Jesus, Philip and our identity

 Luke 24 36b-48(49)

The two disciples who had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus tell the apostles in Jerusalem:

³⁶ While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷ They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. ³⁸ He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your hearts? ³⁹ Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

⁴⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. ⁴¹ And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴² They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³ and he took it and ate it in their presence.

⁴⁴ He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms about me[i].” ⁴⁵ Then he opened their mind to comprehend the Scriptures. ⁴⁶ He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷ and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ And, behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you – but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Lord, bless what I say that is true, and correct my errors in the minds of these kind hearers. Amen

With even the most prominent people, there can be confusions about identity.

Prince Phillip told the story of when he and the Queen (when she was still Princess Elizabeth) visited the US in 1951. Churchill had just won the General Election, and a splendid but somewhat confused elderly lady greeted the Queen with “I’m so pleased your father’s been re-elected!”

Somebody standing next to her said “No, No dear, that was Winston Churchill”. At which point the lady turned to Phillip and said “O I’m so pleased to meet you!”

But here there is no confusion about Jesus’ identity.  In Luke’s account, the women (inducing Mary Madgalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James) who come to the tomb are told by “two men in dazzling apparel” that Jesus is risen, but when they tell the apostles they are not believed.  Then Jesus appears to two disciples (one called Cleopas) on the road to Emmaus. The Catholic & Orthodox traditions suggest that this is the same as Clopas in John 19, whose wife was one of the women at the Cross. But they don’t recognise him until he breaks bread with them and vanishes. So the two disciples rush back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles, who say “The Lord has risen indeed” and has appeared to Simon.  And then, for the first time, the risen Jesus appears in the midst of them.

Before we get onto this passage, its worth noting two important points. First, we’re pretty sure that Luke names his sources. Luke is saying: I actually spoke to Cleopas, Joanna and the two Marys; this is how I know. Secondly: all four Gospels agree that it was the women who first knew about the resurrection, but only Luke tells us that they told the apostles but were not believed. This is certainly not a story you would make up if you were trying to convince people of the resurrection! Nor if you were trying to show the heroic Acts of the Apostles in a good light. Luke includes it because he’s convinced it’s true, and important. (Luke BTW is full of stories where the women come off better than the men. He tells of Mary, Martha’s sister, sitting alongside the other disciples at Jesus’ feet – this is obscured in English translations but in the Greek, para-kathetheisa, it’s perfectly clear). And in Acts he pays a lot of attention to Priscilla, who I think was the author of Hebrews).

And while they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said Shalom – It’s the normal greeting: it literally means “peace” but it doesn’t just mean the absence of strife, it is God’s peace, that surpasses all understanding.  The Psalm set of the day (Psalm 4) concludes:

⁸ In peace I will both lie down and sleep well

For You, LORD, solely, make me safely dwell.

But they are startled and terrified. Why? Well partly because (as we know from John’s Gospel) they kept the door locked for fear of the Jewish authorities. But also because they think they must be seeing some kind of ghost or apparition. Matthew, Mark (and John) all tell the story of the disciples being frightened when Jesus came to them walking on water, for the same reason. So Jesus does what he needs to do to prove to them that he is not a ghost. They can touch him, and he eats with them. This does not, of course, mean Jesus believed in ghosts, just that he knew what the disciples believed about ghosts. And then he explains:

Everything must be fulfilled that is written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms about me.” Then he opened their mind to comprehend the Scriptures.

The whole of the Old Testament (the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms) points to Jesus, and only in the light of Christ opening our minds can we comprehend the scriptures.  The problem with the Pharisees and with the Jewish leaders was not that they didn’t know the scriptures – they knew it inside out!  But they didn’t comprehend them: the word (suniEmi) literally means “bring together” but in the NT it occurs 26x (and 8x in Luke/Acts) meaning comprehension or insightful understanding. All scripture must be read in the light of Christ. The Lord who has truly suffered, truly died, and has risen indeed!

There’s another interesting point in the Greek which doesn’t normally come across in translation. The NIV says “he opened their minds” but the Greek is singular: he opened their mind. Luke says in Acts they were “all continuing steadfastly with the same mind (homo-theumadon) in prayer” and Jesus in John prays that the disciples “may be perfectly one”.

Jesus says that his disciples are witnesses to these things, but he says something more. He is going to send forth the Holy Spirit (“the promise of my father”) on them and from then they will be clothed with power from on high and can go out from Jerusalem and change the whole world. As they did. The word for “send forth” is exapostellw the same root as apostle.

So what does this mean for us?  

It’s clear that something happened at the first Easter!  A tiny band of utterly demoralised followers of an executed Rabbi and wonder-worker, who never even wrote a book, became a movement that conquered the mighty Roman Empire and 2,000 years later has roughly 2Bn people worldwide. The disciples were very clear what had happened: the Lord had risen indeed!  And no-one has ever been able to offer a credible alternative explanation that fits the facts.

Georges Lemaitre was a brilliant cosmologist who showed in 1927 that what we now call the Big Bang provided a solution to Einstein’s equations. This idea was strongly resisted – it sounded far too much like Creation (and Lemaitre was also a Catholic Priest) but in 1965 scientists discovered the Cosmic Background Radiation which is essentially the echoes of the Big Bang throughout the Universe.

In a somewhat similar way, we too are witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection. We cannot see the event itself, any more than cosmologists can see the actual Big Bang: but can read the careful accounts of Luke and others, drawing on eyewitness testimony. And we can also see for ourselves, nearly 2,000 years later, the echoes of the resurrection throughout the world. “Clothed with power from on high” we, as a church, are called to proclaim the Gospel, so that (to use Peter’s words from Acts) “times of refreshing may come from the Lord”.

This is not simply an individual effort. We are all called to play our part in the Body of Christ, each with the gifts we are given. We are not all evangelists, but we must all support the spread of the Good News in the ways we are best able. It is a collective effort, best achieved when we are “all continuing steadfastly with the same mind in prayer.” And remember, we are not on our own. Jesus says (Mat 18.20) “for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” -the same words as Luke uses in this passage.

Archbishop Justin said this of Prince Phillip: “He knew who he was, and his faith was central to who he was and how he lived his life. He worked out his call to serve and follow Christ in the context of his own unique calling.” None of us has anything like that public profile. But we are each equally beloved in God’s eyes. God cares for each and every person just as much as He cares for the most celebrated. We each have our own unique calling, to serve and follow Christ.

This is our story. This is our song. This is our identity. And let us pray, that as we serve, and as we help to bring the good news to people who need it so badly, they will be inspired to say, without any confusion, “O I’m so pleased to meet you!”

Jesus and the Gentiles

I often wonder about the meaning of the passages in the Gospels where Jesus states that he only came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Is it possible that St. Paul invented the notion that Jesus's message was universal and ought to be spread to the Gentiles as well? Especially given the pervasive theory that Paul's visions were the result of epileptic fits, is it possible that Jesus never actually saw himself as the proclaimer of a universal message, but rather simply as a Jewish sage? My main question is what evidence do we have that the notion that the Gentiles ought to be evangelized was not simply invented by Paul, and that passages such as John 3:16 and Matthew 28:19 were not simply written as a reflection of a Pauline view of Christ, rather than as an accurate description of how Jesus himself viewed his mission.

Response:  There are so many instances in the Gospels of Jesus reaching out beyond the Jews that it is impossible to (sensibly) believe that they are all fabricated. Consider the Woman of Samaria for example.

Do we immediately go to Heaven?

I read an article from a prominent Christian (ironically can't remember his name!) who says we won't go to the Christian ideal of Heaven right away but that we'll have a period 'resting' before, waiting for the New Creation. Is that so? if so, how long do we suppose the wait will be and won't it be dull? I am half aware of what the answers might be but just want to 'check' that I haven't got it entirely wrong!

Response:  Our hope is of Resurrection into a New Heaven and a New Earth, with Resurrection bodies. This is not exactly “going to heaven” in the traditional mythological sense.

What I suspect is that the first thing we will know after our death is our resurrection, and that the time between we will have been “asleep” as the Bible says.

On the other hand Jesus tells the “thief” (actually probably a brigand) “this day you will be with me in paradise”.

The impact of Jesus on history

I sent an additional response clarifying the extent to which the life of Jesus and his amazing impact on history can be regarded as evidence (that a scientist might accept - though not of course scientific evidence) for the existence of God:  
There are 3 religious leaders with more than 1bn followers today: Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. The spread of Buddhism and Islam are easy to explain and there is little controversy about the historical outlines.  But Jesus was executed in his 30s having written nothing and attained no political power, his handful of demoralised followers went into hiding and were persecuted by the authorities.  Yet within 350 years they had taken over the world’s greatest empire. The only explanation given for this astonishing transformation, which is consistently offered by all the sources from the people involved, is the Resurrection and subsequent divine inspiration of the growth of the Church.

I am not, of course, suggesting that there is no conceivable alternative explanation (maybe Thetans in UFOs manipulated the whole thing?) but simply that there is no alternative explanation that is remotely plausible. The only reason people reject the standard explanation is that it would have uncomfortable implications for them, and doesn’t fit in with their preconceptions about the world.

Extract from the questioner's response: As I discovered when I did an exhaustive study on it many years ago, the NT includes a set of precepts that together form the best possible structure to get human beings to work together with maximum effectiveness  (eg any commercial organisation that could set itself up in a way that ticked as many of the relevant boxes to the same degree would be a world-beater).

There is of course no doubt that whether or not of supernatural origin, and even stripped of its supernatural content, much of Jesus' teaching was that of a genius  (cf Mahatma Ghandi: "The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest piece of wisdom ever written.") and that quality no doubt added weight to the whole message.

Reply: Thanks. I’m glad you see the ethical teachings of the gospel as a work of genius and pretty much the optimum that has ever been devised.  But this leaves a big problem, because the same genius also made outrageous claims about his own cosmic importance, (Son of God, will judge the living and the dead etc…) and the same people who transmitted these claims were convinced that he rose again after he died.

Given the situation by say AD 150-200 of a pretty clearly articulated gospel message for which people are willing to give their lives it is not incomprehensible, though  still very remarkable, from a secular PoV that it prevailed. But the reason it got to this stage is that people knew people who knew people who had experienced the resurrection and the other phenomena described in the Gospel and Acts, and were indeed willing to give their lives for its truth.

No-one would give their life for something they knew to be a lie. Not only had Jesus’ body disappeared (which could have been the work of grave-robbers, although anyone who had come forward to the authorities saying they had done this would have been richly rewarded) but the disciples were utterly convinced that they had seen, touched and eaten with Jesus after his resurrection.

The only secular explanation that is remotely credible at the physical level is that Jesus somehow survived the crucifixion and then fooled the disciples.  But this requires the greatest moral genius to be a fraud and a liar who would knowingly con his closest friends into laying down their lives for a lie.

Is there any evidence for the existence of God

I listened to your brief piece on Radio 4 this morning with great interest, and it may be that you can offer an answer to a question that has been central to a discussion in which I have been involved over the the last few months.

It is this:

In the sense that any scientist would use the term, is there or is there not any actual evidence that points indisputably to the existence of God?

I should add that I do not find the argument that the mere rationality of the universe to be evidence of a creator, and my current position is that of seeing the existence of a deity as a mere assumption that some people choose to make.

Response: The existence of God is obviously not a scientific question, because the Ultimate Creator is not a part of the Universe on which one can do experiments.  However there is certainly evidence which points to the existence of God. You ask about “points indisputably” as though you want a single piece of evidence which cannot possibly be interpreted in any other way, but that is not really how evidence works, even in science.

Even in physics, the most “cut and dried” of the sciences, the reason we believe in the existence of things we can’t directly observe (such as atoms, quarks, dark energy, quantum fields) is not because a single experiment gives a knock-down proof but because a conceptual framework in which these entities exist makes better sense of more data than alternatives.

Consider, for example:

1. The existence and rational intelligibility of the universe.
2. The ubiquitous human experience of God
3. Our deep sense that love, meaning, purpose and moral values are real and fundamental and not just subjective
4. The life of Jesus and the immense impact that it has had upon the world.

I think most atheists would say that (a) is just an inexplicable fact (though it’s obviously not impossible to explain, they just don’t like the only explanation on offer), (b) and (c) are due to some kind of mistaken cognitive bias (without providing any evidence that it is mistaken),  and avoid (d) (or indulge in some waffle offering supposed “causes” that are completely disproportionate to the impact Jesus has had on history). But even if we concede, as we do, that the atheist responses to each of a, b, c, d are not so outlandish as to rule them out altogether as rational responses, they are each pretty improbable.

Cumulatively, therefore, the evidential value of (a-d) is extremely strong (I have described it as “almost overwhelming”).  Were it not for the arguments against the existence of God, massive anti-religious propaganda in certain countries, and the fact that belief in God also entails behavioural changes which most people are reluctant to attempt, then atheism would be even rarer than it is at present (maybe 5-10% of humanity, most of whom are in China).

I hope this helps and will see what John has to add.

John says: “I thought your response was excellent. If you wanted you could add [from John]: Modern philosophy has come to recognise that logically strict proof is seldom available (Kurt Gödel showed that even arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency) and that what we should seek is best (well-motivated) explanation. I think that Nicolas’s reply shows that theistic belief is a best explanation of significant human experience”

There was a long and interesting subsequent e-correspondence. Here are a few key points - though I should stress that the questioner said a lot more than these extracts indicate and they don't by any means do full justice to his ideas.

Follow-up point: I think I need to clarify the point of my enquiry somewhat, as follows:
There are three logical possibilities:

• No such being as God actually exists
• The being called God exists, but has no objective effect on the universe in which we live
• God exists and (on occasions) affects the universe in which we live (ie is the cause of happenings that would not be explicable in any other way).

Subjective impressions are relevant only insofar as the existence of such impressions is itself evidence to be considered. (eg If someone tells us that he has just seen a pink unicorn, and if we judge that he actually believes what he is saying, then that might be clear evidence of his mental state, but would be probably not be regarded as evidence that such a creature existed.) 

Response: I think your basic mistake is to talk of “happenings that would not be explicable in any other way.”  That’s just not how the world works. Take someone you believe to exist but haven’t met personally – perhaps Nelson Mandela.  It’s quite reasonable to say that Nelson Mandela caused the peaceful ending of Apartheid.  But there are plenty of conceivable explanations for the peaceful ending of Apartheid that do not involve Nelson Mandela. Indeed it is conceivable that Nelson Mandela doesn’t exist and is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by actors and statesmen and the media. I agree of course that such a view would be bonkers in the extreme and one that no reasonable person would hold.  But the point is that “I will not believe in X unless there is no conceivable alternative explanation” is an approach which no reasonable person takes to any topic (other than belief in God) and if this standard were applied you wouldn’t believe in anything.

This is particularly relevant to your trope about “subjective impressions”  But we can’t discount testimony as a source of knowledge. Even in science, at least 99.999% of what we believe to be true is because we have testimony from other people. When they report experiments or observations or calculations we believe that in principle they could be checked, but we almost never check them ourselves (and indeed the number of published scientific papers where the experiments and analyses are checked by third parties is frighteningly low).  As for history ….

It’s possible that you are stuck in the classic left-brain trap of denying the objective reality of other people’s perceptions – but you need to understand that this is a fundamental philosophical mistake.  There is no simple mechanical algorithm that will determine truth (that’s a theorem BTW) we have to exercise judgement.

You can, if you choose, decide to live as though the world were meaningless and pointless, as though love and beauty were mere illusions, and so forth.  Or you can wake up to the glorious love of God in Jesus Christ, and live a life full of meaning, purpose and love.

The choice is yours – and I hope this might help a bit!

Relationship between Old Testament and Christian faith

My question for you and the Rvd. Polkinghorne concerns the relationship between the Old Testament and Christian faith.  Specifically, in light of historical scholarship that casts doubt on the historicity of much of the Old Testament, how are we, as Christians, to deal with situations in which Jesus refers to figures such as Moses and Abraham who may not have existed in a real, historical sense. 

As a Christian university student who attempts to be faithful, but is plagued with doubts, I worry that such a situation would destroy the very foundation of Jesus's ministry.  And the issues raised here say nothing of other parts of the Old Testament that seem downright immoral (e.g. 2 Kings 2:23-25). 


Response:  I don’t think there is much reason to think that Abraham and Moses never existed. The fact that there is no reference to Moses in extant Egyptian writing simply proves that monarchies don’t preserve stories where the monarch comes out in a very bad light.  Almost everyone who No doubt the details of the stories about them have been modified in the telling to make the necessary theological points: the Bible is neither science nor what moderns would consider history (a category that was unknown in the ancient world) but an inspired set of writings that tell truths about the relationship between God and humanity.

However suppose for the sake of argument that a story that Jesus quotes from the Old Testament is legendary (say Moses and the Burning Bush).  Let’s also suppose for the sake of argument that Jesus knew it was legendary*. He is trying to get the Saducees to understand the reality of the resurrection.  He knows that they accept that this story tells fundamental truths about God. So he uses the fundamental truths that they do accept to get them to understand a fundamental truth that the don’t accept.

After all, there is absolutely no reason to think that the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son refer to specific historical figures.  But this doesn’t make what Jesus says, based on their stories, any less valuable.

As for the “immoral” bits of the OT – we need to remember that all scripture must be read in the light of Christ. My favourite example of this is St Benedict interpreting the (apparent) blessing on bashing babies brains out in Psalm 137 as an injunction to nip sins in the bud.  We discuss all this in Questions of Truth which I hope you’ll find helpful.

* This is not self-evident: it’s clear (at least to me) that Jesus limited his omniscience as well as his omnipotence and omnipresence when he became incarnate.

Wouldn't Jesus have been buried in a shallow grave?

May I ask what answer you would give to those who say that Jesus, to Rome, a crucified criminal, would have been buried in a shallow grave with other criminals rather than in the garden tomb?

Response: Clearly Jesus was a very unusual figure and there is no reason to expect that he would have been treated in the “usual” way. Had there been a non-empty tomb/grave the roman and Jewish authorities could have put a stop to all this talk about resurrection immediately.