Jesus and Justice

Some thoughts...

Noel Castellanos’ “5 Elements of Kingdom Ministry”:

1) Incarnation: We must not only have the same message as Jesus but the same method. You really reach people when you enter their world, their hurt and pain. If you’ve incarnated God’s love into the community of a homosexual, for instance, he’ll realize, Oh, this guy is willing to enter my life. He doesn’t just condemn me. The he’s more capable of hearing our message.

2) Proclamation: We’re told to proclaim the Good News, so this is clearly an essential. Proclaiming the truth in love, and in the context of incarnation, is not forcing it down people’s throats. Proclamation is also about formation, describing the kind of people God shapes us into.

3) Compassion: The Good News is authenticated by our caring (Luke 4). And when we are truly incarnate among the poor, these folks are more than just statistics. They’re your neighbors. They’re your friends. And if you meet a person with a need, compassion leads you to do what you can to meet that need.

4) Restoration/Development: When you live in a neighborhood where the same needs emerge over and over again, then you have to look at the larger picture and begin to fix what’s broken. In Baltimore, a little church took over a struggling public elementary school and revolutionized that neighborhood. They’re not just doing compassion, handing out backpacks to kids. Instead, they saw these kids getting a poor education and said, “We’ve got to be about restoration and development.”

5) Confrontation: The best way to do justice work is to be incarnate in a community. As you work to meet people’s needs through compassion and restoration, you eventually come up against systems and institutions that are keeping people in those conditions, beyond their own irresponsibility or sinfulness. This is when you must identify and confront injustice. We might discover this injustice in our government or schools or police forces or even churches – no institution is immune to injustice.

Zacchaeus - Luke 19:1-10 (NIV)

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.'" But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

With Noel’s 5^th Element in mind, I want to suggest going a step beyond identifying and confronting the systems and institutions that keep people in positions of poverty and hopelessness. While it is true that we must look underneath the immediate circumstances of the poor and the oppressed in order to identify what beyond their own sinful choices is keeping them oppressed, I want to suggest looking even further. The institutions and entities that exploit people are themselves run and staffed by people. While some systems are inherently oppressive, many are only so by virtue of the posture and philosophy of the people sustaining them. We must ask ourselves if confronting the system or institution is the best and first and most biblical response, or whether addressing the lostness and darkness of the people in charge might be more in order.

Perhaps there is no dichotomy. Perhaps doing both simultaneously is a perfectly reasonable strategy, but I’m increasingly convinced that at the bottom of all of our problems, from the failure of institutions to interpersonal conflict, is simple human depravity. This, I believe, is why Jesus dealt with the injustice of the Roman-dispatched Jewish mercenaries known as Tax Collectors by winning the individuals guilty of the oppression. I am aware of no record of Jesus confronting the oppressive system. This is not to say we shouldn’t. There are other places in Scripture where people speak prophetically against corrupt systems. But the way Jesus dealt specifically with both Matthew and Zacchaeus, and particularly Zacchaeus’ response once he was converted, needs to inform our thinking of how to approach justice issues. Are we really getting to the root of the problems we see among the poor when we confront the systems holding them down, or are we not going far enough? If the system was reformed and laws were changed, would that bring transformation or merely relief? I agree that if relief is all we can get in the short term, then it’s worth working for, but if transformation is never addressed, and it can only be addressed by the Cross, are we not fooling ourselves?

An example of what I’m trying to say is the ending of the slave trade. Clearly, it is a good and great thing that Wilberforce worked to abolish it. He brought relief in the name of Jesus to a desperately unjust situation that was causing enormous suffering, and the hemorrhaging simply needed to stop. But the deep wound of racism still festers and bleeds to this day, because until the racist heart is changed by the Gospel, laws can only ameliorate the suffering and relieve the circumstances.

More examples could be cited. My point is that the way that justice and evangelism are connected is illustrated perfectly in the story of Zacchaeus. Jesus won the heart and soul of Zacchaeus. He “came to seek and save the lost”, and Zacchaeus was a very lost oppressor who became redeemed and showed it. When the lost are truly found (supernaturally brought to spiritual life from death and reconciled with their Creator through Christ), they think differently. They have repented of their mindset of death, whatever form it took, and have entered into the life that is truly life (John 17:3). I have a great deal of thinking left to do about this, but I believe I have discovered the core of where my thinking needs to spring from.

Black Men

Living in the city all my life and ministering alongside and among minorities for most of my adult life, I have come face to face with the enormous problems in the Black Community and have had to wrestle, as a White man, with all the questions and implications of where things are and how they got that way. I posted about this some time ago.

I have heard all the theories, seen many attempts to "fix" the problem, engaged in the arguments and debates, and at some small level actually put my hand to the plow for some kind of work toward a solution. Anyone ministering in the city has witnessed the parade of preachers and politicians and social engineers who hurl their efforts, seemingly in vain, at the behemoth of brokenness.

I think we're missing something.

The liberals tend to polarize toward a position that minorities, especially African Americans, are consummate victims. Racism, bigotry, poverty and the lack of education that results from them are the adequate explanation for the current mess. Conservatives polarize to the opposite side: Blacks are making excuses and are completely responsible for their present situation. "If they'd just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, everything would be OK" seems to be much of the conservative mantra.

In real life, it's much more complex than either of those positions. No thinking person can spend an hour in the 'hood and come to any conclusion other than that institutional racism has done devastating damage after 300 years. By the same token, I firmly believe that anyone who is objective cannot deny the role that individual and corporate responsibility play in the overall health of a community, and that these very things have become marginalized in large swaths of the Black Community - by Black people.

With all this in mind, I got this e-mail today. It was birthed in the Black community and contains the seeds, I believe, for real change. See what you think.

The Silent Genocide:Facts about the Devastating Plight of Black Males in America

Only strong, organized, committed and courageous Black parents can stop this genocide. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Join us on Saturday, January 17, 2009, to do the work of Black parents. Celebrate Dr. King's Birthday by doing Dr. King's work!


Facts about the Devastating Plight of
Black Males in America*

Education/Family:
In Chicago, only three out of 100 Black boys earn a college degree by age 25.
In 2006, only 37% of Black males graduated from high school in Chicago (near the U.S. average for Black males); only 19% graduated in Indianapolis and 20% in Detroit.
Just 22 % of Black males who began at a four-year college graduated within six years.
69% of Black children in America cannot read at grade level by the 4th grade, compared with 29% of White 4th-grade children.
The average 17-year-old Black student has the reading and math scores of the average 14- year-old White student.
7% of Black 8th-graders perform math at grade level.
67% of Black children are born out of wedlock.

Employment/Economics:
In Illinois, 47% of all non-institutionalized Black men do not have a job.
In New York City in 2003, only 51.8% of Black men ages 16 to 64 were employed vs. 75.7% of White men and 65.7% of Latino men.
At comparable educational levels, Black men earn 67% of what White men earn.
White males with a high-school diploma are just as likely to have a job and tend to earn just as much as Black males with college degrees.
Blacks make up only 3.2% of lawyers, 3% of doctors and less than 1% of architects in America. Many of these are Black women.
53% of Black men aged 25 to 34 are either unemployed or earn too little to lift a family of four from poverty.
Nationally, 72% of Black high-school dropouts are unemployed.
Black America lost between $72 billion and $96 billion in the recent mortgage fiasco.
The median net worth of a Black family in America is $6,100 vs. $67,000 for a White family.
White men with prison records receive more offers for entry-level jobs in New York City than Black men with identical records (and White men with a prison record are offered jobs just as often - if not more so - than Black men who have never been arrested).

Incarceration/Crime:
Murders of Black males between the ages of 14- and 17-years old rose by 40% between 2000 and 2007. During the same period, murders committed by Black males between the ages of 14- and 17-years old also rose by 38%.
In 2001, the chances of going to prison were highest among Black males (32.2%) and Hispanic males (17.2%) and lowest among White males (5.9%).
Blacks account for only 12% of the U.S. population, but 44% of all prisoners in the United States.
Blacks, who comprise only 12% of the population and account for about 13% of drug users, constitute 35% of all arrests for drug possession, 55% of all convictions on those charges, and 74% of all those sentenced to prison for possession.
In at least 15 states, Black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from 20 to 57 times those of White men.
In 2003, 1,172 Black children and teenagers in the United States died from gunfire.
One in nine Black men between the ages of 20- to 34-years old is incarcerated and one in 15 Black men over 18-years old is incarcerated.
More Black children died in Chicago from gunfire in 2008 than Chicago soldiers died in Iraq.
1.46 million Black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote because of felony convictions.

Only strong, organized, committed and courageous Black parents can stop this genocide. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Join us on Saturday, January 17, 2009, to do the work of Black parents.

Phillip Jackson will speak on these statistics and solutions to these issues on Saturday, JANUARY 17, 2009, on WVON radio on the Kendall Moore Show. You may visit www.WVON.com and click on "Streaming 24/7 WVON" to hear this show at 5:00 pm eastern time, 4:00 pm central time, 3:00 pm mountain time and 2:00 pm pacific time.

* These statistics were compiled from various sources by The Black Star Project. You may email us to request sources at blackstar1000@ameritech.net. To join the movement to save young Black men and to educate Black children, call us at 773.285.9600, email us at blackstar1000@ameritech.net or visit our website at www.blackstarproject.org.

Across the United States, the educational, social and economic outcomes for most Black children are a catastrophe! In the new global educational and economic order, many, if not most, Black American children cannot compete. If ever there were reasons for Black parents to take action, few are more compelling than the ones listed above:
Black parents are responsible for the well-being of Black children. Not the police. Not teachers. Not schools. Not preachers. Not elected officials. Not social service agencies. Black parents must hold the police, teachers, schools, preachers, elected officials, and social service agencies accountable for their actions to support the well-being of Black children.

We will only solve the problems of Black youth to the degree that we create strong, empowered and engaged parents for Black children. Our actions, or inactions, will determine the future of our race. Please join Black parents across America who know that if we are not organized, our children will not be recognized. If we do not speak up, Black children will have no voice. Black parents must advocate as well as educate. We must take responsibility for the education of our children. We will work in our homes, with our families, with our communities, with our schools and with our government to guarantee the proper and successful education of Black children. Passive parental involvement is not enough. Black parents must become active co-managers of our children's destiny. We must become the engineers of their success. We must and will actively participate in every aspect of their lives. Please join the Black Star Project's League of Black Parents and commit to a 90-minute meeting, one day a month, for the sake of your child and the future of our race. By joining the League of Black Parents, you will also join our community PTA chapter so that we can take advantage of existing resources.

Sheep and Goats

WARNING: This is going to be a controversial post for some of you. Enjoy!

As I was walking up the stairs to my office this morning, one of the teachers from our school was commenting on how hard my job must be.

Which part? I asked. I do a lot of things.

The part about getting kids not to love the world.

She and her husband, a former youthworker, are doing some after school stuff with teenagers and apparently she's feeling the pain :o)

I told her that it's not hard at all!

Teenagers who are regenerate have this desire deep inside them to follow Jesus. They are sheep. They hear the voice of the Shepherd and they follow Him (John 10:3-4, etc.). They have AMAZING ups and downs, epic battles with the flesh (and parents), trouble of all kinds with the opposite sex, self image issues we cannot imagine, and yes, a fascination with all the world has to offer.

But I don't have to "get them" to love Jesus. There is this engine, the Holy Spirit, inside them that continually drives them towards God. I have watched this over and over again.

Because I'm not the one who has to "get them" to love Jesus, then I'm not the one who who has to "get them" to not love the world. I exhort them and counsel them and love on them and teach them, and sometimes deliver a godly kick in the pants, but they know innately that the world is hollow and ultimately Jesus is better. So they fall and get up. They land on their feet, even if it's a nail biter for a few years!

The problem, I told the teacher, is the goats. The youth group is full of them at the moment. Many churches are full of them, I believe. In fact, I fear that many pulpits have more than their quota of goats across the country, which explains to a large extent the condition of the church in America. For generations we have spouted a "gospel" that says that Jesus will take away all your problems and give you heaven if you say this little prayer. For generations, Christian parents have completely disengaged from their biblical mandate to disciple their children. For generations, youth ministry people have treated sheep like goats because the kid prayed a prayer at age 5 and we refuse to question his salvation, despite the mocking of God or whatever other deviant behavior we see.

And it's REALLY HARD to get goats to act like sheep. Really hard.

I mean, you can get them to for awhile, but when it really gets hot (like loving Jesus, let's say - or renouncing the world, or loving their neighbor) then they get really feisty. I have concluded, after almost 18 years of youth ministry, that the stupidest thing I can do is try to get kids who clearly are unregenerate to worship or be holy or live in any way like Christians. I need to love and evangelize them, and evangelism is surely the first part of the disciple-making spectrum, but I need to stop trying to disciple people who are not disciples.

Now I know, this whole regeneration thing is a bit controversial... we want to treat everyone like a "child of God". We don't want to "judge" anyone's salvation (and we shouldn't in a declarative sense, since only God knows the heart; but we can certainly question and inspect fruit!). We really want to think that getting the lost kid into a Christian community where he can see Jesus in action will win him. And I'll even go so far as to say that for someone who really knows they're not a Christian, this is probably a good strategy. But it does not work for the kid who thinks he's saved and is not. All it does is kill community in your group.

I have wasted far too much time trying to make dead people act alive. I am grateful that it is the Spirit of God that gives life, and that this life He gives cannot be taken away. My job is simply to fan the flame that God has already put in the soul, not to light the fire; and to proclaim the powerful gospel to those who are not yet lit.

Incarnational 101

We are a foster family.

We recently had a little girl named Klaudia placed with us as a foster child. To be honest, our reasoning behing becoming licensed was because we wanted to adopt a second child, and we could not afford to do another private adoption, as we did with Anisa. By going through the foster care system (DCFS and its various contracted agencies - in our case ECFA) we could go through a foster-to-adopt process and actually be paid for the whole thing rather than going into hock. Nothing like your tax dollars at work!

A little boy named Venson was placed with us last summer, but he ended up being permanently placed with relatives shortly after we got him. So in September we got Klaudia at the age of four months.

Klaudia was born drug-addicted. As a result, she spent the first month of her life in the far from ideal environment of a hospital. Because her birth mom was trying to get her life together and was in rehab, she got her little girl back. Unfortunately, her mom worked a lot and Klaudia was left with various caregivers, which ultimately led to 11 fractures, including 5 broken ribs. Klaudia was removed and placed in the system, which led to our paths crossing.

Here's the hard part: Klaudia cries all the time. Often, she screams uncontrollably. When we first got her, she screamed so bad I honestly believe it could not have been worse if someone was sawing her leg off. It has gotten better, but it's still extrordinarily hard. Too frequently we are awakened to screaming at 5 am. Because of her drug addiction, hospitalzations and abuse, she has significant sensory issues and is delayed several months in her development. This results in weekly appointments with various therapists, representatives of DCFS and ECFA, various social workers, and of course the regular weekly visit with her birth mom.

Klaudia also has a condition called craniosynostosis, which will require cranial surgery later this month. Our lives have been consumed with doctor visits, consent forms, and tests at Children's Memorial. The surgery itself will require the turning upside-down of our entire lives (all 6 of us - me, my wife, my boys Klaudia and Anisa) for some time.

It's insane.

I was teaching on the concept of biblical love a couple weeks ago when I realized that I had not been loving Klaudia. In fact, I was looking very forward to the time when she would go back home. The thought of adopting her is really unrealistic since her mom wants her back and is working toward that end, and the emotional trauma of attaching only to lose her seems to be too much. I have even been contemplating getting out of the whole foster care business entirely and scrapping the idea of any more adoptions. It's just too much.

But I am a slave of Christ. Do I love only when it's gratifying? Do I make my own decisions about my life?

What about the thousands of kids in the system that need homes? After Klaudia, do I just get out for the sake of my own sanity?

Maybe...

But it's not my call.

I had something of an epiphany the other night when we went to a foster parent support group hosted by ECFA. I saw other couples that had 4 or 5 or 6 foster kids, all with significant issues. And they were doing it with love and joy.

At the very least, I need to be wide open. I need to be available to God. What, after all, does it mean to be the "hands and feet of Jesus"? It has to be something tangible, no?

I don't want to sacrifice the health of the rest of my family, and God knows how much we can take, but I am no longer willing to simply say no. Life cannot be about my comfort or what makes me happy if I am to call myself a disciple of Jesus.

So I am open.

And I am learning how to love a difficult little girl who lives in my life and my home.

For All You Pastors Out There...

I'll let the video speak for itself

Is the Resurrection Really True?

I teach a young adult class (18-25) on Sunday mornings that is gradually developing into a viable ministry in our church. Since January, we have been covering the book of 1 Corinthians in some detail, going through each passage exegetically, and to say the least it has been an educational experience for me.

So now we're covering chapter 15, which is basically Paul's apologetic on the resurrection. To stimulate discussion last week, I gave them a very critical article by John Spong, who demands that Easter be reinterpreted and completely dismisses any idea of bodily resurrection. Interestingly, he employs Scripture to make his case.

So the article caused a bit of a stir among my students, many of who had never encountered any serious higher criticism of the Bible. Talk about equipping twenty-somethings for the real world! I had my work cut out for me...

This class is remarkably intelligent - certainly more so than their teacher - with many students in very secular (and often hostile) college environments. As a result, our discussions have been very intense and everyone seems to come to class hungry. It's a teacher's dream! In an effort to really feed and equip these kids, I have written a very brief rebuttal to Spong's article. I have included it below.

Feel free to comment or jump in on the discussion...

What Spong is Saying and My Answer

Spong bases his argument against a bodily resurrection on a deconstruction of the four Gospel narratives. In other words, as expressed in his last paragraph, the Bible itself is the evidence against a bodily resurrection: If one looks at it in order and from the “right” point of view, one will clearly see that the bodily resurrection of Jesus grew into a myth over time.

I want to look at Spong’s main points and respond very briefly to each of them, but first I think it would be profitable to take a quick look at Spong himself to get an idea of what he thinks and where he’s coming from.

Here’s a sample from his website:

http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/
About Bishop Spong
John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson — he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both inside and outside the Christian church. In one of his recent books, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Discover the God of Love (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), this visionary thinker seeks to introduce readers to a proper way to engage the holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

John Shelby Spong on the Terrible Texts of the Bible
RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY: [One of many examples]
"No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6)
This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A veritable renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.

This is from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong
Quoting Spong: “Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number
than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It
therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium.”

Criticisms
Gerald O'Collins, Professor of Fundamental Theology, Gregorian University, Rome,
argued that Spong’s "work simply does not belong to the world of international
scholarship. No genuine scholar will be taken in by this book. ... What is said
about a key verb St. Paul uses in Galatians 1:15f. shows that the bishop [Spong] has forgotten any Greek that he knew. [Spong argued his case based on a Greek word that is not in the passage[4]]... [my] advice for his next book is to let some real experts check it before publication."[5]

One critical book is entitled Can a Bishop Be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong, edited by Peter Moore.

Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a response to Spong's 12 points in 1998, when he was the Bishop of Monmouth. Williams wrote that "... I cannot in any way see Bishop Spong's theses as representing a defensible or even an interesting Christian future. And I want to know whether the Christian past scripture and tradition, really appears to him as empty and sterile as this text suggests."[1]

My point is this: Spong has already decided that a supernatural god is a myth created by the primitive human mind, so he views all Scripture and theology through that lens. In other words, his predispositions color all of his thinking and make him anything but open-minded, and his interpretations of Scripture follow suit. He looks to Scripture to vindicate the position he has already decided on. This has to be taken into account when one reads Spong, just like the Evangelical assumption that there is a God who does supernatural things has to be taken into account when reading Evangelicals.

Spong’s Main Points:

1) Dating of the gospels in relation to Paul
a. The gospels were written after Paul died (late dating) so…
Most liberal scholars prefer later dates for the gospels. Some even a late as the 2nd century. One of the main reasons for this is the prediction of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (See Matthew 24:2; Mark 13:2; and especially the detailed passages in Luke 19:41ff; Lk 21:20). The reasoning is that predictive prophecy is not actually possible, and since the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. the Gospels must have been written afterwards. Such a position makes one blind to evidence to the contrary. There is abundant evidence and sound reasoning to date the gospels much earlier than liberal scholars tend to do. I can provide you with materials if you like.

b. Paul never read the gospels and so…
“Paul never had a chance to read the Easter story in any Gospel. The tragedy of later Christian history is that we read Paul through the lens of the Gospels” (Spong). Even if Paul never had access to the written forms of any of the gospels, this argument has very little credibility. There are two reasons for this: First, the material that the gospels were taken from was commonly known in the early church in the form of hymns and brief creeds, as well as eyewitness accounts and oral histories. Indeed, this is the very material Luke compiled to write his gospel. All of it was commonly known to all Christians before Mark ever wrote his first gospel, so even if the Gospels were not inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul had plenty of access to all the material he needed if indeed he needed it. It is perfectly reasonable to read Paul through the lens of the Gospels. The second reason is that Paul claims he was given the gospel (Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day, 1 Cor. 15:1-11) personally by Jesus Himself, and not from any person (Gal. 1:11-12, cf. 1 Cor. 15:3a). That means he neither relied on a hopped-up myth developed by the early church nor on any other accounts. Jesus gave Paul the same Gospel He gave to the Gospel writers. If this is not true, Paul was either a pathological liar or completely deluded.

c. Paul had a different view of the resurrection
I’ll talk a little more in the section on Paul’s “version” of the resurrection in the section on that issue. For this section, it is sufficient to say that Paul’s view is no different than John’s, Luke’s or anyone else’s. Spong’s dates are wrong, but even if they weren’t, it’s folly to think that the early church was confused about the resurrection. It was the central theme of all its preaching.

2) The bodily resurrection is missing in Mark, the earliest gospel
In Mark 8:31 and 10:34, Jesus predicts His death and resurrection. In Mark 9:9, He states it as a fact. The rest of the book assumes a resurrection (e.g. 12:18-27) and the very idea of resurrection assumes a physical body. In the Hebrew mind, man was a unified whole: Mind, body and spirit. To try to separate the idea of a physical body being raised in Jesus’ predictions of His own resurrection seems to be inconsistent at best. Even if the last few verses of Mark are inserted, the whole book is still a solid argument for an actual resurrection.

3) The resurrection account grew over the years
This position ignores Jesus own predictions of His resurrection in Mark, Paul’s insistence on a bodily resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians (written around 55 A.D.), and the Old Testament prophecies of a resurrected Messiah (Psalm 16:10 cf. Ac. 2:27 and 13:35-37; Isa. 53:11). It also depends on a construct that is unique to liberal scholars who begin with the bias of antisupernaturalism. It is very fair to say that Paul and all the gospels agree on a bodily resurrection. The degree of detail varies from book to book, but that is to be expected in independent eyewitness accounts.

4) The underlying unreliability of Scripture in general and the Gospels in particular (e.g. inconsistent resurrection accounts, etc.)
One has to admit that there are apparent inconsistencies in the Gospel accounts, as well as other problems in Scripture. Taken on a superficial level, these are what account for all the claims of “contradictions” in the Bible from skeptics (though most skeptics would be hard pressed to cite specific examples). There is not sufficient space in this article to make a detailed case for the integrity of Scripture or to answer the specific charges that Spong makes in his article, so I will have to refer you to a wealth of materials that are available regarding both issues. Nonetheless, a few things are worth mentioning. Regarding the apparent inconsistencies in the Gospel accounts, it is noteworthy that external harmonization of the account was never done. If the discrepancies were so problematic, and since there were abundant opportunities to edit out discrepancies over the centuries, why was this never done? Why were the accounts never smoothed out? Brilliant minds have examined Scripture for centuries and yet no one has made a case so convincing that it could free the believing masses from their “delusion” (though infidels.org is really trying). I think the answer is that the accounts were different in the details because they were just that – eyewitness accounts. Nobody would expect four witnesses to any given event to have exactly the same account of every detail. People highlight the things that stand out to them or that they want to emphasize. Things like the number of angels or women at the tomb being inconsistent is not a problem at all, in my opinion. The different writers merely named the ones they felt needed to be named. They did not limit the number of people present. A lot of work has been done to set out an orderly account of the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances using all the information in the gospels, so I can make that available to you. One good resource is The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, as well as numerous scholarly works and commentaries. As for the integrity of Scripture, it is hard to deny the self-revelation God does to the one who actually believes and obeys Scripture (John 14:21). That does not win arguments, but it does bring peace and assurance! There have been so many excellent volumes written on the reliability of Scripture that it is not worth space trying to do that here. Here are some: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (F.F. Bruce); The Case for Christ (Lee Strobel); Systematic Theology Volume 1 (Norman Geisler); Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Kind of entry-level, by Josh McDowell); and many others.

5) What actually happened to the disciples after the crucifixion
Spong says this: “What Paul does suggest is that Easter meant that God had acted to reverse the verdict that the world had pronounced on Jesus by raising Jesus from death into God. It was, therefore, out of God in a transforming kind of heavenly vision that this Jesus then appeared to certain chosen witnesses.” And, “Something happened after the crucifixion of Jesus that convinced the disciples that Jesus shared in the eternal life of God and was thus available to them as a living presence. This experience was so profound that the disciples, who at his arrest had fled in fear, were now reconstituted and empowered even to die for the truth of their vision.” Even Spong has to admit that something really significant happened. It is difficult to imagine the early church preaching the message that it did (Jesus was raised from the dead) and suffering the consequent persecution for that message if they were not convinced of something very powerful. It is what that “something” is that is at stake here. So the disciples saw some kind of vision? An individual may be willing to die for a vision, but to convince thousands of individuals who did not see the vision to die for it is entirely something else. I think perhaps Spong needs to be a bit more skeptical, starting with his own theses. Does he really think that the massive changes wrought by the early church were a result of Jesus’ disciples having a group vision? Even a very convincing one? No. They were willing to die for the same reason we are: A very real and alive Jesus. It is true that I have not seen the risen Jesus in His resurrection body, but I have surely encountered Him nonetheless. Spong might say that is all that happened to the 11. But they also saw Him hanging on a Roman cross. And from the beginning they preached an alive Jesus – not a Jesus “raised into God”, whatever that means. The real problem is the persecution. It makes sense that the Jews would have an issue with the disciples for preaching a physically raised Jesus. What does not make sense is being persecuted for a “vision”. Spong is trying way to hard to demythologize something that is obviously supernatural.

6) Paul never mentions a bodily resurrected Jesus
Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 15 is that: 1) The resurrection of Christ is fundamental and essential to the Gospel, 2) That if there is no resurrection from the dead, then even Christ has not been raised, and if so our faith is futile, and 3) The very nature of resurrection is a physical, supernatural, indestructible body. It is rather difficult to believe that Paul did not have Jesus in mind as well in his description of resurrected people; Jesus’ physical resurrection was his starting point. He even goes so far as to define in detail what that resurrection body is in the last half of 1 Cor. 15. In the 23 verses of 1 Cor. 15:35-58, Paul uses the term swma (sūma) “body” or sarx (sarx) “flesh” 19 times! (15 explicit, 4 implicit) How Spong gets no “body” out of Paul’s description of resurrection, I have no idea. If Spong is right and there is no bodily resurrected Jesus in any of Paul’s writings, then we must assume that Paul was making the bodily resurrection case for everyone except Jesus. That is not Scholarship on Spong’s part. That’s satire.

7) The Bible teaches that Jesus was physically resuscitated
This is particularly troublesome to me, since Spong must know that The Bible does not say this and Christianity has never taught this. He seems to be deliberately and irresponsibly misleading in his very thesis – he’s setting up a straw man he can burn down. Either that or he is working with a completely different set of terms and defining them differently, or, he is completely ignorant of what the Christian faith has taught for two millennia. The Bible teaches that Lazarus et al were physically resuscitated – that is, simply raised from the dead – and that Jesus was resurrected in a supernatural, physical body. So He was also raised from the dead, but very differently: In a body that would never die again. Spong seems to badly cloud the definition of these terms.

Some of Spong’s misrepresentations:

· “No one suggests that Paul ever saw a resuscitated body.” – Of course not. The use of the term “resuscitated body” is misleading and disingenuous. Paul saw the resurrected Jesus in His glory. First, the resurrection body Paul describes in 1 Cor. 15 is not “resuscitated” like Lazarus was. It is supernatural. Second, Jesus makes many appearances in His glorified form, such as in Daniel (Dan. 10:4-6), the Transfiguration (Mt. 17:1-13; Mk. 9:2-13; Lk. 9:28-36), and in Revelation (Rev. 1:12-17). Paul saw the risen, glorified Christ. Paul argues for bodily resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:35-58.

· “Here the distance between the Christianity of biblical scholarship and the Christianity of the fundamentalists opens and begins to widen.” – Spong makes it seem as if the clueless (i.e. not scholarly) fundamentalists are the only ones left who believe in a literal resurrection. This is bad information on two counts. First, the bodily resurrection of Jesus has been held by almost all Christians – Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant – for two thousand years. If anything, it is Spong’s position that is out of the mainstream. Second, Spong redefines fundamentalism. Clearly he is using it in a derogatory fashion to describe all Christians who believe in the supernatural, and the term is clouded enough in contemporary culture that he can get away with it. In reality, the term can be taken in two ways in the contemporary Christian lexicon. There are self-identified Fundamentalists (usually Independent Baptists) who are very conservative and somewhat isolationist. They represent a facet of conservative Evangelicalism. There is also the broader use of the term which describes the large group of Protestants that split off of Mainline denominations in alliance with many conservative denominations in response to the Modernist movement of the late 19th century. These people espoused the “Fundamentals of the Faith” and became today’s Evangelicals. Any other use of the term “fundamentalist” is derogatory and reflects the emerging secular understanding of the term, which is analogous to Islamic fundamentalism.

· “If the body of Jesus was not physically restored to life, the fundamentalists claim, then Easter is fraudulent.” – I already made my point about how misleading this wording is. The fundamentalists’ claim is that Jesus was resurrected, not “physically restored to life.” Spong is playing a semantics game that makes him appear to be making a point, but falls flat.

· “Paul did not envision the Resurrection as Jesus being restored to life in this world but as Jesus being raised into God.” – The first statement is patently false, as 1 Cor. 15:35-58 clearly demonstrates, and the second statement is Spong’s own unique construct. It’s not even clear what “raised into God” means, especially since Spong does not believe in an actual, theistic God. Paul certainly does not ever say Jesus was “raised into God”, and it seems doubtful that so many Christians would have been killed over preaching something so nebulous and innocuous.

· “Both Matthew, who wrote between 80-85, and Luke, who wrote between 88-92, had Mark to guide their compositions. Both changed, heightened and expanded Mark.” – This represents only one of many schools of thought on the dating of the Gospels, and it assumes one built on another. He of course automatically rules out any possibility that the texts were inspired. It is a classic position of theological liberalism and has been thoroughly answered many times.

Summer's Comin!

A little review of last summer's antics...

The Peril of the Perfunctory

This is a poignant quote from A.W. Tozer’s Seven Perils of the Preacher:

“Another danger is that he may develop a perfunctory spirit in the performance of the work of the Lord. Familiarity may breed contempt even at the very altar of God. How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when the sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy one; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things.”

Brothers and Sisters, may we never lose the wonder.