I have arrived. I am home. While I am still making steps, I have already arrived, I am already home. I have stopped wandering. This is the teaching and the practice of Plum Village, the Dharma Seal of Plum Village.
from I Have Arrived, I Am Home (2003) by Thich Nhat Hanh; Parallax Press, Berkeley, California,
As I think about my feeling at
home in Zen Buddhism although I have spent
my life in the Christian church and
studying theology. It seems that in Christianity one is trying to achieve something and become more spiritual. The readings I'm finding in Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, is that there is nothing to achieve, it's merely awakening. That may be a
source of my satisfaction with where I'm feeling now.
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Excerpts from The History of God by Elaine Pagels
We know very little about Jesus. The first full length account of his life was St. Mark's Gospel, which was not written until about the year 70, some forty years after his death. By that time, historical facts had been overlaid with mythical elements which expressed the meaning Jesus had acquired for his followers. It is this meaning that St. Mark primarily conveys rather than a reliable straightforward portrayal. P.79
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Mark's gospel, which is the earliest is usually regarded as the most reliable, presents Jesus as a perfectly normal man, with a family that included brothers and sisters. No angels announced his birth or sang over his crib. He had not been marked out during his infancy or adolescence as remarkable in any way. When he began to teach, his townsmen in Nazareth were astonished that the son of the local carpenter should have turned out to be such a prodigy. Mark begins his narrative with Jesus' career. It seems that he may originally have been the disciple of one John the Baptist, a wandering ascetic who had probably been a Essenes: John had regarded the Jerusalem establishment as hopelessly corrupt and preached excoriating sermons against it. He urge the populace to repent and to accept the Essene rite of purification by baptism in the River Jordan. Jesus had made the long journey from Nazareth to Judaea to be baptized by John. As Mark tells us: "No sooner had he come out of the water then he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved, my favor rest upon you.' " John the Baptist had immediately recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The next thing we hear about Jesus is that he began to preach to all the towns and villages of Galilee, announcing: "The Kingdom of God has arrived!" There has been much speculation about the nature of jesus' mission. Very few of his actual words seem to have been recorded in the Gospels, and much of their material has been affected by later developments in the churches that were
founded by St. Paul after his death. Nevertheless, there are clues that point to the essentially Jewish nature of his career. It has been pointed out that faith healers were familiar religious figures in Galilee, like Jesus, they were mendicants, who preached, healed the sick and exorcised demons. Like Jesus again, these Galilean holy men often had a large number of women disciples. P.80-81
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During his lifetime, many Jews in Palestine had believed that he was the Messiah: he had ridden into Jerusalem and had been hailed as the Son of David, but, only a few days later, he was put to death by the agonizing Roman punishment of crucifixion. Yet despite the scandal of a Messiah who had died like a common criminal, his disciples could not believe that their faith in him had been misplaced. There were rumors that he had risen from the dead. Some said that his tomb had been found empty three days after his crucifixion; others saw him in visions, and on one occasion 500 people saw him simultaneously. His disciples believed that he would soon return to inaugurate the Messianic Kingdom of God, and, since there was nothing heretical about such a belief, their sect was accepted as authentically Jewish by no less a person than Rabbi Gamaliel, the grandson of Hillel. His followers worshiped in the temple every day as fully observant Jews. Ultimately, however, the new Israel, inspired by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, would become a Gentile faith, which would evolve its own distinctive conception of God. P.79-80
Eventually three outstanding solutions theologians of Cappadocia in Eastern Turkey came up with a solution that satisfied the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Cappadocians, as they are called, we're all deeply spiritual men. They thoroughly enjoyed speculation and philosophy but were convinced that religious experience alone could provide the key to the problem of God. Trained in Greek philosophy, they were all aware of a crucial distinction between the factual content of truth and its more elusive aspects. The early Greek rationalists had drawn attention to this: Plato had contrasted philosophy (which was expressed in terms of reason and thus capable of proof) with the equally important teaching handed down by means of mythology, which eluded scientific demonstration. We have seen the Aristotle had made a similar distinction when he had noted that people attended the mystery religions not to learn (mathein) anything but to experience (pathein) something. Basil expressed the same insight in a Christian sense when he distinguished between dogma and kerygma. Both kinds of Christian teaching were essential to religion. Kerygma was the public teaching of the church, based on the scriptures. Dogma, however, represented the deeper meaning of biblical truth, which could only be apprehended through religious experience and expressed in symbolic form. Besides the clear message of the Gospels, a secret or esoteric tradition had been handed down "in a mystery" from the apostles; this had been a "private and secret teaching," which are holy fathers have preserved in a silence that prevents anxiety and curiosity so as to safeguard by this silence the sacred character of the mystery. The initiated are not permitted to behold these things, their meaning is not to be devolved by writing it down. Behind the liturgical symbols and the lucid teachings of Jesus, there was a secret dogma which represented a more developed understanding of the faith.
A distinction between esoteric and exoteric truth will be extremely important in the history of God It is not confined to Greek Christians, but Jews and Muslims would also develop an esoteric tradition. Since all religion was directed toward on an ineffable reality that lay beyond normal concepts and categories, speech was limiting and confusing. Besides their literal meaning, therefore, the scriptures also had a spiritual significance which it was not always possible to articulate. The Buddha had also noted that certain questions were "improper" or inappropriate, since they referred to realities that lay beyond the reach of words. You would only discover them by undergoing the introspective techniques of contemplation: in some sense you had to create them for yourself. As Basal said, these elusive religious realities could only be suggested in the symbolic gestures of the liturgy or, better still, by silence.p113-115
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Neither Jews nor Greek Orthodox Christians regarded the fall of Adam in such a catastrophic light; nor, later, would Muslims adopt this dark theology of
Original Sin. Unique to the West, the doctrine compounds the
harsh portrait of God suggested earlier by Tertullian. Augustine left us with a difficult heritage. A religion which teaches men and women to regard their humanity as chronically flawed can alienate them from themselves. Nowhere is this alienation more evident than in the denigration of sexuality in general and women in particular. Even though
Christianity had originally been quite positive for women, it had already developed a misogynistic tendency in the West by the time of Augustine. The letters of Jerome teem with loathing of the female which occasionally sounds deranged. p124
I also read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. Like I have read elsewhere, Christianity seems to have gone through a very narrow choke point where all "heretical" beliefs were eliminated. The book brings out the diversity that existed among gnostic Christians, some with very strange beliefs. And yet she writes in the introduction on page xxxv, "Yet orthodox Christianity, as the apostolic creed defines it, contains some ideas that many of us today might find even stranger. The creed requires, for example, that Christians confess that God is perfectly good, and still, he created a world that includes pain, injustice, and death; that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin mother; and that, after being executed by order of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, he rose from his grave "on the third day."
The first chapter, titled
The Controversy over Christ's Resurrection, begins with; Jesus Christ rose from the grave. With this proclamation, the Christian Church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly is the most radical. Other religions celebrate cycles of birth and death: Christianity insists that in one unique historical moment, the cycle reversed, and a dead man came back to life! For Jesus' followers this was the turning point and world history, the sign of its coming end. (Page 3) I remember the "one unique historical moment" as being the first and on-going problem I had with the Christian message when I went through
Lutheran Catechism. Everything changed? Really? What about the people who lived before Jesus?
Gnostic Christians interpret resurrection in various ways. Without denying the resurrection, they reject the literal interpretation, some find it "extremely revolting, repugnant, and impossible." (Page 5) "Why did Orthodox tradition adopt the literal view of Resurrection? The question becomes even more puzzling when we look at what the New Testament says about it." After explaining how he appeared in earthly form to some of his disciples and even showed he was "not a ghost," she goes on, "But other stories, directly juxtaposed with these, suggest different views of the resurrection. Luke and Mark both relate that Jesus appeared "in another form" - not his former earthly form - to two disciples as they walked on the road to Emmaus. . . John, too, places directly before the story of "doubting Thomas" another of a very different kind: Mary Magdalene mourning for Jesus near his grave, sees a man that she takes to be the gardener. When he speaks her name, suddenly she recognizes the presence of Jesus - but he orders her not to touch him.
So if some of the New Testament stories insist on a literal view of resurrection, others lend themselves to different interpretations. One could suggest that certain people, in moments of great emotional stress, suddenly felt they experienced Jesus's presence. Paul's experience can be read this way. As he traveled on the road to Damascus, intent on arresting Christians, "suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground," hearing the voice of Jesus rebuking him for the intended persecution. (Pages 5-6) It goes on to mention how there are two versions of this story which say the opposite about whether traveling companions heard or saw Jesus. Other authors have mentioned the importance of these visions of Jesus and note how Paul describes his encounter as equal to the others that saw Jesus right after his resurrection. The gospel of Mark denies a vision to anyone.
Pagels then says we have to do more than consider the religious content. "But when we examine its practical effect on the Christian movement, we can see, paradoxically, that the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves as an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic secession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics. (Pages 6-7)
Such political and religious authority developed in a most remarkable way. As we have noted, diverse forms of Christianity flourished in the early years of the Christian movement. Hundreds of rival teachers all claimed to teach the true doctrine of Christ and denounced one another as frauds. Christians in churches scattered from Asia Minor to Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome split into factions, arguing over church leadership. All claim to represent the authentic tradition." (Page 7)
New Testament evidence indicates that Jesus appeared to many others besides Peter - Paul says that once he appeared to give hundred people simultaneously. But from the second century, orthodox churches developed the view that only certain resurrection appearances actually conferred authority on those received them. These were Jesus' appearances to Peter and to "the eleven." (Page 9)
"Finally, those gnostics who conceived of gnosis as a subjective, immediate experience, concerned themselves above all with the internal significance of events. Here again they diverged from orthodox tradition, which maintained that human destiny depends upon the events of salvation history - the history of Israel, especially the prophets' predictions of Christ and then his actual coming, his life, and his death and resurrection. All the New Testament gospels, whatever their differences, concern themselves with Jesus as a historical person. And all of them rely on the prophets predictions to prove the validity of the Christian message." "But according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus dismisses has irrelevant the prophets predictions: His disciple said to him, Twenty-four prophets spoken to Israel, and all of them spoke in you. He said to them, You have ignored the one living in your presence, and have spoken (only) of the dead. Such gnostic Christians saw actual events as secondary to their perceived meaning. (Pages 132-133)
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So besides a group of men with the literal interpretation of the resurrection, we have Paul. We have his letters which for the most part deal with "problems" in the fledgling congregations and his messianic views as described by Wayne A. Meeks: Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University in
Paul's Mission and Letters: Carrying the 'good news' of Jesus Christ to non-Jews, Paul's letters to his fledgling congregations reveal their internal tension and conflict.
The Apostle Paul is, next to Jesus, clearly the most intriguing figure of the 1st century of Christianity, and far better known than Jesus because he wrote all of those letters that we have [as] primary sources.
Some of these Jewish congregations [in Antioch] probably like Paul, probably like other people in the homeland, also knew this apocalyptic message of a messianic expectation and maybe more than one kind of Messiah. Just like we see back in the homeland at this same period. So expect Paul to be preaching about a Messiah. To be talking about a messianic identity isn't really all that unique in and of itself, rather, it's more important to recognize that Paul and other followers of the Jesus movement of this time would have been given a special new meaning or a special new kind of information about their understanding of who and what that Messiah was to be.
In the Jesus movement it's clear that a new understanding has come to the fore. In fact it's slightly odd from certain perspectives. One doesn't normally expect that a Messiah should die and yet we have this ironic message in Paul that in fact the Messiah is the one who has been crucified.
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What we find in Paul, and indeed among most of the early Christians, is a slightly ironic twist of fate that the death of the Messiah doesn't immediately inaugurate the new kingdom, and yet that doesn't seem to diminish their sense of apocalyptic expectation. Paul still thinks it's coming soon. He will go through his entire life thinking the kingdom will come soon but the Messiah had already died.
So when we hear Paul talking about the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified, we're beginning to get for the first time in the New Testament the language that will become the hallmark of all the later Christian tradition. Indeed it's where we get much of the vocabulary that makes Christianity distinctive. The term "Christ" is a title. It's the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messioc and they mean exactly the same thing. They both refer to someone who is anointed. ... It's identifying him as a religious figure in a new way.
Holland Lee Hendrix: President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary;
[Paul] emphasizes two things; on the one hand, very clearly, the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the other hand he also emphasizes the importance of understanding the end time, and the immediacy of the end time, and that one must be prepared for it, and the way one prepares for it is to be good.
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"From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians"
In the period between 100 and 300 C.E., the Christian movement grew throughout the Roman empire. At times there were heated debates about beliefs, worship, and even about Jesus himself. The Christian movement also faced external threats; it became suspicious in the eyes of the Roman authorities and Christians were persecuted.
But the Christian movement pulled together and in the end, what started as a small sect of Judaism became a significant part of the population, enough so that the new Roman emperor Constantine decided that they should be part of the official religion of Rome. This was a momentous change for Christianity.
As the fourth century dawned, the cross was transformed into a symbol of triumph and Jesus of Nazareth became Jesus Christ. In only three hundred years, the empire that had sent Jesus to his death embraced Christianity (audio excerpt) as an official religion and worshipped him as divine.
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Legitimization Under Constantine
Shaye I.D. Cohen: Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University
....it is important to realize that we have a progression and a set of developments, and that Christianity by the fourth century is not the same as the Christianity that we see in the first or even the second.
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Constantine ends not converting, technically, to Christianity, but becoming a patron of one particular branch of the church. It happens to be the branch of the church that has the Old Testament as well as the New Testament as part of its canon. Which means that since this branch of Christianity includes the story about historical Israel as part of its own redemptive history, it has an entire language for articulating the relationship of government and piety. It has the model of King David. It has the model of the kings of Israel. And it's with this governmental model that the bishop explains the vision to Constantine.
[he] is in this amazing position of having a theology of government that he can use to consolidate his own secular power. And it works both ways. The bishops now have basically federal funding to have sponsored committee meetings so they can try to iron out creeds and get everybody to sign up.
One of the first things Constantine does, as emperor, is start persecuting other Christians. The Gnostic Christians are targeted...and other dualist Christians. Christians who don't have the Old Testament as part of their canon are targeted. The list of enemies goes on and on. There's a kind of internal purge of the church as one emperor ruling one empire tries to have this single church as part of the religious musculature of his vision of a renewed Rome. And it's with this theological vision in mind that Constantine not only helps the bishops to iron out a unitary policy of what a true Christian believes, but he also, interestingly, turns his attention to Jerusalem, and rebuilds Jerusalem just as a righteous king should do.
The Council of Nicea, which took place in 325, was a response to a crisis that developed in the church over the teachings of a presbyter, or priest, of the church in Alexandria. And his teachings suggested that Jesus was not fully divine, that Jesus was certainly a supernatural figure of some sort, but was not God in the fullest sense. His opponents included a fellow who came to be bishop of Alexandria, Anthanasius, and the folk on that side of the divide insisted that Jesus was fully divine. The Council of Nicea was called to try to mediate that dispute, and the Council did come down on the side of the full divinity of Jesus. It all boils down to one iota of difference. And the debates in the 4th century about the status of Jesus have to do with the Greek word that exemplifies the problem. One party said that Jesus was homo usias with the father, that is of the same being or substance as the father. The other party, the Arian party, argued that Jesus was homoi usias with the father, inserting a single letter "i" into that word. So the difference between being the same and being similar to was the heart of the debate over Arianism. And the Council of Nicea resolved that the proper teaching was that Jesus was of the same being as the father.
The Emperor Constantine was the moving force in the Council and he, in effect, called it in order to solve this dispute. He did so because at that time he had just completed his consolidation of authority over the whole of the Roman Empire. Up until 324, he had ruled only half of the Roman Empire. And he wanted to have uniformity of belief, or at least not major disputes within the church under his rule. And so he was dismayed to hear of this controversy that had been raging in Alexandria for several years before his assumption of total imperial control. And in order to dampen that controversy he called the Council.
...
Holland Lee Hendrix: President of the Faculty Union Theological Seminary
With Constantine, in effect the kingdom has come. The rule of Caesar now has become legitimized and undergirded by the rule of God, and that is a momentous turning point in the history of Christianity.
To appreciate the remarkable dramatic evolution that had occurred in so short a period, one might counterpose the image of Pliny and his courtroom under the Emperor Trajan -- sending Christians off to their execution simply for being called Christians -- to the majesty of Constantine presiding over the great gathering of bishops that he had called to resolve particular questions. The Imperium on the one hand being used clearly to extinguish a religious movement. The Imperium on the other hand being used clearly to undergird and support a religious movement, the same religious movement in so short a period of time. .
....
L. Michael White: Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin
The imperialization of Christianity can be seen in some of the monuments of Rome itself where imperial ideology and symbolism, the trappings of imperial grandeur, are brought into and overlaid onto the Christian tradition itself. This is probably seen as well as anywhere else in the apse mosaic in the Church of Santa Podenziana at Rome. Jesus is in a very elaborate, expensive toga, seated enthroned in an imperial chair. ...This Jesus looks like the emperor himself, and here he sits enthroned in front of a very elaborate cityscape behind. And it's not the city of Rome, it's the new imperial city of Jerusalem. Behind him, we see Constantine's Church of the Holy Sepulchre that had only recently been completed in Jerusalem itself, and behind is the rest of the new city of Jerusalem, rebuilt for the first time, significantly, after it had been destroyed in the first revolt.
