Summer School Recap Week 2

Of God and Gospels

Last week, we had the second week of Summer School, the concentrated effort to educate the members of my church. My theology and philosophy class talked about historical concepts of God and the development of the Christian creedal statements about who God is to Christians. My New Testament went over the synoptic gospels, the debate surrounding their sourcing, and the emphases they make in an effort to understand the whole picture of whoever this Christ fella was that they’re all talking about.

With these conversations of God and the gospels he reveals himself in, one can imagine the complicated and sanctified discussions we had in class. The conversations themselves were telling of this week’s key takeaways. They also led me to think about what exactly people are looking for whenever they talk classes like this. That, in and of itself, is a whole other takeaway that I’d like to take the time to talk and write about. Don’t forget, dear students, teachers learn from you too.

So here are the key takeaways from week 2’s classes where we learned about God and the gospels:

1. The nature of God must be mysterious if He is to exist

For my theology class, I offered my students the grand opportunity to read excerpts of Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, John of Damascus, and Athanasius. All of these excerpts were around two basic questions theology attempts to answer. 1) Does God exist? and 2) if he does, what is he like? These are the unanswerable things that make up the highest form of the highest form of education (see last post and “Why is Theological Education Important?). Even asking the questions in the first place is an exercise in futility. If the answers were that simple there would never be any debate over it. Yet these debates have been happening since humans found out they were conscious. All the great questions have no solid answer, and real debates only surround the questions that are worth asking.

But since these basic questions of theology have no real answer, where does that leave us, we mere Christians? We want to know God, as do all theistic and even non-theistic religions in the world (looking at you Buddhists). It’s the primal directive of our spiritual selves. “As the deer pants for water, so my soul longs for thee” says the Psalmist. That echoes a fundamental human necessity. Even Abraham Maslow, the famed psychologist known for his “hierarchy of needs”, suggests humans need connection with something larger than themselves. And he was an atheist. We want to know whatever this God is, or at least find a connection with him.

But we, as Christians, aren’t just spiritual leeches sucking the blood from Christ’s wounds. He doesn’t just supply a “need”. In fact, the surrender of “needs” is one of the central tenants of Christianity. “Seek first the kingdom of righteousness” and “see the lilies and sparrows” are the maxims of the faith I and my church claim.

Therefore we as Christians must find a spiritual habitat where our need to know and trust God outweighs the need to find to 1) be right and 2) have all the answers. It is, like all things when it comes to this God figure, mysterious and paradoxical. It is what he is in essence. The more we know God, the more complex he becomes, the more complex her becomes, the more it returns to simplicity.

Which leads me to the main point of the “God” class and the claim above: in order for God to exist, he must be mysterious. That is a self-defeating claim and, by many accounts of philosophy and rules of debate, should not work. If the goal of religion is to know God, how can he be unknowable? If we are to make any claims about Him, how are we to do it if he is unsearchable? If we are to follow him and his ethic for holiness, how are we to do that if he is inexplicable?

Thomas Aquinas in the passage that we read for this course went through five causal statements regarding the existence of God. At the end of each one, he reaches a point of circular reasoning. He suggested every cause has an effect. If you have an apple, an apple is caused by the flower, which is caused by the tree, which is cause by the seed, etc. Yet, when going down the line of causal statements, there is always a moment where there’s a resounding “I don’t know”. He says, at the end of his philosophy, this “I don’t know” is what we call God. For if we were to know him in totality, and all our “I don’t know” cease, God himself would have to have a cause, and that would throw quite a wrench in our conception of God, man, reality, and apples.

Yet, we have the indomitable and all-corrupting sin of pride that is a snake leaning into our ears saying, “the fruit will make you like God”. For mankind desperately wants to know, so much so that many (dare I say most) claim to have no “I don’t know”, but are the infallible manifestation of knowledge on Earth. Whenever a human claims to know everything about God, whether in word or in deed, they are implicitly claiming there is no longer any mystery to him. When someone does that, then they effectively usurp God off his throne and place the crown of glory upon their mortal heads. And, inevitably, that always crushes the wearer under its mighty weight.

The catch-22 of knowledge is the inherent binary of right vs. wrong that it produces. Introduce that into God, whose mystery is necessary for his own existence, and there is virtually no world where unity, understanding, and peace can be achieved. It should surprise no one that wars and wrath have be wrought in the name of God. Because we are here making claims. Not just any claim, but the highest claim of the highest claim to the highest form of the highest form of knowledge.

The beauty of the Christian claims rests in the inherent mystery of God, something I feel Protestants have forgotten, yet the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have kept very much alive. Christianity maintains the mysterious quality of God, encourages its adherents to think and learn about him, while also revealing God and his knowledge through the person-divine that is Jesus Christ. The doctrines the church professes about the nature of God are all mysteries: the Trinity, the “Omni”s (omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.), the incarnation in Christ. Everything written about these wonders have been equal parts theological claims backed by text, logic, and existing philosophy and poetic, beautiful, powerful, and intense “I don’t knows”.

2. The harmony of the gospels is found in their differences, not their similarities

What we do know of God can be substantiated by the word, message, teaching, and nature of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. When Jesus begins ministering to 1st century Judea and Galilee, people began noticing. His unjust trial and execution caught the attention of many. His supposed resurrection only exacerbated the scandal and lore of this so called “light of the world”. People began writing little parchment stories of the main aspects of the Christ’s life: Jesus’ passion narrative, sayings, and miracles. From these small fragments of Jesus’ ministry were carried and passed around the ancient world in the attempt to spread Jesus’ message to the Jew and Gentile. A few decades pass and (so the tradition claims) John Mark, an assistant of Paul and Barnabas, compiles these fragments, and thus creates the genre of what the Greeks called evangelion. Or, as we call it in English, a gospel, the good news.

My New Testament survey course discussed the synoptic gospels, which consisted of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We call these gospels synoptic because they share most of the same content, parables, sayings, scenes, and, sometimes, even wording. The similarities of these gospels suggest they are somehow all connected. The nice dramatic introduction to this section is only one of the potential theories of origin for these three gospels, called the Fragment Hypothesis, that attempts to explain why in the world these gospels share so much information.

The question of sourcing the first three gospels is called the “synoptic problem”. Scholars over the last 200 years or so have been trying to uncover a good solution. Most scholars agree in the Two-Source Hypothesis, which suggests that Mark, being the oldest gospel, was composed (perhaps by the fragments) and then was paired with a sayings source that contain Jesus’ parables, sermons, and dialogues with religious leaders. This sayings source is a theorized lost source called Q, short for the German word Quelle, meaning source. With Mark and Q comes the other two gospels, Matthew and Luke, who also have information unique to them which are compiled into hypothesized sources collectively known as M and L, respectively.

That paragraph was quite a drag to write and I’m guessing it was quite a drag to read. Sourcing the gospels has been a centuries long debate that, frankly, has been drilled into the head of every seminarian and grad student in the history of religious studies. But, I believe most of my students in last weeks class weren’t necessarily occupied with those scholarly questions of similarities. but rather the differences and emphases of the synoptic gospels.

We’re going to take this one gospel at a time like we did in class:

Mark-The eldest son in the family of the synoptics. It has no real narrative. If you read through it, every section begins with “and then” or “after that” or “immediately” or something like that. It’s not much of a “story” like Matthew and Luke. Furthermore, it begins with Jesus’ ministry. There’s an exorcism in chapter one! There’s not even a birth story! There’s not much building up in this one. It just kind of jumps from miracle to miracle and then culminates in a very short passion and resurrection narrative followed by a scribal addition in chapter 16:9-20 where the most extreme of Pentecostals justify their snake handling.

Nevertheless the emphasis of Mark lies within the make up of the gospel itself. It being the first one, this gospel perhaps shows the urgent emphases that the early Christians were concerned with at the time of its composition (sometime between 65-80AD). I read it almost like the résumé of Christ. When you read through it, the emphases of Christ’s ministry become quite clear: miracles, parables, and passion. His parables showcase his teaching, his miracles showcase his power and legitimate his teaching, and his passion is his ultimate cause.

Matthew-Okay now we’re getting somewhere a little more “gospel”-like. We begin this gospel in a way much more fitting for the Messiah, the savior of the Jews. It begins with a genealogy from Abraham, an important distinction from other gospels (even Luke which has a different genealogy…). It is the longest gospel because it is the one that contains the most of Christ’s teachings. It has in full (or the fullest we have) the Sermon on the Mount, which is the whole of Christ’s wisdom and ethic. Not only are there again the same parables as Mark, but here there are explanations which are there for the reader to understand the wisdom Christ is attempting to relay. How nice! It has the highest concentration of Old Testament references, even intertwined within the narrative (triumphal entry, the trial of Christ, etc.). Lastly, if this paragraph hasn’t alluded to it enough, according to Eusebius and Irenaeus, it was originally written in Hebrew.

The emphasis on Jewish history and prophecy is essential to the understanding of who Christ comes from and who Christ claims to be. He is not just the “God” made flesh, but he is the incarnation of Yahweh, the God of the Jews. Furthermore, the emphasis on wisdom relays two ideas: 1) the importance of Jesus as a philosophical and theological claim maker as well as a teacher of ethics, morals, and applied ideas and 2) the entrance of Jesus into Jewish Sapiential traditions. Sapiential traditions are the wisdom traditions of Judaism immortalized in Old Testament writings like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon. This is a gospel for the Jews, the Hebrews, God’s chosen. It would’ve been sent to the synagogue and read aloud by the rabbi who would open the scroll and instead of hearing “the vision of Isaiah son of Amos” or “the word of the Lord spoken to Ezekiel, son of Suzi”, they would hear in their native tongue “this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham”.

Luke-This one begins with a reason for writing, which is a God send for anyone trying to study this gospel. It says that there have been many people that have tried to make an account of the things that happened, but Luke the physician and coworker with Paul, aims to write one specifically for one person. This is the writers’ gospel. Something that’s heartfelt, meaningful, artful, poetic, and just a darn good story. Reading through Luke feels like you’re reading a historical hero’s tale or a biography, something important to its mainly Greek audience. Biography was important for Caesar and his quest to legitimate his rule and reign as the Godman controlling the greatest kingdom on Earth. Here, Luke maintains similar story-telling techniques in a gospel detailing the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, who is claiming the same thing. Luke is a gospel for the revolutionary. The unique material to Luke mainly surrounds parables, teachings, and scenes regarding the outcasted, marginalized, and lowly. It is the only gospel that includes the prodigal son, Zaccheus, and an emphasis on women (Luke 8, parable of the lost coin, etc.). Luke contains more references to “tax collectors and sinners” than any other gospel. Lastly, it contains a beautiful birth narrative that holds within it three separate hymns (the Magnificant, the Benedictus, and the Nunc Dimitiis). It’s almost like there’s an art to this one, a historical component, and the soul of a legend.

Luke is a gospel to the Greek gentiles, the now invited outsiders into the fray of Matthew’s emphasized Israel. The Greeks are the cultural overlords for the ancient world. Their cultural mind penetrated every conceptual thought of the western world. They were prescribed to go to the theater when feeling malaise or anxiety. They painted, sculpted, and wrote as a means of living. They marveled and wondered at the tales of courage and strength. They pondered on the discipline of the humanities and its cyclical poem in history. The gospel of Luke portrayed a Christ that taught the same ethic and wisdom as the other two synoptics, but in a medium that reached the largest audience in the world: Ancient Greece and Rome.

The distinct differences of these synoptic gospels are their paradoxical harmony. They are harmonious in that each are needed to portray a different aspect of Christ, to different audiences, at different times, in different spaces. Mark is the progenitor, the collection of the fragments of the earliest Christian hopes and dreams and the wonder they now had for their beloved Jesus. Matthew is the wisdom gospel to the Jews, God’s chosen and through whom God saved all mankind. Luke is the history and art that captured the imagination of the Greco-Roman world.

The irony is that the similarities of the synoptic gospels lead scholars to scratch their heads and hypothesized every solution to every problem that sourcing proposes while their differences of them individually suggests the fullest picture of Jesus Christ. In the end, who cares about their “validity” as a text and an archaeological artifact. I care about the content of the character it’s trying to portray, the man who is much more than myth and legend, but Messiah and Lord.

3. Theology is the therapy, and therapy cannot be the theology

Here’s the portion of this recap where I talk about what I took away from my students. In the attempt I may seem discouraged or harsh. I promise you I am not. My only aim is to guide people along their path in thinking, learning, and growing in their walk with the Christian faith. It’s because of this, however, that I must talk about where I believe the Protestant church at large misses when they take a class like the ones I’m offering in Summer School.

Every year, I have people that drop my class. I understand, it isn’t for everyone. I’ve already talked about why I do think it’s in fact necessary for everyone, and so I don’t want to repeat myself. But I believe I’ve figured out why many people leave: they don’t want theology, they want therapy.

I have had a couple people approach me after class and say something to the degree of, “I thought this was a Bible study where we go deep into the word”. Immediately confused I say something like, “well that’s exactly what this is…”. And then they respond with the really transparent remark, “well I’m not interested in the theology or textual stuff, I just want to study the Bible”. There was a certain "light bulb” moment whenever I recently had a similar conversation like this. I realized that people make a distinction between “Bible study” and “theology”. “Theology” is a catch-all term people use for any more scholarly attempt than normal “small group” type environment that centers around community bible reading and discussions about life application and personal revelation. When, in reality, every Bible study is a theological discussion. Theology is just the claims about God and his nature. But the things that seem more “scholarly” are deemed cold, unattached, and unemotional while “bible study” environments are deemed more “life-changing” and therapeutic. This distinction that people make, if I am to be honest, broke my optimism as a teacher.

The therapeutic quality of “bible study” does not come from any emotional outpouring or group discussion. The therapy is in the ideas about God. The therapy is in the theology. Yet, in our highly sensitized and emotionally charged construction of the Bible, we want the therapy, what feels “good”, to guide what is theologically true or false. Our experience defines our exegesis. That cannot happen. That reduces the mysterious beauty of God to what he can provide for us rather than casting our minds, the purest portion and choice offering of our lives, upon who he is and pondering on his nature. Our exegesis, the theological interpretations of the Bible, must be the guide for our experiences or else the only God we venerate is the one we choose to create.

At the core of why people consult with religious traditions is that people want their lives to change. People go to church to connect to some sort of existential “other”. The mind retreats into madness if left alone in the world, which displays the deep human need to recover from its inherited futility by knowing God. This is the therapy of theology, not the theologizing of therapy. The mystery of God and the attempt to know him in the deepest possible level is the most therapeutic exercise a Christian can do. Knowing him, the promises established through the Bible, and the ethics and philosophy of God himself revealed through Christ is the spiritual fulfillment every human is needing. He himself is the satiation.

I believe a lot of the personal strife people may have with Christianity, whether you’re in the church or out of it, is the misprioritization of spiritual fulfillment (a.k.a. “therapy”). People go to religion for their life to change, yet it only changes when you give your life up. Life only begins to be satisfied after death. It’s the paradox of the Christian ethic and philosophy. If you love your life you lose it, if you lose your life you will gain it. Fulfillment is not the goal of theology, knowing Christ is. A comfortable life is not the goal of biblical study, knowing Christ is. The answers to life’s biggest questions are not the goal of philosophy, knowing Christ is. And within Christ is every good and perfect gift, the fulfillment of our souls, good spiritual fruit, and the satisfaction of knowing nothing.

Next week we go over morality and Johannine literature. Oh boy.