Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Remembering the First Christmas: The Killing of Innocent Children

 
 
 
16 Then Herod [the Great], when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
 
18 A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
 
 
 
The First Christmas
Posted: December 19, 2012 | Author: Nelima
 
Matthew’s gospel contains the only reference—inside or outside the Bible—to the massacre of the innocents, Herod’s killing of all the baby boys two years and younger in Bethlehem and its environs.
 
So, was it all a Christian invention to gain sympathy for their founder? Was Herod even capable of such a cruel act? Following is a very lightly edited transcript of an interview of historian Paul Maier (one of whose novels I loved). The interview was conducted by Tony Reinke for one of Desiring God’s podcasts, Authors On The Line.

 

* * * * * * * * * *


Tony Reinke: Tell us more about the character we find embedded in the Christmas story, this man we know as Herod.

Paul Maier: Well, Tony, you may be surprised to hear this, but believe it or not, if you’re ever asked which is the one figure from the ancient world on whom we have more primary evidence from original sources than anyone else in the world, the answer is not Jesus or St Paul or Caesar Augustus or Julius Caesar—none of those… Not Alexander the Great, no, no. It’s Herod the Great, believe it or not. Why? Because Josephus gives us two whole book scrolls on the life of Herod the Great, and that’s more primary material than anyone else. And I don’t think Herod deserved it. [Laughter]

He was a very remarkably successful politician, keeping the peace between Rome which had conquered Judea in 63 BC. And he acted simply as a Roman governor overseas. He was simply known as a ‘client king’. Meaning, very often when the Romans conquered a province and they didn’t want to send a governor out, and there was a local king doing a good enough job… And so, yes, he may be called ‘king’ but he was definitely deferent to Rome for his whole administration.

In 40 BC he was awarded the title king. He didn’t actually take control of the land until with Roman help he drove some adversaries out of Jerusalem. From about 37 BC on he’s in charge until his death in 4 BC. Actually he was remarkably successful in a lot of ways. He deserves the title ‘Herod the Great’ if we talk about his accomplishments for much of his life. He was the one who rebuilt the great temple in Jerusalem. He was the one who single-handedly created the city of Caesarea: where there was no good port in the Holy Land, he creates one by sinking some ship hulls and then using them as a base to build a breakwater in an otherwise rectilinear sea coast. He built Caesarea in 12 years, and he built other cities like that too. In Jerusalem he face-lifted the entire city in addition to building a gorgeous palace for himself. He had a hippodrome, a stadium, theatres and this kind of thing. He was kind of a Hellenistic monarch.

And he also built seven great fortresses across the land, strong points at which he could defend his administration. One, the most famous, was Masada, down along the south-west corner of the Dead Sea. Everything he touched diplomatically seemed to turn to gold. He kept peace both with Jerusalem and Rome, and that says he was very successful.


Reinke: There’s another side to Herod. Tell us a little bit about the paranoid side of Herod that begins to emerge later in his life.

Maier: Well, basically, he was responsible for many of the problems back home. His home was a can of worms, simply because he married 10 wives and each of those produced princes for him and each of those male princes was scheming to succeed as number one. And there can only be one number one. And so if there weren’t two or three collateral plots taking place before they had orange juice in the morning, you knew something was wrong.

Josephus gives a hideous tale of what was going on in the family: attempted poisonings, one brother against another. It so rattled Herod that he actually put to death 3 of his own sons on suspicion of treason. He put to death his favourite wife out of the 10 of them. Mariamne was his favourite, she was a Hasmonean Maccabean princess and he put her to death then he killed his mother-in-law—I should have said one of his many mothers-in-law. He invited the High Priest down to Jericho for a swim. They played a very rough game of water polo and they drowned him. He killed several uncles, a couple of cousins… A fellow said he’s a real family man—in that negative respect.

As a matter of fact, Augustus himself, to whom Herod was always very deferent, said, “I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son.” It’s a double pun. In Greek it’s suos and huios—a clever turn on words. The other idea is that at least pigs weren’t slaughtered for human consumption over there, and they had a better chance of a longer life. And so it’s a brilliant pun on the part of Augustus.
 
 
Reinke: At one point late in his life, Herod plots to kill a stadium full of Jewish leaders. The plot ultimately failed, it doesn’t pan out. But explain that episode from his life and why he did this.

 
Maier: Well, Josephus says here a very grisly thing to report about Herod in his last months. He was so paranoid that he … Of course, he did have some grasp of reality, for instance he was worried that nobody would mourn his own death in the Holy Land, which shows how deadly accurate he was. [Laughter].... They were preparing general celebrations. And nobody likes to die knowing that they’re going to dance on their grave. And so he was going to give the people something to cry about.

It’s in 4 BC, he’s down in his winter palace in Jericho—it’s the only place in the Holy Land that doesn’t snow or get cold in the winter, it’s 1200 feet below sea level. Herod is dying and he tries every remedy in the world to stop the gang of diseases that were creeping up on him. He went to the hot springs at [unclear name] at the north-eastern corner of the Dead Sea (by the way, they’re still springing hot water 2,000 years later) and that didn’t cure him. And so now he goes back to his winter palace and he invites his sister Salome in and he says, “I want you to arrest all the Jewish leaders in the land and imprison them in the hippodrome just below the palace here.” And that hippodrome has been discovered archaeologically, by the way. And so she does and then she says, “Brother, why am I doing this?” And Herod says, “Well, I know that when I die the Jews are going to rejoice, so let me give them something to cry about.” And so he wants them all executed in that hippodrome so that there will be thousands of households weeping at the time Herod the Great dies.
 
So is that the kind of a sweet guy who could have killed the babies in Bethlehem? Yeah, I think so.
 
 
Reinke: Speaking of Matthew 2, the Bible records a scene from Herod’s paranoia late in his life. The wise men, of course, alert him to the birth of the new king in Bethlehem. They don’t then return to him and Herod eventually slaughters all the boys that are two years old and under in Bethlehem and in all the region.
 
For all that Josephus wrote about Herod, he doesn’t mention this. In fact there’s no extra-biblical evidence that this event even happened. How do you respond to that claim? Is the slaughter of the innocents historically reliable?
 
Maier: It’s interesting. Josephus does not mention it, and therefore a lot of biblical critics will pounce on that aspect of the nativity account and say therefore it didn’t happen. Now please understand this is an argument from silence, and that’s the weakest form of argumentation you could use. As we say in the profession, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
 
And in this case, one or two things could have happened. Josephus may have heard about it and not used it. Because you don’t have hundreds of babies killed; you only have about 12, as a matter of fact—12 or 15. The infant mortality in the ancient world was so huge anyway, that this is really not going to impress a reader too much, believe it or not. And I think Josephus is choosing between the two stories about how Herod dies and right before his death. I think I would take the one where he’s going to slaughter hundreds of Jewish leaders.
 
Or he may not have heard about it. Again, simply because little Bethlehem didn’t amount to much. A little village of 1500 or so. We did an actuarial study of Bethlehem at the time. You wouldn’t have more than about 2 dozen babies two years old and under, half of them the wrong sex. And so this is not a big deal, and I think that’s why Josephus either never heard about it or didn’t feel it important enough to record. So this does not militate against Matthew’s version by any means.
 
In fact I was arguing once, years ago, on the infant massacre with a professor in Wagner College in New York who claimed that this is all fiction, and that surely a massacre of hundreds of Jewish boy babies would have come to the attention… I agree it would have if there had been hundreds. But it couldn’t possibly be the case [because there weren't that many killed].
 
And ‘all the coasts thereof’… Well, look, Jerusalem is 5 miles away. So therefore this would include Jerusalem as well if we’re going to take literally ‘all the coasts thereof’. We’re talking about Bethlehem and probably a half mile around when we’re talking about the surroundings of Bethlehem.
 
 
Reinke: As a historian, is there any doubt in your mind about the historicity of the slaughter of the innocents?
 
Maier: I see not one iota of evidence that it could not have happened. And therefore, again, there’s no reason to doubt the account as far as I’m concerned. To be sure, Luke hasn’t heard about it. Remember, Matthew and Luke don’t copy from one another when it comes to the nativity. And that’s good, because this way they can hit it from different angles.
 
I think it really happened, and let’s remember again that the first martyr of Christianity was not Stephen, it was Jesus, but not even Jesus… For my money the first martyr in Christian church was the first baby that was killed in Bethlehem, and we always overlook that.
 
 
- transcribed by Nelima
 
 
More on Herod
 
Wikipedia - Herod the Great
 
About.com - The Ruthless King of the Jews: Profile of Herod the Great, Enemy of Jesus Christ
 
National Geographic - Herod
 
Encyclopedia of World Biography - Herod

 

 
 
 
 
 
Review of ‘Pontius Pilate’
(a documentary novel)
 
 
This book, Pontius Pilate, has gained itself a particular distinction in my life: just yesterday, it made me miss my stop on the metro (underground). Many other books have come close, almost making me forget that theirs wasn’t the real world, but none has yet turned me into a confused traveller. Now that you know how much I enjoyed reading it, I’ll try to share why.
 
Paul L Maier, the author, not content with being a theologian and historian decided to try his hand at writing fiction. In this ‘documentary novel’ he masterfully melds together all his expertise without coming across as dry (regarding the history part) or frivolous and sensational (regarding the novel part). He draws on respected historical sources such as Josephus, Philo, Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius —and of course the Bible— for all the major plot events. Only when history is silent does he resort to invention.
 
The story follows Pilate for a large part of his life, from his being a tribune in the Castra Praetoria in Rome to his appointment as the Prefect of Judea and his dismissal from that post (over a decade later) and his subsequent return to Rome. What got me hooked in the first few chapters was Maier’s description in gorgeous detail of Pilate’s wedding, a typical Roman upper-middle class wedding. Throughout the story, his wife is a constant presence at his side, a portrait that affirms marriage.
 
As the story continues we feel Pilate’s optimism as he sails to Palestine with the aim of doing a better job than his predecessors. We puzzle with him as he tries to negotiate the dangerous waters of staying in the emperor’s favour (three successive emperors, to be precise). We marvel with him at the Jews’ apparent stubbornness. We empathise as he tries (unsuccessfully, we know already) to defend Jesus at his trial. Later, Pilate is hard-pressed to explain the empty tomb and the transformation in the disciples. Maier never gives easy answers or descends into being preachy, even when one character was explaining to another what Christianity was all about.
 
I greatly enjoyed this book, and can’t wait for whoever borrowed Maier’s other novel Flames of Rome to return it so that I can dig into that as well!
 
 
- Nelima
 
 
 
 

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