Mark Bateman’s Blog

What was the nature of the change wrought by Jesus of Nazareth?  The change was this: To those who believe in him, Jesus gives access to forgiveness of sins and to eternal life.  Also, with his death and resurrection begins the Common Era , i.e., the current period when non-Jews who believe in Jesus share in the destiny of the Jews, God’s chosen people.  (Read Letter to the Romans, chapters 9, 10, and 11).  These two things accomplished, Jesus could say truly, “It is finished.”.

Except for the remaining decision by each individual as to whether to believe or not believe in Jesus, the work of salvation is finished.  It is a centuries-long progression of history in this material world, a history which unfolded and continues to unfold in accordance within the will of God.  Certain milestone moments stand out:

·        the moment when, against all expectations, Isaac, son of promise, was born to old Abraham and old Sarah,

·        the moment when, after realizing that his firstborn son was dead, Pharoah allowed the children of Israel to leave Egypt,

·        the moment when the waters of the Red Sea engulfed Pharoah’s chariots and ensured the success of the exodus,

·        the moment when the Blessed Virgin Mary said, “May it be done to me according to your word”,

·        the moment when Jesus said, “My Father, . . not as I will, but as you will.”

Having worked through this history and having decided to accept Jesus as the son of God, what then does the seeker of truth do?  It remains for him to seek always to discern God’s will.  The seeker looks within himself, examines his thoughts, his motivations.  The seeker uses all the new insights that human development has achieved through the centuries, the insights of physics and astronomy, the insights of mathematics, the insights of historical research and discovery, the insights of biology, psychology, and neuroscience.  All these insights must then be used in conjunction with the insights of revelation as conveyed in scripture, the accumulated insights of the church as conveyed by the magisterium, and the insights of prayer, labored over in each seeker’s personal garden of agony, a laboratory of self-doubt, critical self-analysis, and ruthless honesty about motives, desires, and the capacity for self-deception.

It may sound quite grim, this “garden of agony”.  It is the only laboratory of faith I have experienced thus far.  But even now I begin to perceive weak rays of sunlight tentatively pushing their way through the windows of my soul.  Near the end of this life, a life forced on me without my consent, I begin now to see life as perhaps a blessing, not the curse that for many years it seemed to be.  I used to share the viewpoint of philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, who wrote in amazement that some people counted it a blessing to have been born.  But now I begin to understand that blessing.  I make so bold as to believe, perhaps, that I am indeed born again, first of water at my baptism in 1955 when I was ten years old, and now more recently of spirit.

A few years ago I dreamt that I was working in a dark, cold, and damp basement.  (In fact, that is where I am at this moment, as I write this.)  In that dream, in the sunlight outside there were myriads of bright, warm, friendly, joyful people, prancing and dancing while I labored in the gloom of that basement.  Yet my perception in the dream was that my subterranean labor was in some way contributing to the joy of those outside above ground.  It was as if the work I was doing was for their sake, even though I had no idea in what way they would benefit from my work.

I interpret the dream to mean that my personal garden of agony, if I persist, will allow me to make some contribution to the happiness of those who in the dream seemed so distant, so different.  This interpretation makes me feel good.  Perhaps it only further feeds the delusions of grandeur which some have told I am prey to.  But there is nothing ultimately wrong with perceiving my life in this way, so long as I do everything in the context of thankfulness and subordination to Jesus.  If I ever realize my dream of benefitting other people, it will be because of the mercy of great Jesus, son of Mary, son of God, very God himself.  May his name be forever praised.  Amen.

Their status as God’s chosen people establishes the destiny of the Jews.  How can an non-Jew partake in that destiny?  It is by having faith in God’s anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, the deliverer of God’s chosen people, Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus is the culmination of God’s plan.  Christians believe that the conception, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, events taking place from 4 B.C. to 33 A.D. or thereabouts, are the crucial, pivotal, and defining events in history, and that by means of these events God’s intervention in history attained completeness.

But is “intervention” the right word?  No, it is not.  Christian scripture asserts God’s foreknowledge and purpose in regard to the working out of the plan of salvation.  History does not unfold independently of God’s will, by mere chance, resulting in a situation where one day God observes the unfolding of history, and decides that things are not going exactly as planned.  “Oh, well,” says God, “I guess I’d better intervene to get things back on the right track.”  No, that is not the kind of omnipotent God Christians believe in.

How, then, does God interact with humankind?  This is the question the answer to which I have pondered many years.  I have arrived at a synthesis of faith which reconciles in my mind belief in an omnipotent and benevolent creator God with the perception that the world seems not to be perfect.  God created the world, and the “Big Bang” is sufficient to account for creation and to reconcile that creation with the viewpoint of science.  With the big bang began the evolution of matter, with the evolution of matter the evolution of life, and with the evolution of life, the evolution of that pinnacle of created life, homo sapiens, man.  Christ completed God’s plan by becoming incarnate as a specimen of homo sapiens.  A Christian cannot entertain the notion that the human genome contains the potential for another evolutionary leap, because in that case God’s incarnation as homo sapiens would be rendered obsolete.

In historical terms, God’s intervention occurred on several occasions: 1) when he caused Abraham and Sarah to bring into the world Isaac, who became father of Jacob/Israel, the progenitor of the chosen people; 2) when he revealed himself to Moses and worked miracles to bring about the liberation of Israel’s descendents from Egypt; and 3) when he became a specimen of homo sapiens in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

In today’s world, how does God intervene in human history?  I believe he is still working through the Jews, his chosen people.  Look at the great ones who have revolutionized human history.  I told M.H., one of the few Jews I have known in my life, that in the field of religion my strongest influence was Jesus, in the field of economics Karl Marx, in the field of psychology Sigmund Freud, and in the field of science Albert Einstein.

“All Jews!”, M.H. exclaimed.

“Yes.”, I said.  “Just think about it.”

Just think about it indeed!  Of course, I am not much of a Marxist any more, nor a Freudian.  But great clarifications have emerged from all four of these Jewish minds, and the world has been radically changed by all of them.  And we Christians believe that the change wrought by Jesus of Nazareth is absolutely the defining and momentous revelation in human history, no matter what other insights may unfold as the human mind continues to examine reality.  (to be continued)

One afternoon I was in downtown Detroit and browsing in the Catholic bookstore that shares a building with the offices of the Roman Catholic archiocese of that fair city.  I bought then, and still possess now, a book called God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections, by Emil Fackenheim.  Inside it said “First Harper Torchbook edition published 1972″.  Assuming it had sat on the bookstore’s shelves for a couple of years, my purchase of this book must have been very early after my return to Christian faith in 1974, but before my embrace of the Catholic faith in 1978.  The pages of the book betray now the telltale yellowing of acid paper; ultimately it will crumble to dust.  (This is notably unlike the rag paper of the 1789 printing of Mrs. Montague’s Memoirs, a specimen of which I found on the shelves of the Wayne State University library, still circulating in 1968, back when I got my Bachelor’s degree in English from Wayne.)

A poignant incident from God’s Presence in History is actually an excerpt from Night, by Elie Wiesel.  In the excerpt, the Nazis in the concentration camp are about to execute three inmates, one of them a young boy.

     “Where is God?  Where is He?” someone behind me asked.
      At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. . . .    
     I heard a voice within me answer . . . :    
     “Where is He?  Here He is—He is hanging on this gallows. . . .

The same question came to the lips of the disciples who had staked their future on Jesus as triumphant messiah.  Seeing him dying on the cross, they may well have asked themselves, “Where is God?  Where is He?”  What answer did they hear?

The Second Holocaust (with a capital “H”) is the designation I attach to the Nazi persecution and eventual attempted extermination of the Jews during the Nazi years of power, 1933 to 1945.  I call it the Second Holocaust because the First Holocaust  was another point in history where the question of “Where is God?” could only be answered by “Here He is—He is hanging on this cross.”  Place around your neck a pendant with the image of an innocent young boy hanging on a gallows, or place around your neck a a pendant with the image of an innocent 33 year old man hanging on a cross.  In both cases, the person of faith embraces the contradiction, the irony, and the anguish of a seemingly “powerless” God, and says “I believe.  In spite of this, or even because of this, I believe.”

I emphasize this parallel between the attempted Nazi execution of God’s chosen people and the earlier execution of Jesus of Nazareth because I have only been able to nurture my faith by grappling with these contradictions.  They entail not only the Christ who ascended into heaven two thousand years ago, but also his chosen people who live with us to this day.  Ask me to sever my destiny from that of the Jews, and you ask me to kill my faith.  (to be continued)

No, this is not some obscure pagan deity, nor some new “Political Action Committee”.  T.E.B.O.P.A.C. is an acronym for the list of attributes of my God, namely, Transcendent, Eternal, Benevolent, Omnipotent, Personal, Approachable, and Creator.

TRANSCENDENT:  My God transcends the world, i.e., he is beyond the world of space, time, and matter.  I am a bit dissatisfied with this locution.  It tries to define God in terms of his relation to the world.  If God is supreme, if the world is dependent on God, rather than vice versa, then it is not fitting or accurate to define God in terms of his relation to the world.  We ought rather to define the world in terms of its relation to God.  God as “transcendent” is a shorthand, or a corollary, to the actual truth about the world, namely that the world exists only in relation to God.

ETERNAL: God is outside time.  This overlaps my above definition of transcendence.  It bears special emphasis.  Time is a created quality.  God exists outside of time, and we cannot say when he began to be or when he will cease to be.  Time is a concept known only in the world, in which we are trapped.  (By “trapped” I do not mean to imply any negative connotation, for such would be inconsistent with the benevolence of God, to be treated next)

BENEVOLENT:  What is “benevolence”?  For us human beings, it can only be quality defined as what we perceive as favorable to our happiness.  I apply this quality to my God because that is at the emotional core of my faith.  It would be counter to what I have learned in the Bible to want to serve a god who is not benevolent, that is to say, one who is malevolent.  Faith involves an emotional commitment.  How can I commit to the service of a malevolent being?  I may serve such a one with my body out of fear, but I cannot serve such a one with my heart out of love.  My God is love.

OMNIPOTENT:  God is all powerful.  That is an absolute.  I remember talking to a campus priest one time, and the priest asked me (perhaps rhetorically), “How omnipotent is God?”  Immediately I pointed out to him that the question contains a logical contradiction which makes it meaningless to ask such a question.  There are no degrees to omnipotence.  One is either omnipotent or not.  God is omnipotent, and that coupled with his benevolence makes him the God whom I choose to serve.

PERSONAL:  God is personal.  He is a being something like me, or more accurately, I am a being something like him.  This negates the idea that “God is what is”, or that “God is everything”  That kind of God is really nothing but a tautology.  If “God” is whatever “is”, in other words, if we believe in pantheism, then we can just forget about God, because he makes no difference.  That may be valid, but it is not what I believe.

APPROACHABLE:  If God is personal, benevolent, and omnipotent, he is surely a person that I would like to get to know.  He is by his very nature awesome, forbidding, and fearsome.  But he has revealed himself as approachable.  He encourages our prayers.  Our faith in his benevolence and omnipotence and approachability makes prayer possible.

CREATOR: Nothing exists that God is not the cause of.  This leads to a whole boatload of philosophical problems, but that is my God for you.  He doesn’t make faith easy.