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If  Jesus were to return to Earth to-day in the state He had before, what would He make of the Church and society?

• The Church:   He would be amazed and appalled that there are 38,000 different denominations and sects within Chrisstianity.   He would call the leaders together and instruct them to end their divisions forthwith.
• He would be puzzled that the ministry structure of bishop, priest and deacon – set out in the NT was not being universally followed.   He would also enjoin His followers to adopt the additional ministries set out by St. Paul.
• BIBLE:   He would commend biblical scholars for all their efforts.   He would, however, upbraid the two extremes of scholars coming to ultra-liberal conclusions bordering on agnosticism and of Fundamentalists, performing contorsions to try to reconcile the irreconcilable in the text, refusing to admit to themselves that Jesus had amended parts of the OT.
• Ministry:   He would state quite clearly that clergy could be married or single, as they wish and not through obligation.   Because of the changes in society since His day, women can become bishops, priests and deacons.
• He would be disappointed that most of His followers had not adopted His teaching about “binding and loosing” and would order its immediate implementaation.
• He would order the disestablishment of the Vatican and bishops’ palaces, as these owe more to the pagan Roman Empire and less to the Carpeenter of Nazareth.
• He would be appalled by the  glass and plastic skyscrapers in the States housing the” electronic preachers”.   The uninterrupted radio and TV preaching a haute voix and with a nadir of guilt is, He would say,  not  how He preached in Galilee.
• With regard to religious orders, He would say that He gave no instructions whilst in Galilee that there were to be Dead Sea Sect-type communities within Christianity.   He would add that if they practised apostolic outreach, they may continue.
• He would praise missionary endeavours in the Third World and the activities in the West over the centuries.   He would, however, draw attention to the lack of missionary effort in , say, Europe, which enables opponents to score intellectually.
• Prayers to Mary and the saints – there are two points
  1. In this life many people ask others for their prayers – the same principle applies after death.
  2. All prayers to Mary and the saints are through Me.
• His main thrust would be concern for the poor, sick and needy at home and overseas – in brief, the Social Gospel.   He would applaud the massive progress since His own day.   He would state that it was His attention to visit Africa and Asia.  For the West there needed to an ever-increasing bias to the poor.and a world government.
• He would draw attention to the fact that Russia and the West still possess nuclear weapons aimed at each otheer as if the Cold War had not evaporated..
• As to other world religions, Jesus said He would need to study them but stated that He was starting from the basis that “Those who are not against us are for us”.
• In the course of several TV and radio interviews Jesus stated that

1. He looked forward to visiting the Holy Land but from what He had heard there was tension and war just as there had been in the 1st century AD.
2. He applauded the efforts being made to reduce atmospheric pollution
3. The City and banking sounded like Sodom and Gomorrah
4. On abortion He said that as a general rule He was against it but that there might be occasional exceptions
5. On contraception He said that He was in favour of it within marriage
6. On homosexuality He drew a line between the person and sexual activity.   He said that gays and lesbians should not be treated as pariahs.
7. On Evolution He said that He had not had time to study the subject.   He added that, whatever might turn out to be the facts of the situation, at root God was the author of life.
8. In answer to persistent questioning, Jesus said that He was divine  but preferred to be identified as “Jesus”.

Jesus’ Knowledge

There are various aspects of Jesus’knowledge.

• There are tendencies in the gospels suggesting that Jesus had perfect knowledge (for instance, in John’s gospel He hints at His forthcoming death and resurrection).   All the gospels attribute to Jesus the ability to know what people are thinking even though they hve not expressed themseelves
• Jesus is presented as knowing at a distance what is happening.
• There are passages in the gospels which show Jesus as leaarned, although He “has never studied”.
• In all the gospels there are passages illustrating Jesus’ knowledge of the future: in particular of His passion, crucifixion and resurrection.
• There are passages which show Jesus as appearing not to know things.   For instance,, He appears not to know who has touched Him in the crowd; and as a young boy He is shown in the Temple asking questions of the teachers of the Law and He is said to have grown in wisdom.   He was thus on a learning curve.   Jesus appears not to know, in His resurrected state, when Israel is to be freed from Rooman rule – only the Father knows this.
• All four gospels report Jesus as making reference to a future destruction of the Temple, an event which would seem to assume the Fall of Jerusalem.   Did Jesus make such a prediction?   If the evangelists put words into Jesus’ mouth  after the event, they missd several important points which would have made Jesus’ predictioon even more impressive.   For example,

1. there is no reference to the barricading of the city with aa four-mile wall.
2. There is no reference  to the civil war going on within the forces of the Jews, which facilitated a Roman victory.
3. There is no reference to the famine in the city
4. The way in which the “abomination of desolation” mentioned by Jesus is fulfilled is not specified by any of the evangelists, as one would certainly have expected had the evangelists been in the business of manufacturing a Jesus with the powwer of forecast.

• The usual objection to any suggestion that Jesus predicted would happen to Jerusalem and the Temple is that it is not within Humanity’s powers to see the future,
• Einstein said “To us convinced physicists the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, though a persistent one”.   Modern Physics contemplates the possibility that we should be able to see the birth of someone born 150 years ago!
• According to scientists Time can run in either direction.   It is not unscientific, therefore, to consider the possibility of precognition in human affairs and on a purely human level, without wishing to rely on divine revelation to account for Jesus’ predictions
• Professsor Hans Eysenck of  London University’ Institute of Psychiatry wrote nearly 50 years ago: “Unless there is a gigantic conspiracy innvolving some thirty University departments all over the world, and several hundred highly respected scientists in various fields, many of them originally sceptical to the claims of the psychical researchers, the only conclusioon that the unbiased observer can come to is that there does exist a small number of people who obtain knowledge existing in other people’s minds or in the outer world, by means as yet unknown to Science”.
• Predictions of future events (air disasters,earthquakes, road accidents, shiips sinking etc.) are well-known and, in a number of cases well-documented and corroborated.
• In June 1914 there was a well-attested case of a Bishop, a former spiritual adviser to Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, predicting the assassination of  the Archduke to friends several hours before it happened.
• A book, written by Dr. Hearne, entitled “Visions of the Future”, gives many examples of precognition, including the following.   The niece of some good friends forsaw by several hours the massive Flixborough explosion in the UK in 1974, with believable witnesses confirming her story.
• Jesus’ powers of precognition are in tune with the foregoing.   In His case He possessed powers to an advanced degree.

Infallibility?

The word “Infallibility” is associated in Christian Theology with the General Councils of the Church and with the Pope.   (Technically, the Pope is not infallliblle – he is not an oracle; it is the pronouncement which is infallible and which has to meet stringent conditions.   It is very rarely used.)

The Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission (ARCIC) produced two reports on Authority in the Church in the mid-Seventies and the early Eighties.   The following are some of the points they made:

• In all councils….decisions are authoritative when they express the common faith and mind of the Church”
• “The primacy, rightly understood, implies that the bishop of Rome exercises his over-sight  in order to guard and promote the faithfulness of all the churches to Christ and one another.   Communion with  him is intended as a safeguard of the catholicity of each local church, and as a sign of the communion of all the churches”
• ” By their agreement or disagreement the local church of Rome and its bishop fulfilled their responsibility towards other local churches and their bishops for maintaining the whole Church in the truth”.
• “In times of crisis or when fundamental matters of faith are in question, the Church can make judgements, consonant with Scripture, which are authoritative.   When the Church meets in ecumenical council its decisions on fundamental matters of faith exclude what is erroneous…..This binding authority does not belong to every conciliar decree but only to those which formulate the central truths of salvation.”
• “If the leadership of the bishop of Rome has been rejected by those who thought it was not faithful to the truth of the Gospel and hence not a true focus of unity, we nevertheless agree that a universal primacy will be needed in a reunited Church and should appropriately be the primacy of the bishop of Rome.”
• “Moreover, although it is not through reception by the people of God that a definition first acquires authority, the assent of the faithful is the ultimate indication that the Church’s authoritative decision in a matter of faith has been truly preserved from error by the Holy Spirit”
• “A service of preserving the Church from error has been performed by the bishop of Rome as universal primate both within and outside the synodal process.   The judgment of Leo I, for example, in his letter received by the Council of Chalcedon, helped to maintain a balanced view of the two natures in Christ”.

But what of the Scriptural foundations of all this?

• Jesus founded the Church.   He gave it an hierarchical structure with Peter as earthly head.
• He gave wide-ranging powers to this Church and these powers were handed on to the second, third etc.generations of leaders.
• In His long personal contact He instructed them for the preaching office; transferred to them a whole series of powers – the power of binding and loosing; the power of consummating the Eucharist, the power of forgiving sins and the power of baptising.   At the Ascension He handed over His mission to the apostles
• The  Church is Christ’s property which He has acquired with His own blood; His bride, whom He loved and for whom He has given Himself in order to sanctify her.
• Christ told His followers:”Those who hear you hear me”
• St. Paul said that the Church is the body of Christ.
• With such a background one can see that the Church at the outset was regarded as infallible.   In keeping with Christ’s statement that His message would continue to the end of Time, one can see why the gift of infallibility was essential.
• There is no good reason why in future the laity world-wide should not be fully involved in the process of defining an infallible decree of the Church.   We have the technoloogy to do this.   It would confirm or otherwise  what the Pope or a General Council wishes to pronounce.

How has it worked out in practice?

The General Councils up to 1054 have worked well.   In that year Catholicism and Orthodoxy split.   From that date Orthodoxy has not held a General Council because they accept that there can be no General Counncil without the involveement of Rome.   Catholicism, on the other hand, has held such councils but these have not been recognised by Orthodoxy.

It has to be said that in any future proposed re-union of Christendom the Vatican will have to be reformed.   It has a long, mainly dark, past and even to-day by its attitude and statements sends out unattractive vibes.   Hence it puts people off rather than attracts them.   Part of a reformed Church will be the ending of the Vatican as a state,with ambassadors etc.

Up until the Second Vatican Council in the Sixties the Catholic Church regarded itself as the sole Church of Christ.   That council recognised Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists etc. as fellow-Christians within the overall Church.

There is, therefore, a problem.   Catholicism believes that infallible decrees from Rome cannot be issued without the Church as a whole agreeing.  As infallible decrees were issued in the 19th and mid-20th centuries, they were issued without consulting the whole Church (including Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists etc.) and would seem to be lacking in infallibility.

One of the problems – probably the most important problem in that it turns so many away from God – which has to be faced fair and square by the believer is:  Why has a good God permitted so much evil to happen?  Why do the wicked flourish and the just suffer?    How account for the diseased, mis-shapen lives of so many, particularly in the Third World – the slums, mass starvation, the wars around the world, the despair to which suffering and wrong have driven countless numbers?

• It has to be stated at the outset that there is no simple, single answer to the Problem of Evil – at least no-one has so far come up with it!
• By way of partial answer it might be said that the common theme of fiction and epic is victory won through trial and suffering and life without some suffering would be the play of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
• Many of the virtues are developed by conflict  with pain and vice: endurance, courage, temperance etc..
• There are mysterious sufferings that are not caused by human beings Really, in the world to-day, it is suggested that, perhaps, 80-90% of our pain and suffering is caused by other human beings.   We could wipe out so many diseases if we wanted to.   We already have done so but more needs to be done,
• But this raises the question: why do these diseases exist in the first place?   This is part of the 10-20% of the mysterious suffering of which we have no answer at present.
• The most wicked example of one people inflicting pain and death on another is the Holocaust.   This surely adds enormous weight to the case against God.   Yet, many of the survivors of the death camps emerged as virtual saints (although it has to be conceded that many also emerged broken).
• One survivor was Rabbi Hugo Gryn.   He says: “  In a certain sense Auschwitz destroyed my childish notions.   But it was in Auschwitz and some of the other camps I was in, in my teens, that my faith was forged.   I understood then, and I understand it even better to-day, that Auschwitz was revelation, too.   It was revelation of what happens when an evil principle is harnessed to up-to-date technology…..What you cannot say is that God did it.   It isn’t true.   People did it – godless people”.
• There is a further conclusion which emanated from Rabbi Hugo Gryn, and it is one which has become widespread among the churches since World War II: that God Himself is “in the mess”, suffering with His creation and that we, like Job, may get no real answer out of the whirlwind but God is there transforming the situation so that we turn from cursing to worship.
• A Christian viewpoint on WW II comes from  Stuart Blanch, the Anglican Archbishop of York in the Eighties: “Actually the experience of being involved in the military where people you knew were dying around you had the effect on me that it had on many aircrew: that it gave them perhaps awareness of the realities which they had never experienced before or never thought about.   There was a disproportionately large number of men in the Air Force who, as a result of their experience, were later ordained”.
• God is holding the whole universe in being and enabling each tiny part of it to go on being itself.   Is it likely, therefore, that He is not in the pain of the universe?
• The purpose of God cannot  finally be defeated.   We see this in the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
• We see from the above that, whatever intellectual objections remain, people in great  danger and stress find that God brings good out of evil.
• In the New Testament we see Christ suffering at the end of His life and especially on the Cross.   But the Cross is not the end of the story; in the Resurrection death and suffering are transcended.   Christians and others believe that in the after-life things will appear quite differently.  Speculation will be subsumed in a new reality.
• Christ does not explicitly argue the goodness of God in creating this particular world and in permitting evil nor prevail over adversaries with philosophical arguments.   He gives a more significant answer in the portraying of God as the Father and Himself as the suffering Redeemer.   Before this vision the hard surface of the Problem of Evil begins to crumble.
• We are surrounded by mystery.   We are asking for an explanation of God’s inner counsels.   Again, we are asking for an explanation of the purpose of this world before that purpose has been fully accomplished; we want to turn to the end of the story when we are only half-way through; to stand outside time and space when we re still in time and space; we are aattempting to get Heaven into our heads instead our heads into Heaven!
• As St. Augustine says:  “God Almighty would in no way permit evil in His works were He not so omnipotent and good that even out of evil He could work good”.
• The explanation of the phenomena of the natural world does not lie within the natural world  and Science which describes these phenomena, telling how they occur, cannot tell us why they occur as they do.   These are familiar considerations.   So, too, must the explanation of the facts of moral experience lie beyond this world.
• An article appeared in “The Times” (London) in January, 1995, which points to forces beyond the human.   A prison chaplain called at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London.  He was shaking with  shock.   He had just witnessed a possession in a prison of which  he was chaplain; he  had just come from the cell of a  22-year old Asian man where he had witnessed the man being possessed by a ghost.   Writing about the case in “The British Journal of Psychiatry” Dr. Anthony Hale, senior lecturer in Psychiatry at St. Thomas’ Hospital, compared the young man’s power to that of the small girl in the film, “The Exorcist”.   What startled the psychiatrists was the description the chaplain gave of the incident he had witnessed.   He had seen a cloud bearing thee image of an old woman descend on the man’s chest.   According to Dr. Hale, this sort of condition may occur in an otherwise well-adjusted person in a culture with strong beliefs in possession and is normally dealt wwith by exorcism.   Dr. Hale treated the man with an anti-psychotic drug which succeded where exorcism had failed.   The possessions ceased but recurred when the man failed to take his drugs.   Dr. Hale stated :”In a multi-ethnic psychiatric service, possession by a ghost must be considered  as a possible diagnosis”.
• It is rarely stated by theists the the Problem of Evil exists for atheists.   For God substitute unaided Evolution and the same agonising difficulties remain.   Why did Evolution bring about evil?  Surely, it could have arranged things differently?  If it had the power to produce Leonardo, Newton,Lister, Curie, Pasteur, Keynes, Einstein, F.D.Roosevelt, Mandela etc.,. would it not have the power to replicate these over and over again so that solutions to the world’s problems might have been solved very much earlier?  The difference between the theist and the atheist approach is that in the one there is a n after-life, in the other there isn’t.
• Evil is not a thing, an entity, a being.   It is a wrong choice or damage done by a wrong choice.   It is no more positive than blindness.
• Who’s to say that we know all God’s reasons?  
• The after-life:  a different way of viewing things.
•  The degree of suffering (as opposed to the extent) is confined to that of the person who suffers most.
• No perfect solution intellectually.
• Satan the agent of evil in Nature.
• Since love must be chosen, love cannot exist without freewill so with evil.
• Fall of humankind leadss to corruption of world: “Everything is connected to everything else”.
• Evil is the absence of good.
• Concepts such as yin and yang argue that evil and good are complimentary.
• The case for Evil being deeper than human shortcomings is argued by Dr. CEM Joad in his book, “The Recovery of Belief (1951):  “For am I really to believe that the passions, the rages, the callous indifference to human suffering, the unbridled lust for domination and display exhibited by the men of restless energy and dominating will who have fought their way to power during the last forty years, are adequately to be explained as the by-product of a feeling of inferiority engendered by neglect in school?”.

Wikipedia – The Virgin Birth (Other articles include: In the Beginning; The End is Nigh?; Christian ~Social Teaching; The Problem of Evil; Did Jesus Exist?; Jesus and the World Religions; Jesus and the Future; Baptism; Binding and Loosing; Do Animals Have Souls?; The Conversion of Israel; Contraception; Holy Communion; Jesus and Ancient Authors; Homosexuality; Reproductive Technologies)

The Virgin Birth was not part of the main apostolic preaching in the earliest days of the Christian faith.   For example, the replacement for Judas had to be a “witness to the Resurrection” (Acts  1:21-22).

Jewish tradition did not expect the coming Messiah to be born of an intact virgin despite the questionable Septuagint translation of the Hebrew “young woman” in Isaiah as “virgin”.

Those critics who suggest that the Christian belief stemmed from outside influences have in mind such instances as the following virgin birth stories:
Dionysos, Attis, Perseus, Plato, Apollonius, some of the Pharaohs, Alexander, Augustus, Karna, Zoroaster.

Other cultures which have virgin birth motifs include:  African tribes, the Inuit, native North Americans, the ancient Toltecs and Aztects, the Persians and the Finns.

Because other religions and cultures from the ancient world have accounts of virgin births it does not follow that Christianity is simply one among many.   There is no exact parallel to the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

The early Church is unlikely to have been attracted by some of the virgin birth accounts of the Graeco-Roman world.   Many were little more than crude sexual behaviour on the part of the deity.   Wisdom 14:24,26 and Romans 1:24 show how Greek-speaking Jews and Jewish Christians would have reacted to such conduct.

There is a strong tide within N.T. scholarship,including many who wear clerical collars, to reject the historicity of the details of the Christmas accounts.

The annunciation, the shepherds, the magi, the star, the flight into Egypt…..are rejected as mythical.   For these scholars  the Virgin Birth which is left standing surrounded by flattened  discarded elements is not sacrosanct, either.   It, too, is rejected.

It is a mystery why the early Christians should have invented a virgin birth for Christ, if,indeed, it did not happen.   As we have seen, there is no exact parallel to the Virgin Birth in the ancient world and the earliest writers in the post-apostolic era accept the Virgin Birth.

The first time that we  learn that, quite possibly, Jesus did not exist was a handful of Liberal Protestant German scholars in the 19th.century.   This did not catch on but with Rudolf Bultmann and his disciples in the 20th century the idea gained ground that we can know very little, if anything, about the earthly Jesus.

What are the counter-arguments?

• As mentioned elsewhere on this Website, there is very much better manuscript evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for Caesar, Livy, Pliny. Plato , Tacitus , Aristotle etc..   The earliest copy we have for the New Testament is dated 100-250 years after its composition whereas for the above the gap is 850-1400 years.
• Pagan writers who mention Jesus are Pliny, Suetonius and Tacitus.   Most scholars accept this view but there  is a minority view (e.g., from Professor George Wells) that these writers were simply recording what they had learned from or about Christians.
• A stronger card is Josephus, a Pharisee writing in the latter part of the 1st.century A.D..   There is debate about what he actually wrote about Jesus but most scholars accept that he wrote about Jesus and believed in His existence.
• In the modern world there is no shortage of Jewish scholars who believe in the historical Jesus.   In fact, many of these compete to reclaim Jesus as one of theeir own.   Thus we have Klausner, Montefiore, Vermes,  Maccoby,Flusser, Goldstein, Goodman,Jacobs, Lapide, Baeck,Ben-Chorin,Sandmel, Schonfield etc,
• What about the originality of the Jesus’ teaching?   A liberal scholar, Professor E.P. Sanders states that there are sayings in the gospels which could not conceivably have been created in the early Church: e.g.,”Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good ?’ “.
• Ernst Kasemann says of the 1st, 2nd and 4th antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (not being angry; not lusting; not swearing) that they could not be regarded as normal Judaism, since it could not tolerate such sayings.
• Professor Geza Vermes, a Jewish scholar, has this to say:   “A negative, but significant, feature of Jesus’ representation of God consists in the absence of any royal figure”.
• The kernel of Jesus’ message was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.   There were very few analogiess in the Judaism of His day.   The ministry of Jesus shows that who He and what He did were closely related to His message of the Kingdom.   In this there is clear blue water between Him and other prophetss and charismatic figures in Jewish history.
• Professor B.Gartner has drawn attention to 5 feaatures of Jesus’ ministry:  He acted in the place of God in forgiving sins; He considered Himself to be greater than Moses in separating the rule of God from acceptance of the O.T. Law; He  claimed divine authority to exorcise demons; He spoke authoritatively of God’s judgement on sinners; and in His activity He manifested the actual presence of the Kingdom.
• Dr. Christopher Rowlands speaking of Jesus’ uniqueness, says that the parables found in the gospels contain teaching which is neither the minutiae of the lawyer nor the ethical maxims of the sage.   (For fuller information on the parables see elsewhere on this website)
• Professor J.Riches states that Jesus strikes a subversive note with the call of the disciples and appointment of theTwelve to sit on the twelve thrones of Israel
• It is contended that St. Paul did not know about the earthly ministry of Jesus.Consider the following:
  1. Paul said that Jesus was descended from Abraham (Gal 3:16)
  2. He said that He was a Son of David (Rom 1:3)
  3. He was born of a woman, born under the Law (Gal 4:4)
  4. He welcomed people (Rom 15:5,7)
  5. His lifestyle  was one of humility and service (Phil 2:7,8)
  6. He was abused and insulted (Rom 15:3)
  7. He had a brother named James (Gal 1:19) and other unnamed brothers (1 Cor:5)
  8. He was betrayed (1 Cor 11:23)
  9. He was killed by Jews of Judaea (1 Thess 2:14-5)

• For the uniqueness of Jesus’ healings see “Miracles” elsewhere on the Website.
• With regard to pre-Christian antecedents of the after-life Professor G.R. Osborne states: For Israel the after-life is Sheol – a rather shadowy existence; immortality; national resurrection; an incorruptible existence; etc..   It will be seen that none of this tallies with the redemptive death and rising again of one man,
• Professor Geza Vermes refers to the various strands of Messianism among Jesus’ contemporaries:  The Messiah will be victor over the Gentiles, a saviour and restorer of Israe; will appear in trappings of royalty; will be associated with the image of the Priest-King; will be a Prophet Messiah; and will be slain as an unsuccessful commander-in-chief of Israel in the first phase of the war against the final enemy.   With the possible exception of the Prophet Messiah Jesus’ concept of Messiahship is quite different.
• If  the gospels are a concoction of various mythical tales, it is surprising that the authors should have portrayed themselves in such dark colours.
• One issue which embroiled the infant Church was the question of tongues.   Why did Jesus not speak about this, if it was to be so important in the Church’s life, assuming He was a mythical figure?

Jesus And World Religions

In this article a comparison between the World Religions and Jesus is made.   This shows the similarities and dissimilarities

There are basically two typessof religion:  those who believe in Resurrection and those who believe in Reincarnation.

MONOTHEISM: Jews, Christians and Muslims are monotheists and believers in Resurrection

• For all three faith means an unconditionally trusting commitment to and reliance on God and his word by the whole person here and now
• Jews, Christians and Muslims are at one in their faith in the God of history.   God certainly transends history but is immanent in it.
• For all three religions God is someone they can talk to.
• For all three God  is a gracious and merciful God.
• All three are  the joint representatives before the world of faith in the one God

JUDAISM: Jesus was born and brought up in Judaism and longed for His native soil to accept Him.   There were diivergencies between Him and most of the leaders of Judaism.   These came to a head on Calvary, where, in Christian eyes, Jesus died for the sins of the people.   The idea of His resurrection was a bridge too far for Judaism.   His earliest disciples and some after the Resurrection were Jews.

• The two religions share a belief in one God; the Resurrection at the “end of the age”; the Old Testament…
• Some Jewish scholars and quite a large number of liberal rabbis speak highly of Jesus, going as far as reclaiming Him for Judaism.   They generally accept Him as prophet but not the Messiah
• Christians have little difficulty in accepting the Jews’ Bible – the Old Testament, which Jesus also accepted.
• Unlike Moses (and Muhammad) Jesus was not a detailed legislaator

ISLAM: Mohammed himself can to a certain extent be viewed as a witness for Jesus

• He reminds the Jews that Jesus fits into the continuity of Jewish salvation history.
• He conspiicuously refrains from passing over Jesus in silence.
• Muhammad is said to have had a supernatural birth,to have worked miracles. to have been without sin and to have gone up to heaven.
• Jesus (to whom Muhammad bore witness) has a message of lasting importance for Muslims.
• Jesus is the most important prophet after Muhammad in Islam.
• The Koran calls Jesus “the word” of God and the bearer of the “gospel”
• The free spirits of  Islamic mysticism found in Jesus not only the example of piety, love and asceticism but also the Christ, who exemplifies fulfilled humanity.;

HINDUISM: A religious tradition developed over several thousand years and intertwined with the history and social system of India.   It does not trace its origins to a particular founder; has no prophets; no set creed and no particular institutional structure.   It emphasises the right way of living rather than a set of doctrines and thus embraces diverse religious beliefs and practices.

• For purposes of comparison Krishna is selected here.   According to Hindu tradition, he is eighth incarnation, in human form, of the deity, Vishnu.   He was a great hero and ruler.   He delivered the great moral discourse of the “Bhagavad Gita”.
• Jesus is not, like Krishna, one revelation or incarnation of God among many.   From a Hindu point of view he might be easily absorbed into the dynamic system of Indian mythology and cultic practice.   Some Hindus do this – often in a spirit of great tolerance and understanding.
• If Christ’s state of being (as seen by Hinduism) is to be preserved, then He would need to be placed in relation to Brahma himself. – the personified creator god.   As seen  by Christianity He would need to be placed higher.

BUDDHISM: A tradition of thought and practice originating in India c.2’500 years ago and now a world religion, deriving from the teachings of Buddha, who is regarded as one of a continuing series of enlightened beings.   A central tenet, in Hinduism, is the law of karma, by which good and evil deeds result in appropriate reward or punishment in this life or in a succession of rebirths.

• A number of broad ethical are common to Buddhism and the entire Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition: Do not kill, do not steal, do not lie, do not indulgein sexual vice
• Jesus shows a greater similarity to Gautama than to, say, Muhaammad, the warrior and statesman.
• Like Gautama, Jesus was a wandering preacher, poor, homeless unpretentious, who experienced a crucial turning-point in his life that moved him to go out and proclaim his message.
• Like Gautama, in preaching that message Jesus did not use a sacred language that had become unintelligible but the colloquial language of His area.
• Like Gautama, Jesus points out a way of redemption from self-seeking, fallenness, blindness,   This liberation is achieved through religious experience and inner transformation: a thoroughly practical way to salvation.
• Like Gautama, Jesus occupied no formal office.

It is not intended in the foregoing to present indifferentism.   Rather it is hoped that there will be a greater appreciation of World Religions: their similarities and dissimilarities.

Through Christian eyes God loves all His creation and longs for them to be saved.   Where Christian and other Faiths co-incide that must be cause  for rejoicing, it means that God’s will is being enacted.   There remains the need for full Christian enlightenment.

All four gospels report Jesus as making reference to a future destruction of the Temple., an event which would seem to assume the Fall of Jerusalem.

If the evangelists had been in the business of retrojecting prophecies about the future of Jerusalem and the Temple on to Jesus, they gave very little space to the subject and did it in an amateurish way.    This last point is corroborated by the following:

1. There is no reference to the barricading of the city with a four-mile wall.
2. There is no reference to the civil war going on within the forces of the Jews, which facilitated a Roman victory
3. There is no reference to the famine within the city.
4. There is no mention of the destruction of the Temple  by fire.

• But how could Jesus know what was going to happen?  There are several points here.
• It is fascinating to find scientists talking and writing about “the arrows of time” and “reversing time”.   The basic laws of Physics, the reductionist equations, are almost perfectly symmetrical between past and future.
• Einstein said: “To us convinced physicists the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, though a persistent one”.
• Forty-six years ago, the prominent British Humanist, Professor Eysenck , a psychiatrist wrote:   “Unless there is a gigantic conspiracy involving some thirty University departments all over the world, and several hundred highly respected scientists in various fields, many of them originally sceptical to the claims of the psychical researchers, the only conclusion that the unbiased observer can come to is that there does exist a small number of people who obtain knowwledge existing in other people’s minds or in the outer world by means as yet unknown to science”.
• Predictions of future events are well-known and, in a number of cases, well-documented and corroborated by researchers:  e.g.,air disasters, earthquakes, road accidents, ships sinking.
• Two books which provide valuable reading opportunities in this field are “Forbidden Science” by Richard Milton and “Visions of the Future” by Dr. Keith Hearne.

• The practice of cleansing by water was known in some pre-Christian religions, where it represented transformation, promising immortality or regeneration.
• In the Jewish tradition people were immersed in water seven days after initiation.
• John the Baptist and the Dead Sea Sect practised baptism.
• Baptism is rarely mentioned in the gospels.   Jesus is said to have baptised and to have committed baptism to His disciples.
• The necessity of baptism is stated in Jn.3:5:  “Unless a man is born again of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God”.
• In Acts baptism is explicitly reported of almost every individual or group who accepts Christianity.
• Although there seem to be exceptions, the main thrust is that the Spirit is given in baptism.
• For Paul baptism is the believer’s experience of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus in him/herself.
• By baptism the Christian is washed, sanctified and made righteous in the name of Jesus.
• Christ sanctifies the Church, cleansing it by the washing of water in the word.   By this experience the believer is reborn, regenerated.
• The believer is redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ and the water of baptism, to which the Spirit testifies.
• Baptism effects the remission of all sins.
• In case of emergency baptism by water can be replaced by baptism of desire or baptism by martyrdom.
• According to Scripture perfect love possesses justifying power: Luke 7:47:”Many sins are forgiven her because she has loved much”; Jn.14:21: “He that loves me shall be loved of my Father and I will love him and will manifest myself to him”  and to the dying thief who had confessed Him at the last: “This day you will be with me in paradise”.
• Baptism by martyrdom.   This signifies martyrdom by confession of the Christian faith on the part of an unbaptised person.
• Jesus attests the justifying power of martyrdom: Mt.10:33: “Everyone therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven”; Mt10:39: “…..he that shall lose his life for me shall find it”.
• Infant baptism cannot be proved from Scripture.   From the earliest documents outside the N.T. we have references to the baptism of children by inference.    Polycarp and Justin Martyr attest to this and their references are to the 1st.century AD.   Other, slightly later, Fathers attest to infant baptism.
• St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians mentions “baptism for the dead”.   He neither supports nor condemns this practice.   We hear nothing more of the practice until the Mormons introduced  it.   They carry out detailed research to identify every human being who has ever lived with the aim of baptising them in this or the after-life by proxy.

“Binding And Loosing”

In Mt.16:13 f. Peter is given  the power of “binding and loosing”, a power that is also given to the other apostles in 18:18.

What does it mean?

The apostles are given the power to bind or loose on earth and this will be bound or loosed in heaven.

Binding and loosing are rabbinical terms that can refer to binding the devil in exorcism; to the juridical acts of excommunication; and to defining decision-making.

Peter was singled out for leadership by Jesus and so he was in the very early days of the infant Church.   We learn from the Gospel of Thomas, however, that the key role is accorded to James, the leader of the Jewish Christians.   For Gentile Christians St. Paul would have been the preferred candidate.

Do Animals Have Soul?

St. Francis told animals to praise God,   To do this they would need souls.

Pope John Paul II on one occasion stated: “Animals, too, have souls”.   It is only fair to point out that he meant something less than saved eternal souls.

In Rom.8:18f. St. Paul writes: “I think that we suffer in this life can never be compared to the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us.   The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons.   It was not for any fault on the part of creation that it was made unable to attain its purpose, it was made so by God; but creation still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God.   From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth”.

In the new heaven and new earth Isaiah forsees:  “The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid, calf and lion cub feed together with a little boy to lead them.   The cow and the bear make friends, their young lie down together.   The lion eats straw like the ox…..”

Enough has been said to say that in the after-life, whether in heaven or the new heaven and new earth, there will be animals.   This could encompass pets who have bonded so closely with their owners on earth.

Contraception

Scripture seems to say little about the subject.   It is to St. Augustine that the Church through the centuries owes its traditionally negative attitude to contraception.

Most Christian churches to-day accept and practise contraception.   The Catholic Church, however, stands aloof, although it has to be said that, where a choice exists,most Catholics opt for contraception.

Those who support the Catholic view point to the dramatic rise in pre-marital sex, the rise in sexually transmitted diseases including Aids, and occasional side-effects of the pill as evidence for their view.   Critics point out that these points do not affect the case for contraceptive practice,in marriage, whether by means of the pill or the  condom.

Regarding political abuse, it is instructive to note that, apart from Hitler’s abuses, in the mid-40s 30 of the  United States allowed mandatory non-voluntary sterilisation of various groups in society, including the retarded, the deviant, the criminal and racial minorities.

The most compelling case for contraception relates to population size.   Many Third World countries to-day and many European countries until recent years have had to struggle with over-population and widesppread hunger aand disease as a result of the Catholic ban on contraception

In Africa the ban on contraception intensifies the massive spread of Aids.   It is good news that often priests, monks and nuns disregard the Vatican and administer contraceptives.   It leads to a better world.

Holy Communion

Mark’s gospel records that “And as they were eating he took some bread and, when he had said the blessing, he broke it and gave it to them.   “Take it”, he said, “this is my body”.   Then he took a cup, and when he had returned thanks he gave it to them, and drank from it, and he said to them, “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many.   I tell you solemnly, I shall not drink any more wine  until the day I drink the new wine in the kingdom of God”.

• The disciples are invited to share in Jesus’ sacrificial death.
• “The blood of the covenant” alludes to Ex.24:8, where Moses seals the covenant by sprinkling  the blood of sacrificial animals on Israel.
• The” poured out for many” allludes to Is.53:12 and gives the action a sacrificial dimension.
• The two OT allusions serve to characterise the death of Jesus as sacrifice.
• The concluding saying places  the Last Supper in the context of the messianic banquet.
• In the early centuries of the Faith we have different statements from the Fathers about the Eucharist:

From earlliest times the Eucharist was regarded as a distinctively Christian sacrifice (e.g., Justin Martyr and the Didache)

The identification of the eucharistic bread and wine with the Lord’s body and blood is to be found throughout the first three centuries of the Faith.

Occasionally, the Fathers use language which may be held to imply that, for all its realistic sound, their use of the terms, “body and blood”, may be merely symbolic.

Athanasius clearly distinguishes the visible bread and wine from the spiritual  nourishment they convey.

• There are many other examples that could be cited.   Taken together they do not project the simple, single view of the Council of Trent in the 16th century.   There is a diverse set of beliefs.
• Whereas the Catholic Church sought to explain how Christ is really, truly and substantially present, the Orthodox Church, which was not involved in the Reformation, simply teaches that the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ.
• The 39 Articles in the Anglican communion is clearly Calvinist in character.   “The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner.   And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith”.   As the centuries have gone by other interpretations have evolved in the Anglican communion.
• Zwingli became a Protestant a year before Luther,   He disagreed with other Protestant leaders over the Eucharist:  he rejected Luther’s, Calvin’s and the Church of England’s views and maintained that Holy Communion was a memorial meal, a symbolic act.
• For Luther the Eucharist is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under bread and wine.   The body and blood of Christ are present in, with and under the bread and wine.
• For Calvin Christ is present, not in a corporeal manner but in a spiritual way through His life-giving operation.   In Calvinist theology it is often stressed that Christ’s presence in the Supper is a “dynamic presence”.
• A visitor from Mars presented with these theories of the Lord’s Supper might think that they are mere metaphysics and go on to say that there is not a blade of grass between the lot of them!
• It is up to Jesus, not Church semantics, to determine whether or not He is present in Holy Communion.

Footnote

It is sometimes argued in academic circles that the Last Suppers was not associated with the Passover.   The contrary case may be stated thus:

1. The Passover meal had to be eaten within the walls of Jerusalem,   The Last Supper was eaten within the city walls.
2. The Passover night had to be spent within greater Jerusalem, which included Jerusalem and the surrounding hills facing it.   Jesus and His companions observed this requirement.
3. Jesus and His disciples reclined as they ate.   It was customary to sit at ordinary meals but to recline at the Passover,
4. The Last Supper was eaten in the evening as required by the Law.
5. The Last Supper  ended with singing, as was customary at the Passover.
6. The interpretation of the elements was a customary part of the Passover and this practice was continued by Jesus in the Last Supper.
7. It was customary at the Passover to give some money to the poor, a practice that would explain Judas (the treassurer) leaving  the gathering.

(Acknowledgements for this Footnote to Professor RHStein)

The Agape (The Love-Feast)

Associated with Holy Communion is the Love-Feast.   We know of the existence of this from two biblical sources, one pagan source and a handful of early Fathers.

Our biblical sources are 1 Cor.11:17-29 and the epistle of Jude.   In both the Love-Feasts have deteriorated into wild-living and the writer seeks to correct it.

The pagan source is Pliny the Younger.   In interrogating Christians he discovered that  their normal practice was to assemble before day-break and sing hymns as to a god and make commitments to a good life.   They assembled later in the day for a common meal.

In the early Church Fathers the Agape is both a rite using bread and wine and a meal of fellowship to which the poor were invited.

It is not clear from the sources to what extent practice varied.   It seems that in some cases the Lord’s Supper was celebrated as part of the Agape; in others, the Agape followed the Lord’s Supper; and, in yet others, the two were clearly separated.

It should not be over-looked that in the original Lord’s Supper this took place during the Passover Meal.   If the intention is to be as near as possible to what Jesus did, the Eucharist should follow this practice.   It does not do this in virtually all the Christian denominations and sects in Christendom.

Jesus And Ancient Authors

Jesus is mentioned by three Roman writers of the late 1st/early 2nd century AD.   The Roman writers are Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Tacitus.   Their references are brief and it seems that their knowledge of Jesus came from Christians rather than from academic research.

Jesus is also mentioned more importantly by Josephus, a Jewish historian at the end of the 1st.century AD.   There are two references to Jesus in Josephus: the Longer Passage and the Shorter Passage.

• The Longer Passage reads:   “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.   For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.   He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.   He was the Messiah.   When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him.   On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him.   And the tribe of the Christians,  so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared”.
• The basic problem with the Longer Passage is that it contains references to Jesus’ standing and actions which, it is argued, would hardly have been written by Josephus, a Pharisee.   The references to the Resurrection and particularly the Messiah are hard to accept from a non-believer.   A large majority of scholars think that Josephus’ words have been worked over by a later Christian hand.
• In the Shorter Passage we read that Annas the younger, a new high priest, seized the opportunity to pay off a number of old scores in the absence of a Roman governor so “he convened a judicial session of the Sanhedrin and brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ – James by name – and some others, whom he charged with breaking the law and handed over to be stoned to death”.
• This passage is very much less controversial and can be said to confirm the existence of the historical Jesus.
• Reverting to the Longer Passage a survey of scholars in the post-1950 period reveals that 18% of scholars think that it is more or less original ; 54% favour tampering by a Christian hand but on a solid, historical Josephan basis; and 28%  that the Passage has been completely forged/ too vague re Jesus to be sure.
• The Shorter Passage is accepted by almost all scholars.

Homosexuality

• This can be a highly emotive issue, especially  in Conservative theological circles.
• The causes of homosexuality are still hotly disputed.   At the time of writing (December,2008) the balance of argument suggests the most pronounced strain favours Nature rather than Nurture.   After all, homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom, so why not in the human?
• The Bible, both in the OT and the NT, comes down  against homosexual practices.   It does not criticise the homosexual bias as such.   This is very often forgotten by those declaiming homosexuals.
• It was even suggested by a future Anglican Bishop of Birmingham (UK) that Christ might have been a homosexual because, unusually for a Jew at that time, he was not married!!
• There is no room in Christian circles for censoriousness  towards homosexuals.
• We are all weak and stand in need of prayer and forgiveness.   Furthermore, Jesus told the censorious religious leaders of His time that the outcasts  would enter His kingdom before they did!

Reproductive Technologies

• Again, this is an emotive issue.
• Medicine is now able to afford hope to thousands of couples who have been unable to bear a child.
• While adoption agencies remain an option for some, the low numbers of avaiable healthy children (22,000 babies for 2,000,000 prospective couples per year in the USA)  create a strong demand for reproductive technologies.
• Artificial insemination by husband (AIH) has been the least controversial technique
• Artificial insemination by donor (AID) has been more controversial.   This is where the sperm of an anonymous donor is used to impregnate the mother.   It is often used where the husband cannot produce the right type of sperm.
• In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is the process whereby a woman’s egg is fertilised with sperm in the laboratory.   Typically, the ovaries are stimulated by a fertility drug, and then a few ova are removed and fertilised.   The most promising zygote is then placed into the uterus.   These are the “test tube” babies.
• “Rent a womb” involves impregnating the womb of a third party with the sperm of the husband of a childless couple.   The woman carries the child to term and then delivers the child to the couple.   This is done for money.
• A large number of ethical, legal, social and theological issues is raised by these technologies.
• Outspoken criticism has come from Conservative Protestants and from the Vatican.   This has not prevented millions of Christians, desperate for a child, from taking advantage of these facilities.
• Experiments on human embryos are very much more controversial, not least because of the Frankenstein scenario.
• By whatever means the baby is created, it is welcomed by Jesus and this is the main point to be made in the furore.

(With acknowledgements to Professor D.B. Fletcher)

• Spiritualism is an organised religion which believes that spirits of the deceased survive bodily death and can communicate with the living usually by means of a medium.
• While many cultures, past and preseent, believe in Spiritism, Spiritualism is primarily a Western culture/religion
• It claims to take a “scientific” approach.
• Spiritualists believe in God and feel that through communications with the deceased they may come to undersstand better the spiritual laws of God.
• Spiritualists also practise spiritual healing.   The healer believes that he/she is controlled by a spirit-guide, often a Chinese or North American Indian.
• It has to be said that many people feel that Spiritualism is prone to trickery.   The famous escapologist and show-man, Harry Houdini, said that he could do anything that a medium claims to do.
• Where does Jesus fit into all of this?   He doesn’t.   He did not urge His followers to focus on the departed but rather to look to themselves in this life.   Healing and passage to an after-life depend primarily on faith – faith in Him.
• The OT is against Spiritualism.   The most celebrated instance is Saul and the”Witch” of En-dor where Saul asks the “Witch” to contact the departed and is roundly condemned by the OT author.