Paul Did Not Invent Christianity

On occasion I've read someone who claims that Christianity is an invention of the apostle Paul. Here is why that idea is a bad one, from Richard Bauckham's Jesus: A Very Short Introduction. BTW - Bauckham's little book is a must-read for all interested in the historical Jesus.

Now, a lot of quoting from Bauckham... (it's worth it):

"It is important to realize that there was never a time, after the death of Jesus, when his followers regarded him simply as a teacher who had died a martyr’s death and left them his teaching to live by. From the 19th century onwards, there have been recurrent attempts to cast the apostle Paul in the role of founder of Christianity. Paul, it is suggested, was the first to make Jesus the object of faith and worship. But all such theories founder on the fact that, apart from anything else, Paul did not have sufficient power and influence to invent Christianity. After coming to believe in Jesus the Messiah, Paul was a major Christian missionary, who did much to spread the Christian Gospel, especially among non-Jews, in the areas of modern Turkey and Greece. But there was already a large Christian community in Rome long before Paul visited the capital. Christianity must soon have spread to Egypt and to Mesopotamia, developments with which Paul had no involvement. Because the second half of the Acts of the Apostles, the only narrative we have of the early spread of Christianity, focuses on Paul’s missionary travels, it is easy to get an exaggerated sense of their scope. Paul’s letters, also preserved in the New Testament, are among the most impressive early expositions of Christian faith and influenced the later church immeasurably, but it was several decades before they circulated outside the churches Paul himself founded. The centre from which the early Christian movement developed and spread throughout the ancient world was not Paul, but the Jerusalem church, led initially by the twelve apostles and subsequently by James the brother of Jesus. What was common to the whole Christian movement derived from Jerusalem, not from Paul, and Paul himself derived the central message he preached from the Jerusalem apostles. The heart of Paul’s teaching was common early Christian faith, though he was undoubtedly a thinker of genius who shaped that faith into a characteristic form, as did a number of other major teachers in the early church (such as the author of John’s Gospel).

It was not Paul who made Jesus the object of Christian faith and worship. He is this in a variety of early Christian writings that were not influenced by Paul. Already, in the early Jerusalem community, Jesus was understood to be a living agent, not just a figure of the past. Though they continued to participate faithfully in the worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, these early believers also met to ‘break bread’, which meant to continue the table fellowship with Jesus that his disciples had enjoyed during his lifetime. Here his sacrificial death was remembered and appropriated. Here, he was addressed in prayer and even worshipped. This was an extraordinary development in a thoroughly Jewish context, for it was the first principle of Jewish faith that only the one God may be worshipped. Many scholars are therefore reluctant to conclude that the earliest Christians worshipped Jesus. But it was an understandable consequence of their belief that Jesus now sat at the right hand of God on the heavenly throne. This made him a participant in God’s own unique sovereignty over his creation. Worship of God the only ruler of all things could now include worship of Jesus who shared that rule." (pp. 110-112)

Give Me One Praying Person...

I heard today from someone who took my 1-month Winter Spiritual Formation class. The main assignment was: pray 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks.

This person did it. They write: "I am still doing an hour of prayer a day ~ I love it!"

Great! This excites me, and gives me hope. I know this person. They have a busy schedule. They are grounding their life in the intimate God-relationship. They're doing this not out of hard duty, but in joy because of experience.

These are the kind of people God uses to change the world. These are the true abiders.

The prayer-abiding relationship with God lies before you today. Now. Now is the time to meet with God. Every meaningful "tomorrow" follows from this.

James Cone on Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

I'm still slowly reading James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree. It's causing me, in a good, sad way, to self-examine and be further purged.

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
- Psalm 139:23-24

I am hearing things I have never heard before, listening to things I have never attended to before.

Cone is, among many other things, a Niebuhr scholar. He writes: "Unless we look at the 'facts of experience,' as Niebuhr's own realism demanded, what we say about the cross remains at the level of theological abstraction, like Karl Barth's Word of God, separated from the real crosses in our midst." (63)

Cone says one who made the connection real was the singer Billie Holiday, with her song "Strange Fruit." This is her "signature song about southern lynching. "When she sang that song, in the words of Elijah Wood, 'You feel as if you're at the foot of the tree'." When Brigitte McCulloch heard Josh White sing "Strange Fruit" she said: "On those southern trees, along with black men, hung the murdered Jews, hung all the victims of violence. And one survived to tell the story, to tear our hearts apart, to make us feel and remember." (64)

After reading this I listened to both Billie Holiday and Josh White sing "Strange Fruit." It reminds me of a Bruce Cockburn song as it takes a soft, moody, jazzy melody and sets words of hellish violence to it.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan)
Originally sung by: Billie Holiday

William Lane Craig on Homosexual Behavior

William Lane Craig, in his book Hard Questions, Real Answers, has a chapter on "Homosexuality." He gives the reasoning of Christian theism. Which is:

(1) We are all obligated to do God’s will.
(2) God’s will is expressed in the Bible.
(3) The Bible forbids homosexual behavior.
(4)Therefore, homosexual behavior is against God’s will, or is wrong. (p. 133)

Of course if someone denies that God exists, then this reasoning utterly fails. I'll add that, on atheism, objective moral values don't exist either. (I've made too many posts on this, using the reasoning of atheists themselves.) I'm with Bill as he explains:

"If God does not exist, right and wrong do not exist either. Anything goes, including homosexuality. So one of the best ways to defend the legitimacy of the homosexual lifestyle is to become an atheist. But the problem is that many defenders of homosexuality don’t want to become atheists. In particular, they do want to affirm that right and wrong exist. So you hear them making moral judgments all the time, for example: “It is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals.” And these moral judgments aren’t meant to be just relative to a culture or society. They would condemn a society like Nazi Germany which threw homosexuals into concentration camps, along with Jews and other undesirables. When Colorado passed an amendment prohibiting special rights for homosexuals, Barbara Streisand called for a boycott of the state, saying that the state’s moral climate had become “unacceptable.” But we’ve seen that these kinds of value judgments cannot be meaningfully made unless God exists. If God does not exist, anything goes, including discrimination and persecution of homosexuals." (p. 132).

For those who believe in the God of Judeo-Christian theism, premise 1 (P1) is noncontroversial.

I believe P3 is true. For a defense of this see, e.g., Robert Gagnon's essay in Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views. See also Craig, pp. 135 ff. And note that the question is not "Does God forbid homsexality?" The question is: "Does God forbid homosexual behavior?" After giving his support for P3, Craig concludes: "the Bible clearly and consistently forbids homosexual activity. So if God’s will is expressed in the Bible, it follows that homosexual behavior is against God’s will." (p. 138)

The question this remains: is P2 true? Again, for the non-Christian, it is not. Of course. Just as many statements in alternative noetic frameworks are false for me, as a Christian theist. But how can we defend P2? Craig responds:

"You could try to show that God has revealed Himself in the Bible. This is the task of Christian apologetics. You could talk about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus or fulfilled prophecy. Scripture actually commands us as believers to have such a defense ready to share with anyone who should ask us about why we believe as we do (1 Pet. 3:15)." (139) I'll add N.T. Wright's The Last Word on the Bible as Grand Narrative as representative of the kind of reasoning that causes me to affirm P2.

The Christian theist, on the other hand, will affirm P3.

For more read (obviously) Bill's entire chapter.

Israel | Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D.

This... is beautiful! Jesus-followers... please watch.

This is the 7-minute trailer for the IMAX film on Israel to be released in 2013.

Keep Your Distance

Horses, keeping their distance from me

Thomas Merton wrote of this world as having a "current" which wants to carry people along in its direction. Spiritually, Merton knew, this was dangerous, false, and a loss of freedom. To be carried along by this world's current is to be rendered spiritually ineffective. It is to be part of the mindless herd, the faceless crowd. Merton wrote:

"I am always being diverted into a way that is not my way and is not going where I am called to go. And only if I go where I must go can I be of any use to “the world.” I can serve the world best by keeping my distance and my freedom." (Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton, (Kindle Locations 2750-2751)

I keep my distance from the world when I "retreat" to those lonely places where it's just my Lord and I. It is in those places where God uncovers and I discover my true self, who I am and what I am to become.

From this place of powerful retreat I then "advance" into the world without acquiescing to its channeling. I am in the world but keep my spiritual distance from it. This is the freedom of every authentic Jesus-follower who flows with the currents of the Spirit.

Proclamation Without Demonstration is Empty; Demonstration Without Proclamation is Blind

At Redeemer we just keep preaching through the Christological texts of Paul. We're not finding texts to fit holidays or holy days. So, e.g., for Christmas and Easter, we just preach on the text that is in queue. I really like doing it this way. It gives a freshness, and unexpectedness, which is like the character of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, this Sunday is Mother's Day. I have a special gift for all the moms who are there. And God has special gifts for us all. One way I expect this to happen is that God will make his preached word living and active.

The text is Romans 8:12-17, which reads:

¹² Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

As usual, these words are so rich, so deep. Part of my focus will be: Actively use the Spirit to put to death the misdeeds of the body. So, it will be another "Go free from sinful addictions" Sunday at Redeemer. My expectation is that the clear proclamation of God's Word is accompanied by the demonstration of God's power in relation to that Word. That is what it means for God's Word to be "living and active." God's preached Word is causally efficacious.

Now I'm thinking of it this way. The philosopher Kant wrote: "Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind." Kant's famous categories of the understanding need perceptual experience to operate on or be applied to. And, there is no such thing as an uninterpreted perceptual experience. In a similar way: Proclamation without demonstration is empty (it's just a theory at that point); demonstration without proclamation is blind (in the sense of being unguided or, perhaps, ungrounded and potentially heretical).

This Sunday: I shall proclaim and, by the Spirit, God shall demonstrate. It's never some dry, boring thing that happens when we live with this kind of expectation.

New York Magazine on Cornel West

I just read New York magazine's article on Cornel West. West left Princeton to teach at Union Theological Seminary.

The Human Connectome Project

This is a cool 13-minute video about current research in brain studies.

Related to this is a book I'm reading now - Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, by Sebastian Seung.  Here's what a "connectome" is.

Craig Keener's Commentary on the Book of Acts Arrives this Summer

Craig Keener's multi-volume commentary on the biblical book of Acts arrives this summer (Vol. 1 comes first).

Reviews are glowing.

In the first volume of this four-volume commentary, Craig Keener introduces the book of Acts and provides detailed exegesis of its opening chapters, drawing on more than 10,000 references from extrabiblical ancient sources.

"Somewhat surprisingly, a social-historical approach to Acts still needs to be defended and its value demonstrated. No one does this better--is more informed about ancient literature, parallels, and precedents, and more interactively and fruitfully engaged with contemporary literature and issues--than Craig Keener. In the Introduction (a monograph in itself), his treatment of the genre of Acts, especially his judicious discussion of the genre 'novel,' of the character of ancient historiography, and of the historical integrity and value of Acts, is unbeatable in today's market. For anyone wanting to appreciate how Acts 'worked' in its original context and to get into the text at some depth, Keener will be indispensable and 'first off the shelf.'"
--James D. G. Dunn, University of Durham

"Keener takes very seriously the claim of the book of Acts to be historiography. His encyclopedic knowledge of ancient literature and his intelligent skill as an exegete make this a magisterial commentary."
--Richard Bauckham, St. Andrews University; Ridley Hall, Cambridge

"This first volume promises to be the inaugural component of the most comprehensive commentary on Acts to date. Keener presents a socio-historical reading of the text with meticulous precision, and his knowledge of scholarly research is impressive. . . . The documentation from ancient Jewish literature is exceptionally rich. From now on, any exegesis of Acts will need to take into account this major work."
--Daniel Marguerat, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

"Early Christianity developed in a complex and multifaceted context, one that Craig Keener masterfully presents in this socially and historically oriented commentary on Acts. As one has come to expect from Keener, there is thorough knowledge and use of the best and most important secondary literature and abundant utilization of a wide range of ancient sources. This is a commentary that will continue to serve as a detailed resource for both scholars and students."
--Stanley E. Porter, McMaster Divinity College

"A monumental exegetical commentary. . . . Scholars and readers of the Acts of the Apostles will find it a precious source for consultation. In addition, Keener's attention to the work of Luke-Acts and the comparison he draws with Paul's letters will greatly profit those who are interested in the Third Gospel and the person of Paul."
--Fr. G. Claudio Bottini, Faculty of Biblical Sciences and Archaeology (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum), Jerusalem

"With a monograph-level introduction and solid, detailed use of background sources, Craig Keener has provided us with a rich gem of a commentary on Acts."
--Darrell L. Bock, Dallas Theological Seminary

"Keener shows convincingly how broadly and deeply Acts participates in ancient Hellenistic and Jewish thinking. This meticulous reconstruction fits well with his deep insights on Lukan theology in Acts. . . . I expect this to be a marvelous, impressive, and inspiring commentary!"
--Manfred Lang, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg