Matthew 26 - The Last Supper - Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis

 “In the institution of the Blessed Eucharist at the Last Supper, … Jesus creates for himself a new form of existence as food for man’s life.  As supreme culmination of the work of redemption, God the Word Incarnate takes on the created form of greatest possible vulnerability by becoming edible and potable, in an act of creative anticipation and transformation of what would  happen to him physically on Good Friday on the Cross.”                                    

Source:  Fire of Mercy Heart of the Word Volume IV, Gospel of Matthew,  by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (Ignatius Press 2006), at page 149.

A Layperson Looks at Desiderio Desideravi

    Pope Francis published his apostolic letter, Desiderio Desideravi (DD),  on June 29, 2022. At section 10, the Pope says:

Ghent Altarpiece D- Adoration
 of the Lamb, by Jan Van Eyck
Credit: Wikpedia Commons

            Here lies all the powerful beauty of the liturgy. If the resurrection were for us a concept, an idea, a thought; if the Risen One were for us the recollection of the recollection of others, however authoritative, as, for example, of the Apostles; if there were not given also to us the possibility of a true encounter with Him, that would be to declare the newness of the Word made flesh to have been all used up. Instead, the Incarnation, in addition to being the only always new event that history knows, is also the very method that the Holy Trinity has chosen to open to us the way of communion. Christian faith is either an encounter with Him alive, or it does not exist.

The Pope in DD presents his take on the  Eucharist as an encounter with our Lord 

in the Paschal Mystery.   

Henri de Lubac - St. Ambrose

I have been reading a lot of Henri de Lubac lately.

Somewhere de Lubac quotes St. Ambrose who said:

"Et nunc deambulabat in paradiso Deus, quando divinas Scripturas lego."

Even today, God walks in paradise, when I read the divine Scriptures.

Return of Jesus

 From a recent study of Psalms and Genesis, I see the divine entourage, starting with, "Let us make man in our image." And then in Ps. 82 - where the RC bishops' version of the Bible (NABRE) backs me up that this is the divine council - we see the harm caused by angelic "rebels" whom we later see in St. Paul, Ephesians ch. 6, the principalities and powers. There is a great deal of biblical support for this "unseen realm." Satan and his corp normally work as wolves in sheep's clothing ("unseen"), such as with the priests who are for the Constitutional right to gay marriage or who don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus, or with church leaders banning the Hail Mary and the St. Michael prayer from post-Mass prayers. But now we see the devil working out in the open, in the U.S. with law court attacks on the faith, and way more horribly in AFG where believers are being burned alive for their faith as we speak. I believe that we should keep an open mind, that in days like these Jesus may well return to the earth, as promised, and if he does the Book of Acts says that we will see him on the Mount of Olives. It's important to look to him and for him daily (the worship of the Lord); otherwise, I might miss him.

Ps. 82 NABRE Notes

 

The New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE),  is a  Bible translation made available online by  the  United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their footnotes to Ps. 82 echo Divine Council teaching which we get from Michael Heiser and others, as you see here, where I quote from the NABRE footnotes:

Footnotes

Psalm 82 As in Ps 58, the pagan gods are seen as subordinate divine beings to whom Israel’s God had delegated oversight of the foreign countries in the beginning (Dt 32:8–9). Now God arises in the heavenly assembly (Ps 82:1) to rebuke the unjust “gods” (Ps 82:2–4), who are stripped of divine status and reduced in rank to mortals (Ps 82:5–7). They are accused of misruling the earth by not upholding the poor. A short prayer for universal justice concludes the Psalm (Ps 82:8).

a.     82:5 The gods are blind and unable to declare what is right. Their misrule shakes earth’s foundations (cf. Ps 11:3; 75:4), which God made firm in creation (Ps 96:10).

b.     82:6 I declare: “Gods though you be”: in Jn 10:34 Jesus uses the verse to prove that those to whom the word of God is addressed can fittingly be called “gods.”

c.     82:8 Judge the earth: according to Dt 32:8–9, Israel’s God had originally assigned jurisdiction over the foreign nations to the subordinate deities, keeping Israel as a personal possession. Now God will directly take over the rulership of the whole world.

Ps. 82 footnotes, New American Bible  (Revised Edition) (NABRE),   © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC.

Kathleen Norris - Psalms

 The Jewish believers sang the Psalms.  Jesus sang the Psalms of ascent with his disciples (Matt 26:30). The Apostles sang Psalms (1 Cor 14:26). That was also the practice of the ancient Christians.  

Kathleen Norris in her book, Dakota: A Spiritual Biography (1993) describes her time praying and singing Psalms at Benedictine monasteries.  The pace of life is too fast, and as Norris wrote in 1993 she saw that people were coming to recognize that time at the monastery just might slow us down.  Norris says:  

The attraction is real. For all our secular preoccupations, our fascination with lifestyles of the rich and famous, twentieth-century Americans are flocking to monasteries for retreats in record numbers. The poor and humble are so popular, in fact, that when I tried a few years ago to arrange on short notice a retreat at a monastery in New England, I was told an apologetic monk that the guest facilities were booked solid for the next six months.    

**** 

The Psalms are the word of God, which is alive and active. It's not  surprising that for Norris the experience of the monastery is  life changing:
She says: 

Often, when I’m sitting in a monastery choir stall, I wonder how I got there. I could trace it back, as I can trace the route from back East to western South Dakota. But I’m having too much fun. The words of Psalms, spoken aloud and left to resonate in the air around me, push me into new time and space. I think of it as the quantum effect: here time flows back and forth, in and out of both past and future, and I, too, am changed

                          

Genesis Chapters 2 and 3 - JSB and Brueggemann

Per the Jewish Study Bible (JSB), Judaism does not see "the fall"  in Genesis chapters  2 and 3.  The JSB claims that getting ejected from the garden and then having to work hard and put on clothes reflects real adult life. The Garden of Eden is like a child's place, where Adam and Eve don't even know they are naked.  I don't agree with this assessment of the rule violation of Adam and Eve. The world changes after this disruption in the garden.  The sin has a cosmic effect. The sin of Adam and Eve drives them away from this great place. I'm going with the the Catechism of the Catholic Church and St. Paul when it comes to original sin and the meaning of  Genesis 2 and 3.  

The garden is God's place. "They heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden." Gen. 2:8.   He sets the boundaries. He is the gardener. Adam and Eve live with him.  Here you see the personal relationship which God offers.  Skipping ahead to Christian application, this relationship provides the  joy of the spiritual life.  There is only one rule in the garden. And they can't even handle that.  Human nature craves autonomy. The serpent stokes that fire. Who is this serpent? The text does not say. And we can't  know from this chapter alone, but other Bible study indicates that the serpent is a spiritual being, here embodied.  One of the themes of this chapter is to avoid the tree of knowledge. Is this a teaching of anti-intellectualism? No. Read Gen. 1:28 (master the earth) and  Proverbs 3:18 (seek wisdom).  But believers can't get anxious about what they do not know. We too live in God's world. Will we respect his boundaries? 

Brueggemann says in chapters 2 and 3 we have the horizontal (conflict between people) and the vertical (conflict with God) which goes hand-in-hand, just as we see with Cain and Abel and in the teaching of Jesus (love God, love your neighbor).  The relationship between  Adam and Eve breaks down. This is love of neighbor - not happening. Adam blames Eve in 3:12. And we see the vertical, where Adam blames God in 3:12:   He says, "The woman you put at my side...."  Adam does not love God. He does not love his  neighbor. See Matt 22:36. Eve comes off much better, where she says in Gen. 3:13, "The serpent duped me."  And that is exactly what happened. She is  just accurately reciting what happened.  And yet fake Christians over the centuries mistreated women citing Genesis 3 as authority for a theory  claiming that from the beginning  women could not be trusted. 

Chapter 3 presents a law court scene. God the gardener becomes the questioner. And there is a judgment and a sentencing.  They were supposed to die.  Gen.  2:15. That was the law. They had been warned. But God had mercy. He even made clothes for their naked bodies. Gen. 3: 21: He "made the garments...and clothed them." Here we see the love of God, and the forgiving grace of God.  They lived. They had children.  I like what the JSB says quoting a talmudic rabbi, that the Torah begins with God clothing the naked, and it ends with him burying the dead (Deut 34:6 where God personally buries Moses). The Lord here provides the example of how we are to live- doing acts of unmerited kindness. 

For Christians Genesis 2 and 3 begins God's  "salvation history." Man has fallen away from his creator, but God is going to restore him. We see a glimpse of the restoration in chapter 3 with his mercies to these his first people. The Bible is the story of God. He is the central character. His people forsake him, over and over, starting here, but he will not give up on them. He finally wins victory over sin and death with the resurrection of Jesus. 

Source:   Walter Brueggemann,  Genesis:  Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (2010). 

Dunn - Prophetic Calling of Jesus

From Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels by James Dunn:

The Gospels also indicate that Jesus probably experienced something equivalent to a prophetic calling when he was baptised by John. So the Gospel writers could hardly fail to recount the beginning of Jesus’ mission from his baptism by John.

Jenson - Role of Old Testament

For some reason Christians lose sight of the fact that the God who saved Israel from Egypt is the God who raised Jesus from the dead.  Here Robert W. Jenson discusses the role of the Old Testament in the church: 

[W]hat did and should it mean for the role of the Old Testament in the church, that in some new way it is now "directed to Christ"? We see that our question must be limited: we cannot ask why the Old Testament is Scripture after Christ's resurrection, but only about the way in which the Old Testament canon actually functions within the risen Christ's community. 

...

When the narratives of the patriarchs' adventures, of the exodus, of the conquest of Canaan, or of the Lord's judgments and restorations of Israel are felt as alien, one of two things is likely to happen; both have actually happened, and both undermine the faith.  One possible and currently actual outcome is that preaching and teaching construe "the New Testament's God" simply by constructing a contrary of the supposed Old Testament God: the God of the gospel is pacific, nonjudgmental, and in general a really nice person. In much of the liberal church, in many Evangelical groups, and indeed among many "progressive" Catholics, theology has thus been replaced by sentimentality ....

...

We must therefore be careful in stipulating the difference that the crucifixion and resurrection made for the role of the Old Testament. In the New Testament itself, the Old Testament's theological authority is unaffected. The Old Testament's identification of the Lord as "the one who rescued Israel from Egypt" is indeed completed by "the one who rescued the Lord Jesus from death"; but it is not replaced (Soulen, God); and in general the New Testament simply assumes the whole of Israel's story about God's works with his people. Whatever problems the Old Testament law made for a soon predominantly Gentile church, Jesus' own remembered words confirmed that the law reveals God's will. And Israel's prophets were the very teachers from whom the primal church learned why Jesus is needed.

Canon and Creed (Interpretation) (Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church)
by Robert W. Jenson  (Westminster John Knox Press 2010).

Robert Jenson - God Enters History

I am reading Robert W. Jenson's great book of lectures to undergraduates titled,  A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live? (Oxford University Press 2016).

Jenson says:

The God depicted in the Old Testament does not ride serenely above the happenings of the temporal world. Israel’s God lives the history of this world together with us. And that means he has to live by and with the particularities and singularities of history. He has to enter history the same way that anyone enters history: by taking a particular place and doing particular things. And he does that the way anyone does: by identifying himself with a particular cause or people or movement—in fact, Israel.

Ecclesia de Eucharista John Paul II

This week I  have reflected on John Paul II’s encyclical, “Ecclesia de Eucharistia,” published the Vatican April 17, 2003.  This is a blog on  the words and deeds of Jesus.  Among his most important words were those spoken at the first Eucharist where he said of the bread, "this is my body," and of the wine, "this is my blood,"  and said  "take and eat." 

Section  22 explains how union with Christ makes his people a sacrament.  The Pope cites John 20:21 (as the father has sent me, so send I you).  The Pope says, “From the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the Cross and her communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church draws the spiritual power needed to carry out her mission. The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the summit of all evangelization, since its goal is the communion of mankind with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit.”

Section 23 explains the communal aspect:  “[O]ur union with Christ, which is a gift and grace for each of us, makes it possible for us, in him, to share in the unity of his body which is the Church.”

And the Holy Spirit?  The Pope says, “God the Father is asked to send the Holy Spirit upon the faithful and upon the offerings, so that the body and blood of Christ “may be a help to all those who partake of it ... for the sanctification of their souls and bodies. The Church is fortified by the divine Paraclete through the sanctification of the faithful in the Eucharist.”

And finally for this post I note section  24.  The Pope is realistic.  He knows that there is disunity in the world, and in the church:  “The seeds of disunity, which daily experience shows to be so deeply rooted in humanity as a result of sin, are countered by the unifying power of the body of Christ. The Eucharist, precisely by building up the Church, creates human community.”

What do I take from all of this? We have this great gift which brings Jesus close to us and makes us more like Christ. It also creates a fellowship like no other among believers, a closeness. How do I make this happen in real life? I attend a large church, the largest church in the entire Milwaukee archdiocese, and I know very few people there.  At Mass I am not sharing with people whom I know. How do I make what JP II describes actually happen? Start with prayer.  Ask God to bring people into my life who will help with all of this.  That should be a prayer that God will answer.  But be patient. 

Jesus in the Gospels

Here is a long blog post from Larry Hurtado, which is wonderful:

 https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/jesus-in-the-gospels/

Larry concludes:

In short, it is a fallacy to pose a genuinely human Jesus such as we have in the Gospels over against the “high” Christology reflected in Paul’s letters and other various early Christian texts. Instead, at least in the various circles that comprised the emerging “proto-orthodox” Christianity of the late first century and thereafter, various affirmations about Jesus were seen as compatible and complementary, and various literary genres were appropriated to express Jesus significance.

John P. Meier - The Future Kingdom in the Beatitudes of Jesus

This is my second post on the book,  A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus Vol. 2 - Mentor, Message and Miracles , by Fr. John P. Meier,  Volume 2  of Meier's five-volume study of the historical Jesus. 

Meier provides background information on the structure of OT beatitudes in the Psalms and Proverbs. He states that "sometimes the reward or fortunate consequence of such wise action is mentioned in the context," as in verse 3 of Psalm 1 (shall be like a tree planted near streams of water).  Meier at 324. 

Credit:  alittleperspective.com

What is a beatitude?  In the OT and in the Intertestamental literature it is a “cry of admiration, congratulation, and felicitation.” Meier at 323.   The wisdom teacher describes the happy person and "while formally descriptive,”  the beatitude is“functionally parenetic.” P. 323. The happiness “explicitly described is implicitly held up as a goal to be pursued.” P. 323. While the OT beatitudes are "basically sapiential [focused on rewards in this life] rather than eschatological," the beatitudes of Jesus reflect the change that came post-exile.   

After the exile, the beatitudes become more realistic (Book of Job), and then after the Seleucid persecutions with apocalyptic literature the horizon extends to the next world, and we see this view of the future kingdom in the beatitudes of Jesus. 

Jesus' beatitudes come in this form: 1) the makarios (happy are), 2) followed by the designation of the sufferers and 3) the  hoti or causal clause which promises the reversal of their "present misery" by an eschatological gift or action from God. Meier at 330.

In the background here is "the whole OT picture of God as the truly just king of the covenant community of Israel, the king who does what Israel's human kings often failed to do: defend widows and orphans ...." Meier at 331.

In Jesus' beatitudes:

“We begin to see why Jesus was not interested in and did not issue pronouncements

about concrete social and political reforms, either for the world in general or for 

Israel in particular. He was not proclaiming the reform of the world; he was

proclaiming the end of the world.”  

Meier at 331.  Here Jesus differs from the prophets who were concerned about the social and political evils of their  day.  Jesus, by contrast, did not denounce slavery, Roman rule in Judea, unjust economic practices “oppressing the poor in the face of inflation,” because:

“The definitive arrival of God’s kingly rule was imminent; calls for social and 

political reform, launched - and often botched - by human beings, were thus beside

 the point.”

Meier at 331.

John P. Meier - Jesus' Two "You Petitions"

For the next four weeks I will be posting on the book,  A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus Vol. 2 - Mentor, Message and Miracles , by  Fr. John P. Meier, Volume 2  of Meier's five-volume study of the historical Jesus.  My citations to this book will be to "Meier" or "Meier Vol. 2."  

At page 317 Meier states: 

  

[T]he historical Jesus did expect a future coming of God's kingdom, and that kingdom was in some way a transcendent one, surmounting this world's barriers of time, space, hostility between Jews and Gentiles, and finally death itself.  A completely un-eschatological Jesus, a Jesus totally short of apocalyptic traits, is simply not the historical Jesus, however compatible he might be to modern tastes, at least in middle-class American academia.

What does the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples tell us about these kingdom expectations?  Jesus begins the prayer with, "Our Father," Greek pater which reflects Jesus' "striking use" of the address,  Aramaic "Abbe" which means  “my own dear father” for God. Meier at 294. The petitions of the prayer "are meant to reproduce the trusting and unaffected attitude of a child dependent on an all-powerful and loving father." Meier at 294.

In the words of the prayer, “Your kingdom come,” we have a petition asking for this kingdom to come soon. Meier at 295, 297.  The "symbol of God's kingship is central to his message." Meier at 294. That may be common knowledge to believers and we take that for granted, but God's kingship is a message which is not central to the NT outside of the Synoptic Gospels and is not central to the OT or to ancient Jewish literature. God's kingship soon coming to this world was an expectation of Jesus that he brought to this prayer, the only prayer in the NT which Jesus taught to his disciples. Meier at 294.

There is beautiful parallelism in the two phrases:  “hallowed be your name,” and “your kingdom come.” Meier at 295. In both the Aramaic and the Greek there are two beats in both, one on the verb and one on the noun, both ending with the same sound (from the pronoun)  and that creates a rhyme in the prayer.  Meier at 295.   This means that these two parallel lines go together and help to explain each other. And what does this  have to with Jesus' thoughts of God's kingdom?

Jesus says, "hallowed be your name." To hallow is to sanctify the name of God. This means two things. First, Israel should "sanctify God's name, as opposed to profaning it" (Meier at 295): "This sanctification includes believing God's word, trusting his promises, standing in awe of his majesty, praising him in worship, and observing his precepts in cult and in everyday life."  Meier at 295.  

Second, to sanctify the name of God means he manifests power and glory "in the blazing of a theophany that can bring either salvation or condemnation." Meier at 296 (citing OT). Meier discusses the “equivalence of a person and the name of the person …” Meier at 296.   God does this "by manifesting his power, glory, and holiness (= his transcendence, his "otherness," his "God-ness") ...." Meier at 295-296.  He sanctifies himself by a “powerful intervention.” Meier at 296 (citing Ezekiel where God brings his scattered people home to their own land).  

Which of these two meanings of "sanctify your name" does Jesus have in mind here? In the context of this prayer, the call to sanctify God's name "is probably neither a prayer that people will honor and praise God's name nor, as it were, an exhortation to oneself to do the same." Meier at 297. For Jesus the "theological concentration" here (citing OT, Qumran literature and the OT) is a petition for God himself to sanctify his name:

God alone can rightly and fully manifest himself in all his power and glory, that is to say, God alone can sanctify his name, which, it is hoped, he will do soon. This interpretation is supported by the close connection between the first and second "you petition." Certainly only God can make his kingdom come; the tight parallelism between the two petitions would seem to argue that the same is true of sanctifying the name.

Meier at 297. 

The prayer creates a picture of a great change coming, not from human actors  but from God (“Abba”), our loving Father.   For those who are praying with Jesus, there is no need to fear.

Encapsulation - Surprised by Hope

One last thing, from Surprised by Hope, at page 122:

The word eschatology, which literally means “the study of the last things,” doesn’t just refer to death, judgment, heaven, and hell, as used to be thought (and as many dictionaries still define the word). It also refers to the strongly held belief of most first-century Jews, and virtually all early Christians, that history was going somewhere under the guidance of God and that where it was going was toward God’s new world of justice, healing, and hope. The transition from the present world to the new one would be a matter not of the destruction of the present space-time universe but of its radical healing. As we saw in the last chapter, the New Testament writers, particularly Paul, looked forward to this time and saw Jesus’s resurrection as the beginning, the firstfruits of it. So when I (and many others) use the word eschatology, we don’t simply mean the second coming, still less a particular theory about it; we mean, rather, the entire sense of God’s future for the world and the belief that that future has already begun to come forward to meet us in the present. This is what we find in Jesus himself and in the teaching of the early church. 

Easter 2016 - Back to Surprised by Hope

I read N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope back in 2011 and decided to come back to it this year as an Easter celebration over the 50 days of Easter, which run from Easter to Pentecost.  This time I’m reading the book along with occasional glances at the  Surprised by Hope Participant’sGuide, where at page 26 Wright says:

The resurrection of Jesus is more than a belief that his body was dead and came to life again, though this is quite true. It is an awareness that there was a cosmic explosion when Jesus rose again, and the power and repercussions of this reality echo through the ages to our day and into eternity. From the earliest years of the church, followers of Jesus were uniform in their affirmation and confidence that Jesus had raised, bodily, from the dead. He had come through death, out the other side, and a new reality was born. The tomb was empty! The risen Jesus had met with them, taught them, shared meals, and instructed them. The one who had died on the cross was alive again. Because Jesus has risen, we have more than confidence that our eternity is secure. We have an invitation to become his ambassadors in the world today. Through his church, Jesus wants to bring justice, lift up beauty, and lavish his gifts on the earth. And the primary way he plans to do this is through you and me.

As to that last sentence, the kingdom of God is not going to come "through you and me."  God will finish that work himself.   But I get Wright's point.   Believers are part of God's plan of redemption, as participants in Jesus'  "new creation" or what he called at his last supper the "new covenant."  I've been listening to 1 Cor. chapter 15 over and over during this Easter time, where Paul calls the resurrected Jesus the "first fruits" of this transformed world.  He is alive today and he  continues to work, to "bear fruit,"  through his people.   That's the message of Surprised by Hope. 

  

Richard Hays - Conversion of the Imagination

Here is a portion of Colin James Smothers' blog post review of  Richard B. Hays' book,  The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), describing St. Paul's method,  which has been helpful to my study of First Corinthians: 

In Chapter 1, Hays turns to the book of 1 Corinthians to examine the question of the eschatological identity of the church of Corinth in Paul’s correspondence. He begins by looking at the direct quotation of Isaiah 45:14 in 1 Corinthians 14:25. Via the concept of metalepsis, Hays analyzes the context of Isaiah 45, which is alluded to in Zechariah 8:20-23 and Daniel 2:46-47, to point out that in their original contexts these passages are about the Gentile outsider being brought to worship Israel’s God after having recognized God’s presence with Israel (3). Hays argues that Paul has intentionally placed the predominantly Gentile church into the theological shoes of OT Israel by identifying the church not simply with OT Israel but as OT Israel. Hays calls this Pauline reading of these texts “apocalyptic,” since it makes use of an “eschatological hermeneutic” that has been shaped by the revealed event of the cross (4). According to Hays, this was “Paul’s missionary strategy in his confrontation with pagan culture … [to] draw[] upon eschatologically interpreted Scripture texts to clarify the identify of the church and to remake the minds of his congregations” (5). Hays sees this “hermeneutical move” deployed by Paul elsewhere—this time typologically—in 1 Corinthians 10:1-22. Here Hays argues that Paul describes the Corinthian church in terms reminiscent of the wilderness generation, which again identifies the church as occupying the theological space of OT Israel. Hays argues for the same church-Israel re-identification in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, and from all of theses passages taken together Hays makes the case that Paul intentionally connected the NT church with OT Israel in order to effect a “conversion of the imagination” in NT believers, an imagination that allows the NT church to read Israel’s history as their history, and even to read themselves into Israel’s history.

https://colinsmothers.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/a-review-of-richard-hays-the-conversion-of-the-imagination/

James Dunn

I like this from James Dunn:

The Spirit opened up a whole new vista for the first Christians, and they were brave and bold enough to follow where the Spirit showed the way. If we are to fully appreciate Paul the apostle, Paul the theologian, Paul the church founder, we must take full account of this vital aspect of his gospel. Having been converted by the Christ to recognise that God’s saving righteousness reached out to embrace Gentile as well as Jew, Paul was also quick to recognise that God’s Spirit was breaking away from the old patterns established by scripture and sanctified by tradition. This is why Christians need to rediscover Paul and to let him provide a fresh challenge to our own traditions where they no longer express the life of the Spirit, and to restore to us a fresh vision of how the initiative of the Spirit may once again be taking us in unexpected directions.

Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels, (William B. Eerdmans 2011) by James D.G. Dunn. 

Richard Hays - First Corinthians

I’m enjoying Richard B. Hays’ fast-paced commentary on First Corinthians.  The text of Paul's letter offers excellent support for Hays’ comments on the “conversion of the imagination,” as this passage illustrates:

            But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

1 Cor 2:9  (NRSV).  In First Corinthians Paul challenges the believers to see with the "eyes of faith" realities which appear foolish to the people of that day.   Hays states, for example, “The scandal of this message is difficult for Christians of a later era to imagine. To proclaim a crucified Messiah is to talk nonsense.”   Here from Hays’ comments to chapters 1 and 2 are beautiful remarks on what First Corinthians opens with and promises to deliver:

“By the end of the first nine verses [of ch. 1], Paul has sketched a sweeping picture of the Corinthian church’s calling: They have been called by God to participate in a movement, along with others all around the known world, to extend the destiny of Israel by living as a covenant people set apart for the service of God. God has lavished upon them spiritual gifts that enable their mission of bearing witness to the grace of Jesus Christ, and God supports and strengthens the community during the present age, while they await God’s final judgment of the world.”

            …

“Consequently, to enter the symbolic world of the gospel is to undergo a conversion of the imagination, to see all values transformed by the foolish and weak death of Jesus on the cross.”

Hays, Richard B., First Corinthians: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Westminster John Knox Press 2011). 

Richard B. Hays  Credit:   Duke Divinity School

Paris November 13 and George Eldon Ladd's The Gospel of the Kingdom

After what just happened in Paris, today is a good day to reflect on the words of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13, Matt 24 and Luke 21).   George Eldon Ladd wrote:

The Kingdom is assaulting the kingdom of Satan. This conflict will last to the end of The Age. Final victory will be achieved only by the return of Christ. There is no room for an unqualified optimism. Our Lord’s Olivet Discourse indicates that until the very end, evil will characterize This Age. False prophets and false messiahs will arise and lead many astray. Iniquity, evil, are so to abound that the love of many will grow cold. God’s people will be called upon to endure hardness. “In the world you have tribulation” (John 16: 33). “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14: 22). We must always be ready to endure the tribulation as well as the kingdom and patience which are in Jesus (Rev. 1: 9). In fact, our Lord himself said, “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24: 13). He who endures tribulation and persecution to the uttermost, even to the laying down of his life, will not perish but will find salvation. “Some of you they will put to death.... But not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21: 16, 18). The Church must always in its essential character be a martyr church. As we carry the Gospel into all the world, we are not to expect unqualified success. We are to be prepared for opposition, resistance, even persecution and martyrdom. This Age remains evil, hostile to the Gospel of the Kingdom.

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The visible Church, we are told, is to be completely leavened by evil doctrine. Apostasy is so to pervade the Church that only a small remnant will be found faithful to God’s Word. The closing days of This Age will be the Laodicean period when the entire professing Church will be nauseatingly indifferent to eternal issues. In such a portrayal of the last days, God’s people can expect only defeat and frustration. Evil is to reign. The Church age will end with an unparalleled victory of evil. Sometimes so much stress is laid upon the evil character of the last days that we receive the impression (unintended, to be sure) that the faster the world deteriorates the better, for the sooner the Lord will come. It cannot be denied that the Scriptures emphasize the evil character of the last days. In fact, we have already made this emphasis. The evil which characterizes This Age will find a fearful intensification at the very end in its opposition to and hatred of the Kingdom of God.

George Eldon Ladd - Credit babelio.com

This does not mean, however, that we are to lapse into pessimism and abandon This Age and the world to evil and Satan. The fact is, the Gospel of the Kingdom is to be proclaimed throughout the world. The Kingdom of God has invaded This present evil Age. The powers of The Age to Come have attacked This Age. The last days will indeed be evil days; but “in these last days (God) has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb. 1: 2). God has given us a Gospel of salvation for the last days, a Gospel embodied in One who is Son of God. Furthermore, “in the last days it shall be,” God declares, “that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2: 17). God has spoken for the last days; God has poured out His Spirit in the last day to give power to proclaim the divine Word. The last days will be evil, but not unrelieved evil. God has given us a Gospel for the last days, and He has given a power to take that Gospel into all the world for a testimony unto all the nations: then shall the end come.

Ladd, George Eldon. The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God  (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959) (from chapter 9, titled,  “When Will the Kingdom Come?”).