. To be sure, from its initiation, it had de facto created these two classes; but that was not its original purpose, meaning, or context. Consider carefully whether this text was meant to create two social classes, or whether it was to remind people of a sacred arrangement between God and humans:

And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Again, while the text does generate a two-class system, such a class system was at most a byproduct of the text. The focus and theme of the text is covenant. By Paul's time, however, two thousand years after God's conversation with Abraham, circumcision had come to be seen as a "badge" - Wright's word - of a group. Many of Paul's readers had misunderstood the primary function of circumcision: they assumed that its purpose was to divide humans into two groups.

Likewise, the act of dining with others was an act loaded with significance. Throughout the Tanakh and New Testament, communal dining was exactly that - communal. A meal was a "being together" - a phrase worthy of Heidegger. From Abraham's meal with visitors (Genesis 18:2 through 18:8), to the Last Supper, to the eternal banquet which is Heaven in the future, the Scripture uses mealtime as a metaphor for unity. Yet in the narrative concerning Peter's eating habits, meals will become divisive instead of unifying.

Anyone who has seen a cafeteria in an American high school will find this narrative easy enough to understand: imagine Peter eating lunch routinely at a table with a group of people - daily, over a series of weeks and months. They eat together because they are friends, and they are friends because they eat together. The shared meal both reflects and strengthens the bond. But one day, as Peter is on his way to lunch, he sees an old friend, a friend whom he has not seen in a long time. Happy to see his friend, he is also concerned about what his friend might think or say when he sees the people with whom Peter has been dining. Peter suddenly breaks his habit of eating at the table of friends.

Peter's error? He has detached the common dining experience from its primary meaning of a "being with" or a "being together" and instead has attached the dining experience to a new meaning, "being seen" as a part of a group. When the symbol is disassociated from its original referent and connecting to a new and foreign significance, social disruption results.

Paul's main concern in writing to the Galatians is not the purity of the symbol; Paul's concern is not preserving the meaning of the symbols. His concern is preserving the Gospel. Paul sees that the misunderstanding of these symbols - circumcision and common dining - threatens something of a larger magnitude. If the problem were merely this misunderstanding, then the problem might be overlooked, or dealt with in a more low-key manner. But this misunderstanding concerns Paul because it could lead, if left unchecked, to much worse problems.

Explaining that he is not held up by minutia or by the technicalities of definitions, Paul points to the question at the heart of the matter: unity. When symbols are detached from the original referents, and attached to other referents, the resulting misunderstanding is the least of the problems. The graver issue is conflict and divisiveness.

The reader might be misled into thinking that the concerns in the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians are circumcision and shared meals. Those are not the main concerns; they are merely the occasions or instances. The main concern is unity. Nicholas Thomas Wright continues:

Why? Because the gospel is the announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord of the world. And if he is Lord of the whole world, then those who believe in him, who give allegiance to him, must form a single family. There cannot be divisions based on nationhood or race. If the church had learnt this from Paul, instead of conveniently forgetting it, many troubles in today's world might have been averted.

Paul cares about circumcision and common dining only because, and only to the extent that, they impact the Gospel, for good or for ill. If someone asks Paul about his theology of circumcision, he might reply that it's whatever most effectively promotes the Gospel. Asked about his theology of shared meals, he might reply that it's whatever most accurately transmits to people the idea that Jesus loves them.

One possible understanding of the second chapter of Galatians, then, is this: Paul understands that unity serves the Gospel, and disunity hampers it. In this particular case, the issues which offer an opportunity for unity, or which threaten to disunite, are circumcision and mutual mealtimes.