Monday, November 16, 2020

On the Rushed Sainthood of Pope John Paul II: Metaphysics and Ideology Triumphant

Just days after the death of Pope John Paul II, “cardinals eager to uphold his conservative policies had already begun discussing putting him on a fast track to sainthood.”[1] This alone could have alerted religionists as to the possible sanctification of an ideology within the Roman Catholic Church. The force of an ideology to its partisans can render them deaf to other considerations. The church ideologues clamoring for the ages-old process of canonization to be disregarded—hardly a conservative demand—chose not to hear the “notes of caution from survivors of sexual abuse and historians that John Paul had persistently turned a blind eye to the crimes in his church.”[2] Fifteen years later, the Vatican itself admitted that the former pope had known of the crimes of Archbishop (of New York) Theodore McCarrick yet refused to put a stop to them. “The investigation, commissioned by Pope Francis, who canonized John Paul in 2014, revealed how John Paul chose not to believe longstanding accusations of sexual abuse against [McCarrick], including pedophilia, allowing him to climb the hierarchy’s ladder.”[3] Rather than being a mere mistake in judgment, as some conservatives would argue, the decision to look the other way resulted in great evil. The foreseeable consequences meant that John Paul II allowed more rapes to happen. Besides the rather obvious point that a saint would not have done so, and thus the canonization of John Paul II was erroneous, this case suggests that the “two miracles” requirement for canonization is itself flawed. 
The claim for canonization was that in at least two cases, people prayed to John Paul II and subsequently were healed. The conclusion that the former pope intervened with God to cure the petitioners suffers from the fact that positive correlation does not in itself constitute causation. Moreover, the emphasis on a metaphysical requirement takes the attention off the real question: Was the candidate’s life saintly? To say that a cleric was a religious man is not sufficient, for that goes with the territory. In fact, the possibility of “insider trading” and “hierarchical favoritism” should trigger extra safeguards in cases in which the candidates were clerics in the hierarchy. Put another way, canonization has more credibility in cases in which the candidates were not bishops, cardinals, or popes.
The metaphysical/life distinction is relevant to the Catholic Church beyond the issue of canonization. If a lay person believes in transubstantiation and ingests the body and blood of Christ after the consecration in the Mass and yet does not reach out to help detractors and even enemies when they are in need, of what good is the metaphysical belief, practically speaking? Valuing Christ’s teachings and trying to live by his example must be met even if the liturgical consecration is revered. The faith is that the two go together, but if they don’t, the matter of valuing Christ’s teachings for how to get into the Kingdom of God by how others are treated must be decisive. Similarly in canonization proceedings, the matter of a candidate’s life is decisive.



1. Jason Horowitz, “Sainted Too Soon? Vatican Report Cast John Paul II in Harsh New Light,The New York Times, November 14, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Religion as an Academic Area of Study

What is religion? What does the domain of religion cover? What is excluded? Does opinion eclipse knowledge in marking the boundaries? Should we allow empirical self-identification claims from self-proclaimed religionists to veto any offending established knowledge of what the religion is? I contend that an atheist who claims he is nonetheless a practitioner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam does not alter the fact that the three Abrahamic religions are monotheist. Atheist Judaism, for instance, is an oxymoron born of an arrogant subjectivity that offends reason itself and therefore cannot be valid.


The full essay is at "Religion as an Academic Area of Study." 

Monday, August 3, 2020

Miracles as a Literary Device

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) is known for being the first Hollywood movie in which the face of Jesus is shown. From the standpoint of the next century, the scandal in showing Jesus could only seem antiquated, if not outright silly. Rarely can such perspective on a scandal exist as it is occurring. In its own time, a scandal seems all-important and critically in need of being addressed lest life as we know it would otherwise come to an end. Ten years earlier, Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, had also been controversial, as was the 1988 film of the same name (and based on the novel) because Jesus imagines himself in the sexual act and he may struggle with mental illness. This scandal was more serious than was that which greeted The Greatest Story Ever Told even though the Jesus of Last Temptation ends up rejecting the temptation to avoid the cross and is thus faithful to his Father in the end. The viewer is left, however, without a decisive answer as to whether the film's Jesus suffers from mental fits because the film ends with Jesus dying on the cross. The theological validation of Jesus is made in Greatest Story, though curiously not chiefly in the usual way this is done in narratives about him. I submit that this deviation makes the film highly significant in that it emphasizes religious experience as a reaction. 

The full essay is at "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Satan in Film: In Light or Darkness?

Released in the last year of the twentieth century, The Ninth Gate is a film about the use of a book to conjure up Satan. The book's title is The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. Between three copies exist nine engravings appropriated from a book written by Lucifer. The person who gets all of those engravings can conjure up the devil. The Kingdom of Shadows presumably refers to Satan's kingdom. At the end of the film, Dean Corvo, a dishonest book dealer, rather than his client, Boris Balkan, is welcomed into a castle in which Satan is located. As the castle's main doors open, a blinding light shines outward into the night. Although Thomas Hobbes castigates the Roman Catholic Church as the kingdom of darkness in his text, Leviathan, Satan's realm has typically been depicted as dark in Christian art. Indeed, the film's own reference to Lucifer's kingdom as that of shadows follows this motif. Yet how can we account for the white light inside the castle? 


The full essay is at "Satan in Film."






Saturday, July 25, 2020

False Christians as the Power-Elite of a Church: A Case of Human Arrogance

In what begins as a story about Bess, a mentally-ill (or cognitively challenged) woman who marries Jan, an oilman, Breaking the Waves (1996) is a film that ends on a distinctively religious note that is nothing short of miraculous. The viewer is meant to be skeptical concerning the authenticity of Bess's spirituality, especially as seems delusional in having two-way conversations with God. Even as one of her prayerful petitions seems perhaps of having been granted when Jan returns from the oil rig to Bess, albeit with Jan paralyzed from an accident, the overwhelming view of the characters in the story, including Jan, is that, as Bess's physician asks Bess, "Do you really think you have so much power?" Bess is blaming herself for Jan's serious medical condition. She could reply, "It's God's power, not mine," but she is slow. Yet she can love, unconditionally. When Jan urges Bess to sleep with other men then tell him about the experiences so he will have the will to live, Bess complies and is summarily kicked out of her church. Even Bess's mother, with whom Bess lives, locks the door. The church elders and the minister are judgmental hypocrites who presume that they can consign a person to hell. Even so, Bess's trust in God as a matter of faith continues, and she sacrifices her life by willingly submitting herself to a sadistic sailor so that God might then heal Jan. Meanwhile, the unbelievers are trying to get Bess to a mental hospital, given her "delusion." On the morning after Jan and his friends on the rig drop Bess's body into the sea, one of the friends wakes Jan to come outside and hear bells ringing even as radar shows nothing out there. The viewer now knows not only that God performed a miracle on Jan, for he is walking around and even back on the rig, but also that Bess's faith is vindicated as heaven's bells miraculously are chiming. The burial followed by bells ringing at sunrise reflects the story of Jesus' passion. The overall message seems to be that we mortals don't know as much as we think we do about God's ways, even if we do happen to have power in the governance of a church.


The full essay is at "Breaking the Waves."

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

The Hebrew Bible on Wealth

The early Hebrews considered wealth to be an integral part of human perfection and, moreover, what ought to be.[1] The ideal man was wealthy and leisured, and yet occupied with honorable work.[2] In the Torah, as long as the Hebrews as a people obey God, including dutifully acting as stewards rather than as selfish exploiters of the land that God has provided, poverty should be nonexistent in Israel. “There need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God.”[3] Blessed wealth is a reward for fidelity to Yahweh, whereas poverty here is indicative of, or even punishment for, disobedience, which will evidently always be the case in Israel, for, “There will always be poor people in the land.”[4] The conditionality leaps off the page, as does the notion of collective justice, and yet wealthy individuals, including business practitioners, are held to account. The ethic of work is upheld even though labor in Genesis is due to original sin.  

The Torah does recognize, however, that the humble can be poor and the greedy and prideful can become rich. God does not punish the humble and reward the proud. To be proud is to trust in oneself, and thus one’s own ability to acquire still more. In Psalm 52, the righteous laugh at the man, “who did not make God his stronghold, but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”[5] Such strength refers here to becoming richer or more powerful, rather than more righteous or pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

The Hebrew Bible depicts greed as a sin. For one thing, greed can motivate a rich or powerful person to unjustly exploit the poor to obtain still more wealth. Relatedly, moreover, putting the love of gain above loving and obeying God implicates greed in contributing to the more grave sin of idolatry—regarding or treating something in Creation as being above the Creator, and thus as a superior god. Pride is thus in the mix—the arrogance of a pot to presume itself superior to the potter who made it. Generally speaking, the Hebrew Bible tends to associate the rich with being greedy, prideful, and, worst of all, idolatrous. Prideful idolatry involves trusting in oneself rather than God. This sort of pride goes easily with making money into an idol to form the ground of existence. The prophets had nothing good to say about selfish wealth and leisure.[6] This does not necessarily implicate wealth itself, however, or even being rich, since it can be a reward for being obedient in placing Yahweh before oneself and other possible gods, such as wooden idols and even earthly treasure. In the Torah, greed and wealth are uncoupled, as if snipped apart with scissors. Wealth itself can go either way. Riches acquired righteously are a blessing from God and therefore do not carry the stain of greed, whereas wealth gained greedily, as in taking unjustly from the poor, is associated with sin.

Nobody is exempt from being tempted by greed. Referring to the people of Jerusalem, Jeremiah charges, “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain.”[7] As an urge, greed can be understood as coming out of an instinct that is activated along with the subtle sense, or fear, that having enough for the future can never be guaranteed completely. It is as if we were squirrels continuously scurrying around after walnuts, storing as many as possible until none more can be found. No amount of wealth is sufficient to get a person to certainty on whether what one now has is sufficient for one’s future needs and comfort. Accordingly, having just clinched a good deal is never enough; any brief satisfaction at the achievement is quickly replaced by the urge to get an even better deal.

Just because greed is a sin does not mean that it treats all wealth as sinful too. According to the Hebrew Bible, a person need not be wealthy in order to be greedy, and a person can be rich without being greedy. Every prophet preached that if Israel were righteous, it would be sure to prosper—the gift of Jehovah on condition that Israel kept to the covenant (i.e., righteousness).[8] The prophets denounce the abuse of wealth rather than seeking or holding wealth itself, luxury, commerce or even monopoly as evil in itself. [9] Even if the overwhelming majority of rich Hebrews in Jerusalem were at a certain time very greedy in unjustly exploiting the poor to gain still more wealth, the Torah indicates that God could still bestow riches, which, coming as a blessing, would be unstained by the sin of greed. Each of the three Patriarchs in Genesis, for example, is rich.[10] Were greed mixed in with blessed wealth, God would be rewarding the righteous with a sin, which does not make sense. Abraham’s wealth is a gift from God rather than a sin.[11]

As a gift, blessed wealth can come with or without the need to labor for it. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[12] Blessed wealth gained without effort is reminiscent of the natural wealth of the Golden Age depicted by Greco-Roman poets such as Homer and Ovid.[13] The Greco-Roman poets characterize such wealth as being free of greed; where there is plenty and no fear of future shortage, a person need not labor; one can even let go of the instinct for still more without fear of falling short one day. In the Hebrew Bible, blessed wealth without painful toil is associated with not only a lack of greed, but also the Garden of Eden—hence prior to Adam’s original sin. It follows that blessed wealth without labor is more of a reward than is the variety of blessed wealth in which industriousness is required. 

The Hebrew Bible does not insist that industriousness itself is sinful. Proverb 10 states, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.”[14] Therefore, working diligently does not necessarily mean that a person is greedy. “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.”[15] Ceaseless activity does not necessarily point to the presence of greed. Proverb 18 goes so far as to say, “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.”[16] Industriousness does not suffer from the vice of such sloth.

Industriousness is not unconditionally good, however. The virtue must pertain to the person who works rightly as a steward in the vineyard in which God created the soil, the vine, the fruit, and even the laborer. Proverb 22 declares, “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.”[17] Although the vineyard differs from the Garden of Eden (or the poets’ Golden Age) in that painful toil is necessary, profit-taking from industrious labor is a blessing, or reward, that God bestows on the stewards who have been dutifully industrious in managing God’s property.  The blessed wealth and the industriousness being presumed greed-free are therefore conditioned on how a person responds to God.

With God as “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is the Creator’s property in Genesis.[18] It follows that human possessions are gifts from God. Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[19] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[20]  Put another way, because Jehovah is a partner in every Hebrew’s property, no Israelite was able “do as he liked with his own.”[21] Indeed, one’s own is precisely what is being qualified or restrained here. At most, a Hebrew’s property was his own and God’s, if not altogether God’s.[22] The partnership laid out in Scripture is one of rights and responsibilities rather than “anything goes,” as is the case with greed.

The theological value of maintaining the partnership through dutiful work and blessed wealth should not be overstated, however. Even though the bounty from God’s vineyard is free of greed, the riches cannot be expected to accomplish what righteousness can do. According to Proverb 22, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.”[23] Proverb 11 is more direct. “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.”[24] Through Zephaniah, God says of the sinners, “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath.”[25] Clearly, having wealth is not as valuable as being righteous.

If riches bestowed by God are worthless in making up for unrighteousness, it goes without saying that greed-laden wealth surely cannot accomplish what righteousness can. Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death.”[26] When greed is added to the equation, industriousness and its wages become ruinous. Proverbs warns, “Better the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose ways are perverse.”[27] In other words, even though we are all subject to the temptation to subject our diligent labor to greed, the sour odor need not stain the fabric of one’s work clothes or the fruit of one’s labor. “The wages of the righteous is life, but the earnings of the wicked are sin and death.”[28] The greedy, having acquired their wealth unjustly, will lose it. The Book of Enoch, of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic movement, reads, “Woe to you who acquire silver and gold in unrighteousness and say: ‘We have become rich with riches and have possessions; (a)nd have acquired everything we have desired.’ . . . your riches shall not abide . . . For ye have acquired it all in unrighteousness, (a)nd ye shall be given over to a great curse.”[29] Both in respect to wealth falling far short of righteousness and the very conditionality of blessed wealth, the positive theological significance of wealth is lessened, or at least moderated. Neither the conditionality of the positive theological significance nor the tendency of people to succumb to greed is a trivial point in the Hebrew Bible.

For more on Judaism on profit-seeking and wealth, see Skip Worden, God’s Gold, ch. 2.


[1]. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work (London: Epworth Press, 1924), 21.
[2]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 22, 33-34.
[3]. Deut. 15:4-5.
[4]. Deut. 15:11.
[5]. Ps. 52:6-7. All Biblical passages quoted in this chapter are according to the New International Version of the Bible, obtained from BibleGateway.com.
[6]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 111.
[7]. Jer. 8:10.
[8]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 128.
[9]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 97-99.
[10]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 21.
[11]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 24; Gen. 24:35.
[12]. Prov. 10:22.
[14]Prov. 10:4,5,15.
[15]. Prov. 28:19.
[16]. Prov. 18:9.
[17]. Prov. 22:2
[18]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 23; Genesis 14:19,22.
[19]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 25.
[20]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 26,55.
[21]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 54-55.
[22]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 55.
[23]. Prov. 22:1.
[24]Prov. 11:4.
[25]. Zeph. 1:18.
[26]. Prov. 10:2
[27]. Prov. 28:6. According to Flusser, the Book of Enoch, of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic movement, contrasts woes against the wicked rich with word of hope and promise to the righteous poor. David Flusser, “Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit,” Israel Exploration Journal, 10 no. 1 (1960): 12.
[28]. Prov. 10:16.
[29]. Book of Enoch, bk 5, 97:8,10. Quote from Robert H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Pope Francis on Subordinating Greed and Wealth

The documentary, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018) chiefly lays out the pope’s critique of economic Man. The film begins with references to climate change too loosely linked to the global population figure of 8 million humans, 1 billion of whom are unnecessarily living in poverty. The viewer is left to fill in the gaps, such as that because as biological organisms we must consume and use energy, the hyperextended overpopulation of the species is the root cause of climate- and ecosystem-changing CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. Arguably, the salvific Son of God or the means into the Kingdom of God enjoy pride of place in the gospels, but compassion for the poor as well as outcasts and the sick is indeed a message that Jesus stresses in the faith narratives. Rather than being a sign of sin, poverty, especially if voluntary,  can permit the sort of humility that is much superior to the pride of the Pharisees. In the documentary, Jorge Bergoglio, who took the name Francis in becoming pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, is a practical man who points to the sickness or temptation of greed that keeps humanity from riding itself of poverty, unnecessarily. Moreover, the hegemony of the market, with its culture of consumerism and commoditization, comes at the cost of the common good, which to Francis has a spiritual basis. Abstractly speaking, harmony, which inherently respects its own limitations, should have priority over greed and markets. Both of these can go to excess without enough built-in constraints as occurred before and during the financial crisis of 2008, with poverty plaguing humanity more rather than less as a result.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis."


Monday, June 1, 2020

The Case for Christ: On the Problem of Extracting History from Faith Narratives

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The full essay is at "Case for Christ."


Saturday, May 30, 2020

Religious Themes Secularized Through Film

One approach to infusing religion in a film is to utilize a secular lens to keep overt religious content hidden such that only its messages that can be stated in a secular way come through. The basic values of a religion can be transmitted without specific religious belief-claims possibly turning off some viewers. Given the mass audience that a typical film can reach, the medium is a good means for presenting people with values that come out of religion but have their own intrinsic worth apart from the related religious belief-claims. Film can play a role, therefore, in enabling the values of a religion to survive the religion’s downfall. From watching the film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), a viewer would not know that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. His wife says at one point in the film that Fred reads scripture and prays daily, but that is the only clue in the film that his religious faith is the source of his motivation for and messages on his show, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

The full essay is at "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."



Sunday, May 24, 2020

Film in Biblical Storytelling

For anyone interested in filmmaking, a film that features the internal operations of a film studio—especially one during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood—is likely to be captivating. After all, as Eddie Mannix, the studio executive in Hail, Caesar! (2016), says, the “vast masses of humanity look to pictures for information and uplift and, yes, entertainment.” This film provides all three for its audience on what film-making was like in the studio system. With regards to the Christian theology, however, the result is mixed.  The film makes the point that theological information best comes out indirectly from dramatic dialogue rather than discussion on theology itself. In other words, inserting a theological lecture into a film’s narrative is less effective than an impassioned speech by which entertainment and uplift can carry the information.

The full essay is at "Hail, Caesar!"

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Comparing Religions

The subfield of comparative religions can be exciting because the beliefs, values, symbols, myths, and rituals can introduce a person to such different ideas that the rush of making a discovery can even be felt. Jaroslav Pelikan, a twentieth-century historian of Christianity, once said that he had learned so many languages just so he could have access to ideas that were not as of yet available in English. Such ideas could be very different than the historian’s extant knowledge. It is perhaps like the early European explorers in America finding plants and cultures that were so unlike those of Europe because the distance had not allowed for cross-pollination and the influence of cultural exchanges. I contend that one reason why religions can be very difficult to compare is that elements of them in a given topic can be so different in kind as to not be comparable. Religions may even be based on variables that cannot be directly compared because they are so different in kind. The related paradigms also may not be comparable. Therefore, it may be that religious comparison is more fitting to comparing sects (e.g., denominations) within a given religion. Even when continuity exists between an established religion and a new one in the same context, the foundational variables may be so different in kind that they are not comparable. I will look at cosmology (e.g., Creation), ritual (e.g., sacrifices) and divine attributes (e.g., truth and love) below to support my claim.

The paradigm of a creator and creation must seem very foreign to a Buddhist who has been brought up without the notion of a beginning point. Indeed, the Big Bang could be reckoned as one explosion in a series. The underlying cyclical idea differs appreciably from that of linearity. That Creation occurred only once at the beginning and salvation history does not repeat itself assumes that time is linear—a straight line that keeps on going without doubling back. I contend that religions are so difficult to compare because they rest on qualitatively different variables and even paradigms (i.e., basic frameworks).

Shankara’s Hindu metaphysic of truth surrounded by illusion surrounded by ignorance (maya) is so different from the Abrahamic religious notion of a creator and creation that the two paradigms can hardly be compared in that finding a common denominator is necessary. That the Abrahamic deity created all that is may be true, but truth itself is not the same as creation ex nihilo. Truth cannot depend even on the created existence if the Abrahamic deity is the first cause and stands outside of creation as well as being omnipresent within it. Furthermore, truth can be regarded as a divine attribute, whereas creation is a divine function. Truth is what God is, whereas creating the world is something God did (as time is linear in the Abrahamic religions). Conflating the nature of an entity and what it does overlooks the basic difference between the two, and thus can give rise to false comparisons based on an assumed common denominator.

In my first world religions course in college, I was fascinated that I could hold both of the disparate (i.e., essentially different in kind; not allowing of comparison) paradigms of Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions in my head without being able to find a basis on which I could compare the two paradigms; they were so unlike. Put another way, I was intrigued that two paradigms do not allow for comparison and yet seek to explain the same phenomenon (i.e., religious metaphysics). The sheer paradigmatic difference alone amazed me so much that I was convinced that further study in the field would give me ideas and paradigms fascinatingly different from what I already knew (e.g., from my religious upbringing).  In studying ancient Greco-Roman religion and Christianity, I discovered that even though continuities can be found, that the two religions are based on qualitatively different religious variables renders comparison difficult if not impossible outside of the few shared continuities.

Ancient Greco-Roman religion was not just “Greek mythology.” In fact, ritual played the central role as means of appeasing and petitioning one god or another. The ritual sacrificing of animals took place on alters outside of the temples, which were used to store gifts for the gods. Because the Roman emperors considered themselves, or were considered to be divine, they mandated that sacrifices be made. Some early Christians accepted even death rather than sacrifice to a god other than Yahweh.

Christianity carried on the ritual of sacrifice in the Eucharistic liturgy. The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ when a priest holds them up in the air above an alter (later, table) and recalls the sacrifice that Jesus makes in the Gospels. The Greek and Roman priests consumed the best of the burnt offerings, and the Christian priests consume the body and blood of Christ. Until the Vatican II council of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s, the chalices were not extended to the laity. There was thus a continuity between the respective Roman priests.

Lest it be assumed that the two religions are easily comparable, it should be noted that even the importance of Jesus Christ’s vicarious sacrifice (see Anselm) does not mean that Christianity’s most important variable is ritualistic sacrifice. Even more important than the ritual consecration is the variable of love. The relative importance of love over ritualistic sacrifice is particularly evident in Protestantism. Even in Anglicanism and Lutheranism, taking Communion receives less emphasis than in Roman Catholicism. That ritual sacrifice is not the core of Christianity does not downgrade the religious efficacy of the Eucharist in the transforming process of sanctification. Rather, the ritualistic sacrifice is a means to an end that reflects another variable (love). The variables of love and ritual are not only distinct; they are different in kind.

To Augustine, “God is love” is foundational. Calvin agreed. The theologians could have been looking at the following biblical verse, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”[1] Even to say God loves is awkward because God’s very nature is love. Hence no one says, love loves, for what else would love do? This is not to say that the action of loving is synonymous with love itself. By example and preachments, Jesus of the Gospels makes the foundation clear. This is not to say that Jesus’ vicarious sacrifice for the salvation of humans therefore lies at the core of the religion. Just following the biblical passage above ending with “God is love” is this sentence: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”[2] “In this,” namely that God is love, God became incarnate and willingly allowed that incarnation to be sacrificed for humans. The incarnation, including its sacrifice, presupposes that God is love, so ritually reenacting the sacrifice of the incarnation cannot be foundational over God’s nature as love. Put another way that should now seem familiar, God’s nature exists before, and is thus not contingent on, God sending his Son into the world. Whereas sacrifice can be classified under ritual (as one type), love cannot be so classified as it is not a type of ritual; indeed, love as the deity’s nature and ritual as a human activity are not directly comparable.

Therefore, just because phenomena exist in the same domain does not mean that the underlying core variables that are not shared are directly comparable. To be sure, two religions may be based on the same core-variable, in which case comparison is not nearly as much of a problem, but where the bases are disparate, comparisons can only go so far. For example, we can compare the ritual sacrifices in ancient Roman religion and Roman Catholicism, but once we go deeper, we run into a brick wall because ritual and love are not directly comparable as they are disparate.  Even if two variables can be connected, they may still be disparate. For example, truth and Creation are not directly comparable even though it can be said that it is true that the Abrahamic deity created all that is in Creation. The nature of truth in Hinduism does not recognize this connection. This alone means that truth itself must transcend its particular manifestations. Hence St. Denis (Pseudo-Dionysus) wrote that God transcends the Trinity, so a person clutching to the latter metaphysical idea does not sufficiently transcend beyond the limits of  human cognition in yearning for God. It follows that the nature of God transcends human conceptions of the incarnation, which includes Jesus’ sacrifice and the related ritualistic sacrifices. Only by getting to the core variable of a religion can it be understood as sui generis, or unique, even though other religions are within the same domain.

[1] 1 John 4:8. English Standard Version.
[2] 1 John 4:9.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

On Believing in Jesus Christ as the Preeminent Focus of Christianity

Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is salient in the four canonical gospels, as well as in Paul’s letters. Hence, christology has been an important field of theology. While the benefits to the Christian have been touted so much in historical and contemporary theological writings, the costs and vulnerabilities of the nearly monopolistic focus have largely gone unnoticed. The realization of them would allow Christians (including extant theologians) to gain a fuller (i.e., holistic) perception and understanding of the religion, and even a better practice thereof.  I will begin with the theology then provide a practical example of the problems involved in having a willowed-down focus at the expense of the drawbacks.

In approximately 170 CE, Irenaeus, a bishop in Lyon in the Roman Empire’s province of Gual (in modern-day France), selected Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as the four canonical gospels. He wrote, “The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don’t have any gospels that aren’t full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic.”[1] To the extent that such a rationale held any sway in his day and beyond, we can surmise just how flimsy what we literally take as gospel can be. Irenaeus assumed that the four gospels were authentically written by the four disciples, but slapping a prominent name on a piece of religious writing was commonly done in ancient times. The Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Peter could also have been said to be written by two disciples.

Irenaeus viewed the negative stance on the material realm in the Gnostic texts as heretical (even though Augustine would write in his later texts very negatively of the earthly realm—seven the physicality of sex is not to be enjoyed even when done to reproduce). I contend that Irenaeus was even in this respect motivated especially to highlight the divinity of Christ.  

Irenaeus didn’t like there being “many gospels circulating with different accounts about Jesus, particularly a number of these accounts [that] rather down-play the materiality and physicality of Jesus’ body.”[2] Ironically, dismissing the physicality of Jesus’ body goes against the christological doctrine that Jesus is the Son of God because as such, God is made flesh (i.e., corporeal). Hence the resurrected Jesus not only walks through a door of the Upper Room, but also asks his disciples for fish, as he is hungry. By implication, that the god-man is fully human and fully divine, which the Council of Nicaea would make official dogma in 325 CE, must have been important to Irenaeus when he was selecting gospels to include in the canon. That is, the identity of Jesus Christ as a god-man must have played an important role in Irenaeus’ selection of the four canonical gospels, within which Jesus’ christological identity is not only the central theme, but also the basis of the salvation of souls in transformed, resurrected bodies, which is the ultimate goal in the faith narratives. God sent his only son to reunite the human species from its sordid earthly condition due to original sin. Jesus’ identity is absolutely crucial to Christ being the second Adam, vicariously undoing Adam’s mistake in having sought divine knowledge of good and evil. I submit that the prideful presumption of seeking divinity is the original sin.

The problem is that presumptuous pride can flourish even though a Christian’s religious focus is on his or her belief that Jesus is divine and that accepting Christ as such means that the he or she is saved and will thus be reunited with God; hence Luther’s doctrine, solo fides, or only by faith. I submit that good works are also necessary. By good works, I don’t mean the liturgical Eucharistic process of sanctification, which is salient in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox doctrine. I don’t even mean good works generally, such as volunteering at a charity. Rather, I mean the putting Jesus’ teachings of neighbor love into practice, and especially of not violating them. Such teachings include turning the other cheek, and even going on to help people who are, in modern parlance, being jerks or assholes. The application of self-emptying love goes well beyond people who are persecuting.

On Easter one year, when I lived in an apartment complex, a resident below one of the units just next to mine played loud, high-bass music with his front door open for hours. Passing by with my garbage at one point, I saw the man in his doorway and asked him to turn his music down. He stared at me for a second, then turned his back. He did not lower his music’s volume or even close his front door. I surmised that the man’s attitude was the underlying problem. Indeed, he even went outside to laugh about my request with another resident who had blasted racist lyrics containing much profanity out in the courtyard (even though kids were in the courtyard). That other resident, who just a week earlier had told police that playing  loud racist, swearing music was part of his culture and thus to be respected, then went to another resident and pointed to my apartment. I knew I was being targeted (with racial overtones), which is at two degrees of separation from being considerate. A bit later, I called the police, who asked the man to turn down his volume. I could hear the man shouting at the police. This is really bad, I thought in reference to the man’s attitude.  

The irony is that the very inconsiderate man was playing the loud music in anticipation of relatives coming over for Easter! He was like the person who goes to hell thinking all the while that he is going to heaven. Aggressively violating Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God while having an Easter party suggests the presence of gaping cognitive dissidence. The same sort of cognitive dissidence applies when a person celebrates Gandhi’s birthday by being violent. The mind should be able to be conscious of such contradictions, and yet this is not the case, at least in the realm of religious ideas. It is precisely this disconnect that has provoked so much of my analytical thinking on religion. Perhaps the human brain contains a weakness or vulnerability in reasoning and being conscious of discordances between religious ideas and practice. Even in terms of religious ideas, such as inflame self-idolatry, the human mind may be handicapped organically. Such a handicap could warp the use of logic. For instance, a person might think, I’m going to annoy my neighbors intentionally as I celebrate Easter. That such an approach not only undoes any religious merit in celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, but also adds sin is something obviously worth realizing, and yet it is not, and has not, been acted on, let alone realized.

The narrow focus on Jesus’ religious identity and even his role in the history of salvation can mean that his instructions for how to get into the Kingdom of God are eclipsed such that they are violated even, it is presumed, in the service of Christ. Crusaders, for example, killed their enemies in Jerusalem and Constantinople for Christ. It never dawned on the four Medieval popes and their soldiers appropriated by Christian kings that killing Muslims in Jerusalem and eastern Christians in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) violates Jesus’ important injunction against harming enemies (as they are to be loved). In going on offence to take back one or the other city, the Crusaders could not even resort to Christian just-war justifications. That the leaders of the Christian Church in Western Europe were leading the charge demonstrates just how great the cognitive dissidence can be even in proclaimed vicars—earthly representatives of Christ. To represent Jesus by killing enemies is such an oxymoron that the human faculties of mind are themselves implicated as they apply themselves to religion.

I recommend, therefore, that Christians shift their focus from the christological and soteriological beliefs to Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God. That is, rather than focusing on a belief about Jesus’ divine, salvific identity, focus on following and not violating Jesus’ example and teachings in the gospels. Even in self-questioning whether an attitude or conduct violates Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek and even proactively care for neighbors even if they are a pain in the ass or an outright enemy, a Christian can rest assured that beliefs about Jesus’s identity and role in salvation will take care of themselves, like lilies in the field. Perhaps the human mind is not good at holding very abstract beliefs and very concrete conduct together such that they can be compared and contrasted. Beliefs concerning conduct may be easier to hold, and thus a stronger focus for the believing Christian.



[1] Elaine Pagels, “The Emergence of the Canon,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).
[2] Elizabeth Clark, “Irenaeus and the Heretics,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).