You may be wondering, how slowly or quickly we will go through the text of the gospels. Well, that's another great question. You can see from our first text that we are taking on 14 verses from the first chapter of John. That's probably going to be pretty typical. (You may also have noticed that I'm skipping a bit - don't worry, we'll come back to that - this is one small exception to the plan for going chronologically - I'm holding off on the stuff about John the Baptizer until later.)
Usually, we will try to cover a whole episode in the ministry of Jesus, or a whole parable, or teaching, in one session. Remember we are going for the historical story, and more important, the theological meaning, rather than the minute details. We will certainly take historical context into account, but we will not be pouring over maps or getting into things like whether or not there really was a cliff for the demon-possessed pigs to rush over. We will also not get bogged down in word studies, though I will be watching the Greek and filling you in on anything that you need to know. But this is not the kind of Bible study that spends an hour on one verse. It's also not the kind of Bible study where everyone gets to say what it means to them. The point is what it meant to the original authors and the original audience. Of course I will take any and all questions, so the more questions you ask, the longer it will take - but that's for a good reason and I love good questions!
We will also not get into any of the wacky theories that 20th century scholars built their careers on. This is about how the early Christians read the text, and so to be honest I will only be consulting modern commentaries in rare cases. But don't worry, I've done my homework over the course of my career, so I know what to look for and I won't leave out anything super important.
The point of our study is not to "harmonize," the gospels, per se, or reduce them to one gospel story, or even to smooth over differences between them. The differences allow us to see the specific perspectives and intentions of the four gospel writers. More important, the differences allow one gospel to help us interpret another – so while we are not “harmonizing,” we are comparing them with an assumption of a consistency of the story – they are all telling a story that really happened – and we do assume that two of them were eye-witnesses (though Matthew was not there right at the beginning). On the other hand, we have to be intentional about not filtering Jesus through Paul (or later perceptions of Paul) too much, - for example, Jesus does not teach anything like the reformation’s "sola fide" (see my video on that for more). So we're going to let Jesus speak for Jesus.
I call this in-depth, because we are not skipping anything - we will read every passage of the New Testament together, if you stick with me (except will not literally read all the way through the genealogies (lists of names) at the beginning of Matthew and Luke). The point is to reflect on the theological and christological meaning for the faith of the Church - This is what the early Christians cared about, so this is what we will focus on.
One final note - remember that the way Locals works is that until we have 50 supporters, we only get a half hour at a time for these live streams. So we'll with that for now, but please invite your friends so we can get up to 50 supporters and have a full hour for our times together.
In any case, I promise that we will go along fast enough that you won't get bored, but slow enough that you will learn something cool every week.
I can't wait to get started!
Jim
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
Here is our next set of texts - as we get into John chapter 6, we first encounter Jesus feeding the multitudes - in this case 5,000 families!
Now, as you know, there is also an account o Jesus feeding 4,000, and so you may also know that some scholars might speculate that these are just different versions of the same story that circulated and were handed down orally, until they were written down. Even the fact that both stories occur in the same gospel would not stop that kind of speculation. So I thought the first question I would have to ask was whether the Church fathers thought this was one event or two - BUT (and you see where this is going) I forgot that Jesus himself makes reference to two separate events (in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8) so there is no question for the Church fathers - these are two separate events. So it seems that Jesus performed this sign (miracle) of the feeding of the multitudes on two occasions. It's not just one event told two different ways, and it's also ...
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
