Thomism is Aristotelianism viewed through a Christian lens. For instance:
“The Eucharist, a Catholic mystery, needs Aristotle's thought to establish its philosophic legitimacy. Scholasticism, with its categories of ‘substance,’ ‘accidents,’ ‘genera,’ ‘substantial forms,’ is the sole authorization of this ontological three card monte which permits affirmation of the bread really, not symbolically—‘literally’ and not ‘figuratively,'
Christian apologist: In his Of True Religion, Saint Augustine describes hell as a place where there is no truth and no reasoning, because there is no shining of the light of the Logos. This makes sense: rationality is the distinctly human feature, and hell is where humanity is in ruins.
Response: So God makes it metaphysically impossible for anyone in hell to ever change, locking people into eternal Logo-less straight jackets, thus ensuring that all possible change (via supernatural healing, new experiential knowledge, introspection, repentance, etc.) is impossible?
Augustine of Hippo Refuting Heretic |
Augustine was the first Christian theologian to write a biblical defense of the view that the lost will suffer forever in hell. If youʼre familiar with the way that previous church fathers — even those who believed in eternal torment — wrote, youʼll recognize that this is something new. This was almost a systematic case for eternal torment, and due to its length (compared with anything that had come before) and Augustineʼs major influence, it became the standard. It took some time for dissenters to again be heard with any significant volume against this backdrop. See Augustineʼs City of God (written soon after the year 410) Book 21.
The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia repeats some of Augustineʼs arguments when it points out:
The Holy Bible is quite explicit in teaching the eternity of the pains of hell. The torments of the damned shall last forever and ever (Revelation 14:11; 19:3; 20:10). They are everlasting just as are the joys of heaven (Matthew 25:46). Of Judas, Christ says: “it were better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). But this would not have been true if Judas was ever to be released from hell and admitted to eternal happiness. Again, God says of the damned: “Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched” (Isaiah 66:24; Mark 9:43, 45, 47). The fire of hell is repeatedly called eternal and unquenchable. The wrath of God abideth on the damned (John 3:36); they are vessels of Divine wrath (Romans 9:22); they shall not possess the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10; Galatians 5:21), etc.
Source
But Augustine went even further. He taught that the memories of the redeemed in the future kingdom of God will be not only supernaturally maintained but enhanced such that they retain all the knowledge of their past sufferings on earth as well as knowledge of the eternal sufferings of the lost in hell, because only by carrying such knowledge around with them for eternity can they truly appreciate what their own salvation means. Otherwise at some point in eternity they might forget what they were saved from, and not remain eternally grateful to God.
To quote Augustine,
…their intellectual knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted not only with their own past woes, but with the eternal sufferings of the lost. For if they were not to know that they had been miserable, how could they, as the Psalmist says, forever sing the mercies of God? (Psalm 89:1)… Those who shall be in torment shall not know what is going on within in the joy of the Lord; but they who shall enter into that joy shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness.
Source 1 and Source 2
Later Christian writers would expand on Augustineʼs point but it was now new. In The Apocalypse of Peter the saved witness the torments of the damned. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, those about to be rescued watch Christ throw the wicked into the pit, Tartarus. Earlier still, there were passages in the Bible that depict something similar. You can skip to the end of this post to read them.
Thomas Aquinas would later argue, based on similar premises, to a conclusion similar to Augustineʼs. Keep in mind such a view became one of the hallmarks of Christianity as supported by some of Christianityʼs leading thinkers as we will see below.
Source
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Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas [center] over the Heretics. |
According to Aquinas the blessed will not pity the unhappiness of the damned. For we choose to have compassion when we wish the suffering of others to stop, and so when we do not wish their suffering to stop, we have no such compassion. Since it is impossible to stop the suffering of the damned, and because it would in any case be contrary to Divine justice, the blessed will have no compassion for them.
Aquinas goes even further, arguing via logical propositions that we will see the damned suffering and we will rejoice:
Nothing should be denied the blessed that belongs to the perfection of their beatitude. Now everything is known the more for being compared with its contrary, because when contraries are placed beside one another they become more conspicuous. Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned… The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.
Source
Martin Luther admitted that he could not comprehend how this God can be merciful and just who displays so much wrath and iniquity and added that Godʼs goodness appears hidden, hence the need for faith of the highest degree:
God hides his eternal goodness and mercy under eternal wrath, his righteousness under iniquity. This is the highest degree of faith, to believe him merciful when he saves so few and damns so many, and to believe him righteous when by his own will he makes us necessarily damnable, so that he seems, according to Erasmus, to delight in the torments of the wretched and to be worthy of hatred rather than of love. If, then, I could by any means comprehend how this God can be merciful and just who displays so much wrath and iniquity, there would be no need of faith. As it is, since that cannot be comprehended, there is room for the exercise of faith when such things are preached and published, just as when God kills, the faith of life is exercised in death.
The Bondage of the Will, 1525
Luther praised the love of God that might even damn him to hell, and declared in The Bondage of the Will, “God himself does evil through those who are evil.”
Martin E. Marty, “Martin Luther: A Life”
I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknow what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination.
Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 3, Sec. 23, 7
Speaking of this passage, nineteenth century Reformed theologian, Dr. H. J. Van Dyke, admitted:
Now let us be candid with ourselves, and even with our opponents. Historic Calvinism does include what Calvin himself calls the horribile decretum, that by the election and predestination of God many nations, with their infant children, are irretrievably doomed to eternal death.
“Variations within Calvinism,” pp.39-40
In similar fashion Calvin wrote:[When it comes to Godʼs honor] He banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that He almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a severity exacted but that we may know that God is defrauded of His honor, unless the piety that is due to Him be preferred to all human duties, and that when His glory is to be asserted, humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories?
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God makes plain that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy. We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of nature when His honor is involved.
Calvinʼs comment on Deuteronomy 13:
Let us also learn that nothing is less consistent than to punish heavily the crimes whereby mortals are injured, whilst we connive at the impious errors or sacrilegious modes of worship whereby the majesty of God is violated.
Calvinʼs comment on Exodus 32:29
One should forget all mankind when His glory is in question. God does not even allow whole towns and populations to be spared, but will have the walls razed and the memory of the inhabitants destroyed and all things ruined as a sign of His utter detestation, lest the contagion spread.
Defense of Orthodox Faith against the Prodigious Errors of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, published in early 1554.
Quote from Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd about a womanʼs depth of faith:
This woman has discovered a very sweet and heavenly frame of mind… Discovering an unusual joy and satisfaction in her countenance… I inquired into the reason of it [and] she replied that God had made her feel that ‘twas right for him to do what he pleased with all things; and that ‘twould be right if he should cast her husband and son both into hell; and she saw ‘twas so right for God to do what he pleased with them, that she could not but rejoice if God should send them into hell, though ‘twas apparent she loved them dearly.
More great words of faith:
You that have godly parents… You will see them with a holy joyfulness in their countenances, and with songs in their mouths. When they shall see you turned away and beginning to enter into the great furnace, and shall see how you shrink at it, and hear how you shriek and cry out; yet they will not be at all grieved for you, but at the same time you will hear from them renewed praises and hallelujahs for the true and righteous judgments of God, in so dealing with you… After they shall have seen you lie in hell thousands of years, and your torment shall yet continue without any rest, day or night; they will not begin to pity you then; they will praise God, that his justice appears in the eternity of your misery… singing the more joyful for the glorious justice of God which they behold in your eternal condemnation. [The last sentence was from earlier in the same essay].
Jonathan Edwards,“The Ungodly Warned”When the saints in glory… shall see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they [the saints] in the mean time are in the most blissful state and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!
Jonathan Edwards 1834, sec. II)
Thy hand shall on rebellious kings
A fiery tempest pour,
While we beneath thy sheltʼring wings
Thy just revenge adore.
[Book 1 Hymn 42]
There endless crowds of sinners lie,
And darkness makes their chains;
Tortured with keen despair they cry,
Yet wait for fiercer pains.
Not all their anguish and their blood
For their old guilt atones,
Nor the compassion of a God
Shall hearken to their groans.
[Book 2, Hymn 2]
Lord, I ascribe it to thy grace,
And not to chance as others do,
That I was born of Christian race,
And not a heathen, or a Jew.
[Divine and Moral Songs, Song 6, Praise for the Gospel]
What a spectacle when the world and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy?… as I see… illustrious monarchs… groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows… What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination.
[De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX]
Once [a soul] is condemned by God, then Godʼs friends agree in Godʼs judgment and condemnation. For all eternity they will not have a kind thought for this wretch. Rather they will be satisfied to see him in the flames as a victim of Godʼs justice. (“The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge . . .” Psalm 57:11) They will abhor him. A mother will look from paradise upon her own condemned son without being moved, as though she had never known him.
“The Pains of Hell,” Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, consisting of thirty-five meditations from The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius as explained by St. Anthony Mary Claret. St. Claretʼs ‘explanations’ were written in Spanish in the late 1800ʼs. (www.fatima.org)
What will it be like for a mother in heaven who sees her son burning in hell? She will glorify the justice of God.
Catholic Truth Society pamphlet from the late 1960s, part of a catechismal teaching [cited in an essay by the English poet, Stevie Smith, “Some Impediments to Christian Commitment”]
God shall not pity them but laugh at their calamity. The righteous company in heaven shall rejoice in the execution of Godʼs judgment, and shall sing while the smoke riseth up for ever.
The goodness as well as the happiness of the blessed will be confirmed and advanced by reflections naturally arising from this view of the misery which some shall undergo, which seems to be a good reason for the creation of those beings who shall be finally miserable, and for the continuation of them in their miserable existence.
[De Origine Mali, 1702]
For centuries, Christians believed that the heavenly few would see and even rejoice at the sight of hellʼs multitude being eternally tortured. As Paul Johnson pointed out in A History of Christianity, “This displeasing notion was advanced and defended with great tenacity over several centuries, and was one of the points Catholics and orthodox Calvinists had in common.”
This “abominable fancy” (as it came to be named) was based on various Bible verses:
The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance.
Psalm 58:10
Let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.
Psalm 68:2-3,22-23
In Isaiah 30:31-33 a human sacrifice takes place (the ‘man’ who is killed represents the nation of Assyria), and the act is accompanied by festival songs, gladness of heart, the sound of the flute, tambourines and lyres. Moreover, “the Lord” performs the sacrifice.
And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me.
Isaiah 66:24
A man suffering in ‘Hades’ sees another man luxuriating in ‘Abrahamʼs bosom,’ and vice versa.
Luke, chapter 16
Ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.
Luke 13:28
They shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment shall ascend up forever and ever. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.
Revelation 14:9-11; 18:20, 19:3
Having such ‘inspired’ verses behind it, this teaching did not grow out of favor with orthodox Christian theologians until the age of the Enlightenment when, for instance, Thomas Burnet punctured it with a prick of irony, “What a theater of providence this is: by far the greatest part of the human race burning in flames forever and ever. Oh what a spectacle on the stage, worthy of an audience of God and angels! And then to delight the ear, while this unhappy crowd fills heaven and earth with wailing and howling, you have a truly divine harmony.” [De Statu Mortuorum & Resurgentium Tractatus, 1720]
But even today the idea is defended even with enthusiasm as in Trevor C. Johnsonʼs thesis, Seeing Hell, which is online here, composed for his masterʼs degree in Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in 2004. It should be noted that his doctrinal beliefs no matter how dark they may appear to some, do not seem to interfere with his desire to love and help others. Johnson is a loving and faithful Christian missionary, husband, and parent who serves some poor villagers in a potentially dangerous mission field. Trevor and I have shared emails of a pleasant nature since he contacted me first after finding some references to “the abominable fancy” in my book, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.
I would like some Evangelical Christian apologists on the web who disagree with the views I have cited from Christian leaders to read Johnsonʼs masterʼs thesis which is now online (and also offered at amazon.com where some Christian readers awarded it four out of five stars) and ponder why the Holy Spirit allowed the most prominent figures in Christendom to come up with such conclusions even after praying to the Holy Spirit who is supposed to lead Christians into all truth. And think of the consequences of such teachings being held so prominently by so many Christians for so long.
Positive Amazon reviews of Seeing Hell:
By M. Pierceon
The author leads the reader through a systematic analysis of views expressed by past and present religious figures regarding his subject, and then applies Holy Writ in a convincing manner. The book persuaded me that hell is visible from heaven, and that the glory of a holy God is thereby magnified. Not for the squeamish, or for those whose god is a jolly rendition of Santa Claus.
By Ronald Miller Sr.
Donʼt leave earth without reading. A side of Godʼs glory you probably havenʼt heard. Excellent for believers & Non-believers, Biblically sound, Answers the tough “God” questions, page turner, describes attributes of God and His rational, How God has glory from those in Hell, Doctrine of Grace, What heaven will be like, Why the sight of the saints in heaven will include hell, comprehensive research, evidenced in over 200 footnotes, Joy in seeing those in hell!
By Peggion
This fellow presents a compelling case that those in heaven will be able to see those in hell and vise versa. My granddaughter recently told me her fellowship group was discussing this concept and I decided to research it. Trevor Johnsonʼs work was one of the first I came across, and I found it to be a compelling, well researched, and carefully presented case. He presents both Biblical and historical evidence for his theses. I highly recommend this book.
By Richard O. Tailleferon
The author turns to the Scriptures revealing what the Bible has to say concerning heaven and hell, and whether the saints will behold hell, and the wicked will behold heaven. The author demonstrates the Bible clearly reveals that the saints shall view the wicked in hell and glorify God for their salvation, while those in hell will see the saints in heaven adding to their torment.
READ Heaven and Hell in Christian Thought at The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The earliest image of St. Augustine from a 6th century fresco in San Giovanni Lateran, Rome. |
Augustine joined his ego with that of the largest religious movement in the Roman Empire which expanded his ego and gave him more verbal outlets for whatever steam was building up between his ears than ever before, more people to preach to verbally and textually, telling them what to believe and how to act, because otherwise… hell. How big a kick is that? What expands a personʼs ego more than imagining one has the ability to jangle the keys to eternal life or death in peopleʼs ears? One imagines one is preaching and writing for Godʼs sake not your own, that you are giving God a voice via promoting your own understandings of “Godʼs words.” You even get to tell your audience that God teaches it is virtuous of them to humble themselves and listen to you and other church leaders you agree with, and God doesnʼt want them listening to any of those “heretics” with whom you disagree. All the while convincing yourself that itʼs your divinely appointed job to help preserve the eternal safety and sanctity of your congregationʼs immortal souls.
Augustine devoted his life to being a cult leader, one of the earliest, loudest and most listened to when it came to arguing that heretics must be compelled/forced to enter or re-enter the fold of the one true Catholic Church. He set forth the principle of Cognite Intrare (“Compel them to enter,” based on Luke 14:23). Cognite Intrare would be used throughout the Middle Ages to justify the Churchʼs suppression of dissent and oppression of difference.
Not long after Augustineʼs arguments were put forth the Roman Emperors who were at least nominally Christian began to produce laws related to the persecution and even execution of unrepentant heretics who refused to keep their damned mouths shut or their pens out of the ink well. Augustine also taught that children who had not undergone the one true baptism of the Catholic Church remained in Satanʼs power and were hell bound if they died prior to receiving such baptism, which I am sure added to no oneʼs anguish at all. (Up till the 1970s Catholic seminarians had to learn how to use a syringe filled with holy water to baptize babies in the womb if the birthing process was not going well in order to ensure such babies would wind up in heaven.)
Below are quotations from Augustine:
Augustine also wrote about the one non-Christian Emperor who reigned after Constantine (all the rest were at least nominally Christians):
Thus Augustine complained about freedom being allowed to heretics to speak their minds or write their works.
St. Augustine, in Epistle 62,
Augustine, in Book II of his Retractions, Chapter 5, and in Epistles 48 and 50, retracts what he had once thought, that heretics should not be forced to believe, and proves at length that it is very useful; he always rules out the punishment of death, not because he thought they did not deserve this, but both because he judged that this was unbecoming the gentleness of the Church and also because no imperial law was in existence, by which heretics were sentenced to death; for the Law, “Quicumque, C. de hereticis,” was promulgated a little after the death of Augustine.
That, however, Augustine judged it to be just, if heretics were put to death, is beyond question; for, in Book I, in opposition to the letter of Parmenianus, in Chapter 7, he demonstrates that if the Donatists were punished by death, they would be justly so punished. And in tract 11, on John:
by which he says they falsely complain that they are killed by Emperors; nevertheless, even if this were true, they would be complaining unjustly. Finally, in his Letter 50, to Boniface, he writes that the Church does not want any heretic to be put to death: nevertheless, as the House of David could not enjoy peace unless Absalom were done away with and David was consoled by the peace of his realm in his grief over the death of his son: so when, from the laws of Emperors against heretics, the deaths of some follow, the sorrow of the maternal heart of the Church is assuaged by the deliverance of a multitude of people.
St. Augustine replies (in Letter 50 to Boniface, and elsewhere) that the Apostles never did that [called upon the secular arm to persecute heretics], because then there was no Christian Ruler they could call upon. For, at that time, the words of the Psalm (II, 2 & 10) were verified:
And after the time of Constantine, that began to be verified which is written later in the same Psalm:
Soon the Church implored the help of the secular arm.
“Augustine was at his most disagreeably impatient when faced by groups whom he saw as self-regarding enclaves, deaf to the universal message of the Catholic Church. He insensibly presented the Church not only as the true Church, but as potentially the Church of the majority of the inhabitants of the Roman world. He was the first Christian that we know of to think consistently and in a practical manner in terms of making everyone a Christian. This was very different from claiming, as previous Christians had done, that Christianity was a universal religion in the sense that anyone in any place could, in theory at least, become a Christian. Augustine spoke of Christianity in more concrete, social terms: there was no reason why everybody in a given society (the Jews excepted) should not be a Christian. In his old age, he took for granted that the city of Hippo was, in effect, a Christian city. He saw no reason why the normal pressures by which any late Roman local community enforced conformity on its members should not be brought to bear against schismatics and heretics. He justified imperial laws that decreed the closing of temples and the exile and disendowment of rival churches [Donatist and other churches]. Pagans were told simply to ‘wake up’ to the fact that they were a minority. They should lose no time in joining the Great Majority of the Catholic Church. In fact, the entire world had been declared, more than a millennium before by the prophets of Israel, to belong only to Christ and to his Church, and Augustine quoted the second Psalm as proof: ‘Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.’ [Psalm 2:6,8,9,12].”
“[Of course not everyone was swayed by Augustineʼs arguments.] We have a recently discovered letter that Augustine wrote at the end of his life to Firmus, a notable of Carthage. Firmus had attended afternoon readings of Augustineʼs City of God. He had even read as far as book 10. He knew his Christian literature better than did his wife. Yet his wife was baptized, and Firmus was not. Augustine informed him that, compared with her, Firmus, for all his culture, even his sympathy for Christianity, stood on dangerous ground as long as he remained unbaptized.“
—Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2nd Ed., (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), p.91, 92
On the Necessity of Believing in What the Scriptures Say Without Hesitation
“…in matters that pass beyond the scope of the physical senses, which we have not settled by our own understanding, and cannot—here we must believe, without hesitation, the witness of those men by whom the Scriptures (rightly called divine) were composed, men who were divinely aided in their senses and their minds…”
On the Necessity of Believing that Vast Waters Lie Above the Firmament
Genesis speaks of the firmament (Gen. 1:6-7) as that place that divides the earthly waters from the heavenly waters. Augustine offers a lengthy allegorical interpretation of the firmament in his Confessions (book 13)—seeing it as a symbol of Scripture and its place between the earthly and the heavenly—but the presence of an allegorical interpretation does not mean that he also rejects the literal existence of a firmament.
When some philosophers of Augustineʼs day argued that the waters would be too heavy to stay in the sky, Augustine replied, “If God ever wished oil to remain under water, it would do so.” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 2.2).
The “term ‘firmament’ does not compel us to imagine a stationary heaven,” says Augustine, “we may understand this name as given to indicate not that it is motionless but that it is a solid and that it constitutes an impassible boundary between the waters above and the waters below” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 2.10.23). And while he appears later in life to question his confidence in the exact nature of the firmament (Retractions 2.6.2), he continues to hold to its literal existence.
—Brandon Withrow, Augustine, Genesis, and “Removing the Mystical Veil”: Part 2
Augustine mentions that “…[in Genesis 1] the firmament was made between the waters above and beneath, and was called ‘Heaven,’ in which firmament the stars were made on the fourth day.” [City of God chapter 11.5-9] In that same chapter Augustine cites Psalm 148:3-4 that states the “sun, moon, stars and heaven” praise the Lord along with “the waters above the heavens,” which assumes waters exist above the stars. Augustine adds, “Whatever the nature of the waters [above the firmament], we must believe in them, for the authority of Scripture is greater than the capacity of manʼs mind.”
Augustineʼs last phrase above was echoed by Martin Luther as late as the fifteenth century:
“Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which… are the waters… We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding”
—Martin Luther, Lutherʼs Works, vol. 1, Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan (St. Louis, MI: Concordia, 1958), pp. 30, 42, 43].
“Many [of the Church Fathers] repeat the statement of Augustine, that whatever the nature of the waters [above the firmament], we must believe in them, for the authority of Scripture is greater than the capacity of manʼs mind.”
—Frank Egleston Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature: a Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis
On the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the Worldʼs Past
“They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed [since the creation of Adam and Eve].
—City of God, Book XII, Chapter 10, On the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the Worldʼs Past
“…those antediluvians lived more than 900 years.”
—City of God, Book XV, Chapter 14
On the Absurdity of Believing that Men Exist on the Other Side of the Immense Expanse of Ocean
“As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth [Augustine is poo pooing the idea that human beings will be found on the opposite side of a spherical earth, not a flat one], where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants. They fail to notice that, even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form, it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, or that any conjectured dry land there should be inhabited by men. For Scripture, which confirms the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches not falsehood; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man.”
—City of God 14:9
On Augustineʼs Belief in Human Giants Based on Bible Passages Combined with Finding Large Bones in the Ground
“…the size of menʼs bodies was larger then than now… the large size of the primitive human body is often proved to the incredulous by the exposure of sepulchers [in this case, buried bones], either through the wear of time or the violence of torrents or some accident, and in which bones of incredible size have been found or have rolled out. I myself, along with some others, saw on the shore at Utica a manʼs molar tooth of such a size, that if it were cut down into teeth such as we have, a hundred, I fancy, could have been made out of it. But that, I believe, belonged to some giant.”
—City of God, Book 15, Chapter 9
On Godʼs Re-Creation of Animals Directly from the Ground in Distant Lands Right After the Flood
In The City of God (16.7), Augustine discusses Noahʼs Ark and how it was that animals were present on distant islands so soon after the great flood:
“[I]t is asked how they [various wild animals] could be found in the islands after the deluge … It might, indeed, be said that they crossed to the islands by swimming, but this could only be true of those very near the mainland; whereas there are some so distant that we fancy no animal could swim to them … they were produced out of the earth as at their first creation … this makes it more evident that all kinds of animals were preserved in the ark, not so much for the sake of renewing the stock, as of prefiguring the various nations that were to be saved in the Church.”
On The Damnation of Infants That Die Without Having Been Baptized
“Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil… The Christian faith unfalteringly declares that they who are cleansed in the laver of regeneration (i.e., the baptismal font) are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those who have not yet been redeemed by such regeneration are still captive in the power of the devil, even if they be infant children of the redeemed… From the power of the devil… infants are delivered when they are baptized; and whosoever denies this, is convicted by the truth of the Churchʼs very sacraments, which no heretical novelty in the Church of Christ is permitted to destroy or change, so long as the Divine Head rules and helps the entire body which He owns—small as well as great. It is true, then, and in no way false, that the devilʼs power is exorcised in infants, and that they renounce him by the hearts and mouths of those who bring them to baptism, being unable to do so by their own; in order that they may be delivered from the power of darkness, and be translated into the kingdom of their Lord.”
—On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 22
On the Knowledge of the Saints Concerning What Is Going on in the Outer Darkness
“They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness… The saintsʼ… knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted… with the eternal sufferings of the lost.”
—The City of God, Book 20, Chapter 22, “What is Meant by the Good Going Out to See the Punishment of the Wicked” & Book 22, Chapter 30, “Of the Eternal Felicity of the City of God, and of the Perpetual Sabbath”
On How Fire Can Burn Forever Yet Not Consume a Body
“I have already sufficiently made out that animals can live in the fire, in burning without being consumed, in pain without dying, by a miracle of the most omnipotent Creator.”
On the Location of Hell
“It seems to me that in the twelfth book I ought to have taught that hell is under the earth rather than to give a reason why it is under the earth, since it is believed to or said to be earth, as if it were not so.”
—Retractations, written near the end of Augustineʼs life
On How the Sexual Organs Functioned in Eden
“In Eden, it would have been possible to beget offspring without foul lust. The sexual organs would have been stimulated into necessary activity by will-power alone, just as the will controls other organs. Then, without being goaded on by the allurement of passion, the husband could have relaxed upon his wifeʼs breasts with complete peace of mind and bodily tranquility, that part of his body not activated by tumultuous passion, but brought into service by the deliberate use of power when the need arose, the seed dispatched into the womb with no loss of his wifeʼs virginity. So, the two sexes could have come together for impregnation and conception by an act of will, rather than by lustful cravings.”
—The City of God, Book 14, Chapter 26
As evidence in favor of his view that Adam had full control over his member in Eden, Augustine cites the case of people who can “make musical sounds” out of their “behinds”):
“We do in fact find among human beings some individuals with natural abilities very different from the rest of mankind and remarkable by their very rarity. Such people can do some things with their body which are for others utterly impossible and well-nigh incredible when they are reported. Some people can even move their ears, either one at a time or both together. Others without moving the head can bring the whole scalp-all the part covered with hair-down towards the forehead and bring it back again at will. Some can swallow an incredible number of various articles and then with a slight contraction of the diaphragm, can produce, as if out of a bag, any article they please, in perfect condition. There are others who imitate the cries of birds and beasts and the voices of any other men, reproducing them so accurately as to be quite indistinguishable from the originals, unless they are seen. A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from the region. I know from my own experience of a man who used to sweat whenever he chose; and it is a well-known fact that some people can weep at will and shed floods of tears.”
—City of God, Book 14, Chapter 24
On Women
“…the woman together with her own husband is the image of God, so that that whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one.”
—On the Trinity Book 12 7.10
On Abstinence Being More Important Than the Continuance of the Human Race
“In the first times, it was the duty to use marriage… chiefly for the propagation of the human race. But now, in order to enter upon holy and pure fellowship… they who wish to contract marriage for the sake of children, are to be admonished, that they use rather the larger good of continence. But I am aware of some that murmur, ‘What if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist?’ Would that all would… Much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened. For what else does the Apostle Paul exhort to, when he says, ‘I would that all were as myself;’ or in that passage, ‘But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remains that both they who have wives, be as though not having: and they who weep, as though not weeping: and they who rejoice, as though not rejoicing: and they who buy, as though not buying: and they who use this world as though they use it not. For the form of this world is passing away.’” (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 29-31)
—On the Good of Marriage, Sections 9-10
On His Advocacy of the View that Slaves Ought to Love Their Masters
“…the apostle [in the New Testament] admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters, and to serve them heartily and with good-will, so that, if they cannot be freed by their masters, they may themselves make their slavery in some sort free, by serving not in crafty fear, but in faithful love, until all unrighteousness pass away, and all principality and every human power be brought to nothing, and God be all in all.”
—City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 15
On the Wickedness of Giving Presents to Friends
MacMullen notes the joyous pagan festivals, including feasts, dancing, poetry orations and their long persistence despite the opposition of the bishops (Augustine tried to argue that giving friends presents was wicked).
—See, Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
On “Curiosity”
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”
—The Confessions
On curiosity, compare a passage from another early Church Father, Lactantius 250-325 CE., who claimed that God made Adam the last of his creations so that he should not acquire any knowledge of the process of creation.
Or consider what another early Church Father, Jerome, wrote, “Is it not evident that a man who day and night wrestles with the dialectic art, the student of natural science whose gaze pierces the heavens, walks in vanity of understanding and darkness of mind?” Comment. in Ep. ad Ephes. iv, 17
“For centuries Stoic philosophers and Christian theologians struggled to subdue curiosity as one of the most disruptive, intractable and potentially vicious human traits. According to the 12th-century saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the evil angel fell as a result of curiosity. ‘He had peered curiously into what was to come and wanted what he was not allowed to have and hoped presumptuous hopes,’ Bernard writes, concluding that ‘rightly is curiosity considered the first step of pride; it was the beginning of all sin.’ Two centuries later, when Petrarch climbed a mountain in Provence and began to enjoy the view from the summit, he nervously opened his copy of Augustineʼs Confessions and was stunned by words that seemed to him a direct rebuke: ‘And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean and the revolutions of the stars—and desert themselves.’
“Yet the great work that checked Petrarchʼs curious gaze paradoxically contains the seeds that would eventually transform the churchmanʼs vice into the psychoanalystʼs virtue. Augustine himself was far too much in the grip of curiosity to endorse unequivocally its condemnation. If he chastised excessive interest in the world, he directed a virtually obsessive attention to the hidden reaches of his innermost self: ‘I have become a problem to myself, like land which a farmer works only with difficulty and at the cost of much sweat.’ More specifically, he manifested what was, for the pre-modern world, an unusual interest in his adolescence, from his theft of pears to his gaudy nights in Carthage, and a still more unusual interest in his early childhood, from his infantile rages to his first stumbling efforts to speak.”
—Stephen Greenblatt, Curiosity Is Destiny: For Adam Phillips, psychoanalysis is about restoring peopleʼs appetite for life, New York Time, February 22, 1998
One of the more remarkable transformations in the history of European intellectual life was the removal of curiosity from the table of the vices and its inscription into the table of virtues. From the beginnings of Latin Christianity in the second century (Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine), curiositas was defined as a vice; but by the fifteenth century it had begun to be considered a virtue, and by the eighteenth century it was simply assumed by most European thinkers to be virtuous.
“It is no exaggeration to say that European thought about curiosity is Augustinian from the fifth century to the fifteenth… Curiosity for Augustine is appetite for nothing other than the ownership of new knowledge.” It is a kind of concupiscentia, a disordered desire that guarantees its own disappointment. Curious concupiscence engages in close study and investigation of its chosen objects. “But the curious man is always a fornicator: he perverts study and investigation in much the same way that having sex with those to whom you are not married perverts the gift of the sexual appetite.” Thus the curious man is distinguished from the studious man.
Curiosityʼs desire is closed off to its objects relation to God, considered only in isolation, whereas the studious manʼs interest is open to a knowledge of things including their relatedness to God. The second of Jesusʼ three temptations in the wilderness (where Jesus is placed on the templeʼs pinnacle and asked to throw himself down because of the scripture that says Godʼs angels will permit no harm to come to him) is the paridigmatic temptation of curiosity, says Griffiths, because it offers satisfaction of the experimental appetite. Appetite for novelty is another key element in curiosity, an appetite that prevents contemplative rest and also “prevents curiosityʼs gaze from seeing the vestigium aeternitatis, eternityʼs trace, in the things at which it looks.” Yet again, curiosity is characterized by loquacitas, a garrulity or chattiness involved in becoming known as one who knows.
But the most important element in Augustineʼs critique of curiosity, according to Griffiths, has to do with the attempt to own knowledge, “to assert proprietas over it, to make it subject to oneself (sibi tribuere).” … Curiositas, then, is an appetite that operates within the constraints of the libido dominandi, the lust for dominance that ownership brings. Its Augustinian contradictory is studiousness, and this is an intellectual appetite that operates within the constraints of a proper appreciation of givenness, or of what Augustine would prefer to call the gift, the donum Dei.
—Paul J. Griffiths, “The Vice of Curiosity,” Pro Ecclesia, Vol. XV, No. 1 (Winter, 2006)
I think the point Griffiths, above, was trying to make, is that Augustine wanted everything in oneʼs mind to be related to God, in fact, in relation to the Catholic Churchʼs ideas and beliefs about God. Hence, one must not be too curious. Knowledge for its own sake might derail the faithful from their prayers and single-minded devotion to God/Church and the Churchʼs mission of “saving” the world. This is borne out by much else that the early Church Fathers wrote concerning knowledge, curiosity, and the priority that Catholic beliefs and teachings must take over and above everything else. Concerning the early Church Fathers and science, the historian, Richard Carrier, has produced some youtube videos and podcasts on the topic that one can google and/or find on itunes. His presentations feature further quotations from early Church Fathers that bear out what I have stated.)
On the Contempt Augustine and other Church Fathers had for Ancient Skeptical Thinking
MacMullen points out the contempt prominent Christians such as Tertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, Ambrose and John Chrysostom had for ancient philosophy. They denounced Plato and Aristotle by name, and mocked the idea of skeptical study and the scientific attitude. Nor did they stop there. They told stories about apparitions over the battlefield, miraculous cures, the ever present existence of demons, people raised to life by Christians, and dragons turned to dust by the sign of the cross.
—See, Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
“After Constantine there existed an empire-wide instrument of education: the church. What bishops, even emperors, made plain, and what could be heard in broader terms from every pulpit, was an agreed upon teaching. Every witness, every listener should know the great danger to his soul in Platoʼs books, in Aristotleʼs, in any of the philosophical corpus handed down from the past. The same danger threatened anyone using his mind according to their manner, with analytical intent, ranging widely for the materials of understanding, and independent of divine imparted teachings… Another factor that arose specifically out of the ongoing conversion of the empire was the doctrine of demonic causation. The belief in the operation of maleficent forces on a large scale had to await Christianity; and it was of course Christianity that was to form the medieval and Byzantine world… Satanic agents were to be seen as the cause not only of wars and rebellions, persecution and heresy, storms at sea and earthquakes on land, but of a host of minor or major personal afflictions. So, in consequence, Christians were forever crossing themselves, whatever new action they set about, and painted crosses on their foreheads too, responding to their leadersʼ urging them to do so. It would protect them against all evil.”
—Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
According to the Gospels Jesus was anointed with (or received) perfume numerous times in his life. Are all the tales true? Are any of them symbolic, legendary? At his birth Jesus allegedly received a visit from an unknown number of wealthy star gazers (was it two? three? more than three? Matthew does not say) who traveled far to deliver gifts of “frankincense and myrrh” (not to mention an unknown quantity of “gold”), at least thatʼs what the Gospel of Matthew states, none of the other Gospels happen to mention such a tale.
During his adulthood Jesus encountered expensive perfume again when women began anointing him with it. There is one story of the anointing of the adult Jesus in each Gospel. One was sufficient for the purposes of each Gospel author. To try and combine the anointing stories of all four Gospels into a single “life of Jesus” is to ignore the differences between each, and would add up to three separate tales: One found in Mark and Matthew which are in substantial agreement, another in Luke that disagrees with Mark/Matthew, and a third tale in John that features elements of the tales in Mark and Luke but also disagrees with them, giving us a total of three separate anointing stories. So was Jesus anointed three times? Or did the story change over time?
The failure of attempts to harmonize such stories reminds me of similar attempts made by conservative Christians to harmonize stories of “Peterʼs three denials of Jesus” that are found in all four Gospels (a total of twelve denials). The circumstances of each denial disagree as to where, when, and, in response to whom. Some of the individual denials are easier to harmonize with those in other Gospels, some less easy to harmonize. But disagreements between denials were so blatant in some cases that one conservative Christian insisted Peter must have denied Jesus as many times as there are unharmonizable incidents in all four Gospels. That Christian had convinced himself that Peter may have denied Jesus more than three times, maybe six or more times, so long as he could find a way to retain the historical truth of every divinely inspired detail in his Bible and read the Gospels like a single story—instead of four separate stories, including some that changed over time. He continued to argue that his solution of multiplying the total number of denials was the most reasonable, regardless of the fact that each Gospel by itself agrees with the others that Jesus only mentioned three denials by Peter.
Below are the tales of the anointings of Jesus. The tales in Mark and Matthew are probably the earliest and they parallel each other so closely as to suggest a common literary source. They also agree that perfume was poured on Jesusʼ head:
Mark 14:3,8 (NIV) While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head…to prepare for my burial.
Matthew 26:6-7,12 (NIV) While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table…to prepare me for burial.
By the time Lukeʼs Gospel was composed the story seems to have changed. It is no longer Jesusʼ head that is anointed with expensive perfume but his feet, by a female sinner who first washes them with her tears and wipes them with her hair, and Luke places the anointing in an early chapter of Jesusʼ ministry, so early that Jesus is shown dining with a Pharisee:
Luke 7:36-38 (NIV) When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Phariseeʼs house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Phariseeʼs house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
In all three of the earliest Gospels the woman who anoints Jesusʼ head or feet is not named. But by the time the Gospel of John was composed a name had been allocated to the “anointress” (if I may coin a term), “Mary.” The author even says this was the same “Mary” whom Luke had mentioned in his separate tale of the “two sisters,” one of whom “sat” at Jesusʼ feet listening to him (Luke 10:38-42). But in the Gospel of John this Mary is no longer the one in Luke who merely “sat” at Jesusʼ feet and drew sighs from her sister who wished to scold her for sitting inertly on the floor and leaving her sister with all the kitchen work. Instead, the “Mary” in the Gospel of John is active, dramatically so, for she is depicted as anointing Jesusʼ feet and wiping them with her hair, resembling Lukeʼs anointing story about the unnamed female sinner in the home of the Pharisee. The Gospel of John adds that the whole house was filled with the aroma after about a “pint” of perfume was poured on Jesusʼ feet, so I guess there was no skimping on the perfume per John—nor does John skimp on the perfume in yet another anointing episode found only in that Gospel, but before proceeding to that episode here is the story of Johnʼs “Mary”:
John 12:1-3 (NIV) Six days before the Passover [Note: Jesus dies five days later in this Gospel, on the day before Passover], Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesusʼ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard [Note: “pure nard” is an unusual and precise phrase that appears in Markʼs earlier version and some commentators suggest that the author of the Gospel of John was acquainted with the tales in both Mark and Luke, combining elements of both to form a third tale], an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesusʼ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. [Note how this resembles the tale in Luke, but the order in which the perfume is applied and the feet wiped is reversed. In Luke Jesusʼ feet are washed (with tears, something John does not mention) and wiped with hair, and only then is the perfume applied. But in John the perfume is applied and the feet are wiped with hair. So in John, Maryʼs hair is full of perfume, but in Luke the womanʼs hair smelled only of the dirt on Jesusʼ feet. The tale in John differs in this and other respects from earlier anointing tales but also demonstrates some knowledge of the story in Mark and Luke.] And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Also, in the Gospel of John not only did the feet of Jesus receive about a pint of perfume, but five days later the same Gospel says Jesusʼ lifeless body was wrapped with “seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes.”
But wait, thereʼs another perfume story I have not mentioned, but we must return to the earliest Gospel, Mark, to find it. That Gospel says that after Jesus died some women “saw” where Jesus had been laid and they returned to the tomb a day and a half later carrying “spice” with which they planned to anoint the body. Probably not “seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes” as in John, and which was not said to have come from those ladies. But comparing Mark with John and attempting to combine the two stories one might wonder how the ladies who saw where Jesus had been laid also failed to note the odor of seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloe, an odor that probably followed Jesusʼ body into the tomb or filled the air around it. I would have thought women had better senses of smell, or if they saw Jesusʼ body being hoisted into the tomb they might have at least seen how Jesusʼ body gained 75 pounds of bulky wrappings after he died and that men were straining to maneuver it into the tomb, even on a stretcher, or if the body was not anointed until after it was laid flat in the tomb then perhaps the woman might have seen large jars of spice and wrappings being carried into the tomb. Instead, the early tale in Mark of the hastily buried (and unanointed) body of Jesus, and the tale in John of the heavily anointed body of Jesus simply pass in the night, each going in their own direction without connecting at all.
Of course the differences between the story of Mark and John pose little difficulty once one accepts that the story in Mark is a completely different tale from Johnʼs. Mark imagined Jesus being buried hastily leaving no time for anointing. While John has Jesus laid out in style, seventy five pounds worth of style. The Gospel of Matthew introduces another take on the tale in Mark because in Matthew there is no mention of the women having “spice” and a desire to anoint Jesusʼ body, instead they come to “see” the tomb. Why does Matthew alter the reason why the woman arrive Sunday morning? Because in Matthew the tomb is sealed and guarded (a story found only in Matthew and no where else). So the women would have had no chance of getting near Jesusʼ body let alone “spice” it up, so Matthew says the woman only came to “see” the tomb. Itʼs obvious at this point that different Gospel writers told different stories and changed them to fit with whatever else they wrote.
Returning to the depiction in the Gospel of John, of Jesus having about a pint of perfume poured on his feet by Mary such that the whole house smelled of it, and five days later Jesusʼ body being wrapped with seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloe, one might wonder if there is any mention in John of the resurrected Jesus smelling of perfume after having arisen a day and a half later and shown himself to a woman and to the apostles. But there is none.
Neither is there mention of the resurrected Jesus smelling of perfume in any of the earlier Gospels. Of course Mark and Matthew, presumably the earliest two Gospels, feature no “seventy-five pound” anointing of “myrrh and aloes” of Jesusʼ body as in John, and they agree that an announcement was made at the empty tomb that Jesus had gone before the apostles to Galilee (“There you will see him”), so, it would take a while to reach Galilee before the apostles would even be near Jesus. Itʼs only in later Gospels (Luke and John) that there is no long delay before the apostles get to see the resurrected Jesus, for neither of those Gospels mention Jesus going ahead to Galilee to be seen there, but instead they have Jesus appearing in Jerusalem on the same day heʼs allegedly resurrected. So Jesus gets to meet the apostles sooner in Luke and John than in the earlier Gospels, Mark and Matthew. But no mention of the resurrected Jesus smelling of perfume in either Luke or John.
Speaking of the resurrection, a story in Luke that has always caught my eye takes place on the day of Jesusʼ resurrection. No time of day is specified, could be late afternoon or evening, doesnʼt say, and the apostles are merely “assembled together” (not cowering behind a “locked door” as in Johnʼs later version), when “Jesus himself stood among them,” and proves he is “not a spirit” but has “flesh and bone,” by eating a piece of fish. The story in Luke continues by claiming that Jesus “led” the apostles out of the city of Jerusalem to the town of Bethany.
I mention this story in Luke because I understand the earlier stories in Mark and Matthew in which Jesus goes ahead of the apostles to Galilee to be seen there, and how it would take the apostles some time to get to Galilee and how some sort of vision could take place out in Galilee, something out of the public eye, away from the big city of Jerusalem. Mark supplies no details at all, just a promise of seeing Jesus in Galilee, while Matthew features a short tale about a sighting in Galilee—but nothing about Jesus trumpeting his physicality, nor boasting about being “flesh and bone” and eating fish—instead, Matthew features a few short words of the risen Jesus, ending with, “but some doubted.” In comparison with the earliest two Gospels (Mark and Matthew) the later Gospels (Luke and John) add more sighting episodes, more elaborate descriptions, more words of the risen Jesus (over a hundred more), and allude to speeches delivered by the risen Jesus, though neither Luke nor John provide them for us to read. After Luke and John there came further stories about Jesus,—the Gospel of John ends by alluding to great numbers of stories then circulating about what Jesus did, “which if all written down I suppose the world could not contain all the books.” Iʼve mentioned this legendary-like development in resurrection stories before, here.
But letʼs take another look at the story in Luke about a resurrected Jesus who was “not a spirit” but “flesh and bone,” and who “led” the apostles out of the city of Jerusalem to the town of Bethany. I assume Jesus was walking and not floating nor spiritually leading the apostles. A walk through Jerusalem, the same town where he was crucified. Was Jesus tempted to walk past the high priestʼs home, past Herodʼs palace, or Pilateʼs? Did the little group walk within sight of the tall Roman garrison building next to the Temple?
A conservative Christian might suggest that the story of such a quiet stroll is no argument against it taking place, and no reason for doubting the inerrant word of God, but the silence in this case is deafening compared with the shouts of Hosannas Jesus had previously received when he rode a donkey into Jerusalem. Compare the two scenes. How somber the triumph of the resurrected Jesus is, everyone in that part of Jerusalem and Bethany oblivious to a dead man walking. Comparing that scene with Jesusʼ public entrance into Jerusalem before his death provides quite a contrast.
I wonder whether any of the apostles in that procession were tempted to converse a bit louder than usual, shout, knock on doors, wave some palms, ask Jesus to show himself to the high priest, preach in public, or announce what a spectacular miracle, as well as a spectacular victory had just occurred. Wasnʼt Jesus more triumphant now than when he had first entered Jerusalem to Hosannas? But no mention in the story is made of joy, of the walkers revealing themselves, nor of anyone recognizing them, nor paying the slightest attention. No one notices the figure in the lead with the holes in his hands and feet (nor looks up after catching a whiff of his perfumed body)? No beggar looks up and sees anything out of the ordinary, perhaps a beggar who would have recognized Jesus having seen him preach in the Temple (with his apostles beside him) a few days earlier? No Roman guards on duty on a corner or at the city gates? No questions asked, no answers offered? As I said, the silence is deafening. But the story seems perfectly suited as a sort of unfalsifiable fantasy told by believers and for believers (equally true of another story in Luke about Jesus walking to Emmaus with two followers, and only revealing who he is for an instant before he “disappears”).
Of course an apologist might suggest that Lukeʼs story about a resurrected Jesus walking the streets of Jerusalem with no fanfare was simply Godʼs way of doing things. But that doesnʼt explain other allegedly God-inspired tales that do involve fanfare:
Jesusʼ death was accompanied by “tombs opening” and “many saints” rising from the dead who “entered the holy city” and “showed themselves to many” on the same day as Jesusʼ own resurrection, a tale told with extreme brevity and only in the Gospel of Matthew (the names of the “saints” were not mentioned, nor the names of any alleged witnesses, not until a century or more after Matthew when some Christians named a few of the alleged “raised saints” and also explained what happened to them—they “vanished” of course, after delivering their testimony to the very same Jewish religious leaders who condemned Jesus at his trial—at least thatʼs what some Christians wrote in The Gospel of Nicodemus, talk about corroborating evidence, Christians have demonstrated that they can invent it as needed)
“Jesus was seen by over five hundred brothers and sisters [believers]” per Paul (By whom? Where? When? Who knows? Neither God nor man preserved such info for us, nor any details about that “appearance,” nor why it took place prior to an appearance to James. Such a tale also seems to have run its course fairly early because it is never mentioned again in any Gospel, nor Acts.)
“Appeared in Galilee” to an unknown number of disciples per Matthew (though “some doubted”)
“Appeared to them [the apostles] over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God,” and ate food with them during this period, per Acts 1. (I guess they werenʼt public speaking engagements nor public eating engagements during those forty days. Just keepinʼ things private, nothing to see here folks, move along.)
Itʼs not like Jesus wasnʼt “around” per the above boasts, nor other resurrected folks—from the “many raised saints” (mentioned only in Matthew) to a resurrected Lazarus (mentioned only in John) if you believe such tales. Itʼs just that the resurrected Jesus seems shy of the public eye in comparison. Only his spiritual family gets to see him.
Why such shyness? Perhaps Jesus had had enough anointings with expensive perfume: “Enough with the perfume already! From my birth to several times before my death, both head and feet, and then my body before burial, seventy five pounds worth, and then women come to my tomb to try and spice me up some more! In fact Iʼm still sick of the noisy ‘Hosannas’ the time I entered Jerusalem, and the crowd nearly plucked every leaf off those poor palms to wave them in my face and toss them in front of me. And I definitely refuse to show myself to the Pharisees, Herod or Pilate, or any other occupant of Jersualem the majority of whom can remain non-Christian and damned to hell. They have the prophets, and the many raised saints, and Lazarus, why do they need to see the “resurrected me” as well? Next thing you know Iʼll have to appear before Caesar in Rome, and in North America (to found the Mormon church), and in Korea (to found the Unification Church), and soon doubting Thomases everywhere will be begging me to appear to them, but Iʼm not going to offer every Thomas, Dickus and Harryus a chance to stick their hand in my side and believe, including people two thousand years in the future. Damn all those future doubters.
“Instead, Iʼm walking out of town quietly, the same day I show myself to just the apostles, no public celebrations, just a quick nosh on some fish and a stroll out of the city to nearby Bethany and Iʼll ascend from there into heaven. (Luke)
“Maybe not that fast, instead maybe Iʼll hang round with just with my homies for about six weeks, teach them a little more about the kingdom, not that any of them will remember a word I tell them during those six weeks of speaking, nor write it down. (Acts)
“Well, and I might appear to over five hundred believers at once, but just once, and just to brothers and sisters in Christ. (Paul)
“Hmmm, hereʼs a question, where should I be when I appear to the apostles for the first time? In Galilee where I started preaching (Mark & Matthew) or in Jerusalem where I died (Luke & John)? I dunno. Maybe I can inspire them to write that the first time the apostles saw me it was in both places, and we can call that place “Galusalem” or “Jerusalee.” Why be specific? Let people say what they may about the mixed up memories and memoirs of the Gospel writers, and about my lame victory lap out of Jerusalem with no Hosannas (Luke), and no crowds to see me rise up into heaven. Let them say these are ‘just so’ stories or urban myths written by and for believers. It doesnʼt matter. Because if they can believe the story found only in Matthew about the raising of many saints, and the story found only in John of the raising of Lazarus, what wonʼt they believe? At least the believers will believe. As for the doubting Thomasʼs, I repeat, to hell with them. No one will ever get that chance again, not a fully physical post-resurrection meeting just for them. Instead Iʼll leave people some weird tales like that old pulp fiction magazine of the same title, and tell them to believe ʻem or be damned. I am outta here! Looking forward to ascending bodily into heaven and not returning again that way til judgment day (Acts 1).
“Wait a sec, maybe I should think about this a bit more. After all Iʼm not coming back for over 2,000 years, and come to think of it I didnʼt leave behind much in the way of first-person named testimonies to my resurrection. Only that of Paulʼs in fact. And he left behind no description concerning what he saw except to write, ‘he appeared to me,’ thatʼs it. There are stories in Acts about my appearance to Paul and they contain some details but thereʼs also some differences between those stories and none of them were written by Paul, so they arenʼt first-person testimonies, and the author of Acts isnʼt even named.
“Also, I hope people donʼt get confused as to what ‘appearance’ means based on what Paul is going to write in 1 Corinthians 15, because later writings (Luke & Acts) will tell people that my resurrected ‘flesh and bone’ body had already ascended into heaven before I ‘appeared’ to Paul, and that body wasnʼt going to be seen again until the day of final judgment (Acts 1), therefore whatever ‘appeared’ to Paul it wasnʼt my resurrected body, since that had already ascended into heaven. But darn it, Paul equated my ‘appearance’ to him as if it was the same as my ‘appearances’ to others, so the earliest mention of my ‘appearances’ makes no distinctions as to what ‘appeared’:
1 Corinthians 15 (NIV) He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
“Yup, that letter of Paulʼs is going to make things sounds a bit vague and sketchy, that I ‘appeared’ to the apostles and to Paul, without distinguishing between them. All just ‘appearances.’ All equal. Oh well.
“And what about that line sandwiched in between the appearances to Cephas and James, the line that I ‘appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time.’ Decades after that statement, the book of Acts is going to imply that there were far less than ‘five hundred’ brethren around after my body had already ascended into heaven. Acts 1:15 says that Peter preached to only ‘one hundred and twenty’ brethren, much less than ‘over five hundred,’ and my resurrected body had already ascended into heaven. That means people will question whether I was still on earth in my resurrection body when I appeared to ‘over five hundred brothers and sisters.’ Neither could Paul have seen my resurrection body if Acts 1 is correct, yet he speaks of my appearance to him as though it was equal to that of my appearances to the apostles.
“It also irks me that there will never be any mention made of to whom, when, or where I appeared in 1 Cor. 15. But I guess thatʼs alright since the stories in 1 Cor. 15 of my appearance to Cephas alone, and James alone, and ‘over five hundred brethren,’ are going to die out pretty quickly and never be repeated in the Gospels or Acts.
“In fact in the Gospel that will be composed last of all and lay furthest from 1 Cor. 15 some of those stories about me appearing to a lone person and then to the apostles will be reversed, and the even the name changed of the lone person. In the last written Gospel (John) it will say that I appeared to all the apostles except one, Thomas, and then that I came back a little later to show myself specifically to that lone apostle after he had gathered together with them. Paul in 1 Cor. 15 features no knowledge of that later tale about me coming back to be seen by Thomas, and it will seem strange to readers how that tale in John is like the opposite of the ones in 1 Cor. 15, and even changes the name of the apostle.
“Sheesh, speaking of things Paul wonʼt mention but later writings like the Gospels will mention, thereʼs the story of my very first appearance, not to Cephas and the apostles, nor to over five hundred brethren, nor to James and the apostles, but to women. The story of my first appearance “to women” wonʼt even appear in the earliest Gospel, Mark, where all that the women see is a young man in white who tells them Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee. So the story about my first appearance to women will only start to be told in the next Gospel, Matthew. Paul wonʼt even mention the story of the “empty tomb” found in the earliest Gospel (Mark). So it will definitely look like the stories of my appearances to women and leaving a tomb empty arose later.
“Nor will Paul mention anything about me being born of a virgin, which is yet another story that didnʼt begin with the earliest Gospel (Mark), but with two later Gospels, Matthew and Luke. So some people might suspect these Gospel stories were legendary elaborations that arose over time.
“Yup, Paulʼs list of mere ‘appearances’ in 1 Cor. 15 is going to make it look like all that Paul had to work with were early mania-driven ill-defined ‘appearance’ stories, and that the Gospel tales including the empty tomb and appearances to women arose later. Even the author of the earliest Gospel will make it look like the empty tomb story arose later, because that Gospel will end with these words:
Mark 16:8 (NIV) Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
So the earliest story about the empty tomb implies the women were not running with joy to tell the apostles of what they had seen as in The Gospel of Matthewʼs later version of the story, but instead the earliest version of the empty tomb story will end with “They said nothing to anyone,” which will make readers think the story of the empty tomb itself could have arisen later, as a legend people began telling each other because the women themselves had originally been silent about what they had seen.
“Luckily I also know that people arenʼt going to think about these stories, their chronological order, and make such observations, not like I just did, at least not until eighteen centuries or so have passed after my death. Even then, most Christians wonʼt bother. They will continue reading the Gospels, jumbling stories together in their minds, like they teach their children to do at Christmas pageants that jumble together the stories of my birth and how and why I wound up born in Bethlehem yet raised in Nazareth. Or like they do—but on a far higher level of rationalization—whenever they attempt to write books about ‘systematic theology.’ They even jumble up Greek metaphysical ideals about an infinite God with the anthropomorphic images of God in the Bible, and imagine they have proved something, or thwarted all questions. Which is great, I mean who really has time to be deal with questions? Pick your systematic theologian and go for it, donʼt look back, donʼt be a doubting Thomas.
“In fact Iʼm gonna make things simple and just damn people for being doubting Thomases, for daring to question things in the past they can no longer see nor hear for themselves, for daring to question stories in a book. Iʼm going to damn those who publicly admit they have questions and that studies of history remain uncertain. And for doubting Creedal formulas concerning who I was and am and will be. And for not making perfect sense out of how shedding my blood fixes the past, present and future, and makes forgiveness possible, or for doubting the Trinity. Damn them for daring to doubt things no one can prove, things that do not make perfect rational sense but continue to be debated even by those that love me. And for daring to bring up the Messiah-mania and superstitious nature of beliefs during the first century.
“People donʼt need evidence, they donʼt need first-person named testimonies. The only one Iʼll give them is from Paul who wrote, ‘He appeared to me.’ (A lot of the other NT letters by ‘apostles’ are disputed or apocryphal and say no more than that, and most say even less than that.) Paul is the one who put Christianity on the map, along with his Gentile converts.
“Neither do people need testimonies from people who personally saw a few startling things but were not brethren themselves. Iʼll leave them stories written by brethren and for brethren, and I wonʼt stop brethren from continuing to add more stories and edit previous ones together so that weʼll have four Gospels with literary links between them, and five, six or more Gospels composed later, let them keep writing things like The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Apocalypses of Peter and Paul, Nativity Gospels, and a host of other Christian compositions, exactly as the Jews continued to write inter-testamental literature. They didnʼt stop after the OT was “complete.” Even the collection of holy books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate that that group of Jews had a broader canon than the one the Jews recognize today.
“Iʼll also leave my followers a few historical crumbs, a few disputed lines about me in the works of Josephus, a man who will never have met me but who will stitch together a few lines about me based on things he will hear second, third hand, etc. Neither am I going to go out of my way to try and preserve long scrolls or codices/books from the first century when I walked the earth, let all first century Christian writing rot. At most Iʼll only leaven my followers a few second century fragments, and a few quotations of Gospel passages or stories in some church fathers, but no whole Gospels till the fourth century. But I also think Iʼll mess with people and find a way to preserve a whole batch of scrolls near the Dead Sea that demonstrate the existence of Jewish apocalyptic-mania both before and right after my day.
“After all, people donʼt need evidence, just stories that move them. Novels and comic books, thatʼs what sells, characters, fiction, drama, and miracles as well. Who cares that the earliest writings that I will choose to inspire and preserve for future generations (those by Paul and the Gospel of Mark) will both lack descriptions of my post resurrection ‘appearances.’ Theyʼll just say ‘he appeared.’ Paul wonʼt even say where. Then Mark will add ‘Galilee,’ and Matthew will agree with Mark but add a quickie appearance of me to some women near the tomb, and then the appearance in Galilee to the apostles. Later, Luke and John will claim I appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem, on the same day as my resurrection.
“Also, who cares that the earliest Gospel Mark, will lack stories about my birth and even lack descriptions concerning my post-resurrection appearances? Mark will begin only with my baptism and end with an empty tomb a promise of seeing me in Galilee. Thatʼs it. The Gospels that come after Mark will differ most from each other in exactly those places where Mark didnʼt have any tales to tell, which makes it look like Matthew and Luke filled in Markʼs blanks with legends and divergent tales that Christians themselves began to tell each other after more converts arose and more of them grew curious about Markʼs blanks. Matthew and Luke tried filling in those blanks, and wound up differing most from each other in exactly those areas where Mark was blank, i.e., in their new tales and descriptions of my post-resurrection appearances (and in tales related to how and why I was born in Bethlehem yet raised in Nazareth).
“Gotta run. Canʼt say when Iʼll be back. Of course things will be hellish on earth in the future, plagues, famines, maybe even an asteroid or solar flare damaging the earth and dragging down civilization, which is why I hope youʼll keep the Bible in print, because if you only try to preserve it in e-book format in the future, good luck. Oh, sure, the Bible wonʼt tell you how to survive the coming difficulties. Itʼs just a book about fearing him who can kill both body and soul and cast you into hell. Oh yeah, and loving your neighbor. So read and tremble! And marvel at the strange mixed up tales of my resurrection! Everybodyʼs gotta believe something.”
