Why incorrect faiths have some merits

It's a provocative sounding title, but not meant to be, just terse in order to fit in the heading space. However, I know that many (though hopefully fewer than there used to be) will not like the implication that there are incorrect faiths. This is because people confuse tolerance with truth. Tolerance means you put up with people who may believe something totally wrong. Truth means it is correct and based on facts. It is not being intolerant to say that certain faiths and "beliefs" lack a truthful and/or factual foundation. It's being brave to say that, ha, but not being intolerant.

Rather than pursue this logic thread I'm going to leap ahead first to the core of what I want to explain, and then return to the first paragraph to further explore tolerance versus truth seeking.

You know the old sayings (usually said about love) regarding how can something so wrong "feel" "so right?" I am going to explain why faiths and "beliefs" that are factually incorrect 1) do have merits of validity and 2) "feel" so right.

No matter what culture one is from, what generation one was born into, raised and lived in, or whether one is young, old, rich, poor, believing or not, the fact is that the same God created the universe and all in it, created and raised humans from the animals by giving each person a soul at conception, and is present everywhere, All Knowing, even if no one is paying any attention to him in a particular place. So the same God is present and has always been present whether he is among believers or non-believers, whether God is overlooking a deserted island or the most crowded city. The same one God always has been and always will be. God's reality does not change at all whether people believe in him or not, or if people even exist.

We know this from the scripture. As God created all things, starting with heaven and the material universe, with the sky and earth, think about it... God's the same God even though people had not even been created yet. God's the same God before creation, on Day One of creation, on Day Two of creation and so forth, and he remains the same God as he creates human beings, as some believe in God and some don't, as many are faithful but some fall away, as many are unfaithful but some remain faithful: throughout all this God remains the same, as he does eternally. This is how to combine faith + logic to understand and draw the same conclusions as I have shown you how to do here, which is that by reading the scripture one learns the obvious that is not spelled out because it is obvious, which is that God's "reality" or "strength" did not grow (or diminish, or change in any way) whether he is overseeing the material things of the universe (rocks, plants, animals) or humans. The scriptures would have obviously pointed this out otherwise. God is understood with the very first words of scripture in the Bible (and the Qur'an) to have always been in existence, to be the source of everything, to be All Knowing, and to be constant and unchanging, regardless of one's vantage point in the universe or one's timeline. The same God created and watches some small piece of rock asteroid millions of miles away as he created and watches a large city of humans with all kinds of genuine faith or bogus "beliefs." The same God created and watches a tribe of indigenous people who may have had no contact with the Gospel, or the God of Abraham. So God is 1) the Creator 2) always aware and 3) always present, no matter what the place or circumstances.

How, then, is God present everywhere, regardless of the presence of people at all, or whether or not they are believers? God's Holy Spirit constantly moves and inspires in all places at all times throughout God's creation. So the Holy Spirit is as present over deserted landscapes as it is among populated areas, and the Holy Spirit is as present among believers as among non-believers, or of those who have genuine faith or those who have bogus beliefs. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the defacto status: it is not a "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval. The Holy Spirit is "there," just as oxygen is always "there," whether people are doing the right thing or not.

So when prehistoric people first started to have self awareness and wonder about the forces of nature and their place within it, the Holy Spirit was there before they started wondering, as they wondered and drew some conclusions, and remains there even if they have drawn false, and even horrifying, conclusions. For example the Holy Spirit obviously was present when indigenous tribes of Central and South America performed bloody human sacrifice because obviously the Holy Spirit does not abandon areas that fall into even the gravest of error. One could argue that the Holy Spirit works even harder to try to bring genuine and not false enlightenment. Likewise in even the most dreadful of enforced atheist countries, such as the USSR under Stalin, it's not like the Holy Spirit was never there or fled, anymore than people's guardian angels take a hike even if their human doesn't believe in them or behaves badly. Even the worst murderers still have their guardian angel to the end of that person's life. (Who wants that job hey? That's one of the differences between angels and humans, which is another reason that people who try to proclaim themselves angels are so pathetic).

But not to get off track with discussing angels, returning then to what I was speaking of, God is present everywhere all the time, regardless if humans are there or not, or whether they have proper belief or not. God's presence is not a reward or a seal of approval, but his being there is the defacto state of all of being, whether heavenly or material realm. The Holy Spirit is, for lack of a better term, the "observable" or "interactive" manifestation of God on earth. God, of course, is always directly approachable by each and every human being through prayer. God, however, tends to carry about individual and group agenda (for lack of a better word) through the Holy Spirit. This is why the Holy Spirit has been compared to and actually seen as the wind, a creature of the wind (the dove), water and fire because this accurately reflects that God is the source of all (the source of wind, doves, water and fire) and his influence that dwells unasked for among people is the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes people read the scriptures and get a little self righteous thinking that they invoke or receive the Holy Spirit due to their faith and goodness. Remember that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, as he said he would, at Pentecost: the Apostles, Mary and the rest of the disciples did not "summon" the Holy Spirit or "earn" the Holy Spirit through deeds, birthright or other human conceptions of merit. The Holy Spirit is always everywhere on earth, whether it is asked for or not. It is another sign of the faithfulness of God even when humans are either oblivious to him or unfaithful to him in turn. Pentecost was the infusion of those present with the Holy Spirit. That does not mean the Holy Spirit was nowhere to be found in Jerusalem before Pentecost, ha. The Holy Spirit is always there, even where people do not exist, so most assuredly the Holy Spirit is there when people reach out to seek God, either incorrectly or correctly.

This, then, is my point about why even incredibly incorrect and unfactual "beliefs" can have some merits. By merits I mean points of validity and even virtues, but obviously those points of validity by no means guarantees or delivers salvation and eternal life. I am explaining this so that 1) those of you with faith in the one true God experience deepening of faith and understanding of God and 2) those of you with no or questionable beliefs can understand that a sprinkling of good things in a belief system does not salvation make.

The obvious example of what I am speaking about are the faiths and "beliefs" who value and seek peace. It is the influence of the Holy Spirit that draws even those people who do not believe in God, or who believe in false gods or worship principalities (such as natural forces or the supposed power of rites), to believe in peace. The Holy Spirit generates and maintains a yearning for good things-of truly good things-like peace among all humans. The danger is that without understanding the reality of God and the Holy Spirit, the objective and the framework for the structure of yearning, the motivations and the actions, and the desired outcome of the people yearning for peace can be all wrong and lead to the opposite, to destruction. Thus you have people who say things like "Buddhism is so peaceful and tolerant and so good, so it must be true." Well, there are two things true about Buddhism. One is that the Buddha existed and had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, but one that was without the context of belief in the one God. So the second true thing is that much of the goodness of behavior and philosophy advocated by genuine Buddhists is worthy and even inspired by contact with the Holy Spirit, but the objectives and the factual world view is off target due to the lack of recognition of the reality of the one God. Thus one can believe in a faith or a "belief" that has worthy and even inspired components while still faithfully following the wrong path because the facts are missing or incorrect.

While Pope Benedict XVI (writing as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) was not specifying Buddhism in this passage in his book "The Spirit of Liturgy" I include it here because it explains some of the problem that I am bringing to your attention in this blog posting.

"...then we can now define the intention of the account of creation as follows: creation exists to be a place for the covenant that God wants to make with man. The goal of creation is the covenant, the love story, of God and man...Only when man is in covenant with God does he become free. Only then are the equality and dignity of all men made manifest. If, then, everything is directed to the covenant, it is important to see that the covenant is a relationship: God's gift of himself to man, but also man's response to God...the fundamental process of salvation history, that is, the election and separation of pure from impure, and therefore the inauguration of the history of God's dealings with man. Thus begins the spiritual creation, the creation of the covenant, without which the created cosmos would be an empty shell...Now if worship, rightly understood, is the soul of the covenant, then it not only saves mankind but is also meant to draw the whole of reality into communion with God...True surrender to God...consists...in the union of man and creation with God. Belonging to God has nothing to do with destruction or non-being: it is rather a way of being" (p. 26-28).

Notice the part that I was thinking of when Pope Benedict writes that belonging to God (substitute "being spiritual" for those who deny God as he really is) consists of neither destruction nor non-being. In other words even peaceful detachment as a philosophy and a belief is damaging and erroneous, just as, obviously, destruction is an error. If one does not believe in God as he actually is one is not participating in creation the way God intended and as it factually is, which is the stage of an ongoing covenant with God, but one that does have a beginning and an end with each person's life and death:

"For Christian thinkers, the circle is seen as the great movement of the cosmos. The nature religions adn many non-Christian philosophies think of it as a movement of unceasing repetition...in the Christian view of the world, the many small circles of the lives of individuals are inscribed within the one great circle of history as it moves from exitus [departure] to reditus [return]...In these circles, the mystery of beginning is repeated again and again, but they are also the scene of the end of time, of a final collapse, which may in its own way prepare the ground for a new beginning...Cult, then, has to do with the movement turning around. It is the sudden awareness that one has fallen, like the prodigal son's remorse, when he looks back to where he has come from...The fascination with such views is very great; they seem so easily identifiable with the Christian message...The religions of the Far East have teh same basic pattern. That is why the various kinds of teaching on redemption that they offer seem highly plausible. Exercises for relaxing the body and emptying the mind are seen as the path to redemption. They aim at liberation at finitude, indeed, they momentarily anticipate that liberation and so have salvific power...[in contrast] Christian thought distinguishes the two movements [exitus [departure] reditus [return]] from one another. Exitus is not a fall from the infinite, the rupture of being adn thus the cause of all sorrow in the world. No, exitus is first and foremost something thoroughly positive. It is the Creator's free act of creation. It is his positive will that the created order should exist as something good in relation to himself, from which a response of freedom and love can be given back to him...It accepts a creation from God as his offer of love, and thus ensues a dialogue of love, that wholly new kind of unity that love alone can create. The being of the other is not absorbed or abolished, but rather, in giving itself, it becomes full itself. Here is a unity that is higher than the unity of indivisible elementary particles..." (p. 31-33).

Here is an analogy to help you to understand, though I think that Pope Benedict is so remarkably brilliant in his explanation here that few will miss his point. His focus, though, is on explaining the history of the relationship between God and his people in order to comment on the development of the liturgy, thus he was not authoring a description of the problem of "good ideas" in factually insufficient faiths and beliefs, as I am writing here. Thus the analogy will help.

God created Creation, the cosmos and all in it, including human beings, in order to have a loving relationship in covenant with human beings as a whole, and individually. This relationship has a beginning (the birth of the person) and an end, which is initiated by the death of the person and then their judgment of where he or she will spend their eternal life, in heaven, or not. As a whole there is also going to be an ending to the entire covenant at the end of time, when the world passes away, the living and the dead are judged, and the heavenly Jerusalem is brought into being. So my analogy is that each person's life is like a single telephone conversation between two persons, in this case the human person and God. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is not really an end because at the end of the conversation the person gets up, leaves their home, walks to God's home and knocks on the door. The person will either be let in or not, and if not will be exiled for eternity in a godless and tormented place.

Now, the conversation can going in many directions and different people have different conversations. It may start out nice but develop into a quarrel. People might hang up the phone on God but then call him back. People might say unworthy things on the phone, or they may only say nice things. Think of it as a play where there may be many scenes and events, but ultimately the play, ie. the conversation, does come to an end.

Christians, Jews and Muslims have this worldview, this true understanding of God, that creation and life is the stage for this one conversation with God, one that has a beginning and an end, and the result of it will be that when one knocks on God's door in person, God will either bring him or her into eternal life in his presence and bliss, or due to their own rejection, sin, injustice or faithlessness, cast them eternally out of his presence.

Faiths and "beliefs" that do not understand this essential try to control the conversation's content for "goodness" or "peacefulness," without understanding that one is in a conversation with God and that this conversation will be followed up by a one-way encounter at death when one knocks at God's door. Thus practices like being peaceful, non-violent, not stepping on little bugs when one walks, detaching from interest in the material things of the world, working through a list of activities that presumably gives advantage in a theoretical, but bogus, future life and incarnation all sound "good" and their spirit may be wholesome in original intent, but they miss the entire point of life, miss the realization that it is all a one-on-one phone call with God, and miss that there is only one door out of life and it leads to God's reality and his front steps.

This is the futility of incorrect beliefs that have good merits. One can talk endlessly about peacefulness and love, but have no idea that God is on the other end of the line and thus waste the entire conversation. Instead of talking about peace in the abstract one should have been paying attention to God in the reality. It's like if you had a conversation with the President of the United States about the health care bill and all you talked about with him is what you saw on the soap opera yesterday. Good use of time? Practical pursuit of worthy goals? Not really. Again, I'm using simple analogies to help understand why something that may "feel" logical and "good" can be so misguided and futile.

Worse, when one is focused on detaching from the world and not believing in the one way street to God, that is like you are constantly trying to hang up the phone. As Pope Benedict explains so well, creation is not the result of the fall, or a futile recycling (my words there); creation is the place that God established in order to have a loving relationship based on a covenant with humankind. It has a purpose and an exit point, even though much of life overall feels iterative as each generation faces the same joys and sorrows, ease or difficulties, as previous ones, but here is the point: It feels iterative but it is not because it is one covenant between one God and all humans, and each human being has their own "phone conversation" with God, the end of which consists of going to God's door and being allowed in or cast down into the netherworld eternally.

I really don't know what to make of the recent generations fascination with tools and techniques that detach themselves from God and his goodness rather than as they believe genuinely increase their presumed "spirituality." One reason I have not criticized my ersatz supposed friends in the past who had these beliefs (including my own niece and others) is that I trust the Holy Spirit who constantly moves among people to bring them to the truth, painful as it may be when one has been so mislead and misleading others. But in private I have been sad to see many people hang up the phone to God or blather their own self focused rubbish on the line, knowing that in the end God will have to say to them "I did not know you."

Sadly, God has generations of experience at of course having to say that to people who believe they mouthed all the right words during life, they were "tolerant," they were "peaceful," they "gave to good causes," they "detached themselves from the evils of the material world..." and then, ooops, you see, that is the problem. The world is not evil, it is the loving home that God created for his loving relationship and covenant with humans. And further, they wasted their entire lives not once acknowledging God on the other end of the line.

So that is why incorrect faiths and "beliefs" can have some merits as in valid thinking, valid philosophies, and even inspired goodness, yet still be factually incorrect. The faith or belief fathers or mothers felt the presence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit but rather than taking it all the way to recognizing God and his covenant, they tried to imitate traits of what they perceived the Holy Spirit to be. At best it is well meaning people who totally miss the point of creation which is to be in loving covenant with a real and active God. At worst it becomes cult where ritual, tech and even abhorrent practices (human sacrifice, blood drinking, etc) are viewed as acceptable and even admirable means to some sort of "greater purpose," but that purpose and that play and that conversation are all made up and bogus self delusion.

You know how many people have dreams where they are back in school again but they have missed showing up for a school exam? It's a classic anxiety dream. Well, people who do not believe in God as he actually is, no matter how nice and "well meaning" they are have missed the entire conversation, the entire classroom, even showing up for school, say nothing of missing the school exam. The Holy Spirit worked to keep yearning for God alive in even the most soul deadening places such as Stalin's Soviet Union. How baffling is it that many faiths and "beliefs" try to deaden awareness of God and his covenant in places where there is absolutely no excuse for doing so.

That is why traditional faiths must be respected, such as Buddhism, because the Buddha and his followers did with good intention seek if not the face of God then the influence of the Holy Spirit, who was always present, even if they did not realize so. But modern variations on these faiths and synthesized "beliefs" are totally bogus and dangerous because they are not at all working within the piece, however small, of the valid Holy Spirit that the faith ancestors did but rather since they do not recognize God as he actually is, yet they have access to knowledge (it's not like they were raised under a rock and never heard of the Bible, Torah or the Qur'an), they create self serving delusion models of a mechanized cosmos, not matter how many loving, peaceful and tolerant, benevolent vocabulary they hide behind. They do not do credit to their faith ancestors who were either of the mainstream believing faiths or those who, like Buddhism, with good intentions, created worldviews based on legitimate input from the Holy Spirit, even though they lacked the context.

I hope this helps. I have to wrap it here because I'm a housekeeper and my boss is wondering where to best display on the living roomwall his blowgun while waving it around and telling me to bend over. *sigh* Kind a distraction from thinking about God and giving spiritual direction.

Book excerpt to help understand human nature

The more prosperous people become and the more society controls all of their sources of information, the more people become both inhumane and un-human. Basically, in the past several decades people have done more to lose their basic humanity and humane-ness than at any point in their history. Worse, the past several decades were a total reversal of the trend line, which had been toward increased humanity and self awareness. This ought to be terrifying to anyone who gives a damn at all.

It's a bit of a paradox, the problem of increased prosperity. By prosperity I do not necessarily mean being middle class or rich, but I mean that life is, by definition, no longer a daily struggle just to survive and to subsist. I'm not making this up (this is what you used to learn in history classes, dear young people ;-) Human life can be characterized as "subsistence," which is defined as barely making the necessary gatherings of food, water, shelter and fuel in order to survive and to, hopefully, support one's family, or as "prosperous," which means that you have excess or surplus than what you and your family need to just survive. I write about this somewhat in my understanding capitalism series. So the corn farmer who grows just enough to feed and shelter himself and his family is "subsistence," while the corn farmer who grows extra to sell in the market for optional or "betterment" activities is a basic capitalist and "prosperous," comparatively speaking.

Here is the paradox, and it is obvious to any student of human nature and also any student of the Bible. The subsistence man, woman or child is not allowed much delusion about the nature of human beings. Subsistence is the ultimate "reality show." The subsistence person is hypersensitive, in a good way, to reality. They can look at the crop seeds in their hand, look at the land, watch the weather, and have a very good idea how reality will turn out... will they grow enough and in time to survive, or face privation.

A person with surplus, with that extra produce or production, allowing them relative "prosperity" is able to imagine more, and is thus instantly more vulnerable to becoming increasingly detached from reality. Just to cut to the chase, a person who is prosperous has too much time on his or her hands to guarantee continued contact with reality, because now they can imagine that they are someone they are not, that life "works" in ways that is different than it really does, that they can make dog doodoo up in their minds and writing it down call it fiction, and mislead others, and become self-congratulatory at their own "success" while others suffer (and then imagine bogus reasons for doing so).

So why have humans become, until recently, increasingly humane and understanding their own humanity, even as they became prosperous? Because, until recently, they held tightly to their ultimate reality, as revealed in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur'an. In those books centuries of believers recorded the faith history as they interacted with the one true God. When one studies the true Word of God, who made not only humans, but all that exists in the universe and "beyond," one has an accurate view of humanity's reality, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and also the many pitfalls of their imperfection and brokenness. So until the past several decades as the Gospel and the Qur'an spread, many more people had the benefit of hoping for increased prosperity while at the same time remaining firmly rooted in reality. With the rise of so called "New Age" "beliefs, the usual cyclical interest in Satan and "witchcraft," the heavy use of mind altering substances coupled with defiant attitude toward even beneficial authority, "for pay" "religion" and "salvation," the rise of atheism and vampire "chic,"and the incredibly arrogant belief of "caste" systems, for lack of a better word, of the "enlightened" and the "not so spiritual," many people (and I know that most of the world "decision makers") have totally lost touch with reality, and have led many millions behind them into that ultimate dead end.

With this concern in mind I read a passage in a book written by our current Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, written when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The book, "The Spirit of the Liturgy," is about the format and spiritual rationale for the format of worship of God in the Catholic Church known as the Mass. In this book the former Cardinal Ratzinger helps the reader to understand the spirit of the Mass, and thus its history and foundation. Here is the excerpt, where PB16 is analyzing why the Chosen People, the Israelites who have just escaped slavery in Egypt, through Moses and God's personal intervention, could seem to hardly be able to wait to "cheat on God" (my wording) and be unfaithful to God even as God is meeting with Moses to give to him guidance and the Law. I've written about this before, to help my readers to better understand scripture. But here I was impressed at how I can share this excerpt with you to better understand the danger of human nature that I have just described above, and that is now causing the ruination of all that is good and genuinely authentic about humans and humanity.

In the Old Testament there is a series of very impressive testimonies to the truth that the liturgy is not a matter of "what you please." Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than in the narrative of the golden calf (strictly speaking, "bull calf"). The cult conducted by the high priest Aaron is not meant to serve any of the false gods of the heathen. The apostasy is more subtle. There is no obvious turning away from God to the false gods. Outwardly, the people remain completely attached to the same God. They want to glorify the God who led Israel out of Egypt and believe that they may very properly represent his mysterious power in the image of a bull calf. Everything seems to be in order. Presumably even the ritual is in complete conformity to the rubrics. And yet it is a falling away from the worship of God to idolatry. This apostasy, which outwardly is scarcely perceptible, has two causes. First, there is a violation of the prohibition of images. The people cannot cope with the invisible, remote, and mysterious God. [My note: and talk about being spoiled! These dummies actually saw God in his cloud form when he met with Moses, to say nothing to have witnessed all of the miracles of Moses, such as the parting of the sea. Sheesh. The Pope is being kind!] They want to bring him down into their own world, into what they can see and understand. Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one's own world. He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God.

This gives us a clue to the second point. The worship of the golden calf is a self-generating cult. When Moses stays away for too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking, and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification. The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.

(Ratzinger, 200, p 22-23).

Pope Benedict telegrams congrats to Obama

I'm sure that all join in with the Pope in his congratulations and prayers for our new President.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0900254.htm

snip

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI, congratulating Barack Obama on his inauguration as U.S. president, prayed that he would remain steadfast in his dedication to promote understanding, cooperation and peace in the world.

The pope, in a Jan. 20 telegram, told Obama that he prayed God would "grant you unfailing wisdom and strength in the exercise of your high responsibilities."

Popes traditionally send a telegram of congratulations to new presidents of the United States on the day of their inauguration.

In his message to Obama, Pope Benedict said he prayed, under the new president's leadership, "may the American people continue to find in their impressive religious and political heritage the spiritual values and ethical principles needed to cooperate in the building of a truly just and free society."

The pope said he hoped the future of the United States would be "marked by respect for the dignity, equality and rights of each of its members, especially the poor, the outcast and those who have no voice."

"At a time when so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world yearn for liberation from the scourge of poverty, hunger and violence, I pray that you will be confirmed in your resolve to promote understanding, cooperation and peace among the nations, so that all may share in the banquet of life which God wills to set for the whole human family," the pope said.

Pope Benedict also asked God to bless the Obama family and all the people of the United States.

marymajor's Diary: December 31

When I'm lonely I turn to the writings of the Popes of the last century, both their personal writing and their doctrinal writing. When I read what they write I feel like I am in their company and am not so lonely.


From Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical: Spe Salvi, "Saved by Hope"

Introduction
1. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given.

Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey.

Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here?

Faith is Hope
2. Before turning our attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely to the Bible's testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable.

Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith”.

We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions.

Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).

Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future.

In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making.

In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.

Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

Understanding the Bible + Bible scholarship

One of my great frustrations in reading most modern Biblical scholarship is that a fundamental error in logic has crept into the modern mind, rendering most of their results fallacious. The problem has resulted from the blurring of two separate lines of study. The first legitimate line of study is called “textual criticism,” which is the responsibility to make sure that the text that is handed down is the most accurate, and that it is well understood where errors in copying or translation may have taken place. This is an extremely valid challenge, one that the ancients themselves had to deal with. Remember that the few copies of Biblical text that existed were laboriously hand copied and distributed over large areas, and thus many versions with many errors were in circulation over the centuries. For example read this quote from Boadt’s “Reading the Old Testament:”

There were quite a variety of copies of the Hebrew Old Testament available by the time of Jesus. Since copying had gone on for a long time already, many different editions circulated, some longer with sections added in, some shorter with sections omitted. All had some change or error in them. Since a scribe in one area often copied from a local text, the same error or change often appeared regularly in one place, say, Babylon, but not in texts copied in Egypt. Thus, at the time of Christ, three major “families” or groupings of text types could be found: the Babylonian, the Palestinian, and the Egyptian. The Babylonian Jews, for example, treasured their texts which had a very short, tightly-knit edition of the Pentateuch, while Egyptian Jews used a ricer and more expanded text. Only at the end of the first century A.D. did the rabbis decide to end the confusion and select one text, the best they could find, for each part of the Bible. In the Pentateuch they chose the Babylonian tradition, but in other books, such as the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, they followed the Palestinian-type text.

Let this very well written paragraph (from a larger and very well written chapter on this topic) sink in for a moment. At the time of Jesus Christ himself there were many different editions of the Old Testament in circulation. People relied on their local copies, which have been copied and recopied over and over, creating what you can almost think of as dialects. Everyone was still speaking the same “language,” since the facts of the Bible were not in dispute, but sections were dropped, pieces repeated or mistranslated, annotations in the margins by scholars were erroneously thought to be part of the text by the next generation of hand copiers, and so forth. The effect as like the same language developed with regional dialects. One could still rely on the “word of God” accuracy of the Old Testament, but human hands and the frailty of the technology allowed the development of these differing editions, which you can think of as “dialects.”

I’m reminded of when I was touring the Tower of London about twenty years ago and I overheard an American tourist tell her fellow companion, in an obvious thick American southern drawl, “I can’t understand a word he is saying” about their English Beefeater guide. They both speak English, and if they were talking face to face they’d have little trouble understanding each other, but the guide’s voice transmitted over distance and with difficulty hearing made comprehending their shared language a difficult chore. The Old Testament in the time of Jesus was easy to share and understand if people had two editions side by side in front of them, so it is not as though accuracy of the word of God was ever risked or in question. Rather, the “one local copy” was passed down with a type of dialect flavor in each region, and those differences had to be reconciled, focusing on determining, if one could, where an error, mistranslation or deliberate editing occurred.

As an aside, this is one reason why genuine Biblical scholars need to be skeptical whenever a new discovery of ancient Biblical text is found. This modern generation thinks that every archaeological dig reveals the “truth” or the “oldest and thus purest” form of something, including Biblical text. However, remember that one might be excavating just a very old copy of one of the “dialects” that had evolved in a region. Orthodox Jewish Biblical scholars, in my opinion, have the greatest integrity in this regard since they have preserved continuity of the faith and cultural context against which they can determine the origin and the context of any newly excavated text.

So to summarize, the first of the two valid focuses of Biblical research and study is the determination of the accuracy of both the text and the translations that have occurred. Boadt quotes Pope Pius XII in his encyclical letter “Divino afflante spiritu” (1943) who quotes St. Augustine (354-430) that the main responsibility of biblical scholars is to produce a corrected text. So the Catholic Church is “on the record” as stating with consistency over a period of more than fifteen hundred years that an accurate Biblical text is the highest priority of Biblical scholarship. Boadt quotes Pope Pius XII as stating that the “text be restored as perfectly as possible, be purified from the corruptions due to the carelessness of the copyists and be freed, as far as may be done, from glosses and omissions.” I focus on this continuity of thought in the Catholic Church because I resent the implication by some modern non-Catholic children of the Reformation that the Catholics are anything but the guardians of the accuracy of the complete Biblical text. The Bible that the children of the Reformation use is the result of such Catholic Church guardianship.

The second valid area of Biblical scholarship is called exegesis, which is the study of the content of the Bible within its cultural and historical context. This is obviously necessary because one cannot understand the faith message within the Bible if one does not understand the cultural context. Regular readers of mine know that I often have to explain a cultural analogy or parable so that modern readers understand the gist of what the Biblical passage is stating. For example, this generation that knows little of agriculture has difficulty grasping some of the agricultural references in their deepest meaning. I recently wrote to explain the custom and the religious requirement for farmers to leave some harvest in the field so that the poor and the traveler can obtain food for free. This is an important cultural context to have when understanding the Jews who criticized Jesus and the disciples for availing themselves of that food on the Sabbath. Reading that passage as many moderns do without that context drops much of the importance and nuance of the conflict in faith between Jews and Jesus, focusing on the forbidding of work on the Sabbath without understanding that they were also criticizing all of the poor who actually “performed work” to feed themselves and their families on the Sabbath. Yes, the Jews were arguing that the poor should go hungry all day on the Sabbath if they did not plan ahead to store up food that they could just eat without effort. Without understanding cultural and historical context one misses much of the faith information that is being conveyed in the Bible. Here are two paragraphs from Boadt:

The Bible is much more than a “text” to be restored to its original beauty; it is the literature of a living people. And because authors in every age and every culture express themselves differently, modern literary-theory must offer us ways of understanding ancient writers. There is, for example, the basic distinction between prose and poetry. Some thoughts are best expressed by poetry: love songs, hymns, intense pain of sorrow and loss. Others are better expressed in prose: biographies, historical records, and lists. Some human expression can take either form: describing the beauty of nature, heroic sagas of famous people or prophetic warnings of doom. What type an author selects is determined by how he feels that he can best communicate what he wants to say (p. 75).

The problem of introducing totally new information was even more acute in the ancient world when culture was much more traditional than now. People depended much less on looking up information for themselves in books than in listening to and mastering the passed-down wisdom of the ancestors. Communication in the ancient world was mostly oral, and societies that rely on oral tradition took at knowledge and history far differently than do peoples accustomed to reading.

First of all, their memories were generally much better than ours. We are lazy about memorizing things because we can look them up. Nevertheless, even they did not in our sense “memorize” every word… Rather, the ancient people often heard stories and events told in a communal setting, either on special feast days when religious leaders would recite the ancient traditions, or in schools where masters gave and interpreted the laws with vivid examples, or in gatherings for entertainment. Very rarely were any of these simply recited by rote memory…In the Old Testament we shall run into quite a number of “wonders” and strange tales…In these we expect to find some “mythic” elements, because through them the story-teller preserved the real meaning: that God gave these men supernatural help. Moreover, human memory does not recall exact details for long-perhaps a generation or two… Source criticism studies the specific problem of whether there are written documents behind our present text…The use of two distinct names for God in Genesis led eighteenth century researchers such as Jean Astruc (1753) to conclude that Moses must have used two or more different written sources when he composed the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers…Other differences were soon noted. Source critics showed the contradictory styles of writing that appeared side by side in a single book, for example, calling the covenant mountain Sinai in one line and Horeb in the next (p 77-81).

Here is where we have a legitimate field of study that very quickly gets into trouble. The first problem arises when scholars depart from holding the Bible in the unique position that it exists, and start through the use of “literary tools” comparing it to other literature and oral stories, such as mythologies. It is one thing, for example, to observe and study the use of poetry in the Bible. It is quite another thing to therefore deduce insight into the “accuracy” of the Bible by comparing it to the motivations and cultural context of other poets “in other cultures” through the ages. Likewise the use of a shared cultural myth about a wondrous event must not obscure the fact that the Bible is documenting an actual instance of God providing supernatural help, even if the details “match” a story told in another culture’s mythology. So we have a problem when scholars use secular “reasoning” tools, such as literary devices, to the point where they forget that in the Bible the purpose is to use the literary device to nonetheless preserve God’s word and thus the truth within a framework that, thanks to the faithful priests throughout the difficult time of the Israelites, guarded the integrity and continuity of the message of God. This is why all “literary devices” throughout the Bible are punctuated with factual lists of the people who lived and who witnessed to these events. Poetry and myths in other cultures do not do that.

A second problem is too rapidly drawing conclusions about the ability and most importantly the motivation of the Israelites to memorize. Boadt is an example of a scholar who compares what the Israelites must have been like to studies of non-religious other culture oral historians and story tellers, and thus surmises some conclusions. However, one need only look at the first Muslims for the counterexample. From the very beginning in the 7th century the entire contents of the Qur’an were memorized, word for word. The first generation of companions of the Prophet (PBUH) worked to ensure that different written editions of the Qur’an were quickly reconciled, kept to the common standard and memorized. To this day there is a vibrant worship tradition that consists of memorizing the entire Qur’an. So there is a problem when scholars deduce possible or worse conclude “probable” customs about the Israelites by comparing them to, let’s say gypsy story tellers, rather than comparing them to those who had similar motivations, the preservation of Divine revelation, the Muslims. The way that the Muslims handled their sacred literature is much more likely to be consistent with the ancient Israelites than to compare them to mythical story telling traditions and, worse, contemporary observations about “human nature.” Everything is different when it is sacred generational literature that is being preserved, and one must always maintain “apples to apples” comparisons.

The third problem is the mental slippery slope that many modern Biblical scholars find themselves on, usually unaware, where they now equate “source” to “who put pen to paper,” or in this case, pen to scroll. For example many, as I cited above one example, just assume that Moses copied what he wrote from older written sources. That is an egregious error in logic. Moses did not copy from older written works, dummies. Moses spent years in the company of God in person, not only on the mountain but in the meeting tent. What do you think they “talked about?” Moses received all of his information about what had transpired before his time not from written scraps from that time but from God himself. I mean, duh. They weren’t talking about the weather and they weren’t discussing how someday “football” would mean different sports to Americans and the British.

When it became the hot scholarly rage to analyze and identify different written sources in the Bible, back in the 1970’s, I thought that was great. One learns a great deal about the cultural context (and has more information to preserve accuracy in translation, etc) if one identifies the differences between those who are putting pen to scroll. But whoa, wait a minute, I just about fell out of my chair when decades later I noticed that people are now assuming that who holds the pen is the determining factor in “the sources.” What? How dumb is that? I pointed out the first problem with that above, where it’s not an endless chain of physical writers going back in time, each being “the source” to the next. Moses is the beginning, where he received the oral history from God of humans’ faith history. It’s not like Abraham left some ragged old scrolls of family scrapbook lying around. Everything was oral previous to Moses receiving oral history from God and then having that put to scroll. I mean, gosh, it is what it is. Many Biblical scholars yak and yak about the oral tradition of the ancients, but then when it comes time to research, they assume that it’s all a paper trail. With that assumption they then totally misunderstand what the Bible is actually sitting there and recording for them in explanation of what happened. God told Moses all there is to be shared about human creation and faith history (remembering that God was not going to dictate the first physics text book) and Moses had that transcribed.

So this is the fourth problem, which is to misunderstand the whole role of scribes even though you can hardly turn a page in the Bible without finding mention of a scribe! This is becoming a generational problem with moderns today, and by no coincidence this misunderstanding arose right around the time that managers and other professionals stopped having secretaries who took dictation. The last secretary I had who could take dictation was in the 1980’s and even then she hardly ever did it. Thus it is no wonder that modern Biblical scholars totally do not understand that holy people had secretaries, I mean, duh. They were called scribes. They took dictation, when the holy person could not or would not write down their own words themselves.

The most obvious example is when modern Biblical scholars question and criticize the high literary skill of the Gospels, Acts and the Epistles by the Disciples of Christ. Do I have to hear one more time, “How can poor dumb fishermen write such sophisticated works?” First of all, people were not so dumb and uneducated when it came to the matter of scripture and faith in those times as you all have come to assume. But, duh, once again, people did not run around performing miracles, avoiding or meeting scourging, persecution and martyrdom, and evangelize over hundreds of miles, and then sit down and put pen to scroll in their spare time. They used scribes, fellow disciples, dummies. So when you are studying a given section of the Bible by a particular “unknown” author, you are studying an amalgamation of the oral dictation to the writing scribe. I mean, why is that so difficult to understand? The poor and the illiterate went to professional scribes when they had to draw up a document, and that continued into medieval times. Obviously among the many Israelites of the Old Testament times and the early Christians of the time of Jesus Christ were many scribes! You can hardly get through a chapter of the Bible without tripping over description or mention of scribes. Do you think maybe that is a clue?

Thus, one of the worse abuses and now unconscious habit of many Biblical scholars is to equate analysis of the writing style and technique of the thread of a particular author as being enlightening regarding the “validity” or “source” of the God inspired information contained within. Like I said, I just about fell out of my chair when I noticed that what had been sound and interesting analysis of the pen work of various Bible inscribers and their insight into therefore the culture and linguistics of the time turned into an assumption that the scribe is the source. This generation forgets the old saying, when someone is asked to do a job that is “beneath them,” “I don’t take dictation.” Too many modern scholars assume that every holy person actually sat down and put pen to scroll them selves. Many did (St. Paul when he had lots of time on his hands and access to materials while in prison, for example). But you can be assured that many did not.

How can anyone ignore the example of the Book of Proverbs? The Book of Proverbs is an anthology of sayings and teachings in order to provide Wisdom, and so it draws upon many sources, including King Solomon. How difficult is it to understand that King Solomon would have said many wise things, which other people would remember, and then later write down? Some of the sayings of King Solomon would have been unique to him, in expression of his God inspired wisdom, but he would have quoted older sayings of wisdom too. Later the scribe of the Book of Proverbs would pull together these many sources of Wisdom and create this God inspired book. No one makes the mistake of studying the words and writing style of the author of the Book of Proverbs and thus deduces they are studying the actual “source” of the proverbs themselves, especially because the author cites the sources of entire sections of Proverbs. But for some reason many modern scholars disregard the entire history of scribes and assume that studying the writing style of an author “reveals” the “true or implied source” of the content of the text. Worse, they assume that changes in “style” (such as in the works of the Apostle St. John) “reveals” that they are “different authors.”

Here’s a simple example of how limiting in intellect are those assumptions. When I was a student in university in the early 1970’s we all used typewriters. Making a typo was a real pain, and I would make one particular typo over and over, which is to transpose two letters in the word “student.” That typo plagued me throughout college, but later it gave me no problem. Today, thirty years later, my most frequent typo is to transpose two letters in “the.” Now, suppose some genius scholar of the distant future had a copy of one of my typed works, with lots of white out of “student,” and a copy of one of my text processing works thirty years later. They would see that I made lots of errors about “student” in the early document, but none at all in the later document. Could they conclude I am a different person? No, of course not, since even if I made the same “student” typo today as I did then, I have a word processor that fixes it before printing. Likewise it is not illogical that the same Apostle could have written by his own hand one document, and given dictation to a scribe another document thirty years later. St. John the Apostle is such an obvious case that I am astonished at how willfully ignorant or conspiracy oriented some modern “Biblical scholars” seem to be. Would you write with the same tone and mannerisms as you did decades before, if you were of extreme old age and had just been taken to heaven to witness the Apocalypse? I mean, not to repeat myself, but duh. But this is the type of sloppy intellectual “scholarship” that plagues much modern Biblical scholarship or exegesis.

Pope Benedict XVI discusses much of the problems with modern exegesis in his introduction to “Jesus of Nazareth” and I will quote him here.

As historical-critical scholarship advanced, it led to finer and finer distinctions between layers of tradition in the Gospels, beneath which the real object of faith-the figure [Gestalt] of Jesus-became increasingly obscured and blurred. At the same time, though, the reconstructions of this Jesus (who could only be discovered by going behind the traditions and sources used by the Evangelists) became more and more incompatible with one another: at one end of the spectrum Jesus was the anti-Roman revolutionary working-though finally failing-to overthrow the ruling powers; at the other end, he was the meek moral teacher who approves everything and unaccountably comes to grief. If you read a number of these reconstructions one after the other, you see at once that far from uncovering an icon that has become obscured over time, they are much more like photographs of their authors [my note: by this the Pope means the Biblical scholars] and the ideals they hold. Since then there has been growing skepticism about these portrayals of Jesus, but the figure of Jesus himself has for that very reason receded even further into the distance (p. xii).

This is such a powerful observation by Pope Benedict and one that is unsparingly correct in its imagery. Indeed, when I read much of modern Biblical scholarship, rather than seeing a picture of the prophet or Jesus or other Biblical figure emerge (to say nothing of further understanding of God), I see a photograph of the Biblical scholar him or herself, and he or she imposes their own bias and often anti-faith very secular world view on the very Biblical material they purport to study. The Pope continues:

All these attempts have produced a common result: the impression that we have very little certain knowledge of Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him. This impression has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large. This is a dramatic situation for faith, because its point of reference is being placed in doubt: Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air (p. xii).

“Without anchoring in God, the person of Jesus remains shadowy, unreal, and unexplainable” (p.322). [Pope Benedict is quoting from another book.] This is also the point around which I will construct my own book. It sees Jesus in light of his communion with the Father, which is the true center of his personality; without it, we cannot understand him at all, and it is from this center that he makes himself present to us still today (p. xiv).

I would like to sketch at least the broad outlines of the methodology, drawn from these documents, that has guided me in writing this book. The first point is that the historical-critical method-specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith-is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work. For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths, but is based on history, history that took place on this earth. The factum historicum (historical fact) is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, bu the foundation on which it stands: Et incarnates est-when we say these words, we acknowledge God’s actual entry into real world history (p. xv).

So the Pope is saying, yes, of course one must study the Bible to analyze and match the historical component to as much of recorded secular human history as possible, since they are both reports of the same history. I personally very much enjoy reading about Biblical archaeology, for example, but I have developed great disdain for the rancorous quarrels and insults that competing archaeologist and scholars hurled at each other over various personal ego based clashes, and so I stopped reading magazines and so forth on those topics.

If we push this history aside, Christian faith as such disappears and is recast as some other religion. So if history, if facticity in this sense, is an essential dimension of Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method-indeed, faith itself demands this (p. xv)… The historical-critical method-let me repeat-is an indispensable tool, given the structure of Christian faith. But we need to add two points. This method is a fundamental dimension of exegesis, but it does not exhaust the interpretive task for someone who sees the biblical writings as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God. We will have to return to this point at greater length in a moment. For the time being, it is important-and this is a second point-to recognize the limits of the historical-critical method itself… The historical method not only has to investigate the biblical word as a thing of the past, but also has to remain in the past. It can glimpse points of contact with the present and it can try to apply the biblical word to the present; the one thing it cannot do is make it into something present today-that would be overstepping its bounds. Its very precision in interpreting the reality of the past is both its strength and its limit. This is connected with a further point. Because it is a historical method, it presupposes the uniformity of the context within which the events of history unfold. It must therefore treat the biblical words it investigates as human words. On painstaking reflection, it can intuit something of the “deeper value” the word contains. It can in some sense catch the sounds of a higher dimension through the human word, and so open up the method to self-transcendence. But its specific object is the human word as human (p. xvii).

In these words from the past, we can discern the question concerning their meaning for today; a voice greater than man’s echoes in Scripture’s human words; the individual writings [Schrifte] of the Bible point somehow to the living process that shapes the one Scripture [Schrift]. Indeed, the realization of this last point some thirty years ago led American scholars to develop the project of “canonical exegesis.” The aim of this exegesis is to read individual texts within the totality of the one Scripture, which then sheds new light on all the individual texts. Paragraph 12 of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation had already clearly underscored this as a fundamental principle of theological exegesis: If you want to understand the Scripture in the spirit in which it is written, you have to attend to the content and to the unity of Scripture as a while. The Council goes on to stress the need for taking account of the living tradition of the whole Church and of the analogy of faith (the intrinsic correspondences within the faith). Let us dwell for the time being on the unity of Scripture. It is a theological datum. But it is not simply imposed from the outside on what is in itself a heterogeneous ensemble of writings… This is a process in which the word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings, in order to open up (p. xix).

The Pope is explaining that there is a great difference between reading the Bible and seeking to use a historical-critical context that is somewhat biased and tainted by current agendas and mindsets, versus turning to the Bible for enlightenment that can be stimulated by current situations and mindsets. Pope Benedict uses the wonderful imagery to describe how the Bible, even though it is of separate writings, has the Divine unity and must be considered as a whole, has within it seeds, seeds which open up understanding of God and the situation of humankind. I think this analogy is enormously helpful in those who through excessive focus on the secular and historical facets of human hands writing human words have lost comprehension of how the diverse books of the Bible form the unified inspired word and will of God. The image of the seeds that are throughout the Bible, unnoticed and unseen until one turns to those pages in light of a current situation and reading is marvelous and I would say remarkably accurate.

“Canonical exegesis”-reading the individual texts of the Bible in the context of the whole-is an essential dimension of exegesis. It does not contradict historical-critical interpretation, but carries it forward in an organic way toward becoming theology in the proper sense. There are two further aspects of theological exegesis that I would like to underscore. Historical-critical interpretation of a text seeks to discover the precise sense the words were intended to convey at their time and place of origin. That is good and important. But-aside from the fact that such reconstructions can claim only a relative certainty-it is necessary to keep in mind that any human utterance of a certain weight contains more than the author may have been immediately aware of at the time. When a word transcends the moment in which it is spoken, it carries within itself a “deeper value.” This “deeper value” pertains most of all to words that have matured in the course of faith-history. For in this case the author is not simply speaking for himself on his own authority. He is speaking from the perspective of a common history that sustains him and that already implicitly contains the possibilities of its future, of the further stages of its journey. The process of continually rereading and drawing out new meanings from words would not have been possible unless the words themselves were already open to it from within (p. xx).

You see, this is what I mean when I explain that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, cannot be compared to either historical documents, although it contains them, or mythological or symbolic stories, though it sometimes alludes to them. Scholarship methods that rely on critiquing the Bible in comparison to either historical documents or mythological/story telling endeavors totally fail because they do not understand that the Israelites and the Gospel authors were writing, as the Pope explains, “from the perspective of a common history that sustains him and that already implicitly [the seeds] contains the possibilities of its future.”

At this point we get a glimmer, even on the historical level, of what inspiration means: The author does not speak as a private, self-contained subject. He speaks in a living community, that is to say, in a living historical movement not created by him, nor even by the collective, but which is led forward by a greater power that is at work. These are dimensions of the world that the old doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture pinpointed with remarkable accuracy. The four senses of Scripture are not individual meanings arrayed side by side, but dimensions of the one word that reaches beyond the moment. This already suggests the second aspect I wanted to speak about. Neither the individual books of Holy Scripture nor the Scripture as a whole are simply a piece of literature. The Scripture emerged from within the heart of a living subject-the pilgrim People of God-and lives within this same subject. One could say that the books of Scripture involve three interacting subjects. First of all, there is the individual author or group of authors to whom we owe a particular scriptural text. But these authors are not autonomous writers in the modern sense; they form part of a collective subject, the “People of God,” from within whose heart and to whom they speak. Hence, this subject is actually the deeper “author” of the Scriptures. And yet likewise, this people does not exist alone; rather, it knows that it is led, and spoke to, by God himself, who-through men and their humanity-is at the deepest level the one speaking (p. xxi).

I hope that you have found this helpful. Modern humans, even when supported by good intentions, and not just egoist personal agendas, are notorious for counting trees and missing seeing the forest. It is, in fact, one of the reasons for the crisis in faith of these times, which has alarmed me so very much as I see more than anyone the profound damage that it has done. This is why I wanted to take the time out today to help those of you who are reading and who are willing to reorient yourself with the most correct and spiritually fulfilling view of reading and understanding the Bible, and yes, even studying it. I started this post with specific examples so that you find it easier to break away from the hypnotic lure of modern thinking that there is only one way to view and analyze what has gone before. I then relied on the explanation of Pope Benedict XVI, whose presentation of the problem and the correct view I could not do better than myself, and can only endorse wholeheartedly.

Quote from "The Apostles"

I am enjoying reading “The Apostles” by Pope Benedict XVI (2007) Our Sunday Visitor Publishing. Here is a sample from Chapter 12, Thomas the Twin.

The Evangelist [John] continues with Jesus’ last words to Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” This sentence can also be put into the present: “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.”

In any case, here Jesus spells out a fundamental principle for Christians who will come after Thomas, hence, for all of us.

It is interesting to note that another Thomas, the great Medieval theologian of Aquinas, juxtaposed this formula of blessedness with the apparently opposite one recorded by Luke: “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see!” [Luke 10:23]. However, Aquinas comments: “Those who believe without seeing are more meritorious than those who, seeing, believe.”

In fact, the Letter to the Hebrews, recalling the whole series of the ancient biblical Patriarchs who believed in God without seeing the fulfillment of his promises, defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” [Hebrews 11:1].

The Apostle Thomas’ case is important to us for at least three reasons: first because it comforts us in our insecurity; second, because it shows that every doubt can lead to an outcome brighter than any uncertainty; and lastly, because the words that Jesus addressed to him remind us of the true meaning of mature faith and encourage us to persevere, despite the difficulty, along our journey of adhesion to him.

A final point concerning Thomas is preserved for us in the Fourth Gospel, which presents him as a witness of the Risen One in the subsequent event of the miraculous catch in the Sea of Tiberias.

On that occasion, Thomas is even mentioned immediately after Simon Peter: an evident sign of the considerable importance that he enjoyed in the context of the early Christian communities.

Indeed, the Acts and the Gospel of Thomas, both apocryphal works but in any case important for the study of Christian origins, were written in his name.

Lastly, let us remember that an ancient tradition claims that Thomas first evangelized Syria and Persia (mentioned by Origen) then went on to Western India, from where he also finally reached Southern India.
***

Well, I enjoy everything that Pope Benedict says and writes, and this book, as this passage illustrates, is another very pleasing work. He captures the essence of each Apostle who personally knew and witnessed to Jesus Christ, and with large, general and insightful strokes brings their interactions with Jesus into useful and comforting perspective today.

"Jesus of Nazareth" Chapter 10

Chapter 10: “Jesus Declares His Identity”

This is another great, enjoyable and important chapter, and this chapter is the conclusion of the Pope Benedict’s book, which is the first volume of his planned two volumes about the life of Jesus Christ, his “personal search for the face of the Lord.” It is great that he put pen to paper during his search, and shared it with great value for many others. Because it is a personal search, Benedict includes only the context and words that serves his direction, which is fine. But I am compelled to add context again in this chapter, so that there is greater explanatory value for the general reader.

Jesus declaring his identity was not important because it was part of a hide-and-go-seek with Jewish and Roman authorities, or as a measure of how much he comprehended his own mission. I’m going to use some contemporary language and examples to better illuminate why the “identity” of Jesus was so important to the general populace, both his supporters and his enemies and why, therefore, he replied as he did at various times.

In those days people did not have resumes (C.V.’s) or job descriptions. The closest that one came to self identifying an occupation or an identity was actually to state who you were the son of (who was your father.) You actually see this at one point in the Gospels when the people react with amazement to Jesus’ preaching, asking “is he not the son of Joseph the carpenter? And is his mother not Mary?” A son’s father’s identification was the son’s resume, job description, social standing, and outlook in life all rolled into one. Your father’s name was like your ID card. And so the people are amazed that a carpenter’s son is preaching. This was also another reason why Jesus’ physical genealogy to the House of David (King and Prophet) was so emphasized. Now it’s a little less strange that Jesus should be at the very least a preacher, and potential leader, if he is descended (on both sides no less) from the House of David. It’s like having an extra trump father ID card. So it’s not just the fulfillment of prophecy about a Messiah from the House of David that is important, as it is the more mundane social necessity of people to understand how to relate to Jesus by knowing “who is his father and what does his father do.” You can now see why “Son of God” and “Son of Man” has huge day to day meaning to everyone, not just to the learned religious. I’ll get back to this some more in a bit, but first I need to discuss a second “form” of “resume, CV, job description, and social standing.” This is a title.

Who one’s father is served, as we have shown, to provide much of the information about a son’s identity. But for the religious, social, military and aristocratic elite there also existed the “title.” One can be a King, priest, centurion, daughter of a noble and those and similar titles map pretty closely to what we would call today one’s “job description” within a rarefied job class. Remember the very moving miracle where Jesus is approached by the centurion, who asks for a cure for his servant, as he states that on his command people come and go, but that he is not worthy that Jesus should come under his roof. Jesus marvels at his faith and heals the servant without entering the centurion’s house. Many do not notice, though, that the centurion is bestowing on Jesus a compliment and equality of title in his speech to Jesus. What is unsaid but implied is that just as the centurion can order people to come and go, he relates to Jesus’ authority to also come and go at will, to command others, and ultimately, to command the coming and going of his miraculous healing power. The centurion is actually the first person in the Gospels to give Jesus a title of secular power, a commander, a centurion, a leader, as a title, doing so obliquely by equating themselves. While the purpose of the Gospels was not to record every detail, giving “color” to the events, we can be assured without reading it that this message and implied honorific was not lost on any who witnessed or heard about it. When someone has a title, either inherited, as with Kings, or bestowed, as by the centurion on Jesus, this provides a reasonable set of expectations about the person’s current and future actions. When Jesus does not deny the compliment that the centurion bestows upon him, there is tacit acceptance by Jesus that leadership is indeed part of his “title.” However, he does not take a title willingly throughout the years of his ministry exactly so that he is not hemmed in to the understood conventions of those titles in those days, because he spans much, much more.

This is why Jesus is not being coy, mysterious, or confused when he replies or refers to titles somewhat obliquely. Each title carries with it a set of well understood expectations in both a societal and salvation history context. Because Jesus spans and encompasses more than a single title, he takes care not to accept one title, which would result in people, understandably, only focusing on that purpose (“job description”) and ignoring the parts of his preaching that does not map to that singular purpose. So now you can see the problems with various titles such as Messiah, where as soon as Jesus would accept one title, the other potential titles would be presumed to not apply, and expectations to see his “action plan” for his accepted “job description” would explode. This was why, as Benedict puts it, “Already during Jesus’ lifetime, people tried by applying to him categories that were familiar to them and were therefore considered apt for deciphering his mystery” (p. 239.) I think Benedict, like everyone else, is not clear enough in understanding why Jesus is being “mysterious.” It’s quite clear if you look at it this way. Benedict is wise in questioning the incredible intellectual exercises, such as “categorizing” the number of times Jesus is “may” have used this title, or “is said to have used that title but we don’t really believe the scriptures that he really said it, it’s those political disciples putting words in this mouth.” To use another contemporary example, that is like assuming that the several dozen quotes of Jesus about his title are the entire set of mysterious substances to analyze in the laboratory. Let’s look at how bizarre is that assumption.

In the time of Jesus people didn’t spend time alone, unless they were in the fields shepherding. Certainly as he traveled and lived with dozens of people Jesus was during the time of his ministry surrounded by people all of the time. During all of this time he and the disciples would have been talking constantly. So assuming that Jesus was able to get his good eight hours of sleep per night, you can count on Jesus talking, teaching, preaching and yes, chatting, with his disciples and extended family and followers a good ten hours out of every day. The Gospels are the coalesced summations and high points of his sayings and his actions that are selected by each author to be a “cram course in the essentials of Jesus.” This is why, for example, the Transfiguration, one of the major events in the life of Jesus is included in all three of the synoptic Gospels, because each of those Gospel authors felt that was “essential teaching.” St. John, by not including it, is not laboratory evidence that he wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t think it was important, or that there were “3 votes out of 4 that the Transfiguration happened,” but rather, St. John through his un-martyred long lived perspective included other “essentials” that would have been lost forever had he not, out of the wealth of discussion and events that took place during Jesus’ ministry. So a statistical, laboratory, numeric approach to the sayings and actions of Jesus is totally bogus and out of context. You can be sure that if an author records Jesus using the “Son of Man” title, for example once, he undoubtedly used that title a hundred times in the course of his total conversation with the Apostles and disciples. So it is ridiculous to try to apply a statistical or other numeric formula to words, speech, and events in the Gospels, “title classification” as Benedict calls it on p. 323. All one is really doing is evaluating the teaching and narrative style of that Gospel author as he condenses the total experience of what Jesus said and did. No one should have any doubt that Jesus said exactly what the Gospel authors recorded. Like someone who has heard their favorite professor lecture and say the same thing thirty times during a semester, though, the Gospel authors will not repeat material just for the purpose of repeating it. In their summary they may also emphasize certain speech that now becomes significant during their “remembering” of the sum total of implications of something Jesus said or did.

As an aside, in this spirit of clearing up mysterious context, let’s look for a moment on page 326, where Benedict mentions “the first beast, a lion with the wings of an eagle, has its wings plucked out” from the vision in the Book of Daniel. The lion is then lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man and is given a man’s heart. Benedict, like most, interprets the lion to represent a dominant secular power, and how in the future it can be humanized and receive a human face, when the Son of Man returns. It is a bit of an aside, but I’d like to clarify what the winged lion actually represents, because people today, like those of yesterday, are obsessed with apocalyptic interpretations and lose all objectivity and accuracy as a result.

At the time of Daniel the fiercest animal that existed in their environment was the lion. The Israelis did not have the Indian tiger, or the Egyptian crocodile, or the African elephant or rhinoceros as the day to day “fiercest animal” to watch for, respect, and fear; they had the lion. Remember that however fierce a lion may be, it did not tend to walk through villages nor seek out people (their flocks perhaps, but not the people) and a lion can be escaped from by getting in the midst of settlement. A winged lion represented to the people of the day the greatest danger that cannot be escaped! With “wings” a lion can pursue a man through the air, into his very home or fortress. This was why the Assyrians had a winged lion as one of their motifs of power. It’s not because the winged lion is some sort of symbol of an abstract concept of good and evil, bestial or civilized. The Assyrians and others viewed the winged lion as the strongest power that cannot be evaded or stopped. This was why in the vision; the wings of the lion are removed. It shows that danger can be bound; it can go back to being a “lion” through the removal of the wings. The vision goes further because it now has the lion stand upright, and receive a human heart. This is what happens when the Son of Man is present, and I don’t want to digress too much by going into a full explanation of the vision of Daniel in this post, as I could. I will just add one other thing,, since I know those who have been tempted by 20th century “new age” so much. The winged lion is not a prediction about a Leo astrology sign billionaire who has his own plane in the time of global warming ha ha. Seriously, it is amazing how many people read the Bible and think it’s talking about them and their secular world, just like the Carly Simon song on the same subject, I guess. That is why I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what the authors, visionaries, and real life participants of the Bible meant and intended about the “winged lion,” not the overly psychological and revisionist projections based on cultural and egocentric urges and temptations that so many indulge in during the past century.

You can now read the rest of the chapter, where Benedict discusses “The Son” and “I Am” with less confusion and more context, understanding what I’ve explained about the importance of “identity” (who one’s father is and what he does) and “title” (what one’s job description is.) Without this context, so many people wallow in the “mystery” of Jesus’ identity and how he states it rather than recognizing the all encompassing nature of his mission, which he deliberately avoided pigeonholing. Jesus did not want to confuse anyone or be mysterious, which is why he often quoted biblical prophesies in connection to who he is. That way he could provide a framework and let the listener draw the conclusions, but without being forced to “select” only one title, one prophecy, one mission, one “job description.” In the section “The Son” Benedict discusses the political and theological implications to the Jews and early Christians of this identity and implied title. Again, as a scholar on his own search, Benedict does look for a lot of the ties and interconnections in the cultural, historical, and theological milieu of the times. I feel he really gets back in gear on p. 340 when he writes, “Only the Son truly ‘knows’ the Father. Knowing always involves some sort of equality” and then goes on to discuss the synchronization of the Father with the Son. This is his long round about way of illuminating the observation I made at the beginning, which is during those times, identity was mostly informed by who one’s father was. Here there is an incredible numinosity when the identity of the Son is revealed through the identity of the Father as God.

The next section, “I Am” can therefore be more easily understood as Jesus’ “title,” his “job description.” Just as his identity as Son is informed by who is his Father, his “I am sayings,” as Benedict calls them, are really the clearest that Jesus comes to accepting a title. See, this is where what I commented about the difference in priorities of reporting between the Synoptic authors and St. John is key, because St. John is the one who mostly records the “I Am” sayings. St. John, being the Apostle Jesus loved, and having a long life, not cut short by martyrdom, to reflect and remember, would not surprisingly be able to remember and highlight those subtle “I Am” sayings and understand them as being Jesus’ job description, his title. Benedict references the “I Am” sayings to the Old Testament and the historic competition between God and the “other gods” and idols of the region. Thus Benedict focuses, understandably, on the “I Am” as reinforcement of Jesus’ identity as oneness with God, and the oneness of God. He points out, correctly, that the “I Am” sayings illuminate his identity and origin. Benedict does get to the point of the “I Am” saying being Jesus’ “job description” (though not with the emphasis I’ve placed on it) when he writes on p. 354:

And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift-he is “life.” For precisely this reason, his whole being consists in communicating, in “pro-existence.” This is exactly what we see in the Cross, which is his true exaltation.

This great quotation is the second to the last page of the book, and is a fine summation of what could have been a confusing and complicated chapter, and indeed, is a fine summation of this first book of the two planned. I would invite you to continue to work with the “job description” analogy when you read this and ponder it, because Benedict hits it squarely with his phrase “pro-existence.” The purpose, the “job” of Jesus Christ in his oneness with God is to be the champion of life and existence. God is life, and Jesus Christ existed to, as Benedict wrote earlier, “bring us God,” to introduce humanity to God, whose job description is “pro-existence” and “life.” No one remembers or cares how many benches Jesus crafted. Jesus is everything about communicating pro-existence. Jesus wants people to live and thrive, and he also wants them to be saved and have eternal life. But he himself who is one with God teaches to fear God, in other words, to fear the loss of God, because if one rejects and loses God, that is not pro-existence because one then loses both body and soul. Jesus really gave two very direct stern warnings during his public ministry. He warned that people should neither lead children to sin, and to not forget that God is first, as he can destroy not only one’s life but also banish the unrepentant sinner’s soul to hell. Jesus is advocating for life, for eternity of existence, He does not do this through repeated fire and brimstone preaching, because that was not the need, the knowledge of God and the personal experience of “his face” was what was needed. Though make no mistake that was then. As St. John records in the Book of Revelations, all too many do choose the other way, the anti-existence, as I work with the great phrase that Benedict provides in “pro-existence.” I think that Benedict did a wonderful job of sharing his personal search for the face of the Lord in “Jesus of Nazareth,” to everyone’s benefit. The face of the Lord, the face of God, is the face of someone who very much wants every soul to succeed, to live and to thrive, and whose only sadness are those who choose their own destruction. Benedict appropriately closes with mention of Peter and his words:

In the Nicene Creed, the Church joins Peter in confessing to Jesus ever anew: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).

"Jesus of Nazareth" Chapter 9

Chapter 9: “Two Milestones on Jesus’ Way: Peter’s Confession and the Transfiguration”

I really enjoyed this chapter of Pope Benedict’s book. Yes, I enjoy all of the chapters, but I always especially like reading what people think about St. Peter. He was such an incredible man – there’s never been one like him – yet he was very, very humble, and sometimes it is difficult for people reading the scriptures to recognize his greatness, because he certainly did not showboat it in the Gospels, Acts, or his two Letters (Epistles.)

The first half of the chapter discusses the various times and ways that St. Peter recognizes the true and full identity of Jesus. I think Benedict describes these wonderfully. I’d like to expand on two points that for some reason just about everyone misses, perhaps because they are so plain and simple. Pope Benedict’s book structure relies quite a bit on overly scholarly work by others, which he then puts in perspective, explaining, agreeing with, or rebuking, depending on what is appropriate. This means that he dives into the more symbolic and complex, and sometimes skips over explaining a few basic things and exploring them for the edification of the general reader who is trying to put it all together and get inside the minds of Jesus and the Apostles, to deepen their faith and understanding. In one example Benedict says, “Scholarship overplays its hand with such reconstructions” (p. 303,) and while he is referring to one scholar’s work, I’d comment that everyone is doing this overplaying to some degree. So here are a few really obvious things about St. Peter that are remarkably profound to his mission as given to him by Jesus Christ.

Benedict describes, delightfully, the intertwining of events, locations, and words of St. Peter to Jesus. He only touches on Jesus’ “nickname” for St. Peter of Cephas, the rock. That is understandable because Benedict’s purpose is to discuss the nature of Jesus, as seen through St. Peter’s “eyes of recognition” (my words.) But there’s some really cool insight that is missed in not looking more at the deliberate implications of Jesus selecting Cephas as the nickname for St. Peter. Benedict points out that there is a tradition where this scene took place “where a wall of rock overhangs the waters of the Jordan and thus powerfully illustrates Jesus’ words about Peter as the rock” (p. 290.) And that is great, but the more important “interior location” of the event is from Jesus’ perspective as a carpenter. Jesus is by trade a carpenter in a time when both stones and wood were used to construct houses. Stones or rock were used for foundations and for wells, boundary markers, livestock pens, and so forth. Stones indicate where a decision to build has been made. Stones are removed from fields that are to be tilled, and placed where there will be a permanent structure. Jesus is telling St. Peter, Cephas, that not only will people literally one day see him as the spiritual rock upon which the Church is built, through the Apostolic and Papal lineage, but also that literally, St. Peter will choose where the foundation of the Church will be built.

Now much focus has been placed upon the Biblical passage “A stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner” (Isaiah 28, later quoted by both Jesus and St. Peter) because that cornerstone refers to Jesus Christ. However, Jesus gives St. Peter the title Cephas, the rock, because he is also literally charging him with establishment of the physical presence and heart of the Church location in time and space on earth. If St. Peter had decided to go to some city in Africa, let’s say, and was martyred there, that would have been the Catholic Church’s “Rome,” The Vatican. If he had hopped a ship to England and gone to London to preach and convert, and was martyred there, London would have been the Catholic Church’s “Vatican.” But he went to Rome, the center of the world’s empire at that time, and that was where the rock of the Church was placed, with Christ as the cornerstone and St. Peter building the stones of foundation. Jesus literally gave St. Peter the nickname, the power, and the title to choose the literal location of the Holy See of the Church. If St. Peter had seen fit to go in a different direction perhaps we’d be arguing about doing the old rite Senegalese or Urdu mass! But it was really both St. Peter’s choice, and the logic of destiny, that he and St. Paul both converged on Rome, the center of the conquered world, and conquer and convert it for Christ.

We know that St. Peter was fully aware of what he had been charged with, though this may come as a surprise to some, because his words of acknowledgement are subtle and humble and easily missed. Read 1 St. Peter 2:4-10:

Draw near to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men but chosen and honored by God. Be you yourselves as living stones, built thereon into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Hence Scriptures says, “Behold I lay in Sion a chief cornerstone, chosen, precious; and he who believes in it shall not be put to shame.” For you, therefore, who believe, is this honor; but to those who do not believe, “A stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner,” and “A stumbling-stone and a rock of scandal,” to those who stumble at the word, and who do not believe. For this also they are destined. You, however, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people; that you may proclaim the perfections of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Is this not beautiful? Many people glide over the writings of St. Peter because they are sparse and humble. Some when they read this passage think that it is only a restatement of Jesus Christ as the cornerstone and their brains kind of turn off or skip ahead in the reading. But look carefully. St. Peter speaks of Jesus as the “living stone” and also the cornerstone “in Sion.” However, St. Peter immediately says, “Be yourselves as living stones, built thereon into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” St. Peter wasn’t talking about a theoretical building offer symbolic sacrifices, because he uses the words “a holy priesthood.” He understands full well that he is to found and exhort the building of the literal Church. He underscores this again after the quotation about the rejected cornerstone being Jesus and “you, however, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood…” Again by using the word “priesthood” he is speaking of the establishment of the literal priesthood in literal Churches. He is writing this in Rome (which he calls Babylon ha ha) in 63 AD, shortly before his martyrdom. So thirty some years have passed since Jesus Christ died and rose again, and St. Peter has served as the Bishop of Rome – the first Pope – and is now preparing for martyrdom. As such he is spelling out that he has placed the stones of the foundation of the priesthood and the Church literal in Rome, and in the hands of all believers for their own locales.

I sometimes wonder if non-Catholic versions of the First Epistle of St. Peter the Apostle were written in lemon juice as “spy ink” and had to be heated over a candle to be read, as people doubt the first hand Apostolic origin and physical placement of the Catholic Church directly from Jesus Christ to St. Peter. No one can read this passage and misunderstand that St. Peter understood full well what Jesus intended for him to do as Cephas.

With this in mind, I suggest reading his full Epistle 1 and especially savor what he wrote in 5:1-11. Compare it to what you have read from Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, and recognize that it is the first papal letter to the flock. It is wonderful that it is in everyone’s hands to see!

The second part of the chapter discusses the Transfiguration, where Sts. Peter, John, and James witness Jesus Christ in his body glorified, in discussion with Moses and Elijah. Benedict spends some time on two points to which I’d like to add some perspective and illumination. The first is that Benedict attributes St. Peter’s offer to make three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah as kind of an ecstasy and highly symbolic (speculating a theorized timing connection to the Feast of the Tabernacles.) While St. Peter was in a wondrous ecstasy of amazement, he was not babbling or being symbolic. Think about it. The Apostles have come to understand who Jesus really is, and now he appears glorified and with Moses and Elijah. Jesus and the Apostles have had many followers, but also their lives have been in constant danger, and Jesus has even had to flee from his own hometown. So St. Peter quite literally believed that Moses and Elijah were appearing to stay and help Jesus. It’s actually a remarkable example of the depth of his faith and belief that he didn’t assume this was a vision, but recognized their physical presence and believed with joy that they would reappear and stay in order to help and protect Jesus. As you know, St. Peter and the others did not want to believe that Jesus would be persecuted and die. They knew who he truly was, and had growing comprehension of the face of God through Jesus, and so this seemed like “the next step,” a time to be elated and welcome Moses and Elijah to the fray, to the mission. Later it is explained that the works of St. John the Baptist were the fulfillment of the “return of Elijah,” but at that moment, St. Peter was certainly not being symbolic or addled, but he was showing as clear and as concrete an action-oriented faith as anyone could.

There is also an interesting synchronicity and foretelling by St. Peter here, because who would become the tent makers? St. Peter would, as the rock, and St. Paul, literally a tent maker, would, as they do in fact literally make the tents of the Church for everyone.

The second point on this part of the chapter that I want to make is about the speculation that the Transfiguration is related to the Jewish calendar by occurring during the Feast of Tabernacles. While there is all sorts of interesting correlations it simply is not so. One needs only to read the Gospel of St. John. Because St. John does not record the Transfiguration people do not read the part of his gospel that corresponds to the Transfiguration event. That’s an oversight because while he does not discuss the Transfiguration he does relate that Jesus so wished to attend the Feast of the Tabernacles that he goes in secret. This is related in John 7:1-15 and you can read what occurs. I’ll cite two lines (10): But as soon as his brethren had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but as it were privately, and (14) When, however, the feast was already half over, Jesus went up into the temple and began to speak. Jesus did not miss the major feasts of the Jewish calendar whenever possible. So going up the mountain to pray, and then undergo the Transfiguration, would not have taken place during Jewish holy days of obligation or feast days. Even if Jesus was establishing the New Covenant in fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and law, he participated in feasts when he could in order to preach.