Thoughts on the discovery of Jesus's body

3/3/07 Update: here is a humorous take on this story.


"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain...and if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins...if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." 1 Cor. 15:14-19 (ESV)

Last year, I stood with my friend Clayton, a candidate for the priesthood in the Anglican Church, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre/Resurrection in Jerusalem. There we prayed and worshiped with some Syriac Orthodox Christians. On the way home he told me about a movie, The Body, starring Antonio Banderas as a priest, in which archeologists claim to have found the body of Jesus - and their claim looks to hold water. What would happen to the faith and to the Church then? Antonio's bishop says: nothing. The Church will go on, because people trust their own real experiences of Jesus. At the time, as I walked the streets of the Holy city, I thought it a very interesting, albiet unlikely, premise.

Just over a year later, Clayton's words seem somehow "prophetic" as James Cameron and some people (I don't know their credentials) claim to have the remains of Jesus Christ, and of course, his "wife" Mary Magdaline. The Discovery Channel is naturally hype-ing this up for all it is worth. Apparently the body - well, pile of dust with bone fragments - was discovered in 1980 and has been in a warehouse (remember "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?). How do they "prove" that it is Jesus? Well, the name on the ossuary says so, of course. But, everyone has heard that one before. The twist is that in the same tomb (or the next tomb over?) they also found the remains of "Joseph," "Mary," "Joses" (the name of one of Jesus's brothers, Mk. 6:3) and another "Mary" (assumed to be Magdaline). What are the odds of finding all these names in the same tomb, they ask? According to their numbers, the odds are something like 600 to 1.

Naturally, if these were the remains of Jesus, to say this is a significant find would be an understatement of the grossest sort. Which raises interesting and disturbing (at least for me) questions. "What would I do if it were true...?" Judaism becomes a live (and very ironic) option, I suppose. Some might turn to the non-physical understandings of "resurrection" that are already floating around (as in the writings of Marcus Borg or John Shelby Spong). I don't think I could go there since such understandings, however well they may fit with certain intellectual currents of the past century or two, have little to do with Jewish Messianic expectation or with the New Testament - and why believe in less than half a faith? I must side with the Apostle Paul here, if there is no resurrection (in the Jewish sense) then there is no Christianity.

So how have people reacted to this new announcement? Just as one might expect. One conservative Christian "family values" group called this a "Hollywood belittling of Christianity." Actually, it is a challenge to the veracity of Christianity based upon new evidence, that is not quite the same thing as an insult and calls for a different sort of response (or have we learned nothing from the PR mistakes of the Muslims?).

More insightful comments, and critiques of this 'discovery', can be found at the ever-excellent blog of Ben Witherington III. And here is one that was commended to me by a friend (he said that this guy, Darrell Bock, is a professor at DTS and was also a consultant for the Discovery Channel documentary, but I haven't checked on that - maybe some of you know?) - http://dev.bible.org/bock/.

As you may have guessed, I am unconvinced - but at this point I would not likely be convinced of their particular argument even if I were an atheist - having not seen the documentary. And of course, I have already taken a side on this issue and will not easily be convinced otherwise. No one who has considered the implications of the resurrection can remain "neutral" on this issue - their lives will show their persuasion.

But the Church need not get overly worked up over this thing. Remember the last ossuary that we found? "James, the brother of Jesus"? I do. And does the timing of this find, when the culture already has a heightened interest in (and willingness to pay money to learn about) "alternative" gospels of Jesus, or secret marriages to Mary Magdaline strike anyone else as...an interesting coincidence?

To paraphrase Tom Oden, the Church catholic has weathered far to many "latest intellectual discoveries" to be cowed by this one.

Which reminds me of a story.

When the Communist authorities in Russia were trying to persuade the people to abandon Russian Orthodox Christianity so that they could embrace the "more rational" ideology of Soviet Communism (which was of course the ideology of the future), they gathered the "latest modern thinkers" to give a lengthy lecture to a gathered crowd scientifically debunking the Resurrection. At the end of the meticulous debunking lecture, the party's speaker turned to the old priest who had been invited to "participate in the discussion" and asked him how he responded. The old priest walked to the center of the stage and addressed the crowd simply with "Kristos Anesti" - the traditional Easter Acclamation, "Christ is Risen" - the crowd roared back the liturgical response: "The Lord is Risen indeed!"

Of course, we are still in Lent for the moment. But Easter comes.

"For I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth." Job 19:25 (ESV)

Comments from Hauerwas

I ran across this interview with the well-known and provocative theologian at Methodist-related Duke Divinity School. I like what I have read from Hauerwas, we'll see what I think this weekend as I am reading one of his books. But this is an intriguing quote, that is probably appropriate pondering material for Lent, which began on Wednesday with ministers telling us "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return; Repent and believe the Gospel," as they rubbed ashes on our heads.

Q: The title of your lecture is intriguing: "Why No One Wants to Die in America." What does that mean?

A: It means that we live in a society that's in deep death denial. Assuming that most Christians live like other people, thinking they can get out of life alive. It's not going to happen. People care more about who their doctor is today than who their priest or minister is. Most Christians live lives of practical atheism. ... Atheism isn't explicitly a denial of God, it's to live in a way that God does not matter.

BW3 on Rob Bell

Methodist theologian Ben Witherington III, after attending a recent speaking engagement by Rob Bell, has taken advantage of the opportunity to comment on Bell's theology and influence. Bell is very popular among young Christians and "emergent/ing" Churches as well. I like Bell's stuff that I have personally read/watched.

Witherington's main critiques are Bells ambiguity on homosexual practice, as well as his sometimes reading the ideas Medieval Jewish and Rabbinic sources back into first century Judaism.

2/20 update: Ben Witherington has gone into more detail on the use/misuse of Jewish sources to shed light on the NT.

Edwards: Theology is for everyone!

I have sometimes talked with people (and have almost agreed on frustrating days) who say that theological study does more to confuse our experience of the "simple love of Jesus" than to edify it. Of course, as I have written before on this blog, even the idea of "simple love of Jesus" is filled to the overflow with theological assumptions that are either sound or not. So theology seems to be necessary, after all - "understanding" cannot really be separated from "faith." All of us think certain things about God that shape how we believe in him (or don't believe in him). As someone said "You are already a theologian, what are you doing to become a good one?"

Jonathan Edwards addresses this issue with precision (of course) with his sermon
The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth (a VERY 18th century title, don't you think?).

He essentially argues that of all creatures humans alone have been given the higher rational powers of learning and understanding. And that God intends us to use those powers. And that the study of divinity/theology - the things of God - is the highest employment we can give to those faculties. This is indeed part of what we were intended to be as humans. I commend this (really really ridiculously long) sermon to you.

I think it is noteworthy that Edwards seems to assume that rational analysis of the Bible, comparing texts, will lead to a right understanding of the Scripture - this is a hallmark of the Reformed tradition. I think it can also be a deficiency because it ultimately makes the meaning of Scripture more or less up to individual reasoning. Granted, we expect the Spirit to guide that individual - but lots of "Spirit-led" individual interpretations have contradicted one another, and surely the "Spirit is not the author of confusion"? On the other hand our Wesleyan/Anglican tradition (with others) emphasizes the role of the Tradition of the whole Church, along with Reason, in helping to interpret Scripture rightly. Of course, Edwards is right that the use of Reason is crucial, but if divorced from Tradition it must inevitably lead to individualistic readings of Scripture.

Edwards rightly emphasizes the connection between "speculative" theology and "practical" or "experiencial" theology - that the two should not ever be separated. I am told that in the Eastern Orthodox tradition there are but three "canonical theologians" (or "divines"): St. John "the Divine," St. Gregory of Naziansus "the Theologian," and St. Symeon "the New Theologian." They are men not only of extraordinary insight into the mysteries of God, but also of exemplary holiness. Indeed in Orthodoxy one cannot even be a "theologian" at all if one does not have experiencial knowledge of God and personal holiness.

Along with Orthodoxy (which has four "great doctors" among its saints: Athanasius, Gregory, Basil, and Chrysostom), the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions also pick up this idea of the "doctors" of the Church - theologians of extraordinary insight and holiness. The Wesleyan tradition also emphasizes the importance of experience - and not any experience but most especially that of justification and sanctification, that is, Christian experience - as a part of our doing theology (see 2004 Discipline, para. 104, esp. page 77). So we are all agreed with Edwards that in some sense, a "theologian" (or perhaps we should say "a good theologian" or "a Christian theologian" - recognizing that everyone engages in some thought about God, though not all love him, which is the concern of Edwards and the Church) should be characterized by holy and God-focused living.

All of these traditions of the One Church, stand over against the peculiarly modern habit (especially associated with Mainline Protestants and Catholics in the West) of recognizing "doctors" as "theologians" sheerly on the basis of (perhaps even secular?) academic credentials and the number of publications to their credit. As if these of themselves gave much insight into one's knowledge of or life with Holy God. So in the theology sections of popular bookstores I can read what "theologians" are saying about "the historical Jesus," without any glimpse of the holiness of their own lives.

Edwards on the other hand, along with the greater part of the Christian Tradition, teaches that one who would be a Christian theologian must have both intellectual and experiential knowledge of the love of God - the two go together. So Edwards urges all who would know God (experiencially) to apply themselves diligently to study the things of God (divinity) - even the slightest nuance of theology, he says, is important and God has revealed not a single word of superfluity in Scripture. And he is certain that all we learn can and must impact our actual practice as Christians.

And we have more access to study these things than ever before! Edwards says to his own flock: "We are in some respects under far greater advantages for gaining knowledge, now in these latter ages of the church, than Christians were formerly; especially by reason of the art of printing, of which God hath given us the benefit, whereby Bibles and other books of divinity are exceedingly multiplied, and persons may now be furnished with helps for the obtaining of Christian knowledge, at a much easier and cheaper rate than they formerly could."

In a world filled with Christian bookstores, websites, and theology blogs, how much more do we have access to "advantages for gaining knowledge"? All of us have access to the resources and the Spirit to become good theologians (knowers of God) in our own lives. Let us strive to do so.

Asbury Seminary is in REAL Trouble.

See this Locusts and Honey Investigative Report to find out why. And if you don't believe in the threat he it talking about, you will (seriously) be shocked by this.