//We have three great patriarchs in the history of Israel:

★★★

This book has sold a lot of copies and generated a lot of discussion since its publication in 1997, but it really just didn’t do it for me. Schroeder’s premise is that Bible thumpers and secular scientists need to put their heads together, compromise a little here and there, and realize that the Bible story goes hand-in-hand with 20th-century scientific discovery.

That means the seven-day creation story is true (Einstein’s theory of relativity helped us out a little on this topic) by measuring time from God’s perspective. The cosmic clock of Genesis is based on the characteristics of cosmic background radiation. The dinosaurs were created on day five, a day that lasted roughly a half billion years. The flood really happened when the Bible says it did, but it wasn’t a universal event. Before the flood, people lived extraordinarily long lives, because the climate was less demanding. You get the idea.

I agree with Schroeder that the conditions of our universe and our own little world are incredibly fine-tuned, and thus a bit difficult to explain. Schroeder quotes Weinberg’s famous calculation that if the energy of the big bang fifteen billion years ago were different by one part out of 10 to the 120th power, there would be no life anywhere in the universe. It’s as if the universe is tuned for life from its inception. There have been a number of thought-provoking responses to Weinberg’s conclusion, but it’s still difficult for me to put out of my mind the idea that something really special has happened for our benefit … something quite carefully planned.

It’s a puzzle without easy explanation, alright. I just don’t get why anyone would choose the Bible’s myths as the foundation for their explanation. As carefully as Schroeder has put his theory together, it still just feels contrived and overly complex to me. If Schroeder wants believers and scientists to hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah, he’s going to need to write down to the non-scientist level. But why bother? Don’t the earliest Bible stories make a whole lot more sense as theological or political or moral treatises than as history books? Why not let religion be religion and science be science?

And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

//I was asked today what this verse is all about, and how anybody could possibly believe the resurrection had already happened. The fact is, there were a number of versions of Christianity in the first couple centuries, and this is one of the things Christians argued about.

Paul believed the general resurrection had begun. He argues his case quite simply in his first letter to the Corinthians. Do you believe Jesus has risen from the dead? Then the resurrection has begun. Do you believe the resurrection has not begun? Then Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.  Paul cannot imagine that Jesus’ resurrection could be an isolated event. He describes Jesus as the “first fruit” … that is, the first of many to rise into a glorious new resurrection body.

So did Paul believe others had been resurrected, too? Possibly, or more likely he felt he was living on the cusp on the general resurrection. You see, another of the things early Christians argued about was what the resurrection body is like. Some believed Jesus was resurrected in body; see Matthew and Luke for evidence of this belief. The final chapter in John and the last section of Mark also portray this physical resurrection, though neither is authentic to the original writing (both stories were added at a later date, apparently to bolster belief in bodily resurrection).

Paul didn’t see it this way. He felt he saw the resurrected Jesus just as clearly as anyone else did, and what he saw was no physical body. He saw a light from heaven. A spiritual body. Paul is adamant that the new, resurrected body, whether of Jesus or of any other believer, is not “of the flesh.”

Given that Christians could not even agree on what the resurrected body of Jesus was like, it’s hardly surprising that arguments arose in the first couple centuries of Christianity about what the general resurrection was like, whether it had begun, and what the new messianic age meant.

The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.

//If you’ve ever wondered at the significance of “three days,” you may find meaning in The Midrash on Psalm 22 to Esther. You may remember her words as she prepared to meet the king: “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

Says the Midrash, the reason for three days is for the sake of Israel. “Why three days? Because the Holy One—blessed be he!—never leaves Israel in anguish for more than three days.” A number of other Bible passages agree:

Genesis 22:4, On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham had set out on a three-day journey, the end of which would end in the sacrifice of his son.

Genesis 42:17, And he put them all in custody for three days. Joseph, in Egypt, has accused his brothers of being spies, and imprisoned them.

Exodus 15:22, Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water.

2 Kings 20:5, “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the LORD. Hezekiah was ill, at the point of death, and was told he must wait three days before God would heal him.

Joshua 2:16, Now she had said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.” Said by Rahab, to the men she helped escape.

Jonah 2:1, From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. I needn’t remind you that Jonah spent three days there.

Hosea 6:2, After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.

After pointing out that God is portrayed as less interventionist in the New Testament than in the Old, and has since become even more abstract, the question is asked whether this is a good thing or a bad thing?

//This question reveals two worldviews that bastardize the gospel, giving birth to cheap imitations. And as Ammon Henacy reminded us, “When choosing the lesser of two evils we must not forget they are both evil.” The two evils are following:

[1] God is elsewhere. This would explain the amount of evil, injustice, misery, and war in the world. God created all, but took some time off afterward, holidaying somewhere nicer, maybe by a celestial pool, while we suffer. The founders of the United States believed in a form of this called Deism. In this worldview, Jesus might be the deity popping back, seeing everything has gone to crap and then saying, “Believe in me and I’ll take you elsewhere, too.” The early church called this heresy “Gnosticism.” In this worldview, God is abstract because God is a secret “get-out-of-creation-free” card.

The other popular option that equally lacks revolutionary energy and impulse of the scriptures is that God is not far off because:

[2] God is everything. Now, if you’ve grown up in a worldview in which God is always absent, where spirituality has nothing to do with creation, and where your body was always seen as bad, this might sound like a better option. Sometimes called “pantheism,” it leaves us with no cosmic critique of the evil of injustice while affirming the goodness and sacredness of creation. Wars, empires, and violence in creation are all just a part of “God/Gaia/the Divine.” Jesus just shows up to “enlighten us.”

God is redeemer is the biblical vision that, in nuanced and elegant ways, radically affirms the goodness of the web of creation while providing an equally radical critique of all violence and injustice that has colonized it as an alien force. As Creating, Sustaining and Redeeming, the Trinity is dynamically involved in history and has acted decisively in the Incarnation, to heal the brokenness we all know, with the wholeness we sometimes feel. This will not leave us with “abstract ideas” but with an invitation to action, for by grace we can be part of God’s “intervention” of the Kingdom.