Dear WesleyNexus Colleagues,
We are approaching the Christmas season, and by the end of Advent, many of our congregations will be re-living if not re-enacting this year the two so-called Christmas stories in the New Testament. Mark, the first Gospel, of course, has no Christmas story, and that probably means there was no Christmas story in the early churches, nothing in Paul’s writings, until AFTER the fledgling churches split from Judaism, approximately 85 C.E. This is when the early church began to build it’s own traditions, although they still drew heavily upon the heritage coming to them from the original stories in Judaism, the only tradition they had.
Everything about the Christmas story, of course, is based on a miraculous birth, and beginning with Matthew, and then Luke, the story is replete with angels, the devotion of wise men (Gentiles) from the East, and a miraculous heavenly star pouring light on an obscure manger. But how is this to be interpreted in the 21st century? Importantly, we have to read all of the so-called miracle stories in the New Testament in the total context of the biblical tradition.
Basically, there are three groups of miracle stories in our scriptures. The fist set is the entire story of the Hebrew people in Egypt, the Exodus and their entry into the promised land, stories grouped around Moses and Joshua. These are still pretty familiar to us. The second grouping are the miracle stories surrounding Elijah and Elisha, including several stories of a raising from the dead.
Elijah raised from the dead the only son of a widow. Elisha raised from the dead the twelve-year-old daughter of a wealthy woman who had befriended him. Elisha was also the first person in the Bible who was said to have performed a healing miracle. He healed the leprosy of a foreigner, a man named Naaman the Syrian.
We must look at these stories as the framework, the blueprint, for the gospel narratives and begin to see the close connections. Jesus, like Elijah, raised from the dead a widow’s only son, a story told only in Luke. Jesus, like Elisha, raised from the dead a child in a narrative portrayed in Mark, Matthew and Luke. We should also remember that Luke alone told the story of Jesus cleansing the leprosy of ten people, but that story turned on the fact that one of them was a foreigner, a Samaritan, and he, like Naaman the Syrian, was the only one to recognize the source of healing power. The Elijah-Elisha stories appear to have shaped these gospel narratives dramatically.
Most of the best-known miracle stories in the gospels that surround Jesus, had to do with healing individuals or making them whole. Jesus was portrayed with some frequency as being able to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to leap and walk to those with lame or withered limbs, and to enable the mute to speak or sing. What do we make of these stories? Well, the fact is that they, too, grow out of the Hebrew Scriptures and were presented in the gospels as signs that Jesus was the appointed messiah.
For this analysis, we have to go to Isaiah (Isaiah 1-39). Someone must have asked this eighth century BCE prophet how people would recognize and know just when the Kingdom of God on earth was beginning. In Jewish mythology, to inaugurate the Kingdom was the primary role assigned to the figure they anticipated as the messiah. Isaiah wrote his response to this question in the 35th chapter of his book in beautiful and poetic language. You will know that the Kingdom of God is at hand and that the messianic age is beginning, he said, when these things occur: First, water will begin to flow in the desert enabling the crocuses to bloom there and the gift of life will be celebrated from Mt. Carmel to Sharon. The second sign will be just as dramatic: Human wholeness will begin to replace human brokenness. “The eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy” (Is. 35:5-6).
That specific messianic tradition was lifted out of Isaiah quite intentionally by the interpreters of Jesus, and its content was placed into the gospel tradition by the authors of both Matthew and Luke when they re-introduced John the Baptist into their narratives. According to this story, John had been imprisoned by Herod for his preaching against Herod’s illegal marriage. While John was in prison, these two gospel writers tell us, John’s confidence began to waver as to whether or not Jesus really was “the one who was to come,” that is, the expected messiah, or whether John and his followers must begin to look for another. With these doubts motivating him, John the Baptist sent messengers to Jesus asking him to clarify his messianic status.
As the Gospel writer explains, Jesus did not answer John’s question directly. Instead, he told the messengers to return to John and tell him what they had seen and heard and let him draw his own conclusions. To do so he referred them quite specifically to this Isaiah text. The blind that came in touch with Jesus were enabled to see; the deaf were enabled to hear; the lame could walk and leap, and the mute could talk and sing. The signs of the messianic age were in fact breaking out all around Jesus. In this narrative, Matthew and Luke were making specific claims about Jesus as messiah and they were quoting this passage from Isaiah to demonstrate that Jesus indeed was the expected one, “the one who was to come.”
If healing were to accompany the inauguration of the Kingdom of God and if Jesus was believed to have been that promised one, then he had to be portrayed as the bringer of wholeness. This means that miracle stories had to be attached to the memory of Jesus in all three of the Old Testament categories: Moses stories, Elijah- Elisha stories and messianic expectation stories. Jesus as messiah was their claim, and for supporting data for this claim they provided a narrative by citing stories that demonstrated that he commanded the forces of nature, he raised the dead and he was the one who could and did bring wholeness to the brokenness of human life.
That is what those miracle stories were employed to communicate and that is why they need to be read as interpretive symbols, not as actual events or supernatural acts. That was also why no miracles were connected with the memory of Jesus until the eighth decade. It took that long for this interpretive process to get established. That is why Paul seems to know nothing of Jesus as a miracle worker. Miracles were an eighth decade addition to the Jesus story, introduced first by Mark, then copied within a decade or so with no additions by Matthew. By the time Luke wrote in the late 90’s to early 100’s, more Elijah-Elisha stories were added to the memory of Jesus. That is why only in Luke did Jesus, like Elisha, heal not one, but ten lepers. Only in Luke did Jesus raise from the dead the only son of a widow – just as Elijah did. (The author of Luke, of course, seems to have been a Gentile, the only non-Hebrew author in the New Testament, but he addressed his “good news” and the Acts of the Apostles, to one Theophilus, a “person of means” whose name here (meaning “God-lover”) likely symbolizes those Gentiles throughout the empire who were hanging out in the synagogues for ethical reasons, who needed some orientation as to who this Jesus might have been, and the stories in the Hebrew tradition were the best way for Luke to do that).
When Luke arrived at the climax of his gospel he once again adapted an Elijah story, magnified it and then retold it as a Jesus story. That is why, only in Luke, did Jesus ascend into heaven, just as Elijah did, except that Luke says that Jesus did it without the help that Elijah received from a magical, fiery chariot drawn by magical fiery horses and propelled by a divine whirlwind. Jesus, as the new Elijah, could ascend without any supernatural aids. After Elijah ascended, he was said to have poured out a double portion of his powerful, but still human spirit on his single disciple, Elisha. Jesus, of course, had twelve.
In Luke’s climactic narrative, Jesus, the “new Elijah,” poured out the enormous gift of God’s Holy Spirit in sufficient quantities to transform the entire community and to last throughout the centuries. In the telling of these Ascension and Pentecost stories, Luke tipped his hat overtly to the Elijah source from which he was drawing his material. He even took the whirlwind that propelled Elijah’s chariot heavenward and he turned it into the mighty rushing wind that filled the upper room on the day of Pentecost. He took the fire from the magical chariot and horses and turned it into tongues of fire that were said to have lighted on the heads of the disciples as a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of the narratives, Matthew and Luke used similar Hebrew stories to convey that Jesus was the new Moses, having been laid as an infant in a basket in the bullrushes and subsequently emerging as “the saving one” after a brief sojourn in Egypt.
A close examination of the miracle stories of the New Testament thus reveals that they were not written as the memory of literal events. They were, rather, created as interpretive narratives presenting Jesus as the new Moses, the new Elijah and the expected messiah. They are to be read not as supernatural tales, but as interpretive symbols. Suddenly the Christmas story begins to look very different and we are able to read the gospels in a new manner. To see this, however, we must “think differently” and read the Gospels with new eyes appropriate for the 21st century.
As always, our thanks go out to our generous contributors. We will continue to share this newsletter in the coming months and encourage you to share comments, articles and insights that will help us all weather these difficult times.
Rick, Jennifer, Maynard, and the rest of the WesleyNexus team.
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New Materialism, Relational Holism, and Posthuman Life
Please join IRAS for the December session of our 2020 monthly webinar series, Science, Religion, and Society. On December 10, 2020 IRAS will host a live session, featuring
Dr. Ilia Delio, OSF, who holds the Josephine C. Connelly Chair in Christian Theology at Villanova University.
Initial Respondent: Dr. John Haught, emeritus Professor of Theology, Georgetown University
December 10, 2020 at 4:00 pm Central time, 5:00 Eastern time
Presentation Overview: Insights from twentieth century science and shifts in culture have given rise to new materialisms. Matter is not viewed as something static, fixed, or passive, waiting to be molded by some external force; rather, it is emphasized as a process of materialization. The term “new materialism” was coined by Manuel DeLanda and Rosi Braidotti in the second half of the 1990s and refers to the idea that mind is always already material, and matter is necessarily something of the mind. The complex interaction among multiple forces spawns and re-configures in the new materialist and posthuman thinking whereby relationships are constantly being formed, unformed and reformed. The new materialisms pose no division between language and matter: biology is culturally mediated as much as culture is materialistically constructed. The “posthuman” has become a key term to cope with an urgency for the integral redefinition of the notion of the human. whereby the distributed cognition of the emergent human subject correlates with the distributed cognitive system as a whole: “thinking” is done by both human and nonhuman actors. Hence the posthuman ability to conceptualize oneself as autonomous being, exercising one’s will through individual agency and choice, gives way to distributed personhood where conscious agency is never fully in control. This talk will examine the posthuman in light of technology and the new materialisms, with an emphasis on Teilhard de Chardin’s insights on theogenesis and noogenesis, and his ideas on a new religion of the earth.
Presentation Background: Ilia Delio, OSF holds the Josephine C. Connelly Chair in Christian Theology at Villanova University. Her area of research and writing is systematic and constructive theology. She is the author of over twenty books including Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion; Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian; Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize; and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, for which she won the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a 2014 Catholic Press Association Book Award in Faith and Science. Her latest book The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science and the Human Journey, will be published in Spring 2021. She lectures nationally and internationally on various topics pertaining to faith and science, and in 2020 received an honorary doctorate from Sacred Heart University for her work in Science and Religion. She is founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online educational resource for the work of Teilhard de Chardin and the integration of Christianity and evolution in the 21st century.
The IRAS webinar is FREE but registration is required:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_emINzx54T6mPjgPeMUPoWQ
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SAVE the DATE – Evolution Weekend Program
A Virtual Event – February 15, 2021 – 5:00 pm Eastern Time
Naturalism—as Religion, within Religions, or without Religion?
WesleyNexus will present it’s Session: Naturalism: 3 Distinct Views – a Panel Presentation
This panel will address the topic from three distinct perspectives: (1) Daniel Spiro, President of the Spinoza Society, will speak first, outlining the classic position as laid out by Baruch Spinoza. In the popular view, Spinoza is considered a pantheist, conflating God and nature, but that is a shallow reaction to his thought. (2) The second position, presented by Maynard Moore, will represent a “Christian naturalism,” though not an articulation that is mainstream. This view is gratefully aware of the richness of life and the resourcefulness of the natural world, but the perspective will reflect the distinctiveness of the Christian naturalist position that is worthy of commitment, while being compatible with the best thinking that characterizes science. (3) The third position will represent a classical Muslim view, articulated by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, based on the Qur’an and the basic affirmation that God is the author of all creation. The Qur’an and the universe should be seen as twin manifestations of the divine act of Self-revelation. Thus, nature must be seen as a “written scroll” with information that must be read according to its meaning.
Continue to check our website www.wesnex.org, for further details in the weeks ahead.
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Imagining Different Worlds: Science, Ethics, and Faith in Science Fiction
Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion
December 9, 2020, 5 PM EST
Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ is the Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. As such he serves as an ex-officio member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He earned undergraduate and masters’ degrees from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona.
Science fiction imagines futuristic or alternate worlds, often exploring themes at the interface of science and society. Relationships between nature, technology and society; the ethical practice and application of science; and ideas about human nature are common themes within the genre – and also central concerns of many religious and spiritual traditions.
On December 9, join AAAS DoSER for a conversation on how works of science fiction can foster reflection, dialogue, and action to spur positive change for humanity. Speakers include Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, and author Nnedi Okorafor.
For more information, visit https://www.aaas.org/events/2020-holiday-lectureTime
Registration required here: https://aaas.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L19e6lx7SB-mcVVZPKMMxA
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Westar Zoom Christmas Event
December 9, 2020, 7:30 PM EST
Join Robert Miller, author of “Born Divine: The Births of Jesus & Other Sons of God.” The gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus are commonly regarded as charming stories suitable for children, but they are actually sophisticated narratives with serious (and dangerous) theological (and political) agendas. He will be joined by David Galston and Perry Kea.
To register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AZO8wV7cSbapXi07V1ppCg
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Antje Jackelén online talk Dec. 9, ‘Technology, Theology and Spirituality in the Digital Age’
December 9, 1 PM EST
Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden, will give an online talk, “Technology, Theology and Spirituality in the Digital Age,” Dec. 9, noon U.S. Central time. Jackelén was director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC), 2003-2007 has also been president of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT). This talk is hosted by the Center for Advanced Studies in Religion and Science (CASIRAS) and LSTC. Register to receive the Zoom link by completing this form. The link will be sent the morning of Dec. 9.
Jackelén was associate professor of systematic theology/religion and science at LSTC from 2001 until she became bishop of Lund, Sweden, in 2007. Her research interests include the dialogue between science and theology, the role of religion in society and Trinitarian theology. She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Greifswald, LSTC and Virginia Theological Seminary. Her most recent books are Tillsammans i hoppet (‘Together in hope’) (2016), God is Greater: Theology for the World (2020) and Otålig i hoppet (‘Impatient in hope – theological reflections in the time of the pandemic’) (2020).
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Science for the Church: A Conversation with Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund
I recently talked with Elaine Howard Ecklund, Professor of Sociology at Rice University and director of its Religion and Public Life Program. Elaine cohosts a new podcast, “Religion Unmuted,” and has written numerous articles and books, most recently, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear. She’s also a good friend and mentor to Science for the Church.
The December 2 Upper House event, “Science, Race, and the Church: A Conversation about Repentance and Repentance” will feature Elaine, me, and Cleve V. Tinsley IV, Elaine’s former student and now Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Center for African-American History and Culture at Virginia Union University. It’s not too late to join us—sign up here.
The interview can be found here: https://scienceforthechurch.org/2020/12/01/a-conversation-with-sociologist-elaine-howard-ecklund/
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DeepMind’s protein-folding AI stuns with a solution to one of biology’s biggest challenges
At the start of a biennial contest to predict the structure of proteins, the expectations for Google’s artificial intelligence unit DeepMind couldn’t have been higher. Think Mike Tyson in the mid-1980s: Everyone was expecting a knockout.
The results of the contest, known as CASP, came out Monday — and DeepMind didn’t disappoint, stunning the field by essentially solving one of biology’s most enduring challenges: quickly and accurately predicting the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. The discovery stands to accelerate drug discovery by giving scientists more precise information about how proteins function within cells, allowing them to better target those proteins to counteract the mechanisms underlying disease.
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