Journal of May 19, 2005

Thursday, May 19, 2005 6:11 PM

Reflecting on the admonition of a young Christian for me to search out the bible for the "standards" by which God will measure me and my life.

When I go here and there in the bible, either randomly or systematically, it is never really quite clear exactly what it is that is being required. At one time it is a sacrifice, and later it becomes a change of heart that gives willingly and not as a sacrifice at all. But one thing that is clear to me, when I once put it together, is that I am not subject to any of these laws that are being ferreted out here and there, for the following, clear logic appears to me enshrined and guaranteed in holy scripture. Jesus tells his disciples that he has all authority in heaven and in earth. And so, of course (for the Christian) that is the utter truth. Then he conveys all this authority to his disciples. Imagine that! Jesus authorizes his disciples to make what requirement they wish in order to make people into fit disciples, and assures these disciples that he will honor whatever they decide. This is remarkable! He hands over the entrance to heaven to his disciples, to men who are sinful, but who are truthful and therefore will speak the truth to all; he gives to these sinful men the power of the destiny of our souls as human beings, for whatever they decide will be decided once and for all forever before the throne of God, and holds whenever any human soul makes approach for judgment.

[The details and citations to all this can be found in my essay entitled: Liberty of the Gentile Christian.]

Anyway whatever they agree on will be upheld by Jesus as a standard of judgment of all human beings. They set the standard. Jesus has lived with them and shown himself to them in his glory, and now Jesus trusts these disciples so much that he gives them this power. Before his death, Jesus could never get the point across for the disciples bickered about who was going to be the greatest, and so missed the whole point entirely and almost made Jesus despondent. But after the death and the resurrection they came to understand and to expect the perfection of the Holy Spirit and so were gathered together in one accord in anticipation of this great event. And that was of course Pentecost, and they were of one accord.

Now there is only one other time in scriptural testimony that such a gathering takes place, where everyone was of one accord, and that was at the edict of the Council of Jerusalem. In the first "one accord" at Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended upon them. And in the second "one accord" scripture reports that the Holy Spirit concurred with the edict of the council. In other words, the only second and perhaps last time the church spoke with 100% unanimity was at the Council of Jerusalem. And it is here that the disciples, speaking with the Holy Spirit, declared that the gentile Christian was free of all law. It is perhaps the most remarkable event in human history aside from the life of Jesus itself. Humans themselves, speaking in the Holy Spirit, determined what would be expected of a human before God, for this will be the only standard used by God by his own authority which he had convey to Jesus, the perfect, who then conveyed to the disciples, the perfected men (perfected in spirit), men arising from sin who were able to attain to the same state of heart as Jesus himself. [See the Zeferelli film “Brother Sun Sister Moon” for a validation of this suggestion.]

Immanuel Kant, who felt that Christianity had died along time ago leaving the church as the memorial to a former religion, this Immanuel Kant found this edict by the council to be singular in the annals of history. These new members of the Christian faith were "not subject to any law whatsoever" and that the “necessary things” mentioned (in Acts 15) were merely a sop to Jewish Christian sensibility. For him this was revolutionary. These gentile Christians could be expected to stand before God with merely a single question for a standard, how did he or she seek to exemplify the love of Christ in his condition.

This means that these disciples considered it quite ample for right conduct that a person would seek merely to love as Christ love (and without a lot of doctrine even), and that such a person will be guided by the Holy Spirit, even as Saul the enemy became Paul the friend, and will in that way actually accomplish the good that is needful. For example, a Christian husband will of course be (or strive to be) a model of Christ in his love to his wife. A Christian slave will of course be a model of Christ in his condition, and be not only diligent but also of good cheer. Likewise a Christian citizen will be a model citizen and will work for a common good with others for an orderly society with law and order and justice, at least for that, e.g., agreeing to drive on the right side of the road and then enforcing that. A regular citizen may slow down in a slower speed zone because he thinks the police are watching, while a Christian would slow down in an effort to help good governance and under the assumption that the meaning of the sign is rational, e.g., you could hurt someone.

In Romans 13 Paul talks about how some people have to be threatened with the sword to do good acts, like driving on the right, while Christians do this as a matter of course, as a second nature or for the sake of conscience. This is the sort of person Paul envisages with the disciples of the liberty of the gentile. Augustine once say to someone who was not sure what to do, “love God and do anything you want to.” Meaning, if you love God you will want to do all good deeds.

And so it seems that the clear expectation of the disciples in the formation of the Gentile Christian Congregation was that the law of love is all that any person needs in order to be able to know for sure what to do, i.e., it reveals exactly what Jesus himself would have done under those conditions. A slave, for example, still has opportunities to spread the gospel of Christ and so, given his condition, he reaches out in love, and it is that which will be considered by Christ (Romans 14:4). Likewise the master. the husband, the widow, the citizen (and later with Constantine, even the emperor).

This is a rather interesting point to me just now. I have just been able to devise a defense to Kant’s attack on Abraham, claiming that he was a criminal. (that’s on my website here). I get Abraham off the hook, I think, but I go further and note that Jesus himself, according to two citations in John 5, actually broke one of the ten commandments. That is absolutely awesome. This man, Jesus, presumed to speak with the authority of God and to correct the revealed law, the law according to Moses’ understanding. He broke the commandment by refusing to wait until sundown, which would not be long, but rather went ahead and performed a work on the Sabbath and healed a sick woman immediately, rather than a few minutes later. He did good immediately and without reference to laws. This, I think, is a sort of icon for the Christian and as such is a certification to the entire world that they have nothing to fear from the Christians for Christians are preluded in advance from ever thinking to interpret a scriptural or ecclesiastical law such that an immoral act were commanded. Thanks to the icon of John 5 this is impossible.

And so this seems to me to tie into this awesome notion of liberty which belongs to the gentile Christian. The gentile Christian is a statement of utter faith of the disciples (and they knew it by virtue of the presence of the Holy Spirit). It’s really an incredible notion and you can understand why someone like Kant could have been so taken. It was really revolutionary, that each Christian becomes like Christ and can speak with clear conscience of the state of his heart and his understanding and his intention, and this will suffice (again Romans 14:4).

What a really remarkable story! Did such a thing as gentile Christianity ever really exist, and then perhaps die out (as Kant thinks happened)? But if it is in scripture, doesn’t that mean that it is still alive?

Consider this. Peter is recorded specially in Acts 15 as being eager for the liberation. Now this Peter is the alleged ancestor of the Bishop of Rome. But it is a doctine of the Roman Catholics that what one pope declares no future one can ever contradict, and so certainly no pope is ever going to contradict Peter himself, and so this means that the Roman Catholic Church is forced to accept the liberty of those Christians who claim that liberty under the edict of the Council of Jerusalem.

In this light the present day Protestant church is for the most part just like the Roman Catholics in providing law, only the Protestants seek the law in the scripture and don’t pretend to come up with any thing new. It’s like this. the Romans were a glove on the right hand and the Protestants today wear one on the left hand. The fight glove says church and scripture. And the left hand glove says: scripture alone. But if both would read the scriptures as I have outlined here, they will both see that it is possible to have a third state, namely no glove at all.

It’s really an amazing story. Jesus gets these sinners (his disciples) to follow him and then to tell others what they have seen, and then he also tells them that they will be the ones who determine who will eat at the table of Jesus in heaven, i.e., what people must do in their service to Christ, and these disciples declare: nothing at all. the spirit of Christ which lives in us and in them is sufficient for all things. Just keep the sensibilities of the Jews in mind, for we want to convert them (the disciples now talking in Acts 15 in so many words), and remember that your word of dedication to Christ is meaningless unless tested, and this is the role of chastity. You dedicate your body to Christ and live in accordance with the love of Christ.

7:40 PM The more one thinks about it the more amazing it is. This Jesus shows his life to his disciples and bids them go make followers of all the world and that they can determine what it means to be his follower. And then they do just that and declare that the law of love is sufficient for all good in and of itself.

This is quite a contrast with the other religions. Islam has a holy book that comes from God (it is said) and there in it one will find what it takes to be pleasing to God. But the disciples did not seek for any such book, but on their own determined and declared what would be required to be pleasing to God. There’s nothing really like it in the annals of all religions. Humans decide what will be pleasing to God. Unparalleled!

We should not imagine any doubt in the minds of the disciples. They had witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, a man whom they knew thoroughly. And so of all people who shall ever live these people had no need of faith about the resurrection for they were the people of sight. They knew full well the authority and power which had been placed in their hands by this Conqueror of Death, and they used it to make the most revolutionary religion in history, the religion of the free man. The Christian. He may be a don Quixote, on occasion, and take windmills for evil giants, but he is one with Christ in his willingness to risk his life to destroy these evil giants that he saw with his over heated eyes, he is one in spirit if not always in understanding. He is called to manifest Christ in his every condition. He is called to love the fellow Christian more than self (in restraining his liberty for the sake of the Jewish Christian who was “weaker in faith” and had need of rules and regulation per Acts 15 and Romans 15 and 1 Corinthians 11). And he was given a circumcision of the spirit in the dedication of his body to chastity as an indication of dedication of his total self to Christ. And he was set free in the assurance of Jesus that he had indeed done right in trusting his disciples who would now receive the Holy Spirit as their guide.

The overarching justification is the iconic violation by Jesus of one of the ten commandments in order to comply with the law of love. And this is what is most certainly missing from Islam and perhaps also from Judaism.