A Case for God
I once asked a group of students if God’s existence constituted a “problem” for them. There was silence for a moment but then a young Indian woman responded: “The idea of God being a problem seems funny to me. If I walk along the beach on a sunny day, I may doubt that the grains of sand reflecting the sun are true sources of light, but I could never doubt the sun. As Hindus, we are not so sure how real we are, but we have no doubt about God and God is certainly not a problem.”
I was taken aback. I had spent countless hours, whether in the classroom or in dorm lounges, arguing back and forth about the existence of God. Atheists and agnostics were everywhere. How could this young woman have no doubt about God? Why did it seem strange to her that God should be thought of as a problem?
Mystery and Problem
Shortly after that experience, I attended a lecture by the French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel. In preparing for his talk, I read his major work, The Mystery of Being. He makes a distinction in that book that has proved central in my thinking ever since. The young woman was right; the idea of God being a problem really was funny. But more importantly, it was profoundly wrong. Problems are to be solved and solving problems entails objectifying them, successfully separating ourselves from them. We have all been solving problems since our first days in school and it is perfectly legitimate to do so.
But Marcel claims that not everything can be conceived as a problem. Life contains mysteries as well. This does not mean a mystery in the Agatha Christie sense; her “mysteries” were, in Marcel’s language, problems. Who killed Colonel Mustard in the library? We know that’s a problem because it has a potential solution. But isn’t all of life about problem solving, about finding solutions? Isn’t everything either a solved problem or a problem waiting for a solution? No, and that’s precisely what we need to acknowledge.
Marcel argues that mysteries are not reducible to problems because we cannot objectify them; we cannot isolate them from ourselves or submit them to laboratory conditions. Mysteries climb back up on us, just when we are trying to push them away. In Marcel’s words, they “encroach on their own data”. They prove to be inseparable from us and thus resist being turned into problems. So a mystery is not an unsolved problem but something altogether different.
Our existence, the divine reality, life and death—these are mysteries, not problems to be solved. But if we cannot solve mysteries, what should we do with them? Marcel’s answer is the same in French and in English: participation. We participate in mysteries. It is a process of immersion, not calculation. It’s similar to the difference between reading all the technological literature about how hot tubs work and the actual experience of lowering yourself into a hot tub. The academic knowledge about hot tubs is not at all like steeping in the warm water.
A colleague of mine informed me recently that he was an atheist. “What would change your view?” I asked him. “I would need a scientific proof for the existence of God” he replied. I pointed out to him that God was not a problem to be solved but a mystery in which he could participate. Or, more precisely, God is a mystery in which he already participates, although he has the option to recognize it or not. I suggested that he might want to meditate, learn to cultivate silence, stay alert for what beckons from so many places in our experience, what the Irish call “the thin spaces” where the divine mystery seems closer than elsewhere.
This is not knowing about God but knowing God in the sense of becoming intimate with God. The Bible speaks of the “knowledge of God” but in Hebrew the word for know is also the word for having sexual intercourse with someone. This kind of “knowledge of God” does not appear as the answer to a set of operations on our computer. We need commitment and dedication; we need patience and prayer. This experienced knowing comes through spiritual practice, not through a process of calculation or reasoning.
It’s important to keep in mind the difference between the methodology we use for solving problems and the methodology we use for approaching mysteries. The essential flaw in all the atheist books pouring off the press these days lies in the fact that their authors are methodological monists. That is to say, they believe that life offers only problems and that all problems can best be met by their particular way of knowing. Most of them are trained in the methodologies of the physical or social sciences and approach the subject of God with the naïve assumption that their particular problem-solving methodology is both appropriate and adequate, when in fact it is neither.
Theism, Pantheism, and Panentheism
Does God exist? My short answer is "yes" but it's not that simple. When anyone affirms that God does or does not exist, it's important to know what they're affirming or denying. One approach to the divine mystery is through what we call in theological conversations "traditional theism”. Now since I have already argued that God is a mystery, not a problem, we need to understand from the outset that both this position, traditional theism, and the ones we will later discuss—pantheism and panentheism--are not solutions but clusters of metaphors intended to help us participate in what is ultimately a mystery.
Traditional theism understands God as an entity somewhere in the universe (usually in a place called heaven). He is often portrayed through patriarchal images: father, king, and shepherd. This God is a separate being. If you add this God to the two of us (you, my reader, and myself) then there are three.
I personally am not drawn into the mystery of God through this set of metaphors. There is another approach in which God is simply everything and everything is God. We call this pantheism. My problem with this language of simple identity is that there seems to be no reason to use both terms. Let’s just say that everything is—end of story. Why use the “God word” at all?
There is, however, another approach to the mystery of God: panentheism. This is different both from traditional theism and from pantheism. Unlike traditional theism, panentheism does not regard God as an entity separate from the universe. But unlike pantheism, panentheism does not understand God as identical with the universe. In this third view, the universe is in God and God is in the universe; and yet, God is more than the universe. This view corresponds to the mystical understanding of God found in many of our sacred traditions.
I first learned this in graduate school when I was studying the 13th-century theological giant, Thomas Aquinas. He asserted that God was not an entity among entities but rather the existence of every entity, the to-be-ness of everything that is. God is “Subsistent To-Be-Ness” whereas every entity -- molecule, plant, animal, human person, or angelic being – is a “Participant To-Be-Ness”. This is heady language and so the mystics naturally turn to poetry.
This is what Gerard Manley Hopkins was talking about when he wrote:
Thee God we come from, to Thee go.
All day long we like fountain flow
From Thy hand out
Mote-like in Thy mighty glow.
The images climb on top of each other. First, the simple process of coming and going, the great mystical insight that everything comes from and returns to the divine mystery. Second, the phenomenon of water flowing from a fountain, looking somehow other but in reality being only water. And finally the tiny particles swimming in a splash of sunshine. The images can never be perfect but they give us a glimpse of the mystery to which they point.
Meister Eckhart, the great 14th century German mystic, was also using an image when he wrote that the drop poured into the ocean is the ocean. And yet, the drop is not the entire ocean, for the entire ocean is not in the drop. In the same way, the person drawn into God is God, but not all of God. But just as there is nothing in the drop that is not water, so too there is nothing in the person that is not God. We either recognize this and live in love’s abundance or deny it and live a diminished life. As one of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas states: “If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty”.
A river doesn’t flow higher than its source. If consciousness and love are our highest attributes, then their source cannot be lower. Though not a person, the divine must be somehow personal. The mystics’ experience of the divine confirms a mystery that is trans-personal but not impersonal: a reality loving us, embracing us, inviting us to participate fully in what we most deeply are, God. Everything that exists is God in manifest form; and yet, unlike pantheism, the manifestations do not exhaust the source.
This God does not inhabit a place called heaven but resides at the heart of everything that exists. All our experience is in God. Even atheists enjoy an unremitting experience of the very God they are so determined to deny. This is the God in whom we live and move and have our being. We can praise this God, thank this God, express sorrow for our failings to this God, and invoke this God for all those needs we feel both for others and ourselves.
The closeness of this God is not an option. As the Qur’an states, God is closer to us than our jugular. Whether we recognize this closeness is our only option—the reality of God is spread out in front of us but that doesn’t mean that everyone sees it. The difference lies in whether or not we realize our deepest reality, cooperate with the flow of life, align ourselves with the grain of the universe, and accept the divine embrace.
A question in one of my college exams was whether or not there was more reality after God created the universe. This was a classic dilemma. If I said there was more reality, then how could God be infinite? If I said there was no more reality, then was I not a pantheist? The only way between the horns of this dilemma was panentheism. There was no more reality after creation but the reality was differently manifested.
Putting God On Trial
This all sounds well and good, but what about all the evil in the world? The problem appears already in ancient philosophy, finding echoes in the writings of many contemporary atheists and agnostics. It eventually acquires the name theodicy, justifying God or putting God on trial to see if God is indeed just.
The case against God often takes the form of a compelling trilemma, three propositions that are asserted to be incompatible with faith in God.
1. God is all-powerful
2. God is all knowing
3. God is all loving
The argument demands that we drop one of the three propositions or drop our faith in God. Perhaps God is not all-powerful; then God is relatively impotent. Perhaps God is not all knowing; then God is to some extent ignorant. Perhaps God is not all loving; then God may well be a monster. And yet, if God is indeed all-powerful, all knowing, and all loving, then the evil in our world precludes this God’s existence.
At this point, we can easily recognize the fact that this logical trilemma presumes traditional theism, the understanding of God as a separate entity, a larger than life being. This being exists separately from us and can intervene in our affairs at will. Why, then, is that intervention so infrequent and inconsistent? Why does God choose to save two lives from the plane wreckage and take seventy? Why does God riddle one body with cancer and yet spare another?
I don’t believe that this challenge can be met within the parameters of traditional theism. From that perspective, we are set up to find someone to blame. Why did God allow Auschwitz? But from the perspective of panentheism, another avenue of response appears. If God is the very to-be-ness of all that is, inseparable from the life we experience, then there is no separate God to accuse.
At this point, an important shift occurs. When we are no longer able to hold a separate God responsible for evil, then we must seek other loci for the evil we find in our world. Am I a source of evil? Are other people a source of evil? Are the parameters of our world—from bacteria to tornados—sources of evil? More importantly, however, whatever sources of evil we disclose, our primary concern is to respond to evil, to learn from it, and to the extent that we can, to alleviate its effects in our world. As a panentheist, I cannot expect an entitatively separate God suddenly to appear on stage (the traditional “deus ex machina”) and solve the problem. Evil is integral to the mystery manifested in and around us. But just as evil is part of our reality, so too is our response to it.
A story from the Jewish mystical tradition may help us to understand this panentheistic perspective. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, a Jew was attacked and beaten by some drunken Cossacks and left half-dead on the road. He was found there by a Jewish family who took him in, nursing him back to health. When they saw that he had regained consciousness, the family inquired as to what had happened to him. The Hasid answered: “The God who attacked me on the road is now the God who is restoring me to life”.
Clearly this Hasid felt the pain of being attacked, just as he felt the comfort of being nursed to health. The story certainly expects us to condemn the evil inflicted by the Cossacks and to emulate the compassion shown by the Jewish family. But what makes this story significant is its panentheistic perspective. The Hasid didn’t look for a God to blame. There was no God separate either from the Cossacks who attacked him or from his fellow Jews who helped him.
What is lacking in panentheism is a basis for any case against God. It simply disappears. Plaintiff and defendant are one. From this panentheistic perspective, when we experience evil, our primary impetus is to respond to it, not to blame it on God. And this applies to the evil done to us, the evil done to others, and the evil that we ourselves do. We waste no time in trying to judge a distant God who has decided to let this evil happen. For no such God exists. The only God is the one who lives and works in us, inviting us to be conscious of our oneness with all that is and to act in the world in ways that reflect that oneness. Love your enemies. Why? Because you have no enemies…they are you.
The Case Rests
I can believe in the God of Gabriel Marcel, the God of Thomas Aquinas, the God of Meister Eckhart, the God of the Hasid. This is the God I find when I am able to participate in mystery. And this leaves me with no separate God to blame, and certainly no separate God to deny. The God I affirm is a mystery, not a problem. This God is the great With of human experience, the One from whom we can never be separated. And it is this God for whom I would presume to make a case.
The author:
Ronald H. Miller
Jews and Christians: Siblings in Strife(Top of Page)
Striving From the Womb
“And the Lord said to Rebecca: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided’.” Genesis 25:23
Though often understood in the past as mother and daughter, Judaism and Christianity are more commonly regarded today as siblings. Like Jacob and Esau struggling in Rebecca’s body, these two religions emerged in strife from the womb of biblical Judaism. Whether one chooses to begin the history of biblical Judaism with Adam’s family, with Abraham, or with Moses, a common denominator in all three of these narratives is animal sacrifice. “The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering [the first-born sheep of his flock].” Genesis 4:4b. Abraham learned that rams, not first-born sons, were the acceptable sacrifice to bring to God. Genesis 22. Moses sealed Judaism’s most important covenant with God by sprinkling the people with the blood of sacrificed oxen. Exodus 24:8. When Solomon built God’s Temple some three thousand years ago, this became the locus of an everlasting sacrifice to the Lord. A bull was sacrificed every morning and every evening as a whole burnt offering. After a brief hiatus following the destruction of this Temple (and indeed of the city of Jerusalem itself) by the Babylonians, a Second Temple was dedicated in 516 BCE. The centerpiece of the Temple liturgy was the practice of animal sacrifice. This continued through the lifetimes of Jesus and Paul until the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE.
In Search of a Hermeneutic
With the destruction of the Second Temple, Biblical Judaism lost its heart; the priests their raison d’etre. A hermeneutics was needed, an interpretation of this tragedy capable of opening a door to a viable future for this exiled people. The Pharisees were religiously observant and theologically liberal; there were about six thousand of them in a total Jewish population of some seven million in the first century BCE. It is the Pharisees, who become the rabbis, who offered a compelling hermeneutics securing a future for Jews and Judaism. They argued that the sacrificial system rested ultimately, not on the blood of animals, but on the dedication of human beings to God symbolized by acts of animal sacrifice. And so the times of animal sacrifice were replaced by the times when the community gathered for formal prayer three times daily. And the holiness of the Temple’s altar was replicated in the table in every Jewish home where the Sabbath was sanctified every week in a special meal and where the Exodus event was celebrated annually in the Passover meal, the Seder.
No less compelling was the hermeneutics put forward by a nascent group of messianic Jews, followers of Jeshu ben Josef (Joshua, the son of Joseph) whom they now confessed as Jeshu ha Messiach (Joshua the Messiah). And in the Greek language that carried their message he would be known by words closely resembling their English translation: Jesus Ho Christos, Jesus Christ. What was the rival interpretation of this messianic sect? In his total obedience to God, Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice after which no other would ever be needed. “Unlike the other high priests, he [Jesus] has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself.” Letter to the Hebrews 7:27. Jesus the Messiah is both Priest and Sacrifice.
The Galilean Hasid
After a brief teaching career, largely to illiterate peasants, Jesus was executed by the Roman domination system. He left behind no writings. He was a Galilean hasid or holy man, a healer, and a wisdom teacher. In his own Jewish tradition, he would be known as a moshel meshalim, a master of parables. The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in its entirety only some fifty years ago, begins with the assertion that it is in the understanding of Jesus’s teachings that immortality lies. In other words, these teachings can lead to the transformation of consciousness, conscience, and community central to all spiritual endeavor. Jesus reminds human beings of their deepest divine identity and encourages them to live from that source. His central image for this divine presence in human lives is God’s reign.
Saul/Paul
The name of Thomas was by no means the only one evoked as carrier of Jesus’s authentic message. Some Christians heard the voice of Jesus in his brother Jacob (James in English) or in his close companion, Mary Magdalene, or in the fisherman, Shimon, whom Jesus had dubbed Cephas (Peter/Rock). And then there is the man who never knew Jesus during his earthly career, Saul/Paul of Tarsus. Fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the Christian Testament are attributed to him and the book that is supposed to be a history of all twelve apostles (Acts of the Apostles) is in fact largely a biography of Paul. In the development of normative Christianity, his voice virtually becomes the voice of Jesus. A contemporary biographer of Paul states: “I shall argue that what Paul meant was not something other than or contrary to what Jesus meant, but that we can best find out the latter by studying the former.” This is a thesis with which a large number of current Pauline scholars, myself included, would strongly disagree.
Paul exemplifies marvelously the type of personality categorized by William James as “a sick soul.” James writes: “Wrong living, impotent aspirations; ‘What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do,’ as Saint Paul says; self-loathing, self-despair, an unintelligible and intolerable burden to which one is mysteriously the heir.” The propensity of such a soul is to feel deeply the pain of the world (what German writers call Weltschmerz). Reality is most profoundly described for such a person by Virgil’s immortal verse: Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. “Reality has a tearful dimension and life’s transciency touches our souls.”
James intends no negative judgment in his use of the term “sick soul”. The “healthy-minded soul” is of no more than equal valence. The terms describe two ways in which God-seekers evolve. The healthy-minded soul grows incrementally into holiness, whereas the sick soul is typically catapulted into sanctity by a profound conversion experience. As a sick soul, Paul saw the taint of sin everywhere and experienced Christ as his rescuer and redeemer. So it is to Paul, not to Jesus, that we can trace the headwaters of that mighty river in Christian theology called Original Sin. Different from the sins known to virtually all the classical religions, this Sin is a condition of our being, not a result of our choice. The seed planted in Paul becomes a tree watered by Augustine and nurtured by Christianity’s great reformers, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Sin and Redemption
Once humankind is understood as ineluctably entangled in this primordial and inherited Sin, alleviation of this condition must come from somewhere beyond the capacities of our human nature. Thus Christ’s saving death, more than his example and teachings, become the focus of his message. And since only those aligned with this atoning death through faith and baptism can be saved, Christianity’s exclusivism inexorably follows. The experience of Paul and his interpretation of the message of Jesus was neither shared by all Christians in the first century nor should be the only template of orthodoxy for Christians today. Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and theologian, writes: “Jesus was repositioned from moshel meshalim to mediator, and the spiritual journey was reframed from a quest for divinization to a rescue operation.” No longer was the transformation of consciousness and conscience primary; being saved from Sin absorbed all other aspects of Christian identity. Jesus was no longer a Reminder of the divine mystery at the heart of our own being; he was now the Redeemer of a fallen humanity.
Emphasizing Jesus as Reminder, rather than Redeemer, has consequences for Jewish-Christian relations. First of all, if the focus is on the life and teachings of Jesus rather than his death, then the role Jews play in the story of Jesus’s arrest and execution becomes less significant. Second, if Jesus called all human beings to recognize their own divine depth, then Jesus is not the only Reminder on the horizon. Ultimately this means that Buddhists are made whole and holy as Buddhists, Muslims as Muslims, and Jews as Jews. The exclusivism so prevalent in Paul’s writings disappears. These two changes alone, if they had won the status of orthodoxy in place of Paul’s teachings, would have led to a vastly different history of Jewish-Christian relations in the subsequent two thousand years. But it was Paul who won the victor’s laurels and it was Paul’s influence that shaped the only history Christianity was to write—at least to our own day.
Paul’s three premises fall neatly into place. First, all are under the power of sin. Second, salvation from sin comes from the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Third, only those with faith in that salvific action can be made whole and holy. “Everyone is in the same predicament: since all are sinners falling short of God’s glory, they are all made God-centered by the gift of God’s grace. This comes about through Jeshu the Messiah, who is the redeemer put forward by God as an atonement sacrifice in his blood, made real for us by our faith.” Romans 3:22b-25. Alternative theologies have always existed but never prevailed; and thus Christian attitudes towards Jews and Judaism have largely been derived directly from these words of Paul.
In Paul’s world, there is no access to God except through Jesus Christ. This applies to Jews and Gentiles alike. Thus “even today when the Torah is read, that veil covers their minds, and it is only by turning to the Lord that the veil can be removed.” 2 Corinthians 3:16. When visiting the cathedrals of Europe, I was often struck by the matching statues flanking the doorways: Church and Synagogue, two women: one reigning with crown and scepter; one with veiled eyes and holding broken tablets. The Hebrew Bible has become the “Old” Testament (testamentum is the Latin word for covenant); without internal validity, it exists only as prophecy pointing to the fulfillment that will later be canonized as the twenty-seven books of a “New” Testament. Replacement theology, also known as supersessionism (literally, that which “sits on” something else), has been born and continues to characterize much of Christian theology to our own day.
Matthew’s Spin
The first of the twenty-seven books of the Christian Testament is attributed to Matthew, though it is unlikely that the story is linked to the man of that name who appears in the narrative. The unknown author(s) of Matthew is using Mark’s gospel (he repeats over 95% of it), along with a collection of sayings of Jesus called Q (from the German word for source, Quelle). This gospel does not allow Jesus to be addressed as rabbi, since the Pharisees are now the rabbis; the Greek word for teacher, didaskale, is used instead. There are, however, two times when Jesus is called rabbi; both instances, however, come from the mouth of the traitor, Judas. For the gospel writer(s), Judas represents the rabbinic Jews who are the theological rivals of this community.
It is not only the rivalry with rabbinic Judaism that gives this gospel an anti-Jewish spin. Written in Greek, this text can move through the entirety of the Roman Empire, calling people to this new faith. But having a felon as founder, one executed by a Roman official, opens few doors in the Roman world. Consequently, the Roman role in Jesus’s arrest and execution must be downplayed. Pilate is whitewashed; he literally washes his hands of the whole affair in Matthew 27:24. In seesaw like fashion, however, if the responsibility of Roman imperialism is denied, the burden of guilt has nowhere to fall but on Jesus’s own people and thus is born the terrible lie that “the Jews killed Jesus”. Matthew drives this point home by portraying the crowd of Jews gathered in front of the Roman headquarters in Jerusalem as condemning itself by crying out the infamous blood curse: “His blood be on us and on our children.” Matthew 27:25. This was to haunt the next two thousand years of Christian history until the Catholic Church officially declared in 1965 that “the Jews should not be represented as rejected by God or accursed.”
By the time Matthew’s gospel was written sometime in the late 80s, the polemical struggle between rabbinic Jews and the followers of the Jesus Movement was intense. One can imagine the peace of the Sabbath being broken on a Sabbath morning when representatives of rabbinic Judaism and representatives of the Jesus Movement clashed in argument, each side attempting to win other Jews to their respective hermeneutic. We hear an echo of this debate in Matthew 28:11-15. Matthew’s community argues that their Messiah had risen because the tomb was empty; the rabbis would counter that a body can be stolen. The followers of Jesus would say that this was impossible since the tomb was guarded; the rabbis then asked why the guards didn’t see the resurrection. The Jesus Movement representatives would say that they did indeed see Jesus rise from the dead but the Jewish priests bribed them to keep silent. The exchange ends with the gospel writer stepping out of his story into his own time frame by saying: “And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.”
What is most insidious about this passage is the implication that the priests knew and believed the story of the guards that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead. So they were not unbelievers, but believers. But if they were believers, why would they persist in their efforts to suppress the truth of the resurrection? There’s only one possible answer. Because they were in league with Satan, the Hinderer, the fallen angel who from the beginning was committed to thwarting God’s plans. So the Jews are not unbelievers; they are much worse than that. They are believers who have chosen to work with the Devil to suppress the truth of Christianity. This piece of anti-Semitism will be woven into subsequent history and will have a profound effect on Christian attitudes towards Jews. Even in our time it is not uncommon for Jews to be asked to show their horns.
Jews as the Evil-Other
The spin that grows from Paul to Matthew culminates in John, the last of the canonical gospels. Here the term “the Jews” is used over seventy times, almost always with a negative connotation. Jesus and his disciples are curiously separated from their identity as the gospel describes how, after Jesus’s death, “…the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.” John 20:19. But are the disciples not Jews as well? This strange wall of separation had been built before the first CE century ended. The Jews are not just others, like Hindus or Buddhists; they are “the other” as black to white, as night to day, as Satan to God. Jesus is portrayed as telling the Jewish leaders that their father is Satan: “You are from your father the devil…” John 8:44. This will be a major theme in the two-thousand year history of Christian anti-Semitism, culminating with the Nazi slogan that whoever fights the Jews is indeed wrestling with the Devil.
The ABC’s of Anti-Semitism
With the close of the Christian canon, the ABC’s of anti-Semitism have become part and parcel of Christian identity. The Jews are (A) accursed since they rejected their Messiah and further committed deicide (killing God) in crucifying Jesus who was both truly human and truly divine. They are (B) blasphemous since they secretly know the truth of Christianity and yet publicly deny it. They are (C) contemptible in their perfidy. It was not until 1958, during the pontificate of Pope John XXIII, that the official Holy Thursday liturgy was changed, no longer praying “pro pefidis Judaeis”(for the perfidious Jews). They are (D) diabolical and will be associated with Satan for the next two thousand years. In Mel Gibson’s viciously anti-Semitic The Passion of the Christ, devils move around freely among the homicidal Jews gather in Pilate’s courtyard, urging the benevolent Procurator (who even offers Jesus a glass of water) to crucify Jesus. And so it comes as no surprise that Jews are (E) excluded in Christian society: excluded from salvation; excluded from legal rights and any protection under the law; excluded from living outside of ghettos; and finally excluded from living at all, when the Nazi “final solution” presses forward with ruthless logic on the path that began with Christianity’s sacred texts.
Justin Martyr and Trypho the Jew
It was just about the time that the last books of the Christian Testament were being written (between 100 and 110 CE) that Justin was born in the city known today as Nablus in Samaria, the territory between Judea to the south and the Galilee to the north. He was of Greco-Roman ancestry and was educated as a Platonist. He was in Ephesus, on the west coast of Asia Minor (Turkey today) when he converted to Christianity at about the age of thirty. Shortly after this, the Jews rebelled against Roman occupation, an effort that was soundly put down by the Romans in 135 CE. It was during this period of Jewish militancy that he met Trypho, possibly the famous Rabbi Tarphon. His published Dialogue with Trypho, a lengthy work of over two hundred pages, was written when Justin was living in Rome where he was eventually killed in one of the outbreaks of Roman persecution. It is thus that he is known in Christian history as Justin Martyr.
The Dialogue with Trypho bridges the world of the Christian Testament and the world of the Church Fathers (the patristic age). In its pages we see the reactions of an educated Christian to Jews and Judaism. Replacement theology provides the foundation for Justin’s argument: “The law promulgated at Horeb is already obsolete, and was intended for you Jews only, whereas the law of which I speak is for all men. Now a later law in opposition to an older law abrogates the older, just as a later covenant voids an earlier one.” Christians constitute the new Israel and the scriptures of the Jewish people can be rightly understood only as Christianity’s Old Testament. “We are the true spiritual Israel and the descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.” For Justin, it is indeed the Jews who killed Jesus: “You crucified the only sinless and Just Man (through whose sufferings are healed all those who approach the Father through Him).” The Jew has become the quintessential enemy of Christian truth and thus writing a tractate “Adversus Judaeos” (Against the Jews) would soon be a prerequisite for all aspiring Church Fathers.
Victim to Victor
Justin and other early Christian Apologists could inveigh against the Jews theologically but were powerless to do anything to them politically. Christians had enough trouble themselves trying to survive the waves of persecution periodically emanating from imperial Rome. That all changed, however, in the early fourth century when Constantine declared Christianity a legitimate religion and co-opted the energies of the Church for his own political goals. With Christianity now on the ascendancy, the traditional religions (both the official Roman pantheon and the various popular cults) were driven into the countryside. Paganus means rural in Latin and thus these diverse religions were eventually included under the umbrella called “paganism”.
What then was to be done with the Jews? Now that Christians had political power, poisonous polemics could become punitive policies. Should the Jews be killed, forcibly converted, or driven into exile? The views of the great Christian theologian Augustine (354-430 CE) prevailed and set the tone for Christian relationships to Jews for the next millennium. The Jews were not to be slaughtered; they were to be scattered. Living in a contemptible state among Christians, Jews would be an eternal sign of the truth of Christianity. And when Jesus returned, their conversion would be Christianity’s final victory. The Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn wrote that without Augustine’s “lovely brainwave, we would have been exterminated long ago.” The policy was not entirely “lovely” but it did provide for survival, albeit with diminished status.
La Convivencia :711-1492 CE
Christian hostility to Jews and Judaism was not unremitting. Moments of hope occasionally broke through the darkness of ignorance and persecution. One of those “moments” lasted almost eight hundred years. The center of this interreligious phenomenon was the city of Toledo, though it flourished throughout much of Spain. The bathhouses in Spain were the gathering places where Jews, Christians, and Muslims met on common ground. And conversations begun in bathhouses ended up in the writings of scholars who borrowed freely from the ideas of their interfaith dialogical partners. The great thirteenth century Christian theologian, Thomas Aquinas, quoted frequently both from the Jewish philosopher Maimonides and the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Despite such great promise, this wonderful interlude in a long history of persecution came to an abrupt end with the introduction of the Inquisition to Spain and the subsequent expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish Christians now sought blood purity, limpieza de sangre, a forerunner of the racial purity so highly prized by the later Nazis.
The Ghetto
Backlash movements of ignorance and repression almost inevitably followed times of dialogue and hope. Pope Paul IV found it unseemly that Jews “whom God has condemned to eternal slavery because of their guilt” were found living in decent homes in the nice parts of town. Sometimes they even lived near churches. On occasion they were doing well enough to hire Christian servants. They even dressed like reputable citizens. All of this weakened the message that Jews were to convey by their diminished status, the message that they were forever cursed and meant to be contemptible in the sight of God and human beings alike. And so a papal statement was issued on July 12, 1555 requiring Jews to live on a single street or in a separate section of the city, an area with only one entrance, one gate whose key was in the keeping of a Christian. Distinctive clothes, restricted civil rights, limited living space—the marginalization of the Jews was complete.
Lessing and Mendelssohn
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born in 1729 and died of a stroke in 1781. Philosopher and playwright, he believed in freedom of religious thought and religious tolerance. I always enjoy visiting his lovely residence in Wolffenbeutal. Today it is a museum but his gentle spirit still hovers over the house and grounds. Here was a man who in an age when anti-Semitism was the air Europeans breathed, dared to write a play, Nathan the Wise, modeled on the famous Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). Lessing regularly obtained the required legal permit, allowing Mendelssohn to leave the ghetto as a Schutzjude (a protected Jew) to attend philosophy meetings and gatherings of the arts. Escaping the poverty and degradation of the Dessau ghetto, Mendelssohn bested Immanuel Kant in a philosophical competition, translated the Hebrew Bible into German, and proved himself to be“ a revolution all by himself, rising by sheer talent to the heights of German cultural life”.
Free…And Yet
In the wake of Napoleon’s wars, Jews were allowed to emerge from the ghettos and enter civic life in the countries of Western Europe. The emancipation that Moses Mendelssohn had but a taste of by way of exception now became the norm. Overnight Jews were transformed from prisoners to guests in their respective host societies. They celebrated the enlightened thinking that led to their emancipation; and yet, clouds of ancient prejudice continued to glower menacingly above them. In 1894 a certain Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the French general staff, was accused of spying for the Germans. After a secret military trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Even though his innocence was later established, the military court reconfirmed its judgment of his guilt. Years passed until a civil court declared his innocence in July of 1906. But it was too little too late. European Jews saw all too clearly that under the apparent tranquil waters of tolerance, currents of anti-Semitism were broiling.
With the rise of Adolph Hitler to power in Germany, two millennia of anti-Semitism reached their logical conclusion. The final solution was not that Jews live in contemptible circumstances in ghettos but that they not live at all. Only about one percent of Europe’s Christian leaders actively opposed this genocidal policy. Europeans had long been accustomed to Jews being deprived of rights, deprived of respect and dignity, deprived of life itself. Pope Pius XII saw himself as responsible for Catholics, but not for human beings outside of his flock. He worked for the safety of Jews who had converted to Roman Catholicism but showed little concern for Jews as Jews. By and large, he and Europe’s other Christian leaders stood silently by as Jews were rounded up and sent to the death camps.
In the Wake of the Holocaust
As the world absorbed the horrors of genocide on a scale never known in human history, some Christian individuals and groups began to awake from their long slumber, realizing their responsibility for a path that began with the letters of Paul and ended in the ovens of Auschwitz. The “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”, voted on by some two thousand bishops at the Second Vatican Council, was officially promulgated by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965. It is an ambiguous document, reflecting a dawning awareness of Christian responsibility for Jewish suffering accompanied by a continued rhetoric of denial. The document does not reach that clarity of vision articulated by the theologian Rosemary Ruether when she boldly declared that the good news of Christianity has consistently been a bad news for Jews and that the essential credibility of Christianity, as well as its legitimate continuance, depends on changing that reality. Nor does it challenge the essential thesis of replacement theology stating that it is only in Christ that Jews can ultimately be saved.
Like most of the documents of Vatican Two, Nostra Aetate is a compromised text. Thomas Merton, monk and interreligious thinker, commented in a journal entry for September 10, 1964:
Abraham Heschel has sent me a memo on the new Jewish Chapter at the Vatican Council. The new proposal is incredibly bad. All the meaning has been taken out of it. All the originality, all the light are gone and it has become a stuffy, pointless piece of formalism with the stupid addition that the Church is looking forward with hope to the union of Jews with herself…
Anti-Semitism is indeed rejected but with a strange sense of disassociation in that it is condemned “at any time and from any source” but without the obvious recognition that a crucial “time” was the two thousand years in which a large part of the Jewish community lived in “Christian” Europe and a major “source” was the very same ecclesiastical group now sitting in solemn session to ratify the document.
The Way Forward
A new path was opened when the United Church of Christ became the first major Protestant denomination in the United States to reject Christianity’s traditional replacement theology. The document adopted on June 30, 1987 at a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio included the recognition that the Christian Church has frequently “denied God’s continuing covenantal relationship with the Jewish people expressed in the faith of Judaism.” After asking for God’s forgiveness, the document then goes on to state explicitly that Christianity has not superseded Judaism. In other words, Christianity is not to be understood as the successor religion to Judaism. It is not a New Testament supplanting an Old Testament. All salvation is not through Jesus. God covenants with people in different ways: with Jews through the covenant of Sinai, with Christians through the covenant mediated by Jesus.
Following an honest act of contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, this rejection of supersessionisn and the consequent affirmation of a dual covenant theology are indispensable to the transformation of Christian attitudes to Jews and Judaism. Rosemary Ruether writes:
The supersessionary pattern of Christian faith distorts both Jewish and Christian reality. We should think rather of Judaism and Christianity as parallel paths, flowing from common memories in Hebrew scripture, which are then reformulated into separate ways that lead two peoples to formulate the dialectic of past and future through different historical experiences. But the dilemma of foretaste and hope remains the same for both. For both live in the same reality of incompleted human existence itself.
With these words, Jacob and Esau have at last embraced. The long years of strife can be acknowledged with repentance and forgiveness. There is hope now for a new future. “Hinei ma tov ou ma naim shevet achim gam yachad”. “Quam bonum et jucundum est habitare fratres in unum”. “How good and pleasant it is when brothers can sit down together in unity”. The opening verse of Psalm 133-- whether sung in Hebrew, chanted in Latin, or prayed in English --proclaims a shared experience of siblings finally finding a common ground where they can live and prosper in an atmosphere of trust, mutual understanding, and peace.
And Yet…..
Unfortunately, every movement forward generates a backlash. Fundamentalist Christianity continues to assert that people can be saved only by full acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Mainline churches not embracing a dual covenant theology (such as the Roman Catholic Church) seek ways to include Jews and other non-Christians in the salvation available only through Jesus. Such church leaders speak of “anonymous Christians”—people who sincerely seek to do God’s will as Jews or members of other sacred traditions and are thereby included in the community of the saved anonymously, without knowing it. If Jesus is the unique incarnation of the divine, these churches argue, then this has no equivalent in other religions. Universalism inevitably stumbles on the dogmas supporting the long history of exclusivism.
No one can say where the future of these two faith communities lies or how long it will take for any of the visions of future to be achieved. Ultimately the path to the future will be determined by the ascendancy of one or other of the two theological models discussed earlier. In the “Christ as Redeemer” model, Jesus is different from us in kind. He is a heavenly being, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God. He came to this earth to die for the Sin under whose power humankind lay in bondage. His death constitutes his defining legacy and accessing that death provides humanity’s only hope of salvation. In this model, Judaism can never be seen as an ally, an alternate covenantal path to God. If this model prevails, then the relations of Jews and Christians will largely replicate the history of the past two thousand years.
On the other hand, in the “Christ as Reminder” model, Jesus is different from us in degree, not in kind. Every human being is an incarnation of God, though Jesus surpasses most in his level of transparency to his divine identity. Jesus’s teachings, more than his death, define Christian existence. He opens up a way to God that complements the paths to the divine represented in countless other sacred traditions. Jews and Christians can be allies in their similarities and in their differences. Neither is to be defined in reference to the other; each is to be understood in its own integrity as a path to the holy. If this model prevails, then another and radically different history will at last be written.
This is, for example, the central thesis of Alan Segal’s classic work, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Harvard University Press, 1986).
For further discussion of the implications for Christian spirituality in this ancient text, confer my book, The Gospel of Thomas: A Guide to Spiritual Practice (Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock,Vermont, 2004).
Shaul(Saul) was his Hebrew name and Paulus(Paul) his Roman name. It was not uncommon then or now for Jews to have a Hebrew name used in the synagogue and a secular name used in the larger society. It is a mistaken notion that Paul’s name was changed from Saul to Paul at the time of his conversion. He always had both names.
Garry Wills, (NY, Viking, 2006), p. 10.
James, Williams The Varieties of Religious Experience, Longmans, Green and Co., New York 1902, p. 190.
I treat this topic in The Sacred Writings of Paul, translated and annotated by Ron Miller (Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, 2007) both in the Introduction (pp. xxix to xxxii) and in the body of the text (most explicitly pp.18-19).
Bourgeault, Cynthia, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart (Jossey-Bass Publishing, San Francisco, California, 2003), p. 17.
This is my own translation from p.29 of my book on Paul: The Sacred Writings of Paul: Selections Annotated and Explained, (Skylight Paths, Woodstock VT, 2007).
The anti-Jewish spin of this gospel is developed both in my translation and commentary on Matthew’s gospel, The Hidden Gospel of Matthew (Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, 2005) and in the book on Matthew that I wrote with a Jewish colleague, Laura Bernstein: Healing the Jewish-Christian Rift: Growing Beyond Our Wounded History (Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, 2006).
This was in Nostra Aetate, the “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” promulgated on October 28, 1965. This text can be found on pp. 970-971 of Volume Two of Degrees of the Ecumenical Councils, edited by Norman Tanner, and published by Sheed and Ward and Georgetown University Press in 1990.
For an excellent treatment of other “Jewish stories” found in rabbinic writings, see Peter Schäfer’s Jesus in the Talmud ( Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2007).
One of my Jewish students was recently at a restaurant in Florida where he was asking a waitress whether there was pork in a certain menu item. She was curious about his question and when he told her that he was Jewish, she asked, “Can I see them?” Several other of my Jewish students or colleagues have been asked this question, especially in the American South.
There is no better place to study this entire history than in James Carroll’s masterful Constantine’s Sword (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, Massachusetts, 2001).
The entire prayer read: “Oremus et pro per perfidis Judaeis: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum.” Quoted from the Missale Romanum used in all Roman Catholic services. In English: “Let us pray for the perfidious Jews, that our God and Lord will remove the veil from their hearts so that they will acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord”.
This background information, as well as all subsequent quotes from the dialogue, is taken from volume six of The Fathers of the Church (the Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1948).
James Carroll, op. cit., pp.215-219.
James Carroll. Op. cit., p. 219.
James Carroll, op. cit., pp. 375ff.
Edward Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews, New York, Paulist Press, 1985, p. 162.
Edward Flannery, op. cit., p. 185-189.
James Carroll, op. cit., pp. 523-535.
This is the overriding thesis of her excellent book, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, New York, Seabury Press, 1974.
Thomas Merton, A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965, edited and with a preface by Naomi Burton Stone, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988, p. 76. A few months earlier, on July 13, 1964, Heschel had visited Merton in his monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. They spoke about one of the earlier and bolder proposals for a conciliar document, one that was discarded along the path of political compromise.
Degrees of Ecumenical Councils, op. cit., p. 971.
This was reported in The New York Times National News on Wednesday, July 1, 1987, in an article by Ari Goldman entitled “Church Affirms Validity of Judaism”, p. 8. This was subsequently published in the minutes of the Sixteenth General Synod of the United Church of Christ, June 25-30, 1987, pp. 67-68.
Rosemary Ruether, Disputed Questions, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989) pp. 71.
Killing the Prophets(Top of Page)
11/21/08
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matthew 23:37)
Today this lament of Jesus has changed: “Rome, Rome, the church that excommunicates the prophets and rejects those who are sent to it”. The former pope excommunicated thirty of the Catholic Church’s most prophetic voices. He appointed conservative “yes-men” as bishops and cardinals. At a recent ordination, the Rector of the seminary remarked to a friend: “They are good young men, prayerful and dedicated. But there’s not a prophet among them”.
Prophets are not popular in the Catholic Church these days. And yet, it is prophets who are the very heart of any vital Christian community. In Paul’s churches in the 50s of the first century, prophets were welcome and respected. Prophets speak God’s Word, even when it threatens the structures of the status quo. But today’s ecclesiastical establishment tolerates no prophetic challenge.
An old adage states, “Become a bishop and you will never eat a bad meal or hear the truth again”. Only the prophets dare to tell the truth, even to the bishops.. And when you ban the prophets, a frost settles on the community. The sap withdraws and the branches are dead. The Vatican today is a wintry palace, frozen and frigid. It was D. H. Lawrence who said: “ It is only immoral to be dead-alive, sun-extinct, and busy putting out the sun in other people”. Pope Benedict’s Inquisition strives mightily to put out the sun in every corner of the Church.
The latest move is the threat to excommunicate Fr. Roy Bourgeois unless he stops his public support for the ordination of women as priests. Here is a man who has served the Church as a priest for 36 years as one of its most courageous voices for peace and non-violence. No priest who supports our unjust war in Iraq is being threatened with excommunication; no priest who supports torture is being threatened with excommunication; no priest who abuses children is being threatened with excommunication. So let’s excommunicate someone who speaks out on behalf of the marginalized peoples in our world, a priest who seems amazingly to resemble his Master.
And when the history books are written, we all know what will be recorded there. The Catholic Church will someday ordain married and single, women and men. And someday it will admit that it has been ordaining gay men for two thousand years and finally have the honesty to recognize the ordinations of homosexual candidates as well. Someday it will see what so many religious institutions already see, that these distinctions are sociological prejudices inherited from a patriarchal era and have nothing to do with religion. Someday. But it won’t be able to bring back the prophets it has banned, the wonderfully creative voices it has silenced. Rome, Rome, when will you cease being the church that excommunicates your prophets?
13 November 2008
Happy to Be Wrong
I am occasionally wrong. Usually not more than five times in one day. But I have never been happier to be wrong than when my prediction in my last essay of a McCain victory did not happen. My argument was based on my fear that the Republicans would play the “fear card” and this would tip the scale.
But a couple of things happened after I wrote that essay. First of all, we all experienced an economic collapse like nothing seen since the Great Depression. Fundamentalist Christians, who might have thought about nothing but making abortion illegal and keeping gays and lesbians from having civil rights, suddenly began to think about their 410K’s. Second, many conservative Americans came to realize that the war in Iraq that John McCain believes to be just and moral and one that we can eventually “win” is costing us an inconceivable amount of money. And third, the choice of Sarah Palin backfired. It was rightly perceived as an insult to women, since it was based on an assumption that any female would gain the vote of the Hillary Clinton supporters. But as Gloria Steinem said, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have nothing in common but one chromosome. Fewer Republicans could say with a straight face that they could live with Sarah Palin as leader of the free world, in the case of McCain’s demise.
For these and many other reasons, an Obama victory appeared like a new star in the heavens of virtually every country on this planet. We Americans weren’t so dumb after all. We were ready to take the reins of government from the cadre of rich, white men who had been running things for so long, trying to con us into believing in a “trickle down” theory. We were ready to choose a change that could in time create a different kind of America, a humble partner for world peace, a nation concerned about its marginalized masses.
My son, Jim Miller, produced a video prior to the election. I’m including the Internet site it case you want to check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6OWb1RaUY <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6OWb1RaUY>
I think he was prescient in realizing that, in our new global world, having friends is of central importance. And the greatest thing that has happened so far is that we did wake up the next morning with friends around the world. The whole world celebrated this victory because it was indeed a victory for the whole world. It’s only a beginning but it’s a beginning born in the audacity of hope.
A man enjoys sex with a male prostitute while
using a mind-altering substance. There seems to be nothing newsworthy
about such a statement. It's happening everday all over the world.
But when the man is an ordained minister, the pastor of a church,
and the president of a national religious body, as well as a prominent
spokesperson for denying civil rights to homosexuals (specifically,
the right to marry),then the newsworthiness of the story suddenly
skyrockets.
The leadership of the national organization has
expelled this man from office, arguing that he has demonstrably
shown that he has acted immorally. But what precisely in this
behavior is immoral? Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians
would argue that homosexual activity is intrinsically wrong and
that is the source of what is immoral. Many Mainline and Liberal
Chrisians would claim that the immorality lies in his adultery
and duplicity.
Duplicity has the same root, to make double, as
our word double-minded. In the Letter of James, one of the twenty-seven
books of the New Testament, the author writes that a double-minded
person "must not expect to receive anythng from the Lord."
(James 1:6) We all sin at some point.The root of the word sin
in Hebrew and Greek means to miss the mark. Like an arrow that
fails to hit the bull's eye, we all act in ways that miss the
mark. We act with insufficient love. We act from a lower level
of consciousness than is required in a given situation. All human
beings have the experience of sinning.
What is it that makes this man's sin especially
repellent? I would argue that it is his duplicity, his double-mindedness.
He lives one life with his wife and another with his gay lover.
He preaches one thing to his congregation but lives by a standard
that is not what he preaches. He represents one position in his
political advocacy but seems to be approving of another position
by his private life. Such double-mindedness, according to the
Letter of James, does not gain God's blessing. Rather than approve
of such double-mindedness, the Sermon on the Mount encourages
us to be "pure of heart". And the Danish philosopher
and religious thinker, Kierkegaard, asserts that purity of heart
means to will one thing--the opposite of double-mindedness.
So for myself and many Christian Liberals, this
man's sexual orientation is irrelevant. The moral principles for
gay people and straight people are the same. Sexual relations
should be honest, respectful, and caring. Being dishonest in one's
committed relationship to a sexual partner is therefore wrong
and immoral. Making public pronouncements that give the lie to
one's private life is double-minded and therefore immoral.
It must be added, however, that when a society
denies civil rights to one of its constituent groups, the society
takes on some responsibility for the subsequent deviant behavior
exhibited by members of that group. We speak of behavior as deviant
when it is "off the road" (i.e. de via) of what is societally
approved. Women, slaves, and homosexuals have often been forced
to act "off the road" when they had no other way to
attain legitimate goals. Read the fascinating story of Tamar in
the thirty-eight chapter of Genesis.
Would this man have lost the approval of his congregation
if he had announced that he was gay, that he was going to divorce
his wife, and that his intention was to enter a committed relationship
with another man? Definitely. Perhaps that is the sin that needs
to more closely examined than the one that is being scrutinized
by the public. When people are forced to deny who they are or
to accept being reduced to a minority with no legal rights, deviant
behavior is bound to happen. The homophobia, so long encouraged
by Christian groups like the one's in this man's story, is the
greater sin in this case but remains the sin meriting little media
attention.
It
was a CNN special. A Ku Klux Klan rally in Alabama. A small group
of some fifteen klansmen shouting obscenities about Blacks and
asserting that Alabama should be an all-white state. A menacing
crowd surrounded the white-clad klansmen. But protecting them
was a cordon of police officers. I was struck by the fact that
at least half of them were African-American. Their faces were
impassive as they protected the klansmen from the angry crowd.
What
a great country this is! John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison….they were all there on the TV
screen. And our Constitution was there too. Tolerance, civility,
respect for other views, protection of minority opinions….herein
lies our true greatness.
And
the irony of it all. Did those klansmen appreciate the fact that
they were being protected by the very people they were excoriating?
Prejudice of that sort lives so far below the level of rational
thought that I sincerely doubt that the irony of the situation
crossed their collective consciousness. But for those with eyes
to see, here was America at its best.
Another
bit of papyrus was recently discovered in the sands of Egypt.
No official translation has yet been published but here is my
amateur attempt to translate the Coptic text. The manuscript is
in fairly good condition but there are a few places where the
text cannot be clearly deciphered.
Two
men approached Jeshu when he was passing through a small fishing
village on the northern shore of the <…> of Galilee.
“Rabbi,” one of them said, “we have often heard
you speak and have been deeply moved by your words. We want our
lives to be open to this reign of God which you proclaim and we
strive to love God mind, and strength, as you
have said, and to love our neighbor as ourself.”
“You
must not be far then from God’s reign,” responded
<…>”
“But,
Rabbi, you must understand that we have been together for seven
years as husband and wife. We exchanged our vows privately <….>
and have lived together faithfully ever since. Having no children
of our own, we are raising nine abandoned children from our village.
Our fishing business thrives and we are able to care for these
children and help other people in need as well.”
“You
are clearly heirs of <,,,,> reign and you are blessed. Why
do you yet seem so troubled?” Jeshu asked them this, knowing
already how much pain was in their hearts. “Because our
religious teachers and many of our neighbors say that we are sinners
and that our love is perverse and evil. Tell us, Rabbi, are they
right?”
Jeshu
replied, “Such teachers and neighbors know nothing of the
deepest teaching of the Torah. If they have not learned compassion,
then <….> is useless. Look at the people passing us
on this road. Some pick up their cup with their right hand and
some with their left. My Father’s creation is diverse but
always good.”
“But
why then, Rabbi,” asked one of the men, “does the
Torah teach that it is an abomination for a man to lie with a
man as with a woman”? Jeshu answered, “There are acts
between men, as between men and women, that are cruel and hurtful,
like the men who wanted to rape Lot’s guests in Sodom. But
when sexual <….> is honest and respectful, it is no
different for two men or two women or a man and a woman. Go to
your homes in peace. You are true children of our heavenly <the
manuscript has deteriorated from this point>.
It
is my hope that as this new text becomes public, it will help
Christians in some of their discussions and debates today on this
question. There are, of course, some who will say that because
this story is not in the four canonical gospels, it has no value
for us today.
