Yet More on The “Many Resurrected Saints”

The “many raised saints” story is an interesting one. I have a few pieces on the web concerning it and the questions it raises:

What happened to the resurrected saints?

More about the resurrected saints

What Happened To The Resurrected Saints? The “Christian Think Tank” Response

One interesting tidbit about the tale of the “many raised saints” found only in Matthew is the probable insertion of the phrase “after his resurrection” which appears to have been inserted so awkwardly into the Greek that it makes the sentences read as though the tombs were opened and the saints raised at Jesusʼs death, but then they lingered about until “after his resurrection” a day and a half later when they finally “entered the holy city.”

Some of course donʼt think that those two little verses about the anonymous “many raised saints” are historical at all but merely midrash added by Matthew, just as Matthew appears to have added incidents in Jesusʼs birth and childhood filling in gaps in knowledge with tales composed to add understanding in a similarly midrashic fashion. (One prominent inerrantist scholar was voted out of the Evangelical Theological Society in the 1980s for acknowledging that there was indeed a case to be made for Matthewʼs use of midrash in his telling of the Jesus story.)

As for inerrantist Christian apologists on the web who acknowledge the ancient use of midrash and even pesher to help try and explain the way some Gospel authors stretched the meanings of Old Testament verses to suit their prior view of “who Jesus was,” please read “The Fabulous Prophecies of the Messiah” which includes comments from Christian apologists at the end.

On this topic of the Gospel authorʼs use of midrash and pesher, even J. P. Holding has listed it among “leading Christian myths” that “OT prophecy fulfillment is a good apologetic. It actually isnʼt useful in the way it was at first. We need to understand (as do Skeptics) Jewish exegesis of the first century. It is not so much that the OT predicted the NT events as that the NT writers looked at history and sought OT passages that echoed what they had seen. This does not mean that there is not actual predictive prophecy at all (for even then God may have orchestrated the pattern) but rather that we cannot present an apologetic on this basis as we normally have; or else we are forced into a corner of explaining ie, why the NT allegedly uses OT passages “out of context.”

Personally, I suspect that the ancient world was generally more mysterious and wondrous than todayʼs and average people were more capable of believing stories or weird strange tales, and capable of repeating them and embellishing them as well. The story of many raised saints, the story of a bodily ascension, the story of a resurrection. I donʼt doubt that Christians were motivated in their beliefs, nor that Christians were motivated to compose not one, but three additional variant endings to Markʼs Gospel, none of them apparently original to that Gospel, and continued to compose additional Gospels and Acts. Truth telling does not seem to have been as important as convincing themselves and others of their beliefs. But certainties are more difficult to come by once Christianity began being examined by more rigorous standards. Historians are not easily cowed by partisan stories of miracles, or by miraculous partisan tales of how various religions allegedly began. Jerusalem itself was turned into rubble in 70 A.D. but the Romans, rubble such that Josephus pointed out if they hadnʼt left the towers of the city standing, one might even doubt that such an immense proud city such as Jerusalem ever had stood on that same spot. So thereʼs no evidence, and no non-partisan writings aside from Josephusʼs mention of Jesus, and even he would have gotten his brief paragraph of info from partisan believers not from actually having seen Jesus himself. The Gospels themselves are written without the authorʼs identifying themselves, and one could read all of the inerrantist and non-inerrantist historians one wants to try and guess who wrote them, and remain uncertain. (And I say that having read Holdingʼs collection of arguments for traditional authorship.)

Nuff said for now, I doubt any single argument can change another personʼs mind that has built up connections with other arguments in a web-like fashion over time, or relieve them of the doubts they may have.

Cheers,
Ed

The Brain-Mind Problem, C. S. Lewis's "Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism," and its Modern Day Defender, Victor Reppert

A list of resources and links in which Christian philosophers disagree whether a Christian should be a brain-mind monist or brain-mind dualist.

I have been discussing brain-mind matters with the Christian philosopher Vic Reppert for years, even before his book was published and before he began his blog. See Vicʼs blog, named after his book, “C. S. Lewisʼ Dangerous Idea”. I am a fan of Vicʼs expertise and composure, including his acknowledgment of arguments contrary to his philosophical and theological opinions. There is agnosticism mingled with his Christian faith—a healthy proportion—so far as I can tell. But that comes from his willingness to remain informed by all sides and to remain aware of unanswered questions and uncertain variables.

One might take note especially of some comments made by Vic concerning intellectual performances by freethinkers Drange (arguing against a proponent of Bahnsenʼs views) and Parsons in debates with Christian philosophers. Apparently Vic and even the younger Christian philosopher, Jason, have been impressed by some points freethinkers Drange and Parsons have raised.

Vic also admits that there are a variety of views held even by Christian philosophers regarding the brain-mind question, including pro-physicalist views. See also the Christian debate book published in May 2005, In Search Of The Soul: Four Views Of The Mind-body Problem, published by Inter-Varsity (the same Christian press that published Vicʼs book, C. S. Lewisʼs Dangerous Idea, two years previously) there are some “physicalistic” views represented. See also this book published Jan. 2006 Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Current Issues in Theology) And Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature And Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate

My own comments can be found at Vicʼs blog and in a few articles at my website.

Iʼd sooner give science at least a couple more centuries of patient investigation of the brain-mind before coming out with premature proofs or disproofs. I also suspect that brain-minds do not come together all at once, but that just as the brain develops, a mind also takes time and a wealth of experiences to develop and incorporates more sensory input and data each second than any of us are consciously aware of, and that even at the moments of creation of memories of untold numbers of things we experience, we are probably unconscious of all the connections between each memory that happen at their creation. And all the thoughts we later take for granted and the connections they have with reality are likewise taken for granted as something automatic, but in fact it all took a lifetime to build up.

There is also the question of “commonsense” responses to the brain-mind question, and of “commsense” itself, as elucidated in an article in The Philosopherʼs Magazine by David Papineau, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Kingʼs College, London and author of The Roots of Reason and Thinking about Consciousness (Oxford University Press). Papineauʼs article is titled, “The Tyranny of Commonsense,” and in it he says, “Everyday thinking embodies a rich structure of assumptions about the mind, and it is by no means clear that all these assumptions are sound. In particular, there are many recent scientific findings that cast substantial doubt on our intuitive view of the mind. For a start, take Benjamin Libetʼs work on the genesis of actions. Libetʼs experiments indicate that, at least when it comes to basic bodily movements, our conscious choices occur a full third of a second after neural activity in the brain begins to prompt the behaviour. This certainly casts doubt on our intuitive conviction that our actions are instigated by our conscious choices. Again, the work of David Milner and Melvyn Goodale on the separation of the dorsal and ventral streams in visual processing (the “where” and “what” streams) suggests that our basic bodily movements arenʼt guided by our conscious visual awareness but by some more basic mechanism. And then there are the many experiments on “change blindness.” These show that we often fail to see large visible changes occurring right in front of us, and so question the intuitive compelling idea that we are aware of pretty much everything within our field of vision. However, when philosophers come across this kind of work, they donʼt view it as an exciting challenge to the everyday view of the mind. Rather, their first reaction is to distrust the interpretation of the scientific experiments. In their view, there is no way that our everyday view of the mind can be threatened by scientific findings. Our intuitive conception of the mind is sacrosanct, so there must be something wrong with scientific arguments that cast doubt on it.”

See also the book, The Illusion of Conscious Will.

I suspect that brain-minds “emerge” since surprising phenomena occur when a glowing stick is subjected to slightly higher and higher levels of oxygen because at some point it bursts into flame, just as surprising things occur when you add one more alphabet block to a pile because at some point you can suddenly form many more words from the letters on all the blocks in that pile. Both analogies were used by the Christian brain physiologist (also a founder of the journal, Experimental Brain Science) D. M. MacKay in his book The Clockwork Image (Intervarsity Press), in which he concluded that Christians need not be afraid of brain-mind monism, because God can preserve the data that is us in some other format after this body dies just as we can preserve songs in formats other than their original formats). “Emergence” has also been championed by a non-Christian philosopher of brain science, Roger Sperry.

Andrew M. Bailey, a young philosopher at the Christian college of BIOLA lists some reasons he too is attracted to physicalism (of an emergent yet non-reductive sort), adding in his blog that “substance dualism remains a (miniscule) minority position among philosophers of mind, despite the traction that more modest forms of dualism have recently found. Substance dualists like J.P. Moreland (and the rest of the Biola crew) [not to forget Platinga] do not yet have reason for triumphal celebrations.” See also Bailey on physicalism here and links to his other pieces here.

Christians who remain in the fold (but are “born again and again and again”)?

Christians at ExploreFaith.org were asked, “What proof is there that Christianity is not a myth created to assuage our fears about death?” I donʼt want to spoil the surprise of their first reply (especially if youʼre only used to dealing with Christians who believe they hold all the proofs of God in their back pockets), so please click here to read it.

The existence of Christians like those at ExploreFaith.org is evidence that for some religious believers there can never be reason enough to leave the fold, no matter how many “questions of faith and doubt” one has. The website features a cadre of famous editors and/or contributors including Marcus Borg, Bart D. Ehrman, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Phyllis Tickle in addition to ministers of different denominations (Anglican, Catholic and Protestant) and at least one rabbi and Buddhist spokesperson as well.

Jon Sweeney is one of the editors of the site, and the author of Born Again And Again: Surprising Gifts Of A Fundamentalist Childhood (pub. Aug. 2005). Although Sweeney moved away from his fundamentalist upbringing, he refuses to give up the idea that we are all born again… and again. (One reviewer pointed out that “Sweeneyʼs practice of openness and hospitality make this autobiographical journey something special. His respect for his fellow Christians, even those with different beliefs, is something we should all emulate in our own spiritual journeys”—published in The Lutheran: The Magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, November 2005)

Seeing how open, honest, compassionate (and in control of their tongues) as are the Christians at ExploreFaith.org makes me wonder why inerrantists canʼt be more like them?

Barbara Brown Taylor is on the editorial board of explorefaith.org, and even her short Vita is long! [Ten years ago Baylor University published a list of the worldʼs “most effective” English-speaking preachers and only one of the top twelve was a woman: Barbara Brown Taylor. After having had volumes of her sermons published, and spoken round the country and overseas, she surprised her growing number of admirers by resigning from her church and accepted a teaching “chair of religion” at a local liberal arts college. Taylor isnʼt the first to leave parish work in search of a second career as a professor. Religion departments are full of clerics and/or former clerics. But very few so honestly and so masterfully compose the memoirs walking the reader through the conscious and subconscious hopes and fears of all the years of “church life.” Not that Taylor betrays parishioner confidences. Her writing, rather, covers interior ground.—Evelyn Bence]

Taylorʼs new revealing book is titled, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (Harper, May 2006).

Hereʼs an excerpt:

“By now I expected to be a seasoned parish minister, wearing black clergy shirts grown gray from frequent washing. I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.

“Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Sometimes I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering at an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me—that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human—seems important enough to witness to on paper. This book is my attempt to do that.”

Taylorʼs website also features an address she gave at the Washington National Cathedral in June, 2006, a few paragraphs of which appear below:

“If my other books have been whole milk books, this is my single malt scotch book, which is the main thing I want to speak with you about tonight. After twenty years of telling the public truth—the truth I believed was both true for all and good for all, or at least all within the sound of my voice—my first attempt at telling the private truth—the truth that may only be true or good for me—well, that was quite a stretch. Clergy spend a lot of time talking about what is right, in case you hadnʼt noticed. For once, I thought I would concentrate on what was true—just for me, from my limited point of view on planet Earth—in hopes that might be helpful to someone else trying to do the same thing.

“Making the move from sermon to memoir has been one of the more strenuous passages in my life, and it also makes the reviews a whole lot scarier to read. A couple of weeks ago I received one via e-mail with “Review of You” in the subject line. Just for the record, my mother confirms that everything in the book is true…

“A preacher who wants to keep his or her job would do well to avoid trying to say anything true about sex, money, politics, war, or existential despair in church. It is also not a good idea to question established readings of scripture or tradition…

“While I knew plenty of clergy willing to complain about the high expectations and long hours, few of us spoke openly about the toxic effects of being identified as the holiest person in a congregation. Whether this honor was conferred by those who recognized our gifts for ministry or was simply extended by them as a professional courtesy, it was equally hard on the honorees. Those of us who believed our own press developed larger-than-life swaggers and embarrassing patterns of speech, while those who did not suffered lower back pain and frequent bouts of sleeplessness. Either way, we were deformed.

“We were not God, but we spent so much tending the God-place in peopleʼs lives that it was easy to understand why someone might get us confused…

“In 1997, after fifteen years of full time parish ministry, I left my little church in the north Georgia foothills of the Appalachians to become a college teacher. My soul was sunburned, for one thing. I thought there was a chance I had lost my vocation, for another, although I continued to preach and to teach preaching in between my undergraduate classes on everything from the religions of the world to the life and letters of Paul.

“The teaching was and is wonderful. I get to work with nineteen and twenty year olds—an age group I saw very little of in church. I get to ask the questions instead of providing the answers, which is a great freedom and relief. I also get to give grades, which clergy only do in their secret fantasies. (I am sorry, Mr. Smith, but your efforts have been so minimal that I am afraid you have flunked Lent.) I am still a Master of Divinity—isnʼt that an interesting name for a theological degree?—but more importantly to me now, I am a member of the Department of Humanities, whose truth-telling has taken a decidedly private turn.

“My last book came out six years ago—a long time, for a wordy person. When people asked me what the hold up was, I told them I had lost my long time editor at Cowley Publications, which was true, but I had also lost my voice—or my voice was changing, anyway, and I did not yet trust it enough to put anything in print. I was no longer a parish priest. Many of my old certainties about life and faith had slipped from my hands.”

Add to the above a few more brief quotations from Taylorʼs book:

“I learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty.”

“I empty the bag of my old convictions on the kitchen table to decide what I will keep.” [Ultimately what she keeps will not satisfy orthodox Christians, as it has more to do with faith (as a verb) than with beliefs.—Evelyn Bence]