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We can safely say several things about the Gospel of St. Luke, the Gospel read throughout the Catholic Church at Sunday Mass during this liturgical year, which began on the First Sunday of Advent, a few weeks ago. First, Luke was not an apostle and never met Christ. He admits this in his introduction where he describes his research: “Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus…” Luke refers to previous accounts already in circulation, most certainly the Gospel of Mark and an independent source of the savings of Jesus, called the Q-source, a source available to Luke and Matthew, but not to Mark.
The dating of Luke’s Gospel has been set at around 80 A.D., a half-century after the Resurrection of Jesus. Among the clues: Luke’s description of the end times is drawn in considerable detail from the actual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.; Luke’s theology of the Holy Spirit expressed in his Gospel and in his accompanying Acts of the Apostles explains the nature of Jesus’ presence in the Church that looked to exist for many years to come, i.e., as the years passed and the Second Coming did not occur, Luke found it necessary to explain the presence of Christ, in the Holy Spirit, that would extend far into the future. St. Paul’s first Letter to the Thessalonians, by contrast, written in the early 50’s A.D., expected an imminent return of Jesus. [See 1 Thessalonians 4] This Gospel is dedicated to “Theophilus.” The identity of this individual is one of the New Testament’s mysteries. In the literal Greek of Luke, the name means “friend of God,” and some commentators see the name as a generic term for any well-intentioned searcher of the truth. On the other hand, in the custom of the time it was accepted practice to thank the patron who made the project possible through financial and other kinds of support. A popular theory in my school days in the early 1970’s held that Theophilus was a high-ranking Roman official; in this scenario, Luke may have been trying to convince Theophilus that, far from being a threat to the Roman Empire, Christianity might be the religious movement that could unify the Empire. Luke writes his Gospel in sophisticated Greek, to an audience that honors the Scriptures of Israel. This style suggests an intended audience of both Gentile Christians and Diaspora Jews who had converted to Christianity, i.e., Jews who did not live in Judaea but had migrated around the Gentile world. The internal evidence of this Gospel strongly suggests an affluent audience, “financially secure enough that wealth had become a challenge to their spiritual health.” [Paulist Biblical Commentary, p. 1037] The best evidence suggests that this Gospel was written in Syria. Again, it is helpful to keep in mind that Luke is also the author of The Acts of the Apostles, much of which is devoted to St. Paul’s missionary work beyond Palestine, in the Greek-speaking eastern portion of the Roman Empire. Luke’s cites his sources in his opening text [see first paragraph above] but like all the evangelists, he writes with a unique theological outlook of Jesus the Christ. With good reason Luke is regarded as the evangelist of the Holy Spirit as he describes the power of the Spirit in the person of Jesus from the very instant of his human existence—"“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” [Luke 1:35, Gabriel’s words to Mary.] Later in the Gospel, in Chapter 3, Luke writes: “After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” [Luke 3: 21-22, Baptism of Jesus by John.] This emphasis upon the Holy Spirit is critical when we recall that the first generations of Christians believed that the Second Coming of Christ would occur momentarily. When this did not happen, and Rome destroyed the holy city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., confusion, discouragement, and even doubt about Christianity’s future needed an inspired restatement of how Jesus’ legacy would be played out. Luke addresses this question in a brilliant Easter Sunday narrative, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In Luke 24: 13-35 the author crafts the story of the two disciples abandoning Jerusalem in utter discouragement. Meeting Jesus on the way, but not recognizing him, they pour out their doubts and broken hearts. Jesus reinterprets the Biblical promises to assure them that God’s plan was still in play. The three men stop to eat, and during the meal “It happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?’” The term “breaking of bread” was the Christian idiom for the primitive Eucharistic celebration. What Luke is teaching here [and this text is unique to Luke] is that the presence of Jesus is with the Church always when it celebrates Eucharist, and eventually the other sacraments. Our eyes are always opened to see Jesus in the sacramental life of the Church. It is not far fetched to say that Luke’s Gospel is the blueprint for a Church that can endure for millennia. Luke goes further to explain that Jesus remains present in the Church through the unfailing presence of the Holy Spirit. In a stroke of pure genius, Luke parallels the human conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit in Chapter 2 of his Gospel with the dramatic conception of the Church by the Holy Spirit in his second chapter of Acts of the Apostles. It is this abiding presence of the Holy Spirit that empowers the Church to preach, teach, and sanctify in God’s name, i.e., where the Church draws its authority to proclaim the truth of Jesus. Again, it is no exaggeration to say that Luke’s Gospel and Acts of the Apostles has bequeathed to us the identity of the Church we know today. As if this were not enough, Luke has left us with a collection of the most powerful parable lessons for Christian living. The following parables are unique to Luke and do not appear in any other Gospel: The Two Debtors (7:14) The Rich Man's Meditation (12:16) The Barren Fig Tree (13:6-9) The Good Samaritan (10:30-37) The Three Loaves (11:5-8) The Guests (14:7-11) The Tower (14:28-30) The Lost Coin (15:8-9) The Prodigal Son (15:11-32) The Unjust Steward (16:1-9) The Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31) The Slaves Duty (17:7-10) The Importunate Widow (18:2-5) The Pharisee and the Tax Gatherer (18:10-14) The Watching Slaves (12:36-38) I would do an injustice if I tried to summarize a common theme or themes to this body of metaphors. Moreover, parables in the Gospels are intended to raise as many questions as answers. However, scholars agree that Luke’s Gospel in general places considerable emphasis upon the universality of salvation, i.e., Gentile and Jew; justice and solicitude for the poor; wrath toward the greedy; mercy and forgiveness; sensitivity to marginalized populations. Luke’s Gospel has also enjoyed a reputation for its inclusion of women in his narrative and in parables. And at this Christmas season, it would be a gross error to forget the magnificent narrative of events surrounding the birth and early years of Jesus. There are only two Infancy narratives in the Gospels: Matthew’s and Luke’s. Mark and John have no birthing narratives. I recommend that when reading the Christmas narratives, do not mix Luke’s with Matthew’s. Read Luke’s narrative [Chapters 1 and 2] as a stand-alone narrative to be faithful to the evangelist’s intent. Again, I encourage you to make the Gospel of Luke your study focus during this liturgical year. I recommend you consider a commentary or aid, and there are good ones available. Check with your parish’s director of religious education or faith formation director for recommendations for commentaries on St. Luke, or Bible studies on St. Luke being offered in your parish. Remember, too, the Gospel of St. Luke will be read about every Sunday at your parish Mass for the next year. If you are shopping for yourself, I have several recommendations from my own experience. If this is your first shot at Bible study, I suggest the New Collegeville Bible Commentary’s The Gospel According to Luke: If you want to tackle something more challenging, consider Sacra Pagina: Gospel of Luke or Joel B. Green’s The Gospel of Luke. This year I am reading an intriguing commentary on St. Luke from Liturgical Press’s Wisdom Commentary, Luke 1-9. This commentary was researched and written by two Catholic feminist scholars. I have completed the first two chapters and find it a very insightful and spiritually moving commentary on this Gospel from the perspective of feminine scholarship and experience. I would not recommend it as a first read on Luke’s Gospel, but you are all adults, and you can do what you want.
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I like Mike. He used to be one of my students in the diocesan certification program workshops. As he put it the other day, “Back then I was going after all the certifications I could get.” After 2016, when I was put out to pasture in favor of cable catechetics, we stayed friends and once a month we meet for an afternoon at a nearby Panera’s for lunch, pastries, endless coffee, and a sweeping review of the world of catechetics—personal, professional, and universal. When the sugar and the caffeine build up, I notice that fewer and fewer people sit near our booth.
Mike and I are both in our 70’s. I come from a liberal arts background; Mike had several productive careers in law enforcement and the trades before he got the call to consider youth catechetics. He teaches fourth grade and participates in a parish bible study. Our diocesan courses over the years barely scratched the surface of Church theology; fortunately, he is an initiative-taker and a self-educated student of Catholic religion. A general problem in religious education is the absence of theological guiding resources for self-readings and self-studies, as well as an absence of personal mentoring of catechists. Mike is aware of this, and he runs his thinking past me as a kind of “peer review” while I devour richly frosted cinnamon buns. Truth be told, though, I am deeply impressed with his study and never cease to be surprised by the insight he gleans from his personal reflection and thinking. This past Friday he shared with me his discovery that St. Peter was the source of the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel we have heard in Church every Sunday during 2021. That is one of at least four source theories about Mark, but Mike had come to understand one of the most important principles of Gospel study—that each Gospel is different, and each offers a unique participation in the mystery that is Christ. Mike has discovered a key to Bible study—to all Catholic study, actually—that the four Gospels, written by evangelist theologians filled with the Holy Spirit, each present a unique window into the meaning and message of Jesus, like the precious jewel held up to the light and reflecting an unending array of colors. This would be vastly different from what I suspect are the working theories of many Catholics, namely, that [1] the four Gospels simply tell the same historical life of Jesus four times, and [2] the Gospels are buffet tables of pithy inspirational texts to be extracted depending upon the need of the moment. One of the keys to studying and teaching the Gospels is to separate the four and focus on one. This is the guiding principle of the Gospel selections for Sunday Mass. Our new Church year will begin November 27-28, 2021, with the observance of the First Sunday of Advent and a turn to the Gospel of Saint Luke. The three Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke rotate in a triennial cycle. [For those of you worried about St. John and his Gospel being left out in the cold, have no fear. The Church assigns the Johannine Gospel to special feasts, such as Christ the King, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the RCIA Sundays of Lent, etc.] The beginning of a new liturgical Church year is an excellent time to focus on the study of the Gospel of that year since portions of that Gospel will be proclaimed every Sunday for the coming year. Consequently, this would be the year to absorb the full Gospel of St. Luke—from personal reading, bible study groups, and [hopefully] from preaching at Sunday Mass. There are several principles to observe in reading the Gospel of Luke [or any Biblical book for that matter.] The first is to remember that faithful reading of the Scripture is a major commitment. About ten years ago I reviewed Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina [1996] for Amazon where I discussed the fact that daily reading of the Bible and other religious works is the backbone of a monk’s life. To immerse ourselves in God’s revealed Word may require time rearrangement, like getting up earlier or setting a daily “sacred time.” The second is development of a sense of obedience to the text. Put another way, the Bible is authoritative. It is not my job to critique it. My task is to listen in silent obedience to the text. If I read something I cannot understand, the onus is on me to research a worthy commentary for the best meaning of a text. [See below] Do not be a cherry picker, jumping around to texts you know and/or avoiding the ones that make you uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, dumb. Luke the Evangelist is a magnificent writer; there are no throw-away lines or unimportant sidebars. The third is to approach a Gospel as if it were the only Gospel in existence. In reading St. Luke, for example, put aside if you can what you remember from other Gospels. This method will help you “get inside Luke’s head” if I may be irreverent. Spoiler alert: Luke is the first of the evangelists to realize the “the church” might last for a long time, that the Second Coming might be a long way off. Second spoiler alert: Luke’s Gospel is the only one with a “part two,” so to speak. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is the second half of his Gospel. If you do not believe me, click here. The fourth is consideration of a biblical commentary. I would strongly recommend it if you plan to study a book of the Bible in its entirety, like the Gospel of Luke. A commentary is a published guide to the Biblical book you are studying. The best guides contain the Bible text itself, a running explanation by a teacher/scholar, useful footnotes/explanations, and a bibliography of other books you might find useful down the road. The fifth principle is the possibility of taking a Bible course [or other theological concentration] at your local Catholic college or online Catholic University. If you live in an area with a Catholic college nearby, i.e., if you live near Boston College, Georgetown, Villanova, etc., you can just call over and see what the school offers for budding catechists and ministers, For example, you might be able to enroll in an introductory New Testament study course—for audit, or even college credit if you qualify for that. If my friend Mike lived near St. Bonaventure University, for example, I would move heaven and earth and pay to get him into several introductory courses. Such courses make it so much easier to continue later study at home, and they direct the student to the best authors and publishers for future purchases. The best on-line college program in the U.S. is “The Virtual Learning Community for Faith Formation” at the University of Dayton, Ohio. I took an on-line six-week course myself years ago on Catholic Social Justice teaching, and let me tell you, it was every bit as challenging as a matriculating graduate course I took on the same subject in 1974. Dayton’s cost is about $100 or thereabouts per course, but time is money, too, and taking a good introductory course saves much time and frustration for catechists who earnestly want to become better at their ministry. Moreover, I think every parish should pick up the tab for any catechist who wishes to take courses and purchase first-rate texts for study. The sixth principle is purchasing the best books available. There is a lot of religious junk on the market. The Catechist Café website tries to highlight the best books, and any reader is free to check in and ask for a recommendation by email tjburns@cfl.rr.com or at the Catechist Café pages on Facebook and Linked In. As a rule, I recommend Paulist Press, Liturgical Press, and Loyola Press as browsing starters. Remember that marketers such as Amazon and Abe Books offer used copies of desired books at lower prices if you are counting pennies. I also recommend purchasing a paper text over a Kindle text; with a paper text you can highlight, make notes, and later retrieve information for class preparation and other projects. At the end of the day the most important thing for a Catholic, and particularly a catechist or minister, is commitment to lifelong immersion into the study of the Faith, beginning with Sacred Revelation. The Church calendar leads us by the hand to St. Luke’s Gospel as our collective study for this coming year. My own reading of St. Luke for 2022, which I have begun already, is the Wisdom Commentary volume on St. Luke [2021] from Liturgical Press. This is a study of Luke’s Gospel undertaken by a team of feminist Catholic women theologians. I am finding it quite compelling…and at the same time discovering how little I know about this Gospel. Anyway, study well. Be like Mike. Every third summer the sultry Dog Days are treated to an extraordinary exposition on the Holy Eucharist from the Gospel of Saint John. St. John does not have “his own” year in the Church’s collection of Sunday readings; Matthew, Mark, and Luke are read during the A, B, and C years respectively. The year 2021 is a “B” year and we have followed the narrative of St. Mark. St. John’s Gospel is preserved for special feasts and seasons, particularly Lent and Easter. But in the B year the Church designates six successive Sundays of the summer to the sixth chapter of St. John, the famous “breads narrative.” The sixth chapter of John is read in its entirely from the 17th through the 21st Sundays of Ordinary Time in the B Cycle.
The first Sunday in this six-week series narrates the miracle of the loaves and fishes. In the study of the Gospel there is a principle called “multiple attestation,” meaning that the more an episode is repeated over the four Gospels, the more likely it has a strong historical event underlying it. Thus, the Baptism of Jesus, the desert Temptation, the calling of the Twelve, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion most certainly occurred in history. This does not eliminate other events narrated in individual Gospels nor Gospel accounts created by the inspired evangelists to bring forth divine truth. The rule of multiple attestation simply highlights what the early Church believed were the most critical and the memorable of events handed down by the first generation of Jesus’ witnesses. The feeding of the thousands by Jesus, multiplying a few loaves of bread and fish, appears in all four Gospels [In Mark, twice!]. John, the last Gospel to be written, around 100 A.D., has very few miracles, about six. When John includes a miracle, which he calls “signs,” he uses the story to introduce a lengthy instruction, which occurs here. After the miracle of the feeding, there is a protracted discussion and controversy about the true bread from heaven which occupies the rest of Chapter 6, a masterful doctrinal piece that sets the table [no pun intended] for understanding the nature of the Eucharistic meal. John’s story of the bread and fish miracle has strongly Jewish overtones. By the time of John’s Gospel, relations between Jewish Christian converts and Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah had deteriorated badly, and John wishes to make the case that the Jewish promise made to Abraham and Moses had passed along to Jesus as the center of a new covenant. We can see clever hints in John’s narrative of his intention. For example, John inserts these details: a large crowd followed Jesus to a mountain because they had seen signs [think Moses and Sinai]; Jesus went up a mountain, like Moses; the Jewish feast of Passover was at hand; there was a great deal of grass in the place [springtime, the season of Passover]. In his account, St. Mark observes that Jesus was moved with pity at the crowd which had been with him for three days. St. John does not mention this. For John, the sign value of what he will do is the primary concern. So, Jesus sends up a test balloon to Philip in the form of a question, “where do we get enough food to feed them?” In the preceding Chapter 4, Jesus had assured his disciples that he was the source of a food that never runs out, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” [John 4: 30-38] The correct answer from Philip would have been something along the lines of “I trust that you have the true bread from heaven that will save us all.” [A Jewish reference to manna would have been appropriate.] Instead, Philip answers with the mundane observation that two hundred days’ wages of food would not feed the crowd at hand. He does not yet have faith in Jesus to save, and his answer is only marginally more polite than the Hebrews in the desert who “murmured” against Moses that he had led them out to the desert only to die of hunger. Andrew’s faith is not much stronger. He comes forth with five barley loaves—historically, the bread of the poor—and two fish, lamenting that “what good are these among so many?” What happens next is one of the great wonders of the Gospel. We get our first idea of the size of the crowd, as Jesus orders them to sit in the grass. There are five thousand men, not counting the women and children. What follows is one of those maddening Gospel narratives—like the Resurrection itself—that provides enough description to take the reader to the edge of faith and leaves him or her to assent or deny. Jesus takes the bread, gives thanks, and distributes it. The term “to give thanks” is rendered in Gospel Greek Eucharisteo; the word that has passed down as the backbone of the Christian worshipping assembly as well as our theology of communion. The miracle itself is not described, only its origins and its results. How did Jesus feed thousands of persons from his small offering of bread and fish? I have heard over the years efforts to explain the event in natural terms. For example, some have theorized that everyone present was hiding their precious stash of food, but the example of Jesus giving his away led everyone to share what they had. The problem with this theory is reconciling it with the recorded actions of the people at this mountainside meal. John records [6: 14-15] that the people exclaimed Jesus as “truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into this world.” Jesus, having performed this sign, “knew that they were going to carry him off to make him a king….” So, the Gospel itself, without giving technical details, conveys that the witnesses were so overwhelmed by this sign that they moved in almost mass hysteria. Much has been made in recent years of the apparent lack of understanding of the Eucharist as the real Body and Blood of Christ. I suspect that most Catholics think of communion as a fellowship around Christ, but that in today’s culture it is hard to believe in real miracles that transcend the law of nature. John’s Gospel does not contain very many miracles, but they are all of the “in your face” type, starting with the Wedding Feast of Cana [water changed to wine] and concluding with the raising of Lazarus from the dead. At some point in our lives, we must come to grips with the idea that Jesus truly worked miracles that defied science and logic. After all, we are banking on the most irrational concept of all, that some day our graves will open, and we will experience a life beyond death. I neglected one point in the miracle narrative: the collection of the leftovers. After everyone had eaten to their fill, Jesus commands that the uneaten portions be collected, which totaled twelve full baskets. This is not an incidental item. There is a biblical theme throughout that when God feeds his people, he does so in copious amounts and with the finest foods. Joel 2:24 states: “And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Second, the number twelve is symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus is demonstrating his establishment of the new and eternal Jerusalem in his person. And finally, there is a peculiar literary insertion. St. John’s Greek narrative states that the baskets were full of fragments, or klasmata. The Didache, a first century description of the very early Church, uses the same word klasmata to describe the pieces of Eucharistic bread broken during the worship rite. Thus, the connection between the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the Eucharistic celebration of then and now is unmistakable. Belief in the Eucharist as the eternal Christ is belief in unity with him after death. “He who eats this bread and drinks this cup has everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Believe it. Having introduced the New Testament letters of John and Peter in the “Smallest Books of the Bible” posts [see posts below], this week I was moved to meditate upon and research the Hebrew Prophet Micah. The original Micah, or Micah the Morashtite, prophesized sometime between 742 and 687 B.C. Nothing is known about his personal life except some traces of information in his seven chapters. Sister Irene Nowell, O.S.B., Micah’s scholar for The Paulist Biblical Commentary, notes that other Biblical prophets exercised their ministry during Micah’s time: Isaiah in the southern kingdom, and Amos in the north.
A quick overview of geography is helpful when approaching this work. We are accustomed to thinking of Israel as one entity led by God’s anointed kings. However about two centuries after the glory years of David and Solomon, the kingdom divided into Israel [north] and Judah [south]. The capital city of the northern kingdom was Samaria, later destroyed, and Samaria became a region in tension with Israel to the south. Think of the “Good Samaritan [St. Luke’s Gospel] “and “The Samaritan Woman at the Well” [St. John’s Gospel.] The two capital cities in Micah’s time were Jerusalem [south] and Samaria [north], and while there are many towns mentioned in Micah’s texts, they are secondary to the prophet’s main thrust of calling out the sinfulness of “big city living.” It did not require a seer to see life-shattering threats upon the horizon. The northern kingdom was hedged in by Assyrians [early Syria] to their north, and in fact the Assyrians would overrun the northern kingdom and destroy much of it in 720 B.C. Micah understood that the southern kingdom, losing its northern buffer, would at some point face a similar fate, which indeed occurred in 586 B.C. when Babylon seized the remaining southern kingdom and carried off the occupants in the “Babylon Captivity” which lasted 50 years. Consequently Micah, preaching during the northern crisis, directs his preaching to both kingdom capitals which had fallen into spiritual decay. Micah does not waste time. From the very start he announces that he has received “the word of the Lord” which he directs to both Jerusalem and Samaria. Samaria will become “a stone heap” for its sins, which from the context of chapter one appears to be idolatry and probably temple prostitution. Idolatry can mean multiple things, but at its heart is a failure to trust God and a tendency to “hedge bets” with other powers by trading, treaties, adopting pagan fertility rites, etc. God takes the abandonment of trust and fidelity to the Law with the rage one would expect from a spouse who has been sexually betrayed. This theme of conjugal betrayal is used elsewhere in prophetic writing, notably the Book of the Prophet Hosea. Temple prostitution itself was a regrettable but real institution of support for the holy place until the later years before the coming of Christ. Chapter 2 of Micah should give us pause in the United States. The preaching here turns to “redistribution,” from the poor to the rich. “They [the rich] covet fields, and seize them; houses, and they take them; they cheat an owner of his house, a man of his inheritance.” He goes on in Chapter 3: “Hear this…you rulers of the house of Israel. You who abhor what is just and pervert all that is right…her leaders render judgment for a bribe, her priests give decisions for a salary, her prophets divine for money.” Micah scorns the mindset of the rich and powerful, who believe they can live in such an imbalanced society with impunity. “Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No evil can come upon us!” But Micah, speaking for God, demurs: “Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem reduced to rubble.” The obligation of society—to stamp out abuse of the poor by the rich--is probably the primary ethical teaching of the entire collection of prophetic books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures. When coupled with absolute love of God and obedience to his Law, this is the summit of Jewish life. There are some who say that with the coming of Jesus, the moral life of Israel ceased to be the determining factor in eternal destiny. They forget that Jesus was born, lived, and died a Jew. When Jesus was pressed about the final judgment, in Matthew’s Gospel [Matthew 25: 41-45] Jesus had Micah in mind when he stated a hard truth: “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” The Book of Micah is not well known to most Catholics; one could probably say the same thing about much of the Hebrew Scripture. And alas, in the case of Micah, the name might stir to mind the celebrational vibes of the Christmas Season of the Christian Calendar. For Micah Chapter 5 begins with a prediction: “But you, Bethlehem-Ephratha, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.” For centuries Micah 5 was considered a prediction of the birth of Christ, though most of the chapter describes this future figure as a new king of Israel who will unite the nation and reclaim any lands lost to the Assyrians. To highlight Bethlehem, a nondescript town, would be very consistent with Micah’s disgust of big cities. The association of Micah’s prophesy with the birth of Jesus is made by the Christian evangelist St. Matthew. In Chapter 2 of his Gospel, the famous visit of the Wise Men of the East read every year on the Feast of the Epiphany, Matthew describes King Herod coming unhinged at the appearance of the Magi seeking the newborn king of the Jews. Herod convenes his clergy: When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’]” Micah is one of twelve “minor prophets” in contrast to the major prophets such as Isaiah, whose work runs past 60 chapters. But there is a remarkable harmony to all the prophetic literature and the ultimate commandments of Christ. The key is behavior: individuals and nations who do not rest until every human being, a child of God, has experienced God’s expression of protection and justice at our hands motivated by a genuine sense of brotherhood under God’s watchful eye. Micah’s simple seven-chapter book brings home the consequences of indifference and abetting a status quo which institutionalizes economic and social dysfunction. For the text of Micah and a brief commentary, the USCCB provides free access here. The Paulist Biblical Commentary treats of Isaiah, pp. 842-851. The PBC is a valuable addition to any church minister, teacher, or student of the Bible. The most recent book on Micah’s text from a Catholic publisher is Micah [2015] by Julia O’Brien. This book appears in the Wisdom Commentary Series of Liturgical Press. WCS is the first collection of scripture commentaries researched entirely by women scholars and theologians. WCS is an ecumenical venture, as are most major commentary series today. Face Book photo is mine, featuring The Paulist Biblical Commentary and the New American Bible, 1991 edition. Perhaps it is the ambiance of viewing the Mass in my own home that I find myself keying in on the Scriptures with more intensity. For one thing, since I own the remote control, I control the volume, no small consideration when you hear with only one ear. But more to the point, I have come away with a greater appreciation of the writing of 1 Peter. I wrote in the last post how 1 Peter, proclaimed at Mass on the Sunday after Easter, was probably an instruction to the newly baptized, and as such, is a particularly good example of post-Apostolic catechesis. I was not aware last month that 1 Peter was the designated source for all the second readings Sundays of Easter in the A Cycle. If you live in dioceses that celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday this week, you will hear yet another selection from 1 Peter next week.
2 Peter is not, I repeat, is not a continuation of the book you have heard proclaimed over the past weekends of Easter, nor does it share the same author. If 1 Peter shares the Christian’s wisdom of the baptismal change of the newly concerted, 2 Peter is a general letter to all Christians in local communities to root themselves in the unspeakable glory, wisdom, and love of God with his divine Son, while at the same time decrying the evils in the world and the treachery of false teachers from within their midst. Neither 1 Peter nor 2 Peter were written by that Peter, the senior of the Twelve, but rather by two later teachers and leaders who adopted the pseudonym of the great Peter, a common practice in antiquity. In the Paulist Biblical Commentary, scholar Sherri Brown observes that the letter may have originated in Rome [hence the pseudonym Peter] or in Asia Minor, as the author makes multiple allusions to the theology of St. Paul’s writings. The author’s dependence upon the Gospels and the Letter of Jude make clear that the letter was written long after St. Peter’s death and belongs to a collection of pastoral instructions to churches that were gathered in the early second century. The “canonicity” of 2 Peter [i.e., whether it belonged in the canon or collection of inspired books of revelation we know as the New Testament] was a matter of considerable debate. The first Church historian, Eusebius, questioned the letter’s inspiration in 324 A.D. Despite that, the letter remained in the Scripture through the present day, though as Brown discusses in a “special issues” segment, modern scholarship has not always been kind to the book. It has been called “a weak minor epistle” or even—and this is harsh— “the ugly stepchild of the New Testament.” [p. 1546] I found the text both inspiring and intriguing. Chapter One focuses on the glory of God and the unspeakable promise that “you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.” He goes on into a litany that is both instructional and poetic. “For this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue//virtue with knowledge//knowledge with self-control//self-control with endurance//endurance with devotion//devotion with mutual affection//mutual affection with love.” [1:5-7] This summation of a godly life is the kind of thing you tape to your bathroom mirror as a daily offering of focus, an act of faith and a rule of conduct. In 1:16ff the author recounts his life in the faith as he apparently believes he close to death. He argues that Christians receive faith not by “cleverly devised myths” but by the very testimony of God on behalf of his Son, Jesus, when the Father declared “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” This quote is borrowed from the Gospels’ Transfiguration witness on a high mountain. The author is clearly disturbed that certain individuals, probably in places of authority in the local churches, are seriously distorting the basic heart of the Christian message, and he reminds the community that the Spirit, and not imaginative individuals, are the source of truthful teaching. But it is in Chapter Two that we learn about these troublesome figures; they are “false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies and even deny the Master who ransomed them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.” As this chapter unfolds, we get the picture that the challenge comes from within the churches, as noted above, and from an amoral Roman society. There is no indication of persecution here, but a conflict to capture the thoughts and conduct of a believing mind. The bulk of Chapter two is a history of unfaithfulness, evil teaching, and perversion, and how God punished in response. Most of the examples are drawn from the Hebrew Scripture—the fallen angels, Noah’s countrymen, Sodom and Gomorrah. But the internal “heretics” are his primary targets, speaking of those who “revile things they do not understand.” [2:12] He gives equal attention to libertines and heretics. The closing lines of Chapter Two certainly hold attention: “What is expressed in the true proverb has happened to them, ‘the dog returns to its own vomit’ and ‘a bathed sow returns to wallowing in the mire.’” [2:22] The Third Chapter unveils what might also have touched off turmoil in the churches, specifically the delay in the Second Coming. The “scoffers” as the author calls them are harassing the faithful for awaiting an event that was long expected and has yet to arrive. Part of the problem is the primitive nature of sacramental theology to that time; St. Luke’s Gospel, for example, addresses this problem by explaining that the Lord Jesus remains in the breaking of the bread. [See Luke 24: 13-35.] Without compromising his belief that the judgment at Christ’s coming will be an awful thing to experience, the author explains that if God is delaying, it is because he “is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” [3:9] This is an insightful piece of advice. He returns in the final paragraph to an exhortation to holiness, to the apocalyptic style we are familiar seeing at the end of the Catholic Church Year in late November. Brown observes that this and several other brief New Testament letters form a useful collection that circled through the general Church at the beginning of the second century. In varying styles these letters buttress the solemn revelation of the Gospels for the diverse Christian churches stretching from the Middle East through Asia Minor and of course the Roman peninsula. If their context is understood, most of these letters—including 2 Peter—have an enduring capacity to cut to the chase on the heart of Christian living. Sunday, April 19 marked the end of the Easter Octave, a continuous eight-day intensive liturgical celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. The Feast of Christmas has a similar eight-day octave. The concept of “octave” is more evident for those who attend daily Mass, where all the Easter Gospel narratives are proclaimed sequentially through the week. Those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily use the solemn form of the prayers and psalms. The Sunday after Easter [now known as the Second Sunday of Easter since 1969] is a day rich in tradition, as it was and is the final day of the Octave. In my youth the Sunday after Easter was known as “Low Sunday.”
The name “Low Sunday,” at its heart, probably has a psychological basis, implying that the week of festivities has drawn to a close and the time has come for Christians, particularly the newly baptized, to get to the hard work of preaching and evangelizing. The official Latin name for this eighth day was Dominica in albis depositis, “the Sunday for removing the white [Baptismal] robes.” The theme of Baptism was always a major part of the Octave liturgies. The new Roman Missal [1969] extends the Octave mood over seven weeks, to include the Ascension and, on the final day of the Easter Season, Pentecost. History gives us some insights into how the post Easter Sunday life of the Church was celebrated ritually. Although the catechumens receive much of the attention then and today, the Church envisioned the Baptismal action as a joint one for both the new and the veteran Christians. And as the white baptismal gowns are put aside, the final stage of the Baptismal process began, a period referred to as the mystagogia. The mystagogia was and is a period of intense reflection on the sacraments just celebrated, the cleansing of baptismal water, the passing on of the Holy Spirit, and the first eating and drinking of the Lord’s Body and Blood. [See Peg Ekerdt’s observations on parish mystagogia here.] The opening antiphon of last Sunday’s Mass, written around 100 A.D., sums up the experience of mystagogia well. “Like newborn children you should thirst for milk, on which your spirit can grow to strength, alleluia.” [1 Peter 2:2] The antiphon comes from the very brief New Testament book, First Peter. There is a companion letter, Second Peter, which we will address in another post in this series. Looking at last Sunday’s Liturgy, the above cited antiphon and the Second Reading of the Mass indicates that in the weekend Mass after Easter 1 Peter enjoys a place of prominence, though the depiction of Doubting Thomas from John’s Gospel probably stays with the listener in a more affective sense. Peter’s words from the second reading of Sunday’s Mass compliment John’s narrative quite well. Both are addressed to hesitant believers and remind them of their holy nature, rendered by God through Baptism. Both are words of encouragement and power to hearers surrounded by persecutors and an unredeemed world. Both recall the hearers to their mission, to live and work in the World as Christ in the flesh, a vocation for which Baptism has transformed them. Are St. Peter and the author of 1 Peter the same person? The author identifies himself as Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and there is consensus that the letter is intended to carry the importance of one who was close to Jesus. There are several instances in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures where a book may carry the title of a famous leader while the actual writing and editorial shaping was undertaken by a close disciple or even a community of believers; this is most evident in the books attributed to the Apostle John. It is worth noting that in the fourth century, when the collection of books for the New Testament Canon was completed, the two letters of Peter were included in the body of Revelation. The introduction to 1 Peter found in the NABRE translation explains the authorship question well. The letter is addressed to Christians—apparently recently baptized—in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, all territories in modern day Turkey, an exceptionally long distance from Rome. As the letter describes persecutions, modern day historians have attempted to pin down a period of governmental assault on Christians in this territory and have found little. The Emperor Trajan issued a surviving instruction to the Bithynian governor, Pliny the Younger, in 110 A.D. to condemn confessed Christians but not to exert himself nor listen to spies. Roman persecutions did not become empire-wide till the Emperor Decius [249-251 A.D.] As with the Jews, Christians seemed to have suffered most from local outbursts of fanaticism focused against their lifestyle and survival. Thus, the dating of this letter remains somewhat in doubt, though the later the dating, the less likely St. Peter is the original author. There is another literary aspect of 1 Peter that suggests this work is not the sole product of a single Galilean fisherman. The Paulist Commentary calls 1 Peter “one of the most polished Greek texts in the New Testament.” [Even the best English translations such as the NABRE cannot do full justice to the nuances of the Greek.] Moreover, the author’s command of the Greek language is without equal. There is a term for a word that is used only once in a literary collection: hapax. 1 Peter contains 66 examples of hapax, more than the rest of the New Testament combined. Some scholars have theorized that the actual author of 1 Peter is Silvanus; in 1 Peter 5:12 Peter states: “Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter.” The Paulist commentator, Bernardo Estrada, favors a Peter-Silvanus joint effort but admits that other hypotheses and dating issues must be consulted. A strong case can be made that 1 Peter incorporates an early written sermon-instruction to the newly baptized. It is a combination of doctrinal and moral instruction. The first section is a summary of Baptism: God has given a new birth into a living hope. Writing to communities under outside pressure, the nature of baptism—its infusion of a new life and a promise of glory beyond the grave—is a reminder that surviving persecution or facing the sword will both lead to a glorious finale in the fullness of God’s presence. Persecution literature often contains elements of apocalyptic, a mysterious end time when all unknowns will be revealed. 1 Peter continues with emphasis upon one’s “election by God,” that one has been called out of the world of darkness, a term often applied to the Roman Empire in the later New Testament. This letter does not enter the thorny Reformation question of predestination, i.e., that God calls some and not others. Borrowing the Hebrew Scriptural understanding of morality, 1 Peter describes the baptismal life as one of strict personal holiness. “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” At the end of time stands the God of all grace to call them to his eternal glory in Christ. 1 Peter includes the Gentiles as among those called by God into what is termed “The People of God.” Two millennia later, the Council Vatican II would describe the family of the Church as “the people of God” in its teaching documents [along with “the pilgrim people of God.”] The key theological teaching of 1 Peter is “the presentation of Jesus Christ as the model of righteous suffering. The second of two hymns embedded in the work “urges the audience to endure suffering, even unjust suffering, ‘for Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” [Paulist Commentary, p. 1536] The Letter known as John 3 is the briefest of the three epistles attributed to “John.” Only the Letter to Jude rivals this text in brevity in the New Testament. Given that it has been a while since our last post on this stream, I had some opportunity to look at very recent scholarship on the entire body of literature under the name of John. There are five books in the New Testament under the name of John:
[1] the Gospel, of course; [2] 1 John Letter; [3] 2 John Letter; [4] 3 John Letter [today’s post]; and [5] The Book of Revelation. Toan Do’s excellent essay on the Johannine literature in The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018] summarizes recent scholarship on the three letters of John. [pp. 1551-1566]. It is fascinating to me, an old catechetical war horse, to see the evolution of thinking about John in my lifetime. In the PBC commentary, To observes that until the nineteenth century the Church simply assumed everything under the name of John was written by John. By the time I arrived in grad school in 1971 with my high hopes and lunch in my briefcase [no backpacks then], there was a strong consensus that the Book of Revelation was written by a different author utilizing an apocalyptic [futuristic] vision for a persecuted people. During much of my professional life the dean of Johannine study was the American priest, Father Raymond Brown. An immensely gifted researcher and writer, Brown put forward the thesis that the early Church featured a division between those who acknowledged Peter as the center of the Church, on the one hand, and followers of “the beloved disciple” on the other. Brown summarized his theory in his 1979 The Community of the Beloved Disciple, an eminently readable text and easy to obtain today. Today’s students of John illustrate that we are not certain of precisely who John is. The Synoptic Gospels [Matthew, Mark, and Luke] only identify John as, with James, “the sons of thunder” whereas the Gospel of John identifies “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” The best we can say with historical probability is that a “school of John” arose with a rich theology of Jesus and the Church. Apart from Revelation, all the John writings reflect a portrait of Jesus who is truly God and truly man. Consider the first chapter of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word….” The latest Gospel, John’s first chapter is possibly a salvo in a theological war of ideas, as multiple sources attest to a heresy in the early Church which denied the humanity of Christ. It is possible, too, that all the Johannine literature bears Greek influence as the Church expanded into Turkey and Greece. Legend has it that after Good Friday the Apostle John took Jesus’ mother to live in Ephesus in modern day Turkey. The literature of John carries a constant message of the necessity of love. This may be another indication of the Greek influence in the early Church which many members felt important to protect and practice as the principal imitation of Christ. Greek thinkers identified two forms of love: eros, or possessive love, and agape, a total giving of one’s self for the other. John’s Gospel seizes the definition of agape, as in Jesus’ washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper, an episode which is not mentioned in the other Gospels. This, then, is the backdrop of 3 John, which appears to be a product of the “Johannine wing” of the Church. This third letter was included in the Biblical Canon of Revelation by the early fourth century, and was cited by earlier bishops and saints of the Church from the early 100’s. The unknown author identifies himself as “an elder,” which may indicate he was a regionally respected exemplar of fidelity and teaching authority. The letter is addressed to one individual, Gaius, a friend of the elder. Gaius, it seems, is somewhat beleaguered by the teachings and behaviors of other visible members of his local church. The elder boosts his spirits, noting that “the truth is in you,” a cause of personal rejoicing. The author feels no need in this letter to identify the tenets of the truth; both men assume they are one in fidelity to the truth of Jesus, i.e., that he is God and man. The elder evidently has other connections with this church, as he references a recent visit from Gaius’ town from other brethren. Perhaps it is from them that he learns of the problems Gaius is confronting. The brethren report that many in their community are “walking in truth” and “living genuinely” [i.e., in a spirit of agape.] The elder encourages Gaius to keep doing what he is doing and encourages him to extend hospitality and support to friends like the elder and strangers alike. Ministers of the Gospel were highly dependent upon support of the places they visited but had learned through hard experience that unconverted Gentiles were not likely to help them much. The elder promises to send another elder, Demetrius, to assist Gaius in a brewing battle with another member of his community, Diotrephes. It is not clear precisely what lie at the heart of this local theological crisis. The NABRE Bible suggests that Diotrephes was an old-guard believer who distrusted the elder in his efforts to consolidate his authority. This may reflect the changing governance of the Church at the end of the first century, when charismatic and independent ministry began passing to the oversight of bishops. The elder, though, notes the pride of Diotrephes and his withdrawal from the mainstream of the local community. In any event, the elder has surmised that Diotrephes was a threat to the agape that held the early churches together. He does not believe that excommunication would be helpful [perhaps Diotrephes had his own following]; he hoped instead that the errors of this discontent would be evident if Gaius and others taught and lived “the way,” the idiom used for fidelity to the life and will of Jesus. In concluding, the elder determines the problem with Diotrephes would not be solved by letter. “Instead, I hope to see you soon, when we can talk face to face. Peace be with you. The friends greet you; greet the friends there each by name.” When you talk about the shortest books of the Bible, the Second Letter of John in the New Testament must be a magnet of attention. 2 John consists of one chapter, which in turn consists of four modest paragraphs. The First Letter of John, by contrast, consists of five chapters; see the preceding post on this stream. My initial reaction to the study of this letter led me to think that this tiny snippet, along with the equally short Third Letter of John, were included in the New Testament Canon primarily because of the identification of the author as the “Apostle John” or one or more of his closest disciples in the writings of early Church sources.
However, the content of these three letters together contributes a considerable amount in the development of the Church and its Tradition. The most recent research I have at my fingertips, To Doan’s introduction to the three letters of John in The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018], indicates that we still know very little about the authors of the entire library attributed to the Apostle John, including the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation. This did not seem to trouble the early bishops who inserted the Letters of John into the New Testament Canon. The content of the letters themselves treat of the nature of Christ, the errant followers or early heretics, the Antichrist, and the daily morality of a people baptized into the life of God, who is love. 2 John, like its companion pieces, was most likely written in Western Turkey [then marked on maps as Asia Minor] late in the first century. Turkey is a far piece from Jerusalem, which had been leveled by the Romans in 70 A.D., and Rome, where the Christian Church was setting roots, despite intermittent persecutions, to establish a general evangelization to the entire empire. Thus, Turkey, isolated from Roman and Palestinian culture, was significantly influenced by Greek thought. Think for a moment of St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:23: “Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…” For a moment, let’s concentrate on why Christians were persecuted in their missionary efforts. Roman persecution was easy to understand. Roman emperors were considered gods, and the Christian refusal to venerate the emperors was interpreted as treason and punished accordingly, if not constantly. Jewish persecution, until the fall of Jerusalem, rested upon the idea that to equate the crucified Jesus of Nazareth to the Lord Yahweh, whose very name was forbidden to pronounce—was blasphemy to the ultimate degree. But further to the East, as Christians settled in Greece and Turkey, they encountered the rich world of Greek philosophy, the land of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whose bodies of work were produced a few centuries before Christ. Aristotle, known simply through Church history as “The Philosopher,” would inspire St. Thomas Aquinas in the 1200’s A.D. to put forward the Catholic structure of thought we still find today in the Catechism and other standard texts. Greek thought from this era is notable for its “metaphysics,” a term which roughly means “that which comes after physics.” Put another way, metaphysics is the science of drawing mental conclusions of reality from what we can see and experience in the material world. In one sense the Greeks opened a gulf between a material world and a world beyond visibility, a principle that reality is composed of matter and spirit. Because of Greek thought, the Church would be able to develop a religious anthropology in what a human being possessed a body and a soul. Without the Greeks, we would still think of a person as a unitary creature whose death was the end of human essence. Two things happened when the early Christians, mostly Jewish converts, began to encounter the Greek world. The Greek questioned how the metaphysical god of total otherness could be identified with the human Jesus of Nazareth. St. Paul’s sermon at the altar of the unknown god [Acts 17:23] tackles this conflict head on, but his Greek hearers replied “we should like to hear you on this some other time,” as polite a brush-off as one finds in the bible. The second challenge faced by Christians in Greek lands was an infiltration of pseudo-Christians who carried misbegotten metaphysical notions about Jesus that, taken together, denied the pillar of salvation possibility: the Incarnation. God, they reasoned, could not become man. 2 John is a letter written by an elder [presbyteros] from another Christian assembly to people he knows well, calling them “the chosen Lady and to her children,” emphasizing the truth that dwells within them, that Christ is one with the eternal Father. He commends the fact that some of the children [members] are walking in the truth. He reminds them of the necessity of loving one another, not as a new teaching, but as something that has been the cornerstone of every teaching they have received. But all is not well. The elder is distressed. In 2 John 1:7 he warns against the antichrist, an apocalyptic figure who will mislead many just before the Second Coming, which evidently was expected soon. But in 2 John 1:9 the elder becomes more specific, and he commands this local church to reject “progressives” from among its membership. Goodbye Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren? Perhaps some bishops would favor that today, but, the elder is referring to a brand of Christian teaching which held that the man Jesus Christ would “progress” on to a higher metaphysical plane. Such corrupted teachers could not bring themselves to believe that Jesus could be both God and man, which is the heart of orthodox Christology. An error like this one arises from a belief that matter is evil, and only the metaphysical [or “spiritual”] is good and true. This is a contradiction of the Hebrew accounts of creation, where God looked out over everything he created and saw that it was good. Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si addresses the sacredness of God’s creation in our own time. If matter is evil, then the human Jesus is evil and unworthy of our faith. Unfortunately, denial of Christ’s humanity had a long shelf life. In the days of 2 John such heresy would have multiple names and forms, such as Docetism and Gnosticism. In the fourth century the heresy, under the name of Arianism, would prompt the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea [325 A.D.], which produced the Nicene Creed we proclaim every Sunday. One reason 2 John is so brief is the elder’s pledge to personally visit this community shortly to elaborate his concern, perhaps to correct in-house error, and to extend the love of his own Christian community to them. Our first foray into the “little books” of the Bible will take us into the New Testament Epistles of John, of which there are three distinct letters. I can recall as a grad student in the early 1970’s that one of the most hotly debated subjects in our biblical courses and in the scholarly literature of the day involved the identity of the author [more likely, authors] of the five books of the New Testament which carried the name of John—i.e., the Gospel, Revelation, and the three distinct letters. The similarities of thought between the Gospel and the epistles led many—not all-scholars to hypothesize that early Christianity experienced something of a split between followers of Peter and followers of “the beloved disciple.” For centuries “the beloved disciple” was believed to be the Apostle John himself, but Scriptural evidence identifying John the son of Zebedee with the beloved disciple is sketchy at best. John 21:15f seems to attempt to solve some kind of rift between Peter and the beloved disciple, or between their followers.
Using the eyeball test, that is, reading the Gospel of John and the Letters of John straight through, one can see an affinity between the Gospel and the Letters, though the theory of a separate community is not as strongly embraced today as it was half a century ago. The Biblical scholar Toan Do wrote the commentary on John’s Letters for The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018] and in his introduction Do writes this: “”A sound explanation is that the Johannine Epistles were composed separately [from the Gospel] and were circulated for both personal and communal reading among the churches.” [PBC, p. 1552] Do puts the date of composition of the Gospel around 95 AD and the letters between 100 and 110 AD. The consensus of scholarship places the composition of these letters in Asia Minor, specifically western Turkey. Whether the Apostle John, or another apostle, or a scribe of John’s finished the Gospel, the Church has always considered the Gospel of Apostolic inspiration, and thus the Epistles as inspired commentaries of the theology of the Gospel. This body of literature places special emphasis upon themes vital to Church identity, the priority of love and the fact that Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine. The two great doctrines around which our tradition is built were coming to fruition and understanding in the Johannine era, i.e., the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Curiously, the harder of the two proved to be the Incarnation. There were wholesale defections or schisms which plagued the early Church, most of them dealing with the mistaken notion that Jesus was a “faux human,” a divinity who only appeared to be a man. In Greek the verb for “to demonstrate” or “to show” is doceo, and eventually the heresy known today as Docetism argues in various ways that those who claimed to have seen Christ in his flesh were viewing a projection, so to speak, rather than a human like us in all things but sin, bound by the limits of space and time. Docetism in its raw form renders Jesus’ crucifixion useless and helpless in the forgiveness of sin on the grounds that the perfect sacrifice on Calvary never really happened. The other heresy which plagued the infant Church along with Docetism was Gnosticism, from the Greek word for “knowledge.” Gnosticism was already in circulation as a philosophy before the birth of Christ, holding that material things are evil and only mystical spiritual realities were true. In its Christian iteration, only “sacred knowledge” shared with the chosen had the power to save. The idea of matter=evil percolated into Catholic thought long after the Johannine era, impacting St. Augustine’s teachings on sexuality four centuries after Christ. As among the last writings of the New Testament in terms of date of composition, the letters of John squared off with the established enemies of the Apostolic Tradition, both from within and outside the Church. The author or authors of these letters thus labored with a two-front challenge: to defend and enforce the holiness of the Church while protecting it from errors of thought and practice. 1 John 1:1-4 bears a striking similarity to the beginning of John’s Gospel, emphasizing the visibility of the Word [God] multiple times and affirming fellowship among fellow believers. In 1 John 1: 5-10, the author speaks of God as light; he equates true Christian faith with a conduct of walking always in light. Verses 6 and 7 speak of the importance of living in light, i.e., believing what the Church believes. To acknowledge one’s sins, in this context sins of disbelief, enables us to enjoy the saving fellowship of the church assembly, the body that has been cleansed by “the blood of his Son, Jesus….” This is a sweep at the Gnostic/Docetic element who spread division in the Church and denied the power of Christ’s blood to save. Many commentators believe that this letter, 1 John, was intended as a teaching statement for the general Christian Church, with the other two letters directed to specific communities. Chapter 2 continues the theme of Christ’s blood [i.e., his full human sacrifice on the cross] as redemptive in saving us from sin and darkness. The author uses language similar to John’s Gospel: “The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments.” As Do explains, Chapter 2 emphasizes the closeness of Jesus to his followers, beginning the section with the invocation, “my children.” The closeness of the church is wounded, in the author’s mind, when even one member sins by deviating from the command of God to love one another. Unlike the Gnostics, the true Christian believer’s fidelity is a commitment to love his neighbor and seek the forgiveness won by Christ in his flesh. There is no “secret key” restricted to a few, and one will be judged by conduct in the here and now, in flesh and bones. The author does use the term “world” with varied nuances. The saving forgiveness of the Father is extended to the whole world, but in Chapter 2 the believer is urged not to “join the world,” which stands in need of forgiveness. The Gospel and Letters share a feeling of the temporary nature of this world; in the Passion narrative of John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Pilate that “my kingdom is not of this world.” The author of the Gospel uses the parallel of day and night as a literary device to make this distinction. Judas leaves the Last Supper “at night” to betray Jesus. The Samaritan woman, by contrast, finds faith at high noon. These Letters carry something of this motif into their teaching. The final three chapters of 1 John speak of a love ethic. Chapter 3 is sobering on this point, calling to mind the murder of Abel by Cain to show the violent excesses resulting where brother hates brother, instead of the other way around. Chapter 4 addresses “the testing of spirits,” an idiom for the ideas and practices of a Christian community. The author provides a rule of thumb in discerning thoughts and deeds: “every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come into the flesh belongs to God.” Chapter 5 repeats and reemphasizes much of what has been said before. We can guess that the author believed these basic themes needed repeating, having seen repeated disunity in the community and constant denial of the power of God to save his children through the blood of Christ. Christian communities at the end of the first century were for the most part small islands of believer struggling not just to preach to the strange worlds around them, but to clarify what it was that kept them united and courageous in the first place. In last week’s “Things Biblical” stream on the Café blog, I touched upon the formation of the Biblical canon [admittedly in broad strokes], specifically how the Church collectively defined the “library” of sacred books containing the entirety of God’s revelation. The formation of the Canon/Scripture was a long and arduous task for both the Jewish and Christian traditions. It may surprise you that the final binding pronouncement of the New Testament books was not formally proclaimed until the Catholic Council of Trent [1545-1563], though by this time the list of the 27 New Testament books was an accepted fact for about a millennium. Trent also established the Jewish Canon or Old Testament at 45 books for Christian usage; Luther, in translating the bible into German, had omitted several Jewish books a few decades before Trent’s deliberations. Hence the expression “Catholic Bible vs. Protestant Bible.” It is remarkable to stand back and look at the full canon of the Judeo-Christian bible and consider that each work was selected for a reason under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The theological principles underlying the selection process for the New Testament appear to have been [1] Apostolicity, the belief that the sacred authors were faithfully rendering the actual teachings of Jesus as heard and conveyed by the Apostles; [2] doctrinal soundness, or coordination with developing beliefs within the Church, such as the full human nature of Christ; and [2] liturgical usage and circulation, i.e., the texts were commonly used in Eucharistic celebrations and preaching. If you sat down with a piece of paper and listed every book of the Bible you could name, how well would you do? If you could recall 20, you would be close to three-quarters short. The Gospels, of course, capture our attention, as well they should. But our ancestors in faith included 68 other books. Some are long and majestic, others amazingly terse. What I am going to do next is list the books of the Bible by length, specifically the number of chapters in each. [If you see a book you’ve never heard of, click this link to the USCCB Bible site and then click the book for a brief introduction.] 150 Psalms 66 Isaiah 52 Jeremiah 51 Sirach 50 Genesis 48 Ezekiel 42 Job 40 Exodus 34 Deuteronomy 36 Numbers 36 2 Chronicles 31 1 Samuel 31 Proverbs 29 1 Chronicles 27 Leviticus 25 2 Kings 24 2 Samuel 24 Joshua 22 1 Kings 21 Judges 19 Wisdom 16 Judith 16 1 Maccabees 15 2 Maccabees 14 Daniel 14 Hosea 14 Tobit 13 Nehemiah 12 Ecclesiastes 10 Esther 10 Ezra 9 Amos 8 Song of Songs 7 Micah 6 Baruch 5 Lamentations 4 Ruth 4 Joel 4 Jonah 3 Nahum 3 Habakkuk 3 Malachi 3 Zephaniah 2 Haggai 1 Obadiah 28 Matthew 28 Acts of the Apostles 24 Luke 22 Revelation 21 John [Gospel] 16 Letter to Romans 16 1 Letter to Corinthians 13 2 Letter to Corinthians 13 Letter to Hebrews 6 Letter to Galatians 6 Letter to Ephesians 6 1 Letter to Timothy 5 1 Letter to Thessalonians 5 Letter of James 5 1 Letter of Peter 5 1 Letter of John 4 Letter to Philippians 4 Letter to Colossians 4 2 Letter to Timothy 3 2 Letter to Thessalonians 3 Letter to Titus 3 2 Letter of Peter 1 Letter to Philemon 1 2 Letter of John 1 3 Letter of John 1 Letter of Jude It is true that the larger works—for example, the Law Books and the major prophets in the Hebrew Canon, and the Gospels and St. Paul’s Letters in the New Testament canon—tend to lay out the panorama of God’s plan in a majestic sweep. But the smaller texts contribute mightily to the unified message of salvation, and for this reason I propose to spend the next several months looking at the “smallest” texts, those under ten chapters. In no particular order, let me cite the advantages of studying these texts, with their usefulness in grasping the full message of the Bible and introducing new students of the Bible to its styles and ways of teaching. [1] The small texts are easy to handle if you are just starting an adult study on your own. The Prophet Obadiah runs to a mere twenty-one verses. Within that limited framework the reader can see one of the general themes of prophetic preaching, that God’s enemies will be eventually be crushed and that a glorious “day of the Lord” will come set things right. [2] The small texts provide a window into Christian attempts to live faithfully. The three Letters of John reiterate the message of John’s Gospel that the greatest gift of God is love, personified in the person of Jesus Christ. These letters press the point that love of Christians for one another is the highest moral imperative. [3] The small texts give us a taste of how the Church addressed its internal problems, how moral reasoning developed. Paul’s Letter to Philemon discusses a runaway slave named Onesimus. Paul evidently had baptized Onesimus and now found himself in the dilemma of whether to send him back to his owner, another Christian. [4] The small texts can give insight into the development of doctrine and how true belief was separated from error. A major problem for the post-apostolic Church was wholesale belief that Jesus was not truly a man but only appeared to be. Our belief in the Incarnation was solidified by writers such as John, who in his letters refuted Christians who held such beliefs. [5] Some smaller works established balance in the early Church’s theological teaching. In Romans 5 Paul establishes that we are justified only by the direct gift of God, and not by our own works. In the brief Letter of James [2:14ff] the author responds that “if someone says he has faith but does not have works…can that faith save him?” The Church, in its wisdom, retained both works in its repository of faith. [6] Some small works branch into a variety of forms, including satire. Thus it is with Jonah, a psychological profile that speaks volumes of later Israel’s ideas about the role of prophesy and the men who filled it. Some of these works we can cover in one Tuesday’s post. With others we will take the time we need. By my counting, there are 29 biblical works of under ten chapters in the entire bible. My primary source will be The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018], though I will use other commentaries and cite them with links if your interests take you further. The PBC runs to about 1700 pages and presently costs about $100, give or take. It is not necessary for our purposes here to own one, but if you are involved in ministry, it is not a bad investment, for every book in the Bible is treated in the PBC and you would not have to purchase individual commentaries on each book unless you plan on going on to higher studies…which I hope some of you would. |
THINGS BIBLICAL. Archives
September 2023
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