On the Ethics of Dispensational Pre-Millennialism

The Christian “belief in the ‘rapture’ of believers at the time of Jesus’ return to Earth is rooted in a particular form of biblical interpretation that emerged in the 19^th century. Known as dispensational pre-millennialism, it is especially popular among American evangelicals.”[1] This biblical interpretation is based on the following from one of Paul’s letters to a church:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”[2]

Presumably the “trump of God” in the King James version of the Bible is distinct from Trump as God, for that eventuality would raise a myriad of questions and difficulties, and at least two difficulties pertain to the verse and, moreover, to dispensational pre-millennialism as a Christian doctrine. That it was constructed only recently by Christian standards raises the question of why the idea did not dawn on Christians closer to Paul’s time. That Paul does not represent himself in his letters as having met Jesus prior to the Resurrection and Paul’s use of mythological/Revelations language, such as “with the voice of the archangel,” also provide support for not taking the passage literally. After his resurrection in the Gospels, Jesus does not have the voice of an archangel. With Paul’s passage viewed figuratively or symbolically, rather than empirically and literally, the underlying religious meaning would of course remain unperturbed: keeping the faith is of value and thus in holding on to one’s distinctly religious (and Christian) faith, this strength will be vindicated even if no signs of this emerge during a person’s life. In other words, faith in vindication is part of having a religious faith, which is not limited our experience. The Resurrection itself can be construed as vindication with a capital V, regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead empirically and thus as a historical event. In fact, a historical account or claim is extrinsic to religious narrative even though the sui generis genre can legitimately make selective use of, and even alter, historical reports to make theological points. The writers of the Gospels would have considered this perfectly legitimate, given that they were writing faith narratives and not history books. Making this distinction is vital, I submit, to obviating the risk that one’s theological interpretations lead to supporting unethical state-actors on the world stage, such as Israel, which as of 2025 was serially committing genocidal and perhaps even holocaust crimes against humanity in Gaza. In short, the theological belief that supporting Israel will result in the Second Coming happening sooner than otherwise can be understood to be an unethical stance based on a category mistake. American Evangelical Christians may have been unwittingly enabling another Hitler for the sake of the salvation of Christians, while the Vatican stood by merely making statements rather than acting to help the innocent Palestinians, whether with food and medicine, or in actually going to Gaza’s southern border (or joining the flotilla) to protest as Gandhi would have done.

One problem with dispensational pre-millennialism itself is that predictors keep getting the date wrong, and this may be because a category mistake has been commonly committed between the faith-narrative genre and those of history and empirical science. Joshua Mhlakela, an African, whose dream in 2018 predicted that Jesus would return on September 23^rd or 24, 2025, obviously did not pan out, for I write this essay on September 25, 2025 and the Christians are still with us here below. That the Second Coming presumably comes at the end of time means that today should not exist, which would mean that I am not writing this essay (and you are not reading it). Lest we have slipped into a supercomputer’s Matrix, named after the famous solipsistic movie, other people had predicted the Second Coming, also without success. William Miller, a Baptist pastor, had read the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation and concluded that “Jesus would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When this date passed, he recalculated the date several times and finally landed on Oct. 22, 1844.”[3] Similarly, “Ellen G. White, a founder of the Seventh-day Adventist movement” and “Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted Jesus’ return in 1914. Over time, many others have attempted to predict Jesus’ Second Coming. Harold Camping’s 12 failed predictions being the most famous.”[4] Interestingly, all of these Christians had forgotten “Jesus’ own warning that no one knows the timing of this event (Matthew 24:36).”[5]

Moreover, I contend that applying calculation of empirical events from mythic language involves making a category mistake regarding qualitatively different domains. A person would not try to predict next year’s gross domestic product from calculations based on passages in Revelations, for example. Sometimes it’s easier to recognize category mistakes when they are made from the other direction.

Furthermore, Jesus not only says that no one but the Father (i.e., not even Jesus himself) knows when the last judgment will occur—and notice that Jesus is thus not omniscient by his own admission—but also that “this generation will not pass away” until the Son of Man will come “in the clouds with power and great glory.”[6] It is interesting that Jesus would make any prediction, since he is aware that only the Father knows, but, in any case, even this prediction is wrong. Such an uncomfortable conclusion points back to a conflation of history and myth, two distinct genres and domains, each with its own type of valid meaning that cannot be touched by the other domain even in overreaching.

Besides those problems, dispensational pre-millennialism can lead to rather unethical political and ethical stances. Many Christians “influenced by dispensationalism believe that the re-establishment of Israel and the return of the Jews to Palestine, especially since the 1920s, is a sign that the end is near. The centering of the re-establishment of Israel has important political implications, including unquestioned support for Israeli actions by many evangelicals.”[7] Conflating myth, such as is evinced by the Book of Revelations, and empirical, historical events can give rise to giving even a genocidal regime a blank slate and lots of military hardware. Both politically and ethically, even supporting Israel politically in 2025, when God was supposed to take humanity out of its self-imposed misery even in acting as bystanders, had become deeply problematic—especially ethically. In the Gospels, Jesus would obviously not encourage his disciples to support a genocidal regime even though he does not support the zealots acting against the Romans in the Gospel narratives. Giving what is Caesar’s (i.e., Roman coins) to the Romans does not mean actively supporting Rome. Were the imperator Romanorum to decide in the story to kill every Jew in Judea so to build Roman luxury resorts in and around the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus would likely urge turning the other cheek and loving the enemies rather than either helping them to kill Jews or fighting the Romans as they do so.

To respond to the humanity of those whom a person dislikes (or is disliked by), according to Samuel Hopkins, who was Jonathan Edwards protégé, is the essence of the Kingdom of God available here and now, rather than after a final judgment. In fact, choosing to value and incorporate in practice such a kingdom as Hopkins sketches survives any Jansenist, strict Augustinian, view of free-will as profoundly wounded by the Fall. Looking the other way, not to mention supporting politically, ideologically, or ethically a heinous regime that is starving and killing millions intentionally out of sheer hatred, even relegating the other as subhuman, whether Jews in Nazi Germany or Palestinians in Gaza nearly a century later, reflects how deplorable a human’s use of one’s free-will can be, post-lapsarian (i.e., due to original sin). Even given the mythic fall of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis, we are all responsible for how we use our free-will, even though it is tainted.

It may even be said that there is a special place in hell for Christians who look the other way on Israel’s extermination of the Gazans, as if all of them were culpable for Hama’s day of attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and a few hundred taken hostage by a subjugated people occupied by an apartheid regime. The doctrine of collective justice, which Yahweh, not human beings, apply to Israel in the Hebrew Bible, is in human hands nothing but a weaponized fallacy. To give this a blank slate because Israel’s existence empirically is requisite to the Second Coming even raises the question of whether the human brain is inherently compromised cognitively and ethically in relating the domains of ethics to religion/theology. It used to be asked whether atheists could be ethical. Perhaps the question has become whether pre-millennialist theists (i.e., evangelical Christians) can be ethical and politically responsible.

---

1. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen,” MSNBC.com, September 25, 2025.
2. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV)
3. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen."
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. This prediction is in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.
7. Robert D. Cornwall, “The Roots of Belief in the 2025 Rapture that Didn’t Happen."

Interpreting Scriptures: On Referential Realities beyond the Text

In Christianity, Paul wrote that if the resurrection of Christ Jesus didn’t really take place, then faith is for naught, but he also wrote that faith without love is for naught. The assumption that if Jesus was killed and raised historically speaking, why be a Christian, has had much greater currency than the assumption that if a person is not kind and compassion in heart and deed to people who have been insulting or have damaged the person, that person is not really a Christian. In short, the value of the religious meaning in the New Testament has typically been assumed to depend on the extratextual (i.e., beyond the text of the Bible) existence of Jesus. Using Vedanta hermeneutics (i.e., method of interpreting a text) in Hinduism, I argue that the assumption is incorrect. This is not to make a historical claim one way or the other regarding Jesus or Krishna; rather, I want to claim that the religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making the assumption that the reality described therein exists beyond the text. Although hermeneutically based, this argument may sway attention back to religious meaning itself as primary, including in regard to engaging in pious actions.

In Hinduism, Mimamsa and Vedanta commentators “’restain’ extra-textual reference within the overarching frame of the text, which is not replaced by knowledge, even if the object of knowledge remains ‘outside the text.’”[1] To be sure, the Brahma-sutras “could lend itself to the idea that the Upanisads communicate various authors’ intentions and point to a reality beyond the text.”[2] This is problematic because “external reference to impermanent realities threatened ultimately to undercut the posited eternity and permanence of the sacred text itself. The system had to be nonreferential, meaningful in itself, and expressive in that meaning, in order to be protected from a changing and unpredictable world.”[3]

What about positing of imperishable, and thus permanent realities as existing outside the text? Doing so would not undercut the posited eternity and permanence of a sacred text itself, but it would mean that such a text is referential and thus not meaningful as a system within itself. Also, is not such a positing of something existent outside of the text necessary for the extra-textual component of the hermeneutic (or else the meditation is just on abstract knowledge)?  Both the Mimamsa and Vedanta schools presuppose that “text and performance—meditational or sacrificial—imply, reflect, and instigate one another.”[4] Perhaps it can be said that the meaning in the text is primary in the textual hermeneutic, whereas the extra-textuality reality is primary in the extratextual portion of the Vedanta hermeneutic. Hans Frei, who wrote in his Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative that neither form nor historical criticism should eclipse the religious meaning of a religious text. In other words, Frei holds that asking about “the historical Jesus” and whether different authors, each having their own agenda, contributed to a text gets in the way of giving the meaning of a religious story enough air to breath in a reader’s heart and mind.

 I wonder if questions concerning reality beyond a text and being referred to textually should also be bracketed so not to eclipse the meaning that is in the text. And yet, the Vedanta project “is permanently about the reading and use of texts, and about brahman as an extratextual reality communicated through texts, without either the text or the reality being thereby rendered superfluous.”[v] Perhaps the question is whether a text alone (bracketing extratextual praxis) can only allow for the nominalist rather than a realist assumption as regards the reality being described or discussed textually.

It may be that making the realist assumption—that the reality described in a text really exists outside the text—makes sense, for why would an author claim writing a text that a reality has meaning if that reality doesn’t really exist outside of the text. On the other hand, making a nominalist assumption keeps the focus on the text itself, whose religious meaning is primary in a hermeneutic. Put another way, even if brahman or Krishna do not exist beyond the meaning in a text, the textual religious meaning can still have value. As Victor Frankl discovered, the human need for meaning can be felt in even very dire circumstances. Distinctly theological or religious meaning can sooth a troubled heart or mind even if God doesn’t exist beyond the text. The textual meaning is real in that it is hardly illusory and can have an effect on people without having to approach a text as a realist rather than as a nominalist. This is not to say that the realist assumption is never the correct assumption to make; rather, it is to say that the validity and usefulness of religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making that assumption. If so, and because we mere mortals cannot be certain whether an extratextual reality exists as it extends beyond the limits of our thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, religious meaning gleamed from a religious text ought to be primary in interpreting one and the basis upon which a religious practitioner acts, whether in worship or interpersonally in daily life.

In Christianity, for example, being compassionate to people whom the Christian doesn’t like or who don’t like the Christian should not depend on whether the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred historically and even metaphysically. Even as a textual illustration, the Passion Narrative has meaning and thus value, which can be put into practice regardless of historical and metaphysical questions. Selfless love as to a detractor or even a hated or hateful enemy as a means to entering a different spiritual condition (e.g., the kingdom of God) has its own meaningfulness and value both in itself and as put into practice. Both Paul and Augustine wrote that God is such love. In Vedanta Hinduism, brahman itself can be grasped as identical to an person's self (atman) in experientially meditation, which, though extra-textual, is based on concentrating on the meaning of a scriptural passage. 

---

1. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text: Vedanta as Philosophy and Commentary,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed., Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), p. 56.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 58.
5. Ibid., p. 61.

Christian Devotionalism in Film

Brian De Palma’s film, Obsession (1976), harkens back to Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo (1958) primarily in that resemblances between a character-contrived myth, or story, and the closely related, though different in key respects, social reality in the film (i.e., what’s really going on in the film’s story-world) trigger perplexed reactions for the character being duped by other characters in the film. I thought she died, but there she is . . . or maybe that’s another woman who looks like her—so much so that I believe I can will the woman to be her. The human mind may be such that it convinces itself of even a supernatural explanation than admit that one’s own mind has been fooled by someone else’s cleverness. At the very least, resonances between the impossible and the possible can increase the uncertainty of the beholder. Doubt as to what is really going on can be stultifying, and the human mind is all too willing to fill in the gap by either resorting to a supernatural explanation or making something so as if believing it to be so is sufficient to render it really the case.

The full essay is at "Obsession."

The Holy Grail: Artifact or Superstition?

Relics are nothing new to religion, whose legitimacy used to be synonymous with being ancient, which is one reason why the ancient Romans did not consider the nascent Jesus Movement to be a religion. The cup that Jesus uses in the Last Supper in Gospels is right up there with pieces of the wood cross of the Crucifixion as the most holy of relics in Christianity. “In Europe alone, there are said to be around 200 cups, each thought to be the Holy Grail—the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.”[1] They can’t all be THE cup, but I bet if you visited each place, the partisans would insist that their cup is genuine. For example, the website of the cathedral at Valencia, in eastern Spain, proclaims regarding the cup there, “Tradition reveals that it is the same cup that the Lord used at the Last Supper for the Institution of the Eucharist.”[2] Never mind that medieval legend had it that Joseph of Arimathea had brought the Holy Grail near Glastonbury Tor in southern England shortly after Jesus’ death. That would be quite a distance to travel back them to deliver a cup. These two cannot both be right, yet Christians have prayed in both places as if the cup in each place were genuine. That people have gotten carried away with the super relic through history seems clear from “the fact that, over the centuries, legends have arisen of ‘grails’ producing miracles.”[3] That miracles have been said to arise from more than one of the cups ought to be a red flag that something is amiss, for only one cup could possibly be genuine and so miracles could not have come by means of proximity to the other cups. I submit that basic category mistakes regarding genres of meaning (and writing) are a big part of the problem as to why a presumed historical artifact has given rise to puerile superstition in the name of religious truth.

One scholar of religious studies, Joanne Pierce, is realistic in saying, “I honestly do not think that the actual cup from the Last Supper still exists.”[4] In fact, Pierce elaborates that because according to some Gospel accounts, the room was already prepared before Jesus and his disciples arrived, the cup used may not have even belonged to them. I submit that Pierce is conflating historical accounts and faith narratives—two very different, albeit related—genres of writing. That some of the Gospels have the room already prepared is itself an indication that we should not assume that the room actually was prepared beforehand.

Moreover, a faith narrative is not written as a historical account; the concerns of the writers would have been theological rather than to make empirical reports or accounts, especially as the Gospels were written many decades after the Crucifixion. Is it really likely that, for theological purposes, a detail such as how or whether the room was prepared would have been preserved in notes or orally? Pierce gets around this problem by stating that “the idea of the Holy Grail is more symbolic than realistic—in her words, ‘a cultural reality rather than a religious reality.’”[5] We are no longer concerned with the relationship of empirical history and faith narrative; the idea of the cup is what matters, and that isn’t even religious.

I think Pierce is wrong to jettison the religious meaning of the cup, even as an idea, because of the salvific significance at least in Roman Catholicism of the Eucharist in the gradual process of sanctification. Given the theological doctrine of transubstantiation—the real presence of Christ in bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ—in Catholicism, it is interesting that, “(f)or Pierce, a Catholic, the idea of the Holy Grail is more symbolic than realistic.”[6] Zwingli, the Swiss reformer for whom the Eucharist is only symbolic, would be more likely than the Pope to agree.

Essentially, my argument is that faith narratives are neither historical accounts nor just cultural ideas; rather, the distinctive meaning in a faith narrative such as one of the Gospels is religious. It is felt proximity to religious meaning that is important—not whether a given cup was actually used by Jesus in a historical or empirical sense. To conflate the religious and empirical is to engage in superstition, as evinced by the attribution of miracles from Jesus’ historical use of a cup. Put another way, the religious significance of the Last Supper, which is Jesus being willing to follow his Father’s will in sacrificing his life for humanity, does not come down to the trite contention of which cup Jesus actually used. “It was just a cup,” Jesus might say; “You’re missing the point.” In other words, too much attention to the means can obstruct the ends being served by the means. 

Regarding the famous cup, the distinction between artifact and superstition can be transcended, perhaps even in a Hegelian sense of solving dialectics through human history, by focusing instead on distinctly religious meaning. In other words, perhaps superstition results from mistaking historical artifact for religious truth. This is not to say that the latter cannot come through history; only that if or when the transcendent does manifest on the surface of history, a faith narrative still cannot be taken for a historical account. To focus on the historical as if it were the point would be to miss the distinctly religious point, for the validity of religious meaning does not depend on the criteria of any other domain.

---

1 Julia Buckley, “They All Say They’ve Got the Holy Grail. So Who’s Right?” CNN.com, August 17, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Mary Magdalene: On the Kingdom of God

In the film, Mary Magdalene (2018), Mary Magdalene and the other disciples have two different interpretations of the Kingdom of God; these may be called the interior and the eschatological, respectively. The Kingdom of God is within, already and not yet fully realized, or not yet at all, as it will be ushered in by Christ in the Second Coming, which is yet to come. The film’s point of view is decidedly with Mary’s interior interpretation and against Peter’s revolutionary (i.e., against Roman oppression) eschatological take. After both sides fail to convince the other, Peter sidelines Mary in part also because of her gender, so she decides to preach and help people on her own. That the film does not portray Jesus and Mary as romantically involved is a smart move, for it sidelines a controversy that would otherwise distract the viewers from focusing on the question of the nature of the Kingdom of God. This focus is long overdue in Christianity, and is important because only one of the two interpretations—the eschatological—has dominated historically. The film is valuable theologically in that it gives the minority position—Mary’s interior interpretation—a voice. To be sure, Mary Magdalene is a controversial figure, so the choice of that character as a mouthpiece in the film for the minority theological position on the Kingdom is daring and not without its drawbacks. For one thing, she is a woman in a man’s world in the film. Outside of the film, in real life, a medieval pope denigrated her by erroneously identifying her as the prostitute in the Bible, and her reputation had to wait until the twentieth century for the Vatican to correct the error and label her as the Apostle to the Apostles. Finally, there is the Gnostic gospel, The Gospel of Philip, in which Jesus kisses her and the male disciples ask, “Why do you love her more than us?” That jealousy is present in the film, and plays a role in the dispute between Mary and Peter on the nature of the Kingdom. So, returning to the film, having her as the mouthpiece for a minority position that has not seen much light of day historically in Christianity puts the credibility of the interpretation at risk. Accordingly, it may not have much impact in shifting the emphasis away from the eschatological Kingdom in the religion, given the tremendous gravitas that any historical default enjoys.

The full essay is at "Mary Magdalene."

On the Infallibility of the Pope: The Assumption of Mary

What does it mean for a human being to be vested with infallibility in a religious organization even though like all humans, that one is a finite being? Ironically, it is often the ignorant who presume that they cannot be wrong (i.e., that they are infallible). That is something else entirely. The sort of infallibility granted by the Roman Catholic Church on its pope does not mean that he knows everything or can’t be wrong about anything. The infallibility is circumscribed to cover only religious doctrine. In short, Roman Catholicism gives the Pope the authority to promulgate theological truths that go beyond, yet are consistent with, the Bible. A pope cannot say that Jesus is no longer to be regarded as the Son of God, for such a claim obviously contradicts the canonical gospels. Yet more could be said that is consistent with Jesus’ divinity, and even about Mary, whose womb is regarded as blessed. The “Mother of God” is itself a title that practically invites further theological elaboration beyond the material on her that is in the Gospels. I have in mind here the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on August 15 annually. The feast-day is not a minor holy day for Catholics, for they are obligated to attend Mass. Indeed, a human body being admitted into a spiritual state is no small matter theologically. 

Aad de Lange, the chief financial officer of the archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in Texas, took to social media on the day in 2023 to give a synopsis of how the holy day came to be. “On November 1, 1950, Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption. Thus he solemnly proclaimed that the belief whereby the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the close of her earthly life, was taken up, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, definitively forms part of the deposit of faith, received from the Apostles. To avoid all that is uncertain the Pope did not state either the manner or the circumstances of time and place in which the Assumption took place--only the fact of the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, is the matter of definition." Having degrees both in business and theology, I’m glad to see a CFO being so well-versed in theological-speak. Indeed, his paragraph is dense, so I shall endeavor to unpack it by putting the theological verbiage in contemporary terms.

In particular, I have in mind the telling of a story. I used to tell kids stories when I worked at two summer camps. As the storyteller, I could invent new characters and elaborate on existing characters as long as I did not contradict the story so far. For example, I could say that a group of kids alone in the woods came upon a bear; bears are consistent with forests. I could not then refer to the bear as a wolf unless I obviate the contradiction by saying that a witch changed the bear into a wolf. Furthermore, I could not start referring to the kids as adults without a magical explanation.

As a student at Yale, I took a course called storytelling that was taught at the divinity school. At the time, I just assumed that the course was for preaching, for who doesn’t enjoy a good story, even in church. But then I read Hans Frei’s book, Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative. Frei had been on Yale’s faculty, but unfortunately that was before I matriculated. In his book, he urges readers not to get in the way of the story in the Gospels. Take the story in without thinking about whether the characters existed historically or whether a miracle was an empirical event. Religious truth is distinct from historical facts; faith narratives and historical accounts are distinct literary genres. The writers of the Gospels would have known that they were writing faith narratives, so historical events could legitimately be appropriated or even invented to make theological points. For example, that gospels differ on when the Last Supper takes place—notice I’m not using the past tense!—relative to Passover to make different theological points. In Matthew, which was likely oriented to the Jews, it is no accident that the Last Supper takes place on the night that commemorates the sacrifice of lambs in Egypt so the death would pass over the Hebrew houses. Jesus is to be viewed as the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sins of the world by his willing sacrifice. This is the point, and interrupting the story to ask whether the Last Supper “really” happened is a diversion. Being eternal, religious truth is not affected by time, and is in this sense outside of history. Conflating the object of a faith narrative (i.e., getting at or uncovering religious truth) with that of a historical account (i.e., getting at the who, what, and where in history) not only evinces a category mistake, but also, especially since the Enlightenment, risks the subordination of religious truth to historical fact.

In his paragraph, Aad de Lange obfuscates the two genres. After pointing out that the dogma of the Assumption was added by Pope Pius to the then-extant deposit of faith, de Lange treats the new doctrine in terms of a historical event: “the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the close of her earthly life, was taken up.” It is as if being a historical event is needed to legitimate or justify the religious truth being promulgated. This “need” is merely a symptom of our age in which scientific fact dominates and is the default for certainty. To eclipse even the extended faith narrative, which has Mary go to heaven in body as well as soul, by asking whether or not it was an event that happened historically is to tacitly treat the story-telling as somehow insufficient or subordinate in its own genre. The dynamic, or narrative “arc,” in the Gospels being interrupted by interlarding exogenous questions, the reader (or ancient hearer) undoubtedly has trouble zeroing in on the unique sort of validity that religious truth enjoys. Such truth itself is best grasped from a story if it is not interrupted with distractions.

De Lange unwittingly provides us with a useful way to understand the distinction between historical events and religious truth: “the Pope did not state either the manner or the circumstances of time and place in which the Assumption took place—only the fact of the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, is the matter of definition.” Although de Lange clearly views the Assumption as having occurred empirically (i.e., historically), he does depict religious truth in its own terms—that of definition. A historian would not find the language, “the matter of definition,” to be that which historians use, for they are interested in “the manner or the circumstances of time and place” rather than definitions of truth.

The Pope can be regarded as the chief story-teller as regards religious truth in the Roman Catholic Church. As long as he does not contradict the story so far, he is free to go on telling the story as the spirit and his mind moves him. As long as the dictates of logic (e.g., non-contradiction) are maintained, any storyteller cannot be wrong as one develops a story in progress. In the story of the kids in the woods, I am adding that a helicopter flew in at the last minute and rescued the kids. Once I add this elaboration, someone listening can’t very well say, “No! That doesn’t happen. The kids get eaten.” Notice that I use the present tense—doesn’t—because I am referring to what goes on in a story, rather than to an historical account. Were the listener to say, “No! That didn’t happen,” I would reply, “Of course it didn’t; it’s a story. Now, what does it mean?” Similarly, detecting the leitmotif of a faith narrative distinct from trying to ascertain whether a certain event (or character) existed in history.

To be sure, were the Crucifixion only in the story rather than also a historical event, then it could not be said that a sacrifice happened that restored humanity to God’s graces. Jesus actually suffering is necessary to “pay the price” that no one else would pay. If the only suffering is in the Passion Story in the Gospels, then the reconciliation of humanity with God is also only part of a story. Furthermore, the Incarnation is depicted as God piercing or entering human history—God made flesh. Indeed, the Immaculate Conception of Mary (i.e., she is conceived so as to be without sin) can also be regarded thusly.

Christians are in the unenviable position of believing in religious truth that hinges on historical persons events that historians have so far not been able to determine to have lived and occurred. Faith narratives do not count as historical sources because the writers of such stories can legitimately use, modify, and even invent historical figures and events in the service of making theological points. The risk involved in believing that the Word became flesh as a person who lived historically/empirically is that religious truth comes to depend on history even though truth itself is eternal and thus does not depend on time.[1] In other words, such faith can be in historical fact, which is an oxymoron as facts are known rather than believed and thus of religious belief. In contemporary parlance, it is said that a person is entitled to one’s own opinion but not to one’s own facts. Facts are solid, and thus deemed superior to mere subjective opinions. The danger in subordinating religious truth to historical facts is that truth is relegated as mere opinion.

Just as thinking during a movie in a theater about what to cook later breaks off, or eclipses, the suspension of disbelief that allows a person to “enter” a movie’s story-world, so too does thinking about matters outside of a faith narrative as it is being read. Let the story speak to you so you might grasp the religious truth from the continuity or flow of the narrative. Let history take care of itself. This is not to commit to any answer concerning whether someone existed or something actually happened. Even using words like really and actually for historical claims implicitly subordinates religious truth. Transcending temporal things, truth is really and actually existent. In an age in which some people insist on imposing their ideological opinions as if facts of reason, such presumptuousness shows up much better relative to a discernment of religious truth from a faith narrative.

The infallibility of a storyteller in the telling of a story is much different than the arrogance on ideological stilts that indicates self-idolatry. To be sure, such idolatry can be used to impose even religious truth. At a Roman Catholic church in my hometown, the pastor said in his homily, “Don’t worry if you don’t understand the Marian mysteries; just obey.” That is to say, just obey the pastor. Pope Benedict promoted the pastor to bishop.  Such a decision falls outside of a pope’s story-telling infallibility (as does that Pope’s decision when he was an archbishop to transfer rather than defrock a sexually-molesting priest), and perhaps even outside the purview of the Holy Spirit.  

---

1. I deliberately use the word, “Word,” as the second person/manifestation of the Trinity (i.e., the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) to de-anthropomorphize God. To anthropomorphize something is to ascribe human qualities or attributes to it. Doing so in the case of the second person of the trinity risks understating the qualitative difference (i.e., difference in kind rather than degree) that exists between the Creator and creation, and thus the eternal God and temporal history. In my book, God’s Gold, is suggest that viewing God in terms too similar to us (i.e., anthropomorphizing the transcendent) may be one reason why the assumptions of theologians on wealth and profit-seeking in relation to greed have shifted from anti- to pro-wealth through the centuries. If the second person of the Trinity is viewed too much like the flesh in the Incarnation, then it’s easier to overstate the theological significance of the stuff of Earth more generally, including wealth. From such an overstatement, it was written in the Italian Renaissance that a person must be rich to exercise the Christian virtue of munificence (rather than merely liberality). Cosimo de Medici, who made his fortune from usury, a mortal sin, was absolved by Pope Eugene IV by making a large gift to the Church. Had de Medici not been rich, he could not have afforded to pay for the renovation of a monastery. So it turns out that a rich man can get through the eye of a needle, and that money helps.

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."

The Young Messiah: A Film Rendering Religious Meaning as Distinct

The 2016 film, The Young Messiah, admits to being an imagined year in Jesus’s childhood. To be sure, history and even Biblical passages are drawn on, but the genre of the film is fiction. This label seems too harsh, for Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, mentions Jesus, “the so-called Christ, and his brother James." Josephus was not a believer; he did not believe that Jesus Christ was (or is) the Son of God. So, given Josephus's intent to record history rather than write scriptures or, more specifically, faith narratives, scholars can conclude that at least one historical mention is made of Jesus and his brother as having lived. To be sure, the historian could have been wrong; he may have heard secondhand that Jesus and James did exist, and the teller might have had an agenda unknown to the historian. Even so, Jesus and James are mentioned in one historical account, just as the Hebrews having been in Egypt is mentioned on a historical tablet. We must be careful to distinguish these records from that which is in faith narratives concerning Jesus and Moses. We simply do not know whether that material has any bearing on the historical, as no historical accounts are (as of yet) extant. 
Very little from Jesus's childhood is in the Gospels, so the screenwriter had to use imagination to fill out the gaping holes. Crucially, they were filled with content consistent with, though not in, the Gospels. In other words, the film contains religious meanfulness that is admittedly from imagination in large part, and yet that meaningfulness is strong even so, and can be readily associated with Jesus's ministry. In other words, the film enables the viewer to see that religious meaningfulness need not be from faith narratives directly, and, furthermore, that they need not be conflated with historical accounts--something even the writers of faith and of history would not have done. How, then, can we override their intents, which are clear from their writings. Even today, theologians, for instance, do not regard themselves as historians, and vice versa.

In short, a distinctive religious meaningfulness can be separated from the domain of history without any loss, and history need not be used as a crutch. Human imagine, so informed as it will by both, can produce valid religious meaning. 

The full essay is at "The Young Messiah." 

Risen

In Risen (2016), A Roman Tribune, Clavius, is tasked with overseeing Jesus’s crucifixion; more importantly, Pilote tasks his Tribune with making sure that no one steals the body out of the tomb so no one could claim that Jesus is arisen. This would put the Jesus movement within Judaism as much more of a threat to Pilote as well as the Jewish leaders. More than Christians can glean interesting lessons from the film. That is to say, it is by no means a remake of The Greatest Story Ever Told and Son of God.

The full essay is at "Risen."

On the Methodist Complaint against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on an Immigration Policy

Assessing whether a Christian denomination’s formal discipline is being used for religious or politically-ideological purposes is fraught with difficulty. Certain governmental policies, such as genocide, clearly violate Christian teaching, such that government officials charged with implementing such policies could legitimately be sanctioned on religious grounds without it being thought that a political or partisan difference is the actual basis of protest. As the harm to others in a given policy lessens, the specter of ideological opposition as the actual motivator increases as a possibility. In 2018, 640 United Methodists filed a complaint to their church charging U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions with having violated the Church’s Book of Discipline, its code of laws and social principles, on account of the alleged “child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination, and ‘dissemination of doctrines contrary’ to those of the United Methodist Church.”[1] Sessions had been tasked with implementing the U.S. immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the border. At the time of the complaint, over 2,000 children of illegal aliens were being held by the U.S. Government as their parents were being prosecuted.

From a political standpoint, the separation may have served as a deterrent to potential illegal immigrants as well as a practical means by which the adults could be prosecuted. The moral harm in the separations is clear. For Christians, the morality factor must be put up against Jesus’s teachings and example. It is highly unlikely he would have supported separating children from their parents. In fact, he pointed to the innocence of children as being like the Kingdom of God.

For his part, Jeff Sessions pointed to Paul’s dictum in Romans 13 to obey civil authorities. Jesus himself said to give what is Caesar’s to Caesar. Sessions’ defense is flawed, however, because obeying the authorities would apply to the illegal immigrants who are Christian, rather than to the authorities themselves. What would Jesus say to a Christian authority concerning harm to others through a government action or policy?

The answer may depend on the grievousness or extent of the harm to others. Surely Jesus would disown any of his followers involved in perpetuating the NAZI holocaust in Germany. Separating children from their respective parents involves less harm than would killing the parents or their children, but the harm is still very significant to both parties. Sessions could point out that the parents risked this harm by crossing the border illegally. Even so, the question for the Christian is where Jesus would stand on a civil official implementing a policy of such harm. I contend that Jesus would have rebuffed such an official. How Jesus rebuffed the rich man, who would not part with his wealth to follow Jesus, can be taken as a model or indication. You can keep your power or money, but you cannot follow me if you do.

In terms of money, Jesus’s stance toward the rich man is a very strict view, which would be modified in Christianity from the Commercial Revolution on.[2]  In particular, the good use of even just part of a fortune would come to justify being wealthy. Similarly, could the good use of political power be said to legitimate holding civil power by a Christian? The difficulty especially concerning governmental power is what counts as good, for partisans have different answers, even different ideals or stressed values. The 640 Methodists may have objected to the good that Sessions saw as coming from the policy. In his view, that good is the order that comes from a nation of laws; illegal immigration hampers or detracts from such good because of the lawlessness itself as well as the associated culture of disrespect for laws. Would illegal immigrants suddenly respect and obey traffic laws in Arizona after having presumed that the immigration laws do not apply?

In short, as soon as we drift away from “What would Jesus do?” to consider the good use of political power, we open up the problem of different political ideologies, each of which can be said to have some version of the good in mind even if harm to others is in the means. What would Jesus say to Jeff Sessions? This is what his pastor should focus on, rather than wading into political waters that can easily be twisted one way or the other, and can belie legitimate religious points. From the latter perspective, the harm in the action of the policy itself is at issue. Would Jesus accept one of his followers assuming a government post that involves separating children from their parents?

---

[1] Daniel Burke, “More than 600 Members of Jeff Sessions’ Church Just Charged Him with Violating Church Rules,” CNN.com (accessed June 19, 2018)

[2] Skip Worden, God’s Gold.  Available at Amazon

Christian Films as Distinctly Theological: A Theological Project

Should films with a distinctively religious theme and narrative water down the theological dimension so to be more acceptable in modern, secular society (i.e., a broader range of movie-goers), and thus profitable? The success of films like The Last Temptation of Christ, The Nativity Story, The Passion of the Christ, and Son of God suggest that theology should be embraced rather than tempered if box-office numbers are at all important. The genre should thus be distinguished from historical drama. Screenwriters and directors engaging in the religious genre would be wise, therefore, to distinguish the theological from the historical even in handling religions in which the historical is salient in the theological.

The full essay is at "Christian Films as Theological."

Christianity as Distinctly Religious: A New Species?

The human mind naturally tends to make (and remake) religion into familiar terms, while resisting the wholly other as such. As David Hume explains, the human mind is naturally drawn to what is familiar to itself; considerably more effort is required to hold onto the notion of pure divine simplicity without adding ornaments. Sociological phenomena such as father-son relationships and the role of a son are more familiar than the Son as Logos and agape.[1] The resurrection is typically thought of in supernatural physiological and historical terms, rather than as whose meaning is distinctly religious and, furthermore, is part of a religious narrative. The Trinity as existing in reality metaphysically is easier to understand than the Trinity as transcending reality, as it’s source rather than its substance. God as the first cause of the Big Bang is easier to grasp than God as the source or condition of Creation. These all-too-easy category mistakes are particularly problematic in that they obscure religion as distinctly religious.

Who thinks of the Son of God as the Logos, or Word—that aspect of God that plays an active role in the creation story as well as the Incarnation? It is much easier to conceptualize the Son from father-son relationships even though Augustine warns against doing so. Who thinks of resurrection as whose historicity is within a faith narrative rather than from a historical account, and is thus conditioned on a distinctly religious meaning and basis of validity? If I'm right, none of us has thought much about what remains after the precipitates of other domains have been extracted such that the remaining liquid is distinctly religious.

That the resurrected Jesus walks through a door and yet is hungry and eats a fish suggests that the concept of resurrection is not at bottom physiological. At the very least, the linguistic device seems to be oriented to obstructing such easy likenesses from other domains. A body transformed spiritually is a distinctly religious phenomenon; it is no accident that it is ensconced in a faith narrative, rather than in a historical account, a book on human biology, or even a text whose body is on supernatural, hocus pocus magic.

That the Passion story is ritually and festively acted out each year means that in “mythic time” Jesus is risen each Easter. Hence Christians rejoice, as if announcing breaking news, "He is risen!" The experience of religious presence that can take place in mythic rather than chronological/historical time has great value and meaning. Yet such distinctly religious meaning and its own sort of validators are overlooked simply in asking whether Jesus was really resurrected from the dead.  "Was" connotes time to a historian, and “really” is taken to mean empirically (i.e., as an observable fact), as if such time and factuality trump mythic time and distinctly religious validation stemming from religious meaning.

Religion itself, moreover, is undercut even if Jesus rose from the dead historically. Whether persons or events in a faith narrative happen to be historical outright or mythic-historical, accepting empirical historical claims as the litmus test undercuts religion itself because it is made subject to the criteria of another domain, namely history. In his book, Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative, Hans Frei points out that just asking whether some event in the story really took place gets in the way of the story’s meaning coming through unimpeded.

On a morning after Easter when I was at a grocery store looking at half-priced, tempting chocolate eggs, I conversed with an evangelical Christian woman about the holiday. She told me she had read the Bible thirteen times. "You have to read it all the way through to get its full meaning," she explained, "because the meaning of one chapter is connected to the meanings of other chapters." Thinking of Frei, who had retired from Yale unfortunately before my studies there, I replied that interrupting the reading to ask whether something "really" happened would get in the way of the coherence of the meaning of the Bible as a whole; it would be like stepping out to get popcorn in the middle of a movie. The suspension of disbelief, and hence "getting into" the story-world itself, is eclipsed by the interruption. The woman agreed, though she was visibly uncomfortable with the mere possibility that I might have been suggesting that Jesus did not really (i.e., as a historical occurrence) rise from the dead. Frei would say: Don't even ask the question! Get out of the way, "for Christ's sake," and let the story tell its story. Instead of spoiling for a brawl, this policy not to eclipse the story's own meaning treats religion as sui generis, as worthy in itself instead of needing to defer to the criteria of another domain for some sense of validity.

We are so used to thinking of religion using concepts borrowed from other domains that we would scarcely even recognize something that is distinctly religious if it came up and slapped us in the face and said, "Here I AM!" Elijah found the Lord on the mountain not in the high winds, the ensuing earthquake, or the fire, but in a gentle breeze.[2]

What is the Logos, for instance, and how can “Son” be thought of as such rather than in terms of the characteristics of human sons? Augustine warns that “no carnal thought creep up” in interpreting Jesus’s expression, “As the Father has taught me” in terms of a human father teaching his son. To liken the Trinitarian relationship to a (merely) human one would be, Augustine writes, to “fashion idols” in one’s heart.[3] We are so conditioned to think of the Son of God in terms of being a son of a father that we, Christian or not, have scarcely any idea what "Son" means in a distinctively religious sense; and yet, it is precisely such a sense that can minimize the risk of self-idolatry that comes with anthropomorphism (i.e., applying human characteristics to non-human entities).

We are so used to assuming that overgrown vines from other gardens are native to religion that we have no clue, I suspect, as to what religion’s own garden would look like if regularly weeded.  In fact, I would not be surprised to find that we have been pulling the native plants as weeds! For religion to regain or perhaps achieve its native health for the first time, without the convenient and alluring stain of anthropomorphism, the category-mistakes that come with blurring boundaries must first be recognized and corrected and then attention must be directed to the question of just what is distinctly religious.[4] Perhaps the defining question is whether religion need necessarily be human, all too human; can the domain as distinctively drawn transcend the limits of human cognition, sentience, and perception to have as its referent point the Wholly Other? Can we get out of the way?
 

1. For more on this point and that of David Hume, see ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

2. 1 Kings 19:11-12.
3. Augustine, "Tractate 40" in Tractates on John: Books 28-54, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
4. See ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

Pope Francis Puts Up A Syrian Refugee Family: An Opportunity to Clean House

During wars, houses of worship have become temporary hospitals meeting very practical needs. Caring for the suffering is particularly close to the message and example that Jesus provided. In response to Pope Francis’s call for each parish in Europe to take in at least one refugee family amid the tremendous influx of mostly Syrian refugees in 2015, the pope himself arranged to take in a family. Leading by example is certainly fitting for a follower of Jesus. I submit that the pope could have gone even further to drive home the message of what it means to be a Christian.

The pope put up a Christian family from Damascus in a Vatican apartment.[1] Given the tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees pouring into the E.U. at the time, the impact of the pope’s move is of course symbolic in nature. Given the tremendous power that symbols can have, I submit that the pope missed an opportunity to realize the symbolic potential in Christian terms.

Firstly, putting up a Christian rather than a Muslim family misses the opportunity to stand up for a more marginalized people in Europe. Just as Jesus tended to ritually unclean people of his day rather than to people who could worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, and more generally to social outcasts such as the poor and the sick, the pope could have taken in a Muslim family. The move would have been further out of his comfort zone, and thus even more Christian in terms of following Jesus’ preaching and example. Consider, for example, how Muslims in the Middle East would have thought of such a gesture. I submit that it would have been of much more importance than any official dialogue between Catholic and Islamic clerics.

Secondly, the pope could have housed the family in the papal apartment, while he continued to reside in a room in a relatively simple place for visiting priests. In the spiritual logic of the kingdom of God of which Jesus preached, the last are first and the first are last. Put another way, the kingdom upends societal logic. Putting a family in the papal apartment would have highlighted the status of the downtrodden and marginalized in the true Christian’s kingdom, as well as the servant quality of the pope and his subordinates. The gesture would dwarf that of the pope washing feet in the liturgy of Holy Thursday just before Easter.

Pope Francis washing the feet of men and women in a juvenile detention center on Holy Thursday in 2013. That he washed women's feet flustered some people in the Vatican who missed the main point of the ritual. 

Were the pope to have opened up the papal apartment to an “ordinary” family—Islamic no less!—surely a bureaucrat in the Vatican would have protested that the pope would be violating some rule or at least custom long held. To such a pedestrian mentality, the pope might conceivably have retorted, “Get behind me, Satan!” For anyone who puts a rule or custom ahead of a person following Christ cannot be reckoned as Christian. The pope would have sent the message in the Vatican that even its ensconced functionaries may not be Christian, after all—the matter of their creedal beliefs being nugatory in retrospect.

The first in human terms are bound to be reckoned as last, while most of the last are hopefully first in the eyes of God. To add greater certainty to the sentence would be impious for a mere mortal, and yet how many so-called religious people presume as much without even realizing the presumptuous that is implied. Were the pope to have opened up the regal apartment rather than one of many of the ordinary sort in the Vatican, a much larger project of house-cleaning might have ensued.

---

1. Vincenzo Pinto, “Pope Francis Puts Up Syrian Refugee Family,” AFP, September 18, 2015.

Pope Francis On Taking In Refugees In Europe: A Basis For An Alternative Approach To Christianity

As tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East were seeking refuge in the E.U., Pope Francis “called on every parish, religious community, monastery and sanctuary in Europe to shelter refugees.”[1] It was not enough, he said, to tell them, “have courage, hang in there.”[2] 

Hungarian officials threw bread to the refugees in holding pens like zookeepers feeding animals.  In credibly, the migrants did not fight for food. The "animals" were more civilized than the "zookeepers."  (Michaela Spritzendorfer/Ehrenhauser)

Providing the Christian basis, he said that “the Gospel calls us to be close to the smallest and to those who have been abandoned.”[3] Jesus went to those who had been abandoned by the hegemonic Temple-centric Judaism of his day, and healed them. In the Gospel of Mark, it is the strangers rather than the disciples who understand his message. I submit that this approach to Christianity could serve as an alternative to the dominant one that applies Christianity to every issue.

Pope Francis making the appeal. (Riccardo De Luca/AP)

In the Gospels, Jesus says nothing about abortion or gay marriage. Fittingly, Pope Francis chastised the bishops who obsess over these two ideological issues, trying to get them to focus on the core religious area of the religion. To be sure, those bishops could find a basis in the Church’s magisterium, or continuing teaching authority, which, unlike the Gospels themselves, can potentially touch on any issue. Opposing ideology, such as that which goes against action on climate change, may be the only pushback constraining the overreaching. Australian Cardinal George Pell, whose “lavish personal tastes” had only months earlier been leaked, said in July 2015, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”[4] Too late for Galileo, but significant nonetheless as a potential precedent for constraining the reach of the magisterium.

One problem with applying the Gospels to every issue is that the leaps of inference required can result in positions at odds with Jesus' example and teachings in the Gospels. For example, the pastor of largest Catholic Church in my hometown fired the music director because he was gay. Whereas Jesus is mute on homosexuality in the Gospels, he does preach on reaching out to people who are marginalized in society as well as by a religion! For a religion presumably based on Jesus Christ to abandon the marginalized bears the sting of hypocrisy. That the pastor moved on to become the bishop of North Dakota when Joe Ratzinger was the pope suggests that acting antithetically to the Jesus in the Gospels was laudatory “all the way up,” in terms of the human chain of command. Perhaps the leaps of inference involved in coming up with a Christian position on virtually any issue are antithetical to the leaps of faith required for the courage to embrace the abandoned as Jesus does in the Gospels.

Moreover, the presupposition that Christianity should be applied to any issue may be ripe for critique. Jesus did not have a position on every issue of his day, and if he did, the writers of the Gospels chose not to include Jesus’ various stances. Rather, Jesus of the Gospels focuses on a theme, or particular approach, as a way into the kingdom of God. Healing the sick, feeding the poor, loving those who are marginalized or abandoned by society—these coalesce into a distinctive approach. The pope’s call for Christians to take in the refugees resonates. In fact, we can take the call as a potential new direction for Christianity. In place of being “all over the map” on issues, Christian clergy and laity could try to limit themselves to what Jesus exemplifies and preaches in the Gospels. Such an approach would not only be in line with following Jesus; it would also avoid unintended hypocrisy.

---

[1] Alison Smale, “Pope Calls on All of Europe’s Catholics to Shelter Refugees,” The New York Times, September 6, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.
[4] Anthony Faiola, “Conservative Dissent Is Brewing Inside the Vatican,” The Washington Post, September 7, 2015.

Is God the Father Marginalized in Christianity?

The name of Jesus (or Christ) is common on Christian lips. “Jesus saves” is a typical expression, whereas expressions highlighting the Father or the kingdom of God are much less frequent, and explicit references to the Holy Spirit (or Ghost) are essentially missing. As the three manifestations, or “persons,” of the Trinity are consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance), the hypertrophy (i.e., maximizing one part of a system) is worthy of investigation. This is not to say that equal attention to all three is optimal; Jesus himself says in the Gospels that he came to preach the mysteries of his Father’s kingdom. This statement implies that followers of Christ should focus most on the Father and his kingdom. That this is not the case suggests that historical and contemporary Christianity has missed the point. This should hardly be surprising, for throughout the Gospel of Mark, strangers get Jesus’ point whereas the disciples tend to miss it.

This church has an explicit Christocentric focus. (Maliz Ong) 

The default, or “party-line,” which is hardly ever questioned within Christianity, goes something like this. “Concerning Christ’s life the Creed speaks only about the mysteries of the Incarnation (conception and birth) and Paschal mystery (passion, crucifixion, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension). . . . ‘All that Jesus did and taught, from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven,’ is to be seen in the light of the mysteries of Christmas and Easter.”[1] Along this line, Jesus is focused on himself, which implies that he is not just the intercessory means to the Father, but also the end-point. Unfortunately, this assumption is one that Jesus himself does not hold in the Gospels. Accordingly, the nearly monopolistic focus on Jesus Christ is problematic.  

The Logos became man “in order to do his Father’s will.”[2] The incarnation is thus a means; the focus should rightly be on the Father’s will.  “Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.”[3] In Luke, Jesus says, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.”[4] He views himself and his life as a means to something else—I dare say, something that he views as more important than himself. Were the kingdom of God synonymous with Jesus, he would say he must preach about himself. I came to preach the mysteries pertaining to myself. In saying he came to preach the kingdom of God, Jesus distinguishes himself from his Father’s kingdom.

Lest it be construed that Jesus is the king of the kingdom, as per the “Christ the King” feast day at the end of the liturgical calendar, Jesus refers to the kingdom as his Father’s rather than his own.[5] We know from the ancient Greeks that deities cannot die; this is the main way in which the Greek gods and goddesses differ from humans. Presumably immortality holds in the case of Jesus’ Father (as well as Jesus Christ). So the king of the kingdom cannot be the Son because the Father always exists. That Christians regard Jesus as a king (the Romans do so to taunt the Jewish leaders) suggests that the focus on Jesus is exaggerated. Reason itself should not be so offended, as if the mind goes on holiday when it comes to religion.

A more troubling problem pertains to the Christ-centric historical approach ensconced in the typical Christian mindset. Both the kingdom of God and its king, Jesus’ Father, are marginalized. That is to say, scant attention is devoted to them—the obsession on Jesus Christ crowding them out as the go-between is treated as an end in itself. To treat a means as an end is deeply problematic in itself, especially if the means views itself as a means. In coming to preach on the mysteries of his Father’s kingdom, wherein his Father’s will is done, Jesus is not focused on himself. Ignoring this point, however, his followers have focused on him, and thus ironically deviate from following his lead. It is reasonable, I submit, to posit that a follower should be focused on what the leader says is his focus. If this focus is not on the leader himself, then a follower goes against the leader in focusing on the latter.

Lest it be argued that the invisible kingdom and its king are too far removed from human perception and cognition to be grasped—hence the mediator is necessary—the presumed knowledge of divine revelation undermines the claim. In other words, that the religious, theologians, and laity tend to assume that they cannot be wrong about revelation being revelation (and even on how it must be interpreted!) undermines the claim that the Father and his kingdom are too distant theologically to be petitioned and entered, respectively, directly. Put another way, the sheer declarativeness in typical statements pertaining to revelation belie the claim that a Christian’s focus cannot be on the Father or his kingdom.

To be consistent with Jesus’ own approach, a Christian is therefore rightly focused on the Father’s will and his kingdom more than on Jesus Christ. I am assuming here that the end being served by a means is more important that the means itself; hence the use of served by. In terms of religious objects, the Christian imitating Jesus is most focused on the Father and his kingdom. The latter two would be central to the Christian’s mindset and Christian liturgy. That is to say, worship of the Father primarily, in line with, “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” In spite of this prayer taught by Jesus, “In the name of Jesus” is much more likely to be in a petition, prayer, and sermon or homily. In fact, the all-consuming gravity of this obsession has left little if any space for references to the Holy Spirit.

 Christians on the street are more likely to ask, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ?” that preach on the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The hackneyed question may legitimately be answered by another, “Have you?” The declarative certainty of the likely response undercuts the Christian’s premise that 1) humans are not infallible, 2) belief does not constitute knowledge, and 3) the Father (and his kingdom) are too distant theologically, or “wholly other,” for human beings to relate to, or focus on, directly rather than through an intercessor or mediator. This is not to say that following Jesus’ example and teachings is not important; rather, it is to make this point.

---

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 1, Sec. 2, Ch. 2, Art. 3, para. 3, line 516.

[2] Ibid, line 512.

[3] Mark 1:14-15.

[4] Luke 4:43.

[5] Matthew 26:29.