Mary Magdalene

The February 13, 2006 issue of the New Yorker has an article about Mary Magdalene: The Saintly Sinner, by Joan Acocella.

I imagine we will see more and more of this type of article as the hype builds for the film version of The DaVinci Code. I plan to take off early the afternoon of the opening and see the earliest showing in Georgetown. I won't try to treat all the themes of TDC in this post; I just want to make a couple of comments about Acocella's article.

Acocella does a good job of summarizing recent Mary Magdalene (MM) scholarship and tying it somewhat to the broader field of gnostic studies. She also outlines briefly the connection of all this to the highly questionable Priory of Sion and the centuries' long mystery known as the quest for the Holy Grail, and what all this has to do with the movie some of us are dying to see.

I've read a good bit of this literature, and the arguments break down for me along a couple of lines. First of all, the writers all seem really sure that the Church would collapse if it could be proven that Jesus was married to MM, or that they were lovers. By "the Church" they mean the instiution of the Catholic Church. I can't speak for the Catholic Church. As an evangelical/pentecostal protestant, however, I can tell you that my faith would not be harmed if Jesus had been married. Marriage is a good, God-invented thing; sex is a very-good, God-invented thing if enjoyed inside marriage. The only real problem I have with the idea of Jesus being married is that it doesn't seem like it would be fair to the woman.

There is a scene in The American President where Michael Douglas is talking to Annette Bening about why he thinks she's nervous about sleeping with him for the first time. He tells her that almost all of the other presidents were already married when they became president, so their wives were already used to them. In their case, she was dating the President of the United States, so it made it intimidating for her to sleep with him. It turns out that Annette Bening's character was rather NOT intimidated by this circumstance, but that is a different essay. What I'm saying here is that it doesn't seem fair to any woman for her husband to be the Creator of the Universe and the Savior of Mankind.

Most writers I've read on the topic of this supposed marriage between MM and Jesus imply that the fact that MM is thought to be a prostitute makes the idea of marriage between them completely scandalous for the church. Well, maybe for some in the church, but have these writers read the Bible at all? Have they missed the entire book of Hosea? In that book, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute as an allegory of God's relationship with Israel. I think if the Son of God were going to be united in marriage with a human woman, a prostitute is very likely exactly who He would choose. This is exactly the moral state all of us find ourselves in, and God rescues us when He brings us to Christ. Some of us are unfaithful and leave Him, some of us struggle with other loyalties, even with idols-- yet He remains faithful. Besides, there isn't really any scholarly basis for identifying MM as a prostitute. It appears to be mostly legend.

Another reason I doubt that Jesus was married is that in 1 Corinthians 9:5, the Apostle Paul asks the rhetorical question "Don't we have a right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and Cephas (Peter) and the Lord's brothers?" I really think that if Jesus had been married, Paul would have used Him as the example here, not the other apostles.

As the article goes on to describe, the gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi fueled the speculation about MM and Jesus, particularly in the Gospel of Mary. There are descriptions of conflict between Peter and MM, as well as accusations from the other apostles that Jesus liked MM best, or that he was always kissing her on the mouth. Hmmm. If they were married, or unmarried lovers, then why on earth would it be remarkable that Jesus liked her best or kissed her? Even with cultural differences accounted for, it doesn't seem like something worth writing about.

There's a lot more in this article, but since it's online, I'll let you read it for yourself if you are interested. The only remaining thing I want to comment on is a paragraph about miracles, on page 8 if you print the article out. Here Acocella refers to a new (Nov. 2005) biography of MM by Bruce Chilton, an Episcopal priest who doesn't believe in miracles. She quotes a couple of other scholars who believe the question of miracles, particularly the resurrection, is irrelevant, but says that Chilton purports that the belief in miracles is actually harmful, and that he can put forth a more modern, acceptable form of Christianity without that belief.

Acocella goes on to admit that most of the world's Christians do believe in miracles. When was the last time you saw one?

Jesus Without the Miracles

Jesus Without the Miracles is the title of an article in the December 2005 issue of Harper's magazine (sorry, it's not available online, but you can probably find it at your public library). In some ways the article is not much different from other writings that extol the virtues of gnostic texts and dis the canonical gospels. The author, Erik Reece, has a strong personal bias; he grew up in a guilt-laden fundamentalist tradition that helped push his father to suicide. He feels that the sayings of Jesus in the Nag Hammadi text known as the Gospel of Thomas hold more meaning for him, or at least are more palatable to him, than the accounts of Jesus' life in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Reece makes much of the idea that the Gospel of Thomas isn't concerned with the life of Jesus at all, and instead focuses on sayings, many of which are not recorded in the more familiar accounts. There is no mention in this text of any miracle, no mention of Jesus being the Son of God, no salvation, no resurrection. Reece thinks the details of Jesus' life are irrelevant, and can't be known with much certainty anyway. The Jesus I follow isn't only about words and teachings; instead those words and teachings have meaning only in the context of who Jesus is, and living those words is meaningful only in the context of a real, ongoing relationship with Him. This point is more important to me than whether or not the Gospel of Thomas contains authentic sayings of Jesus.

Now, this is where the article really gets interesting for me. Reece points out that this ancient Gospel of Thomas has much in common with another text, by another Thomas: The Jefferson Bible. If you aren't familiar with this work by the Third President of the United States, have a look at the Wikipedia article linked above, or this publisher's blurb at the Beacon Press website.

Thomas Jefferson was living in the White House when he took scissors to the gospels and removed all the miracles. Every single one of them, including the virgin birth and the resurrection. He also removed any other stories or sayings that he felt were inauthentic, using his own good judgment to determine what should stay and what should go. During his lifetime, he didn't allow it to be published, fearing a backlash. It was published in 1903 for the United States Congress, and apparently was routinely given to new members of that body for some years.

I'd just like to pause here and ask you to reflect on this fact. The author of the Declaration of Independence, the President of the United States, sat in the White House, took his figurative black marker, and changed the Word of God. And the way he changed it wasn't just to make all the Divine pronouns feminine or something small like that. He removed the miraculous from the life of Jesus Christ. Then, about one hundred years later, The Government Printing Office of the United States of America published this false gospel at the request of the United States Congress, and that august body then passed it out to new members.

Kinda makes that image of the Christian foundations of this country look a little blurry, huh?

Reece further suggests that the Jefferson Bible ended up being a precursor to the much more ancient Gospel of Thomas. This is because that ancient text spent 1600 years buried in a clay jar in Egypt, so though we had a few references to it in other texts, no one really knew what it said until it was unearthed in 1945. In this way, it could be said that the Jefferson Bible had laid the groundwork among certain thinkers to accept the idea of Jesus' philosophy apart from His life, and apart from any supernatural evidence that He is the Son of God.

Reece calls the Jefferson Bible and the Gospel of Thomas collectively "a peculiarly American gospel." He also discusses the work of Emerson and suggests that together, the ideas of Emerson and Jefferson, though very different from each other, make up a uniquely American view of religion. There is another, much weaker argument running through the article that likens stereotypically strict fundamentalist Christianity to the Hamiltonian vision of a society based on manufacturing, while linking the Gnostic/Enlightenment view of the Gospel of Thomas with Thomas Jefferson's vision of an agrarian society. You'll have to read the article yourself for details on that thread. For now, I'll just say this about it: Horse feathers.

I think this attitude toward the gospel represents the larger mindset of our culture toward Jesus, and it could explain in part the phenomenon of many people praying prayers to accept salvation, but never coming into the fullness of that salvation, that is, the lack of deliverance and healing. While the American church has a history of strength and accomplishment, especially in terms of mission-sending, it is also largely a national church that has been characterized, in comparison with others, by a profound absence of miracles.

What we find in the Jefferson Bible, in the Gospel of Thomas, and in a significant portion of the American church, is a world view that focuses on morality and denies the supernatural, and that specifically denies the miracles of Jesus (either during his life on earth, or now through His folowers). This results in people attempting to follow Jesus in terms of morality or philosophy, but without experiencing His resurrection power. The Apostle Paul calls this "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."

Signs and Wonders

So, in John 14, Jesus suggests that if humans have trouble believing that He is the Son of God, they could at least believe on the evidence of the miracles.

I gather from this that miracles give evidence of something. Think Elijah on Mt. Carmel. Think Moses before the Pharaoh. Think Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Those Old Covenant guys had some cool evidence, but seems like it was few and far between. Jesus came along and once He got started with the water into wine, it was Evidence like nobody had ever seen before. Healings too numerous to be listed in the gospels. Casting out demons. Feeding crowds with small lunches. Walking on water. Raising Lazarus from the dead. Rising from the dead Himself.

And He said we would do greater things.

Is all of this just hocus pocus? Was it just a special thing at a special time? Can we take Him literally that we will do greater things?

A couple of months ago I felt like God told me how miracles work to bring people to a knowledge of Jesus as Savior. I think it works something like this:

The cultural stuff we live in colors how we view things. In fact, the beliefs and thought systems of a culture can completely blind people to the truth of God. Animists may be blinded by their beliefs and experiences with demons as the ultimate spiritual reality. Muslims may be blinded by a belief system that says Jesus did not die on the cross. People in Western Civilisation may be blinded by remnants of the Enlightenment world view that says the spiritual realm doesn't exist. Yeah, I know, we're all Postmodern now. But not everybody. Enlightenment still rules, even if the foundations of that rule are shakey at best.

Signs and wonders break through the veneer of cultural belief and thrust the person into a space where his fundamental understanding of the universe comes into question. If God can reach into our world and heal this disease, or speak this prophecy, or raise this person from the dead-- then maybe the other things I think are fixed and true could be in question as well. Maybe God does exist, and maybe Jesus is His Son.

Greater Things

What if the Lord of the Universe whispered to you that He was going to work miracles through your life? What would you do?

In a way, He has said this to all of us, and not in a whisper, but in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John:

"Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father."

So, the goal is not the miracles themselves, but bringing glory to the Father through the Son. Just in case we get dazzled by the idea of signs and wonders and focus on that pursuit instead of our true aim.

Why is it that I am not doing greater things than Jesus did? Was Jesus' prophecy incorrect? Do I not have faith in Him?

One of the questions I am most interested in is: Why is the supernatural largely concealed in our culture? What is it about Western Civilisation that draws a veil over both demonic activity and the activity of the Holy Spirit?

Yes, there are some miracles in the U.S. The modern Pentecostal movement started here. We have sent out more missionaries than any nation in history thus far (China may be poised to change that statistic). But have you read any accounts of what is going on in other places on our globe? In South America? In Africa? In China?

Missionaries often tell of their sudden awakening to the spirit realm when they arrive on the field. Suddenly the evidence for demons, and for God's power overcoming them, is out in the open.

I have been investigating this issue of the mechanism by which the supernatural is veiled in Western Civilisation, specifically in the United States, for a number of years. I'm not sure that I have very many answers yet.

Recently, I felt that God told me that the way to combat this false philosophy is by miracles. I argued with Him for several minutes, but He didn't hang around for that. He kind of came into the room, woke me up, said the thing about miracles, then was gone in a flash. He's like that.

So today I'm just wondering. What would I have to change in my life in order to get to a place in the Lord where I see some miracles happening? Because we always have to make choices. If I keep spending all of my time on commuting, working, studying, cleaning, cooking, laundry, meetings at church, or all of my time on some kind of ministry He hasn't called me to, then there will be no time left to pursue what He has spoken.

The last thing I want to hear when I get to heaven is "VeraLee, VeraLee, that's not what I told you to do."