For several years now, GCI’s auditor has been a firm named CapinCrouse. Some time ago, on a trip to our Home Office, their lead auditor mentioned that she grew up in a small town in South Dakota. Pleasantly surprised, our Treasurer, Mat Morgan, replied that he hailed from the same town! As the conversation ensued, she mentioned that her father was a long-time police officer in that town, and Mat (now both surprised and a bit chagrined) realized that he had received his first traffic ticket from our auditor’s dad! (I think Mat would want me to mention that he was just a teen at the time.) Anyway, all of us were reminded that, just as the Disney ride song says, “it’s a small world after all.”
Perhaps you’ve met someone for the first time, only to learn that you know some of the same people, or that your parents attended the same school at the same time. I’ve had such experiences, and the theory sometimes employed to explain them is called six degrees of separation. As illustrated below, the theory states that any person on earth can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.
Wikimedia Commons, used with permission
There have been several tests of this theory, including the Small World Project at Columbia University where the project team instructed a large group of “searchers” to send out multiple emails intended for a particular recipient that they did not know. The catch was that they could not send the emails directly to the intended recipient. Instead, each email was sent to a person they already knew, who was then instructed to forward it on to someone they knew, etc. The hypothesis was that the email would eventually reach the targeted recipient. Unfortunately (perhaps due to lack of cooperation), most of the original emails never reached their target. However, confirming the six degrees of separation theory, hundreds of emails eventually did reach the intended recipient in six or less steps.
Used with non-commercial, social-media license
Though the six steps of separation theory needs further testing, its premise has been confirmed in research, and in our experience as we’ve discovered multiple, unexpected connections with other people. Such experiences should not be a big surprise to us, understanding as we do that our tri-personal, relational God created a relational world. And it’s not just humanity that God placed in relational networks—all creation exists in a relational web that reflects the fact that our triune God is relational in his being and doing. As part of the Body of Christ (the church) we participate in Jesus’ relationship with the Father and the Spirit. It is in and through Christ, by the Spirit, that we are interconnected with each other. No wonder we crave good and right relationships!
Angels at Mamre (Holy Trinity) by Rublev (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
At lunch recently, State of the Heart Ministries Director, Ross Jutsum, shared with me a “small world” story of his own. He later sent me this write-up:
On a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia to serve in our GCI congregation there, I spent a couple of days helping a dear and long-time friend of Tammy and mine—Martha Williamson, best known as Executive Producer and main writer of the television series, Touched By An Angel. Martha had asked me to record some piano music for a movie that was based in a restaurant where there was a grand piano and singing waiters. I played and recorded the actual piano music “backstage” on the set, while a tuxedo-clad Canadian actor was on camera “finger-syncing” what I was playing.
Ross and Tammy Jutsum
On the first break from shooting, I introduced myself and learned that the actor’s name was Glenn. I complimented him on his excellent “finger-syncing,” and asked what he did for a living. He answered that he was a composer. I then asked where he studied composition, and he replied “at the University of North Texas.” When I asked what years, he replied “1990 to 1994.” He also told me that he had completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. I responded that I had been in attendance those same years and had received the same degree in conducting! In further discussion it became clear that we had been in some of the same classes and seminars. I explained that Martha had asked me to play the various tunes for this movie because she had heard me do something similar in the 1970s in Pasadena, California, where I was supplementing my income teaching at a small college.
During the next break in filming, Glenn approached me and asked if that college in Pasadena was Ambassador College. I answered is was, and asked how he knew about AC. He told me that while he was a doctoral student at North Texas, he was also a member of the WCG/GCI congregation in Fort Worth, Texas! We both had to admit that this was not blind chance—surely it was a “divine encounter.”
The magnitude and importance of the interconnectedness of God’s creation is something I appreciate more and more as I grow older. Whether pondering the micro-scale of quantum mechanics, or sharing in a gathering of hundreds of people at a family reunion, I find joy and amazement in experiencing God-ordained relationships, which I see as indicators that our triune God, who created and now sustains the universe, is inherently relational.
Thankful to recognize we are in relationship with God and one another,
Philosophers and theologians refer to what is called the mind-body problem. This is not a problem about fine-motor coordination (like when you take a sip from a cup and spill a bit, or miss badly throwing darts). Instead, it’s about whether our bodies are physical, while our minds are spiritual; or whether humans are purely physical, or a combination of physical and spiritual.
Though the Bible does not directly address the mind-body problem, it does assume a non-physical aspect to human existence, distinguishing (in New Testament terms) between body (flesh) and soul (mind/spirit). Though the Bible does not explain how the body and soul are related, or exactly how they interact, it does not separate them nor present them as interchangeable, and it never reduces the soul to the body.
In thinking through the mind-body problem, it’s important that we begin with a foundational teaching of Scripture: human beings would not exist, and would not be what they are, apart from an actual, ongoing relationship with the transcendent Creator God who created all things and now sustains those things in their existence. The creation (including humans) would not exist if God were disconnected from it (in an absolute, entire way). The creation did not produce itself and does not sustain its existence—only God has existence in himself (theologians refer to this as God’s aseity). The existence of all created things is a gift from the self-existent God.
God Creating Heaven and Earth by Tempesta (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Contrary to the biblical witness, some claim that human-being is nothing more than a material thing. But such claims prompt this question: How can something as immaterial as human consciousness ever arise from something as unconscious as physical matter? A related question is this: Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all? Such questions give rise to many others concerning whether consciousness is a mere illusion, or is a real (though non-physical) property related to, yet distinct from, the material brain.
Almost everyone agrees that humans have consciousness (an internal thought-world of images, sensations, and feelings)—what is commonly referred to as mind, which is as real to us as our need for food and sleep. However, there is not agreement on the nature and source of consciousness/mind. Materialists view it as arising solely from the electro-chemical activity of the physical brain. Non-materialists (including Christians) view it as a non-material phenomenon that is not identical to the physical brain.
Speculation concerning consciousness falls into two broad categories. The first is physicalism (materialism), which teaches that there is no such thing as an invisible spirit world. The other is parallel dualism, which teaches that the mind may have non-physical properties or be totally non-physical, and therefore cannot be explained in purely physical terms. Parallel dualism views the brain and mind as interacting and working in parallel—when the brain is injured, a person’s ability to reason can be impaired. As a result, the parallel interaction is also impaired.
In the case of parallel dualism, when talking about people, the term dualism distinguishes between the observable and unobservable interaction between the brain and mind. The conscious mental events that are private to us as individuals are not accessible to others. People can grab hold of our hands, but they cannot grab hold of our private thoughts (and most of the time we’re glad God made it that way!). Moreover, certain human ideals that we hold within our minds are not reducible to material factors. Those ideals include love, justice, forgiveness, joy, mercy, grace, hope, beauty, truth, goodness, freedom, human agency and responsibility—things that have to do with life’s purpose and meaning.
As Christians, we refer to what is unobservable in explaining God’s activity and agency in the world, which includes what he does through created means (natural agency), or more directly through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is invisible, his work is not measurable. Nevertheless, he acts upon and within the material world. His works are not predictable, nor reducible to empirical cause-and-effect chains. These works of God include not only creation itself, but the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, sending of the Holy Spirit and expected return of Jesus Christ to bring to consummation the kingdom of God and the establishment of a new heaven and earth.
Back to the mind-body problem: materialists claim that the mind can be explained physically. That view opens the possibility, but not the necessity, for minds to be reproduced artificially. Since the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was coined, it has been an optimistic subject of computer developers and writers of science fiction. Over the years AI has become an essential part of our technology. Algorithms are programmed into all kinds of machines from mobile phones to automobiles. Software and hardware development has progressed to the point that machines have bested people in gaming experiments. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat the reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating and demanded a rematch. I wish IBM had not refused, but they decided that the machine had worked hard enough and simply retired Deep Blue. In 2011, the Jeopardy quiz show hosted a match between IBM’s Watson computer and the two greatest Jeopardy champions. The champions lost by a significant margin. I can’t help saying (tongue-in-cheek) that Watson, which was just doing what it was designed and programmed to do, did not celebrate, though the AI software and hardware engineers did. That ought to tell us something!
Materialists claim that there is no empirical proof that the mind is separate and different from the body. They reason that the brain and consciousness are the same thing, and that the mind somehow arises from the quantum processes of the brain or emerges from the complexity of the brain’s processing. From the perspective of their worldview, there isn’t any non-material parallel processing. One of the so-called “angry atheists,” Daniel Dennett, goes even further, claiming that consciousness is an illusion. Christian apologist Greg Koukl points out the fundamental flaw in Dennett’s reasoning:
If consciousness was not real there would be no way to perceive that consciousness was just an illusion. If consciousness is required to perceive an illusion, then consciousness cannot itself be an illusion. Similarly, one would have to be able to perceive both the real world and the illusory world in order to know there is a distinction between the two, and to subsequently identify the illusory world as illusory. If all one perceived was the illusion, they would not be able to recognize it as such.
The materialist (empirical) method cannot detect what is not material. It can only detect the material phenomena of observable, measurable, testable and repeatable things. But if the only things that can exist are things that can be empirically tested, then nothing that is one-of-a-kind (non-repeatable) can exist. And if that is the case, then history, a one-of-a-kind, non-repeatable series of events, cannot exist! Though convenient, it is arbitrary for some to declare that only things that can be known by one particular and preferred method can exist. In short, there is no way to empirically prove that only empirical/material things exist! It is illogical to reduce all reality to what can be detected by this one method. Such a view is sometimes referred to as scientism.
This is a big topic, and I’ve only scratched the surface, but it’s an important one—note Jesus’ comment: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). Jesus was no materialist—he clearly distinguishes between the physical body (which includes the brain) and a non-material component of our humanity that is the essence of our personhood. When Jesus tells us to not let others kill the soul, it’s no stretch to say that he is referring to not letting others destroy our faith and belief in God, whom we cannot see, but whom we know, and trust, and can even feel or sense through our non-physical consciousness. Indeed, our belief in God is part of our conscious experience.
Jesus is reminding us that our minds are integral to our life of following him as one of his disciples. Our consciousness gives us the capacity to believe in God as Father, Son and Spirit. It helps us acknowledge the gift of faith that gives us “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Our consciousness enables us to know and trust God as Creator, to “understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:1, 3). Our consciousness enables us to experience the peace that surpasses understanding, to know God is love, to believe Jesus is the Son of God, to believe in eternal life, to know true joy, to know that we truly are God’s beloved children.
Delighted to know the transcendent God in my conscious, private world of thought, Joseph Tkach
PS: I want to express my deep appreciation for all the birthday cards I received in the last few weeks. It was an unexpected delight to receive so many—it would take me a very, very long time to send individual thank you cards in reply. I’m now officially an old man—I have the Medicare card to prove it!
This is our last issue in 2016. The next one will be published on Jan. 4, 2017. The letter below is the third in a series from Joseph Tkach addressing the origin, dating and Christian celebration of Christmas. To read an article (Some Thoughts About Christmas) that compiles all three letters, click here.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Joseph and Tammy Tkach
Rejoice! Christmas is almost here. In celebrating Christ’s birth, many Christians display a Christmas tree. For them, the colorful lights and ornaments add to the ambiance of the season. Some Christians choose not to have a Christmas tree, and that’s fine, as long as they don’t buy into the false idea that having one is tantamount to joining in pagan worship. I chuckle at that notion because, though I love trees, I’ve never worshiped one, nor have Christians down through the ages. There is a strict and obvious difference between the pagan worship of trees and what Christians do in displaying a decorated tree during the Christmas season.
The Bible says a lot about trees. It tells us that God created trees for us to enjoy and to care for. It tells us that God placed two special trees in the Garden of Eden—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some commentators see the tree of life as symbolic of blissful eternal life in God’s presence. Others see the Garden of Eden as symbolizing heaven, with the tree of life symbolizing Christ through whom eternal life is gained.
The Tree of Life, Revelation 22 (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
In the book of Proverbs, trees signify life and happiness (Proverbs 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4). Elsewhere, trees often symbolize God’s redemption. Note what Isaiah says about the promised Messiah: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit” (Isaiah 11:1). Other passages refer to the Messiah as “the Branch of the Lord,” “the Righteous Branch,” and “God’s Servant, the Branch.” These are references to God’s gracious work in raising up within our time and space a Messiah to give life and righteousness to all who believe in him (see Isaiah 4:2; Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16; Zechariah 3:8; 6:12).
The Bible mentions multiple kinds of trees, including almond, acacia, apple, ash, aspen, balsam, broom, carob, cassia, cedar, citrus, cypress, date palm, elm, evergreen cypress, fig, gopher, holm, mastic, mulberry, mustard, nuts, oak, oil, olive, pine, poplar, sandalwood, spice, storax, sycamine, sycamore, tamarisk, terebinth and willow. In Hosea, God refers to himself as a tree: an evergreen tree! “O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit” (Hosea 14:8 ESV).
Christ on the Cross by Zurbarán (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
In the New Testament, the Greek word xulon is used for both the cross and trees, including the tree of life (Revelation 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19). Jesus compares himself to a tree as he hears women lamenting his plight: “For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31). Jesus calls himself a green tree because of his eternal power and capacity to give new life.
No right-thinking Christian would ever worship a tree. They know God taught Israel to avoid idolatry, and it’s idolatrous to think that any part of God’s creation is divine. Embracing that belief set Israel apart from its pagan neighbors who viewed the sun, moon and stars as divine, and regarded vegetative and human fertility as making use of the power of the gods. Though God commanded Israel to reject such pagan notions, he did affirm the goodness of all that he created—distinguishing between the absolutely distinct, holy, particular and personal goodness of God (who alone is uncreated and thus divine) and the relative, limited (fallen-distorted) goodness of God’s created gifts.
This distinction between what is divine and what is created informs how Christians view the bread and wine served at the Lord’s Table. The communion elements are created, not divine. However, as signs of the real presence of our divine-human High Priest Jesus Christ, they are powerful reminders of God’s atoning work in and through Christ—both in the past and in the present, at the Table. In communion services within liturgical churches, before the bread and wine are consumed, the elements are lifted up to God in a prayer of consecration, given in recognition that the created elements have no power in themselves to give us fellowship and communion with God. Each and every time the Lord’s Supper is served, God graciously acts by his Spirit in making these created things to be channels of his grace to us as we worship Jesus for how he—on a tree!—poured out his blood from his broken body to conquer sin and death for all humanity.
It is interesting (and likely highly significant) that in the Bible the grand narrative of salvation is book-ended with key scenes featuring trees. Note this from fourth century church leader John Chrysostom:
Do you see how the devil is defeated by the very weapons of his prior victory? The devil had vanquished Adam by means of a tree [of the knowledge of good and evil]. Christ vanquished the devil by means of the tree of the Cross. The tree sent Adam to hell. The tree of the Cross brought him back from there. The tree revealed Adam in his weakness, laying prostrate, naked and low. The tree of the Cross manifested to all the world the victorious Christ, naked, and nailed on high. Adam’s death sentence passed on to all who came after him. Christ’s death gave life to all his children.
It’s not a sin, and thus there is no Christian prohibition against using decorated trees to celebrate the way Jesus created trees and then used them in fulfilling God’s plan for the redemption of humankind. When we use a Christmas tree as part of our celebration of the nativity of Christ, we do so as a mere sign (witness) of God’s great gift of his Son who brings eternal light and life into our dark world. We let the light of Christ, which shines down on those trees, reveal to us their true meaning. We refuse to let any pagan Grinch of Christmas trees past steal way that Christ-centered significance. The often star-tipped tops of our Christmas trees point humbly up to their transcendent Maker and Redeemer—the One who from heaven came down to us in the humble form of a servant, born in a manger in Bethlehem.
Jesus, the second Adam, redeemed the distorted relationships that through the first Adam had intruded into all creation (trees included). By dying on the “tree” of the Cross, Jesus brought redemption to humanity and light to the world. Through his sacrifice, he brought forgiveness, hope and salvation. We don’t worship trees, but because of what Jesus did, trees can serve as witnesses to God’s glory—reminders of his grace and love for all humankind.
I pray you have a joyous and fruitful celebration of Jesus’ incarnation, Joseph Tkach
PS: For a related GCI article on Christmas trees and Jeremiah 10, click here. For a Christianity Today article on the history of the Christmas tree, click here.
In my Weekly Update letter last week, I noted that associations of December 25 with ancient paganism have no relevance to how Christians celebrate the birth of Christ today. To think otherwise would be to fall prey to the genetic fallacy, a faulty line of reasoning also known as the fallacy of origins. Saying that celebrating Christmas on December 25 is wrong because pagans had celebrations that day, is like saying that renting a hall for church services from the Masons or Odd Fellows is wrong because those groups have ceremonies with pagan roots. (Note: renting such facilities might be unwise, but it’s not wrong.)
Claiming that the practice of celebrating Christmas on December 25 is rooted in paganism cannot override the fact that, for well over 1700 years, the worship of the church has irreversibly established the biblical story of Jesus’ birth as the focus of Christian Christmas celebrations. It’s superstitious to think that if pagans did certain things in the distant past, then Christians, merely because of that association, must avoid those things today. Pagans performed animal sacrifices, lit candles and had harvest festivals long before ancient Israel included similar practices in their temple worship. Were they wrong in doing so? Pagans breathe oxygen, must Christians avoid doing that? How far does such silly thinking go?
Adoration of the Shepherds by Murillo (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
In deciding to celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25, was the early church cozying up to paganism? The article below, reproduced with permission from the December 2003 issue of Touchstone Magazine, provides some interesting historical perspective. I think you’ll find it interesting.
Advent-Christmas blessings to you all, Joseph Tkach
Calculating Christmas, The Story Behind December 25
by William J. Tighe [1]
Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals. Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.
A Mistake
The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.
There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.
As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.
In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.
A By-Product
It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.
How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.
Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)
However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.
Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)
These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.
In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)
Integral Age
So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.
This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.
It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.
Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.
Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).
In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.
A Christian Feast
Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.
And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
[1] William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
This article is the second of three on the topic of Christmas. For part one, click here. For part three, click here. For a compliation of all three into one article, click here. For an essay that makes similar points, click here. For related chronological charts, click here.
While eating lunch with a pastor friend of mine (from another church), we discussed his reasons for believing Christ’s birth should be celebrated in September, not December: 1) Jesus was more likely to have been born on one of Israel’s autumn festivals than at the end of the year, and 2) Christmas is a pagan holiday. We discussed both assertions at length, and though he agreed that the word “Christmas” is not of pagan origin (it’s from a Latin expression meaning “Christ is sent”), he would not budge from his position, which was based on his use of an argument known as “the fallacy of origins” (or “the genetic fallacy”) in which a perceived defect in the origin of an idea or thing is taken to be evidence that discredits that idea or thing itself. According to this faulty line of reasoning, the truth of an idea or thing is rejected based on its source rather than on its merit. Here are two examples:
Wedding rings were invented by pagans, therefore wearing a wedding ring is unChristian.
The word “cereal” comes from the name of the pagan goddess Ceres, therefore Christians should not eat cereal.
Those not realizing the fallacy of such reasoning risk falling prey to the myths and misinformation that often surface when the origin of Christmas is raised. Even if the day is somehow incidentally related to less-than-Christian practices of the past, that association does not determine the meaning Christians (in the early church and today) attribute to Christmas. It’s enough to know that Christ was born on a day in history, in flesh and blood, space and time, for us and our salvation so that we might be born from above by God’s Word and Spirit. By assigning December 25 on the church calendar to celebrating Jesus’ birth, we as Christians are able to celebrate together, and then invite others to join in.
Peace on Earth by Liz Lemon Swindle (used with artist’s permission)
The meaning Christians attribute to Christmas comes from our services of worship on that day, which include readings of relevant Scripture, the preaching of messages expounding those readings, and the singing of hymns and carols that proclaim the joyous, biblical message of Christ’s birth. For us, the meaning of Christmas is determined by the object to which our celebrations point: Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God.
Is Christmas rooted in paganism? Historians (and others) have long debated that question. In the History Today article [1] reproduced below, British journalist Matt Salusbury debunks some of the claims frequently made in that debate, and we’ve linked similar articles in the second footnote [2] to shed light on the debate which often is filled with misinformation and outright superstition. But the bottom line is this: incidental associations of Christmas with non-Christian practices do not determine the meaning of the day for Christians. Jesus Christ gives Christmas its meaning.
Did the first Christian Roman emperor appropriate the pagan festival of Saturnalia to celebrate the birth of Christ? Matt Salusbury weighs the evidence.
It was a public holiday celebrated around December 25th in the family home. A time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts and the decoration of trees. But it wasn’t Christmas. This was Saturnalia, the pagan Roman winter solstice festival. But was Christmas, Western Christianity’s most popular festival, derived from the pagan Saturnalia?
The first-century AD poet Gaius Valerius Catullus described Saturnalia as ‘the best of times’: dress codes were relaxed, small gifts such as dolls, candles and caged birds were exchanged.
Saturnalia saw the inversion of social roles. The wealthy were expected to pay the month’s rent for those who couldn’t afford it, masters and slaves to swap clothes. Family households threw dice to determine who would become the temporary Saturnalian monarch. The poet Lucian of Samosata (AD 120-180) has the god Cronos (Saturn) say in his poem, Saturnalia:
‘During my week the serious is barred: no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping … an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water – such are the functions over which I preside.’
Saturnalia originated as a farmer’s festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season in honour of Saturn (satus means sowing). Numerous archaeological sites from the Roman coastal province of Constantine, now in Algeria, demonstrate that the cult of Saturn survived there until the early third century AD.
Saturnalia grew in duration and moved to progressively later dates under the Roman period. During the reign of the Emperor Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), it was a two-day affair starting on December 17th. By the time Lucian described the festivities, it was a seven-day event. Changes to the Roman calendar moved the climax of Saturnalia to December 25th, around the time of the date of the winter solstice.
From as early as 217 BC there were public Saturnalia banquets. The Roman state cancelled executions and refrained from declaring war during the festival. Pagan Roman authorities tried to curtail Saturnalia; Emperor Caligula (AD 12-41) sought to restrict it to five days, with little success.
Emperor Domitian (AD 51-96) may have changed Saturnalia’s date to December 25th in an attempt to assert his authority. He curbed Saturnalia’s subversive tendencies by marking it with public events under his control. The poet Statius (AD 45- 95), in his poem Silvae, describes the lavish banquet and entertainments Domitian presided over, including games which opened with sweets, fruit and nuts showered on the crowd and featuring flights of flamingos released over Rome. Shows with fighting dwarves and female gladiators were illuminated, for the first time, into the night.
The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in AD 312 ended Roman persecution of Christians and began imperial patronage of the Christian churches. But Christianity did not become the Roman Empire’s official religion overnight. Dr David Gwynn, lecturer in ancient and late antique history at Royal Holloway, University of London, says that, alongside Christian and other pagan festivals, ‘the Saturnalia continued to be celebrated in the century afterward’.
The poet Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius wrote about another Saturnalia, describing a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome during the festival. Classicists date the work to between AD 383 and 430, so it describes a Saturnalia alive and well under Christian emperors. The Christian calendar of Polemius Silvus, written around AD 449, mentions Saturnalia, recording that ‘it used to honour the god Saturn’. This suggests it had by then become just another popular carnival.
Christmas apparently started – like Saturnalia – in Rome, and spread to the eastern Mediterranean. The earliest known reference to it commemorating the birth of Christ on December 25th is in the Roman Philocalian calendar of AD 354. Provincial schisms soon resulted in different Christian calendars. The Orthodox Church in the Eastern (Byzantine) half of the Roman Empire fixed the date of Christmas at January 6th, commemorating simultaneously Christ’s birth, baptism and first miracle.
Saturnalia has a rival contender as the forerunner of Christmas: the festival of dies natalis solis invicti, ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’. The Philocalian calendar also states that December 25th was a Roman civil holiday honouring the cult of sol invicta. With its origins in Syria and the monotheistic cult of Mithras, sol invicta certainly has similarities to the worship of Jesus. The cult was introduced into the empire in AD 274 by Emperor Aurelian (214-275), who effectively made it a state religion, putting its emblem on Roman coins.
Sol invicta succeeded because of its ability to assimilate aspects of Jupiter and other deities into its figure of the Sun King, reflecting the absolute power of ‘divine’emperors. But despite efforts by later pagan emperors to control Saturnalia and absorb the festival into the official cult, the sol invicta ended up looking very much like the old Saturnalia. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was brought up in the sol invicta cult, in what was by then already a predominantly monotheist empire: ‘It is therefore possible,’ says Dr Gwynn, ‘that Christmas was intended to replace this festival rather than Saturnalia.’
Gwynn concludes: ‘The majority of modern scholars would be reluctant to accept any close connection between the Saturnalia and the emergence of the Christian Christmas.’
Devout Christians will be reassured to learn that the date of Christmas may derive from concepts in Judaism that link the time of the deaths of prophets being linked to their conception or birth. From this, early ecclesiastical number-crunchers extrapolated that the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy following the Annunciation on March 25th would produce a December 25th date for the birth of Christ.
—Matt Salusbury
Birth of Jesus by Hajdudorog (public domain)
I praise God for leading GCI out of faulty reasoning, errors of fact, and various misinterpretations concerning the celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas. We join with the host of Christians down the centuries in celebrating Jesus’ birth on the traditional day, knowing that the incarnation of the Son of God is central to God’s plan to save humankind. Regardless of the actual day of the birth of Immanuel (God with us), his birth is more than worthy of our celebration. As Jesus’ followers, we celebrate together, rejoicing in the amazing, sacrificial love of our Triune God seen in the birth of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem.
Celebrating Jesus and his birth, Joseph Tkach
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[1] This History Today article was first published in December 2009 (volume 59, 12). It is reproduced here with the publisher’s permission with History Today retaining the copyright. To read the article online, click here.
[2] This is the first letter in a series about Christmas—its origin, dating, and contemporary Christian celebration. To read the other letters, click here and here (and for a compilation of all three merged into one article, click here). For other articles debunking claims concerning the pagan origin for Christmas celebrations, click here, here and here.
I recently saw an anonymous blog post titled, The Church Service of the Future. I think you’ll enjoy this slightly modified version:
Pastor: “Praise the Lord!”
Congregation: “Hallelujah!”
Pastor: “Please turn in your tablet, iPod, iPad, cell phone, PC or Kindle to 1 Corinthians 13:13, then switch on your Bluetooth to download today’s sermon notes. You can also logon our church Wi-fi using the password, ILOVEGCI777.”
“Now, let’s pray, committing this week to God. Please open your Apps, BBM, Twitter and Facebook and let’s chat with God…”
[S-i-l-e-n-c-e]
“And now as we give our tithes and offerings, please have your credit or debit card ready. Those preferring electronic funds transfer, go to one of the laptops at the rear of the sanctuary, or use your iPad or iPod. Those preferring telephone banking use your cell phone to transfer contributions to our church account.”
[As the ushers circulate, mobile card swipe machines in hand, the holy atmosphere becomes electrified as cell phones, iPods, iPads, PCs and laptops beep and flicker.]
[Then at the end of the service comes the final blessing and closing announcements:]
“This week’s ministry cell meetings will be held on the various Facebook group pages where the usual group chatting takes place. Logon and don’t miss out! Thursday’s Bible study will be held live on Skype at 1900 hours GMT. Don’t miss out! This weekend you can follow me on Twitter for pastoral counseling and prayer. May God bless you—have a wonderful week.”
While I enjoy the use of technology to enhance church services (and I’ve been known to use my phone to look up a Scripture from time to time), I think you’ll agree that technology cannot replace worship: It can’t replace prayer, it can’t replace study groups or small groups, and most importantly, it can’t replace fellowship and the sharing of the story that gives shape to and explains why we worship.
Used with permission
A story of real relationship
Authentic and true worship is about a story of real relationship that affects all humanity. That story tells how the world became dysfunctional due to the sin of its inhabitants who developed a storyline other than the one their Creator intended. It tells how humanity rejected God, seeking its own way, leading to lawlessness, jealousy and hate. But it’s also the story of God and his gift of redemption, forgiveness, adoption and love. Were we to focus only on humanity’s side of the story, we’d have no cause for worship. But God has written already the end of the story, and continues working to bring it about. The story tells us that our Creator became our Redeemer and that our Redeemer is Jesus—the truth who sets us free (John 14:6; 8:36). By, through and in him we worship God in gratitude for the fact that we are included in God’s story—a story that tells us how God got involved in the chaos of humanity’s mess and redeemed and restored us so we might fulfill his purpose for all creation (humanity included).
Created for worship
Human beings were created to worship their Creator and Redeemer with all they are and all they have. For humans, the ultimate fulfillment in life is being in right relationship with God. We see that fulfillment in the Person and work of Jesus who not only shows us who God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but show us who we are as humans in right relationship with God. Jesus shows us that we were created to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as we ourselves are loved by God. In Jesus, we hear and see this purpose lived out to perfection. He alone perfectly fulfills the two great commandments that sum up all of God’s will and ways. And by the provision of his grace, accomplished in his cross, resurrection and ascension, Jesus has included us in his circle of perfect relationship and, by the Spirit, calls us to participate in his ongoing worship of God and his love for all people.
Embrace the true narrative, reject the false
Various religions have devised narratives to describe their particular conception of God and his relationship to the world. Some of these conceptions are noted in the chart below. We believe that the most accurate understanding of who God is and how he is related to the world is found in Scripture and in the creeds of the early Christian church—a narrative identified below as Trinitarianism (under Monotheism).
One of the other narratives is Panentheism (under Polytheism). It’s gaining popularity in North American and Western culture, with some offering a “Christianized” version (Christo-panentheism) in which the God-world relationship is seen as a unity of being between the triune God and creation. Although those who teach this story acknowledge that there is more to God, creation is held to be naturally divine and naturally in right relationship with God—a relationship that is built-in, behind-the-scenes, on auto-pilot. This relationship requires no costly personal intervention by God to put things right. The “unity” and “love” in this narrative is impersonal, requiring no repentance or transformation, and no worship. It’s a very different story than the Christian gospel of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Christo-panentheism’s easy and automatic nature makes it attractive to some Christians. In this issue we’ve included an essay that I asked Dr. Gary Deddo to write to spell out for us the key elements of Christo-panentheism, showing how it diverges from the biblical narrative revealed in Jesus Christ. I encourage you to read it carefully.
The heart of worship
The story of our Triune God (which includes creation, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and re-creation) shows forth the glory of God and the true nature of our ongoing relationship with God. The dynamics of the relationship between the Triune God and his creatures, through Christ, and by the Spirit, is the heart of worship that is authentic and true. This worship not only involves praising God for including us in his story—it also has to do with participation in that story in our individual lives and in the life of the church. This worship occurs in churches where the truth about what God has done and is now doing is lived out in his people.
Appreciating worship that is authentic and true, Joseph Tkach
An undergraduate speech class professor of mine taught that there are three aspects of a speech: 1) what is said; 2) how it is said; and 3) who says it. I sometimes reflect on this insight when preparing sermons—focusing particularly on how these aspects of a speech relate to the Bible where what is said, in both the Old and New Testaments, is the message of salvation in Christ; where how it is said has largely to do with the Spirit inspiring the retelling of Israel’s story, which includes Christ; and where who says it is the living Word of God, Jesus Christ—God’s ultimate act of speech.
The author of Hebrews refers to Jesus Christ (God’s “Son”), as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV)—or as the NIV has it, “the exact representation of his being.” Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, is the ultimate, definitive speech of God. He is the life, the way and the truth of God personified in order to communicate with us. We rightly, therefore, refer to Jesus as the living Word of God, knowing that he transcends the written word (Scripture) because the totality of God cannot be reduced to a text. Jesus’ life exudes the character of God and embodies God’s kingdom rule. As the Word made flesh, he interprets for us what it looks like to live in relationship with God in anticipation of the coming fullness of the kingdom.
St. Augustine by Peter Paul Rubens (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
The declaration that Jesus is “the exact imprint” of God’s “nature” should create new connections in our minds in telling us the truth that God is like Jesus. To express this truth, the apostle John calls Jesus the Word (Logos/Logic) of God. Centuries later, in The Trinity, Augustine explained the triune relationship of love that God is using this analogy: If Jesus is the Word, then there must be speech (the Spirit), and a speaker (the Father). Augustine’s analogy expresses both the three-ness of the divine Persons and the one-ness of God’s being as Trinity. Though all analogies ultimately fall short, this one helpfully conveys the wonderful truth concerning God’s nature, and his revelation to us in and through Jesus, by the Spirit. I enjoy the way Gary Deddo put it at one of our conferences:
Jesus was the self-revelation of God, and the self-giving of God. He was the embodiment of God’s love for the world. Everything else then shifted around that new and living Center, and a renewed grasp of who God was. He was identical to Jesus Christ. There was no other God, no God behind Jesus Christ, no Old Testament God in contrast to Jesus Christ. God is like Jesus, all the way down.
Think back to the prophetic promise given to Abram in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3 ESV). As Scripture goes on to make clear, Jesus, the Seed of Abraham, is the ultimate fulfillment of this promise. In the book of Acts we read this about Jesus: “There is salvation [ultimate blessing] in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12 ESV). God gave us the written word of God (Holy Scripture) to point us to our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God. The Bible is the only ancient book that can be read with the author still present with us, and Jesus, through the Spirit, uses the written word to tell us about himself, and also about his bride, the church.
To help us better understand the nature of the church and its ministry, Gary Deddo has written a lengthy essay that addresses the related topics of ecclesiology and missiology. You’ll find the introduction and part one of his essay in this issue(click here). Additional parts will be posted once a month, leading up to our Denominational Conference in Orlando, Florida, in August 2017. I believe you will enjoy reading how Jesus is the foundation of the church, and about the nature and purpose of the church that Jesus continues to build.
I wish you all a blessed Advent as we rejoice in the coming of Christ into the world for our salvation.
On November 24, most of us in the U.S. will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day (other nations have similar celebrations at various times of the year). Reflecting on this annual holiday, comedian Phyllis Diller joked, “My cooking is so bad my kids thought the purpose of Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor!” While her humor always makes me laugh, I’m glad the Thanksgiving meals we’ll soon be enjoying will be gourmet affairs, not catastrophes.
Charles Spurgeon
Thanksgiving helps us remember what we’re thankful for (both great and small), then extend that gratitude to God and others. Perhaps, like me, you find yourself thankful for more things each year. The more we understand who Jesus is and who we are in him, and the more we appreciate the relationships he gives us in union with himself, the more we will be inclined to practice what the famous British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon refers to in the following quote as thanks-living:
I think there is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will.
Thanks-living, which flows from “an attitude of gratitude,” is the result of God’s grace. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Considerable research confirms how important it is to express (and thus cultivate) gratitude toward others. A few years ago, the Harvard Mental Health Letter summarized some of that research. Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami conducted a study in which they asked participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics. Here is a summary of what they learned:
One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation. [1]
In a related study, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, had 411 people write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone they believed had never been properly thanked. The result was an almost immediate increase in the happiness of the letter writers.
This research confirms the wisdom contained in the Bible. Many of the Psalms mention the importance of being thankful, and the apostle Paul exhorts Christians to give thanks “in everything… for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NKJV). Practicing thanks-living leads to both spiritual and physical health. Conversely, being unthankful is characteristic of those not living in communion with God as noted by Paul in Romans 1:21 (ESV): “They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” As we live in union and communion with God, we cannot help but be thankful.
C.S. Lewis
In Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer [2],C. S. Lewis helps us see how being thankful is woven into a life of worshipping God. He notes that when we give thanks to God we often focus on what God has done for us—all his blessings, especially the gift of redemption through the atoning work of Jesus. But sometimes when we turn to God with thanksgiving, we begin to realize that the reason God does all that we are thanking him for is because of who God is. It’s at this turning point in our thinking that our thanksgiving goes deeper, turning into adoration. In adoration we are thankful not so much for what God has done for us, but for whoGod is—for that is why God does what he does!
Being thankful is one thing. But knowing Who we’re thanking leads into true thanks-living—a life of worship, fellowship and communion with the Triune God: Father, Son and Spirit.
I’m grateful every day of the year for each of you, and for your faithfulness to our God. I pray blessings upon your celebrations of Thanksgiving whenever and however they come your way.
The Bible is one of the world’s most accessible books, having been translated into most of the world’s major languages [1], and in many of those languages, made available in multiple versions. People with computers, tablets, or smartphones are able to download the Bible for free, and even hear it read aloud. Yet, with this accessibility, many people do not read the Bible. Thankfully, most Christians do, but do they understand what they are reading?
public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Few of the early Christians had access to Scripture, and even when they did, most were unable to read. As a result, learning in the early church came mostly through oral teaching, which often included the reading of letters from the apostles that were circulated among the churches. A few churches had scrolls of the Old Testament translated into Greek, but again, most early Christians could not read.
Some house churches had cabinets (similar to those used in Jewish synagogues) in which they stored letters from the apostles and others. Which letters each congregation possessed varied. Most probably had copies of some or all of the Gospels, a few of Paul’s letters, a letter or two from John and other apostles, and perhaps a copy of the Acts of the Apostles. Many had a copy of a story from someone called The Shepherd, along with letters from a Roman pastor named Clement. Most would not have had copies of some of the letters we now find in the New Testament—Hebrews and 2 Peter, for example. When gathering for worship, many early Christians made use of what we call the Apostles’ Creed(they called it the Rule of Faith), which summarized the apostles’ teaching concerning God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Despite this diversity in teaching resources, the New Testament churches experienced great unity, due largely to the oral teaching based on stories of Jesus and letters from the apostles, understood in light of the rule of faith. This teaching gave them the common, grand understanding that Scripture holds out for us today, namely that all Scripture is about Jesus. Jesus was what the early Christians taught, and what they shared with others. Jesus was (and still is) the gospel.
One thing is sure—when early Christians gathered, they were not arguing over the correct days for ancient Israel’s festivals, the meaning of Hebrew words, or the necessity of learning Hebrew to know God’s love and plan for them. Even the apostles, who as good Jews had observed the festivals, understood that the festivals were part of the old covenant of promise, which pointed to the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant in Jesus (through his life, death, resurrection and ascension). They never taught that Israel’s holy days revealed anything but Jesus.
It is disappointing that among those who read and even regularly study the Bible, interpretations have developed ranging from slight variations in understanding, to totally missing the point. This happens for a number of reasons, but I want to point out one that plagues Sabbatarians in particular. Reading that God rested on the seventh day, then gave Israel the command to rest on the seventh day, Sabbatarians use the Sabbath as the “lens” through which they read and interpret all Scripture. In doing so they completely miss that the Sabbath command was about a covenant grounded in a particular place and time, having largely to do with promises concerning the Promised Land. But before we judge the flaw in their thinking, we must admit that many of us have had the experience of hardening our mental defenses against those who tell us that seventh-day Sabbath observance is not part of an obedient Christian’s life.
The Pharisees Question Jesus by Tissot (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Sabbatarians are mistaken in using a lens other than Jesus to interpret Scripture. Jesus warned of this error when he said this to the experts in the Law of Moses (the Torah):
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39-40)
Jesus was not saying there is something wrong with the Torah—he was criticizing their use of it as their lens to interpret Scripture. Jesus is to be that lens, and that is why he proclaimed himself Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:5). Jesus called upon the experts in the Law (and all people) to interpret the Sabbath in terms of who he is, not in terms of any preunderstanding they might have concerning the Sabbath.
The apostle John had this truth concerning Jesus’ primacy emphasized to him by an angel:
The angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.” (Revelation 19:9-10)
Scripture and prophecy are not unlocked and understood by anything other than the One to whom they point—Jesus Christ. He (and he alone) is the focus of all Scripture—not geo-political alliances, not British-Israelism, and not Israel’s seven festivals. God has given us the New Testament, which, through the lens of Jesus, interprets the Old Testament. When we use the Old Testament to interpret the New Testament, we make the mistake of doing it “bass-ackwards,” as the old spoonerism goes. An insistence on keeping the Sabbath on a particular day in order to be righteous before God is a prime example of this mistake. Beware of anyone telling you differently!
The Sabbath was given to point us to Jesus, not the other way around. The Old Testament Sabbath is a sign, which like all signs is given to point to its fulfillment—its reality. The commandment to “keep the Sabbath holy” is magnified under the New Covenant. Under the old covenant, the tabernacle and later the temple were holy because God made them his place of dwelling among his people. This was a temporary arrangement designed to point to Jesus coming and making his dwelling among us. Once Jesus fulfilled his atoning work on the cross, leading to his resurrection and ascension, he moved from dwelling among us (John 1:14) to living in us through the Spirit (Ephesians 3:16-17). God, through Jesus, by the Spirit, now dwells in us, making us and all our time holy. Under the old covenant, God’s people sought a holy closeness to God once a week; under the new covenant, we are given a new life with Jesus living in us and transforming us from the inside out. It is no longer a once-a-week time with God, it is now a new life in him and he in us. Jesus, and not any day, is our Sabbath rest, and so we celebrate him when we gather as his people.
When we read the Bible, we do so to help us see Jesus—to help us learn from and about him. We read the Bible to help us understand that, by the Spirit, Christ lives in us as we respond to him in faith, hope and love. We read Holy Scripture to help us see God’s faithfulness for his beloved throughout all history—working all things in preparation for the turning point of history—the Incarnation, which was God’s plan from before the foundation of the world. We read the Bible to remind us that we are God’s chosen ones—made holy and righteous through Jesus. We read the Bible to see how God has invited us to join him in his continuing work of revealing himself to others so they too can know the true lens of life, Jesus Christ. We read the Bible because it is the written word of God designed to always point us to the living Word, Jesus, our Lord.
Reading the Bible with joy, through the lens of Jesus, Joseph Tkach
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[1] As noted by Wycliffe Global Alliance, though there has been much progress in recent years, much more needs to be done to get the Bible into the hands of all people groups on earth. There currently are about 7000 languages in active use in the world, and at least one book of Scripture exists in over 2,900 of these languages. However, of the (approximately) 7.2 billion people on earth, about 1.5 billion of them do not have the full Bible available in their first language, though over 663 million of these have the New Testament. For more information on this topic, click here.
Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” often is quoted to describe someone who seeks to convince others of something that is not true. The line comes to mind when I hear atheists protesting claims that atheism is a religion. In support of their protests, some atheists offer these syllogistic comparisons:
If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color. While this may sound almost borderline profound, all it does is compare a false statement with a category error. Baldness has nothing to do with hair color. Certainly bald is not a color, but since atheism exists in some sense, it may very well have a color like other religions even if it has a unique color, as does Christianity. Moreover, I’ve never met a bald person who doesn’t have a hair color. An absence of hair on the head does not equate with the absence of a hair color.
If atheism is a religion then health is a disease. Once again, this may at first glance sound like a valid syllogism but it is nothing more than doubletalk that once again compares a falsity with a category error, a logical error. I should also note that studies have shown that belief in God correlates not only to reports of improved mental health among the faithful, but also better physical health compared to nonbelievers. In fact, nearly 350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health that have used religious and spiritual variables have found that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes. [1]
If atheism is a religion, then abstinence is a sexual position. Once again juxtaposing two thoughts doesn’t mean that they are real proof of something. One can go on and on composing such nonsensical statements. Pointing out logical errors does not tell us what is true in fact.
The US Supreme Court has ruled on more than one occasion that atheism is to be treated as equivalent to a religion under the law (i.e. it is a protected belief system at the same level as any religion). Atheists believe, of course, that there are no gods. As such, atheism is a belief about gods and thus qualifies as a religion, much in the same way Buddhism is described as a religion.
Religious views about God fall into three categories: monotheistic (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), polytheistic (Hinduism, Mormonism), and nontheistic (Buddhism, atheism). One might place atheism in a fourth category by saying that it’s antitheistic. In Atheism as a Religion: An Introduction to the World’s Least Understood Faith, Mike Dobbins highlights ways that atheism mirrors religion; here is an excerpt (from The Christian Post):
One sacred symbol to atheists is the ‘A’ that symbolizes atheism. Three ‘A’ symbols are prominent in atheism. One ‘A’ symbol was created in 2007 by Atheist Alliance International and has a circle around it. The circle is meant to symbolize the unity of all atheists and the inclusion of all other atheist symbols. As you can tell, not only are these symbols for atheism, there is atheist religious symbolism within them that only atheists or those who study atheism know….
Many atheists demonstrated just how sacred the symbol ‘A’ is to them in the Christmas of 2013. Since my hometown city of Chicago allows a Hanukkah Menorah and Nativity scene to display on government property during the holiday season, the atheists asked to display their own religious symbol so the government wouldn’t give the appearance to be endorsing one religion or the other. The monument the Freedom From Religion Foundation chose was a giant… letter ‘A’ which stood 8 feet tall and lit up red at night for all to see. Countless atheists showed respect for the ‘A’ by making a pilgrimage to the site where the ‘A’ was displayed and having their picture taken with the ‘A’ which I’m sure will be kept as a cherished keep sake for many. Still, the giant red A was not enough. They also advocated for their atheist faith by erecting a sign that read, “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”
The Debunking Atheists blog has a helpful list of atheism’s key views that clearly are religious in nature. Here is an edited version of that list:
Atheists have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world. Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. They are like a guy wearing dark sunglasses who chides all others for thinking the sun is out.
Atheists have their own orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a set of normative beliefs acceptable to a faith community. Just as there are orthodox Christian beliefs, there is an atheist orthodoxy as well. In brief, it is that EVERYTHING can be explained as the product of unintentional, undirected, purposeless evolution. No truth claim is acceptable if it cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny and empirical confirmation.
Atheists have their own brand of apostasy. Apostasy is to abandon one’s former religious faith. Antony Flew was for many years one of the world’s most prominent atheists. And then he did the unthinkable: he changed his mind. You can imagine the response of the “open-minded, tolerant” New Atheist movement. Flew was vilified. Richard Dawkins accused Flew of “tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy. By their own admission, then, Flew abandoned their “faith” [and became a kind of Deist].
Atheists have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin and Marx.
Atheists have their own messiah: Charles Darwin, who in their view drove the definitive stake through the heart of theism by providing a comprehensive explanation of life that never needs God as a cause or explanation. Daniel Dennett has even written a book seeking to define religious faith itself as merely an evolutionary development.
Atheists have their own preachers and evangelists: Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.
Atheists have faith. Though their writings ridicule faith (Harris’s book is called The End of Faith), atheism is a faith-based enterprise. Because the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, denying it takes faith in their own scientific powers of observation and rationality. Atheistic evolution has no explanation for why our universe is orderly, predictable, measurable. It has no rational explanation for why there is such a thing as rational explanation. There is no accounting for the things they hope you won’t ask: Why do we have self-awareness? What makes us conscious? From what source is there a universal sense of right and wrong? How do we know that there is no life after death? How do we know that nothing more than material things exist? How do we know that the only things that exist are (conveniently) those things that can be known by our current scientific-empirical methods? Atheists take such unexplained things by faith—they assume things without having a sound rational or empirical basis.
Contrary to the protestations of atheists, the reality is that their belief system is a faith-based enterprise with practices and beliefs just like other religions. How ironic that atheists, insisting that atheism is not a religion, rail against other religions, even setting up competing displays next to displays from other religions.
I hasten to add, though, that some Christians make essentially the same mistake when they rail against other religions (even other forms of Christianity). We Christians should keep in mind that our faith is not a mere religion that needs to be asserted or defended. Instead, Christianity, at its core, is a living relationship with the Triune God: Father, Son and Spirit. Our calling as Christians is not to push another belief system on the world, but to participate with God, as his ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), in his ongoing ministry of reconciliation—letting others know the good news (gospel) that they are forgiven, redeemed, and loved by a God who desires a relationship of trust (faith), hope and love with all people.
Loving that authentic Christianity is not a religion but a relationship, Joseph Tkach
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[1] “Religious involvement, spirituality, and medicine: implications for clinical practice,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings vol. 76:12, pp. 1225-1235. Retrieved from Mayo Clinic Proceedings website on July 20, 2014.
