Washing Away Concepts

Matthew’s Gospel in particular provides us with the most illuminating, complete sequence of John the Baptist’s demonstrations for the benefit of the people (3:1-12):

John appears in the Judean desert, not in Jerusalem, or Bethlehem, or Nazareth—or in any other place significant to Judaism or Christianity;

He proclaims generalized repentance, not repentance directed toward the Jewish law or covenant;

He is described in his approaching by the use of a passage from Isaiah (40:3) that is imprecisely rendered;

His dress and diet were bizarre and repulsive;

His ministry was, in short, one that struck down or ignored an array of prevailing conceptions about religion, yet the result was:

“Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins” (5-6, KJV).

But the collapsing of concepts was not yet finished:

John was not about to let the concept of repentance exist in sterile separation from that with which it is properly admixed; or, to put it another way:

John was not about to forget that repentance shades imperceptibly into reformation:

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bring forth therefore fruit meet for repentance” (7-8).

And so, of course, John’s water baptism of repentance was never so much about water, or even so much about repentance.  It was about a cascade of necessary self-denials that involve us giving up treasured notions about life and existence.

In the context of John’s baptizing, the sacrifice that he required of the Jews was this:

“And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (9).

The contemporaries of John the Baptist were, as we are today, provided with a storehouse of concepts about life that allow a person to rationalize away true duty and true responsibility.  John, apparently, was setting about to empty that storehouse.

Starting with John the Baptist

The Christian fascination with concepts asserts itself from the very beginning of conventional New Testament commentary.  The baptisms by John the Baptist are asserted by the commentators—utterly without evidence—to necessarily establish an indispensable sacramental framework.  The repentant Jews, according to the prevailing Christian concepts, were—of course—washed because the Jews had always been following washing regimens, or because water is next to cleanliness is next to godliness—or some such.

In truth, if it were not for the Baptist having been directed by God to baptize (Luke 3:2-3, John 1:33), it would be impious presumption to contend that John’s ministry of repentance had, of necessity, to be connected to water baptism.  Other possibilities present themselves.  For example, Paul, in his letter to the Romans (12:20), refers to Proverbs 25:

“If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee” (20-21, KJV).

It would be scarcely difficult to imagine the proverb—featuring a picture of burning shame to be internalized by a transgressor—turned into a ritual of repentance.  John apparently had a habit of baptizing where “there was much water” (John 3:23); surely he could have found similarly isolated places where there was ample scrub for firebrands, embers, ashes, soot, and the like for a repentance ritual.

However, it is plainly characteristic of Christianity to conjure endless conjectures about concepts—and their related controversies—where no such things need exist.  Why, oh why, did John the Baptist’s ministry take the form it did?  Well, it might be helpful to consult the man himself:

“And I knew him not, but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water” (John 1:31).  There we have it.  Setting aside the evocative poetry of the baptism stories (only for a moment, as valuable as it is for motivation) we are left with the upshot of the baptism stories: the introduction of the messiah to his main contemporary audience.

If it had served God’s sovereign will, Jesus’ introduction might have been effected by one full-throated fisherman or shepherd.  Of course, thus eliminating the repentance ritual account of John the Baptist would have deprived numerous sinful generations, then as now, of getting the hell scared out of them.

In Regard to the Title of this Blog

“Roused, Readied, Reaped” is meant in contradistinction to “Conceived, Considered, Consigned” (or some such), the latter triad being what I contend is the generalized Christian conception of the life of human beings.

In Christianity, the life of humans as moral agents is invariably measured against some instantaneous beginning.  Believers who choose to subscribe to the salvation or damnation of single-celled organisms will fixate on life from biological conception; others will emphasize the moment of birth; still others will talk of some age at which the child or adolescent incurs moral responsibility.  The upshot in any event is the same: the person attains a status of accountability in an instant—the person as a moral agent is “conceived.”

It is my contention that, as opposed to being “conceived,” the person liable to moral accountability is “roused” to that state by a gradual process—as this blog will show.

In Christianity, the life of humans is invariably understood to be punctuated by instances of judgmental finality.  Either that judgment is pre-ordained—final in its solemnity and unalterable; or that judgment falls instantaneously, for good or ill, once for all; or that judgment knows moments of mortal sin or of absolution.  The person is, in the judgment of heaven, “considered” saved or damned as of any moment—and, crucially, as of the criteria taught in the respective sect’s theology.

It is my contention that, as opposed to being “considered,” the person is endlessly being “readied” to serve the kingdom of heaven—as this blog will show.

In Christianity, the life of humans is invariably described as ending with final and unalterable judgment—being “consigned” either to salvation or to damnation.  A state of being consigned to heaven or hell can—in the theology of predestination—exist throughout a person’s life, or, in other theologies, a state of unalterable salvation or damnation can precede physical death—a kind of living death.  Or physical death and the process of final consignment can occur together.

It is my contention that, as opposed to being “consigned” to heaven or hell, humans are confronted in life with the death of their innocent created natures, and in the living death of moral accountability are presented with ceaseless opportunities to forsake themselves for the enrichment of the kingdom of heaven.  They are “reaped” —as this blog will show.

The Flesh Indeed is Weak

Matthew and Mark, relating Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane, have him returning briefly at one point to find his companions sleeping.  He upbraids them with “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (KJV).  Other translations try to substitute some such notion as “human nature is weak,” but the Greek root (which we usually present as “sarc-“) makes the bodily association plain.

Christianity endlessly repeats Jesus’ phrase—“the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”—but in reality Christianity has little use for it.  Christian lore has much more affinity for a raw-boned character such as an idealized Paul, able to undergo amazing physical trials, but only insofar as his more-or-less willing spirit allows him.  Such an approach would be more accurately phrased as “the flesh indeed is willing, but the spirit is weak.”

(To be plain, the “spirit” reference in Gethsemane has no divine implications, especially in light of John’s statement that before the crucifixion “the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:39).  The “willing” spirits of Peter, James, and John in the garden were their own.)

We are sinful because our fleshly—and I mean fleshly—natures issue forth behaviors and utterances that our conscious selves can scarcely own.  Jesus is at great pains to declare that sinful behavior comes from the heart and not the mind.  Consider dietary laws; the Jew is not righteous, according to Jesus, because the Jew adheres to dietary restrictions, but rather because in those and all other matters his behavior is characterized by an upwelling of innate benign impulses.

The same general characterization of righteousness applies to the Christian as to the Jew, and indeed is irrespective of religion.  The very concept of religion is meaningless in the teachings of Jesus, because the foundation of the teachings of Jesus is the fleshly, the (for want of a better word at present) “infra-cognitive”—that is, that which precedes and undergirds all concepts.

Concepts Clouding Everything

Mark 8:22 to 8:26 tells a curious story of a two-part healing by Jesus of a blind man.  I say “curious” because its two-part quality is not explained in the text, and because mainstream commentators are so profoundly incurious about it.

Jesus places spit on the man’s eyes, and then asks the blind man if he can see anything.  The man replies, “I see men as trees, walking” (KJV).  Jesus puts his hands again on the man’s eyes, and it is said of the blind man that “he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”

(Other translations tend to say that the blind man saw “everything”—rather than “every man”—clearly, but the word in the Greek rendered by those other translations as “everything” is also translated in the New Testament as “everyone,” “everybody,” or “all”—in the sense of a complete body of people.  The importance of the textual connection to people is not something to be dismissed.)

So what does it matter that the blind man was not healed all at once?  Of course it would matter to orthodox Christian interpreters; Jesus is not supposed to have to muddle through anything he undertakes.  So the resort is often to non-interpretations.  Moody Press’s The Ryrie Study Bible says of the passage in question, “This miracle was performed in stages,” as though that explained anything.

Either this unique two-part miracle means something, or it doesn’t.  I contend that the miracle demonstrates Jesus’ repeated emphasis on having eyes that really see.  To really see a person (or anything else) is to see without having perception clouded by conception.  A man is only like a tree in a world of conception (and there are innumerable more-or-less benign metaphors we might concoct in such a connection.)

To really see is to see without conception, without concepts.  Inescapably, it is to pull out every prop (to use a metaphor) from under religion and theology.

Theology’s Ends

Derrick Day, in the blog Love Minus Religion (“Divine Anthropology—The End of Theology,” March 3, 2020) asks this:

“Think about it, theology is, ostensibly, the study of God. But how can we study something we cannot begin to quantify, much less comprehend. Because we cannot understand the object of our study, it is nearly impossible to produce any empirical conclusions about God.”

Day proceeds to suggest: “My proposal would be to adopt Divine Anthropology. Just like theology is, ostensibly, the study of God, anthropology is the study of humanity. And, since Jesus is the prototype of our coexisting humanity and divinity, He is the springboard for this field of study.”

Despite Day’s laudable appeal to logic, he describes no necessary connection between an unfathomable God and Day’s (or my) seizing on Jesus in preference to any other teacher or savior.  There would seem (if we are to entertain Day’s—and my—emphasis on an unquantifiable God) to be only one reason to accept Jesus as an authoritative voice on the qualities of God: because Jesus gestures toward an indescribable God.

This, then (as I will try to develop later) is the proper end of theology: the beginning of our understanding of ourselves as conceptualizing beings, in the context of our realization that formulating concepts about God is the pursuit of fools, liars, and hypocrites such as we.

What Is the Big Idea of This Blog?

In a way, there is none.  Genesis says humanity is made in the image of God.  Scholars know that the word for “image” used in that description is ambiguous.  It might well be interpreted to mean that humanity is brought into existence by the imaginings of God.

And of course, in any event humanity IS brought into—and sustained in—existence by the imaginings of God.  God not only exists in the fullness of any relevant concept; He is also the author and sustainer of all concepts.

Therefore attempts to conceptualize either Creation or its Author are imperfect recapitulations of His work or character, and have within them the germ of blasphemy.

My Apologies

I’m going to try to pick up this blog again.  I’m afraid the concepts I’ve been trying to deal with have gotten ahead of me.  Speaking of concepts….