Friday, April 27

Ezekiel 18: This is an oracle about personal responsibility, a matter on which the mind of Ezekiel may be contrasted with modern sensibilities. Modern ideas of individual moral responsibility often run along such lines as, “You must not do anything you can’t live with.” According to this perspective, moral norms are established by the limits of a person’s psychological comfort; what is evil or good is determined by whether or not a person can endure having done it.

Ezekiel knows nothing of such nonsense. For him personal moral responsibility means that a man must ultimately be responsible, not to the dubious dispositions of his own conscience, but to the all-righteous God who gave the law.

Each man must respond for himself, however, not for either his ancestors or his progeny. The people at Jerusalem needed to hear such a message, because some of them contended that they were being punished—with doubtful justice!—for the sins of their fathers. Ezekiel was charged to set them straight on this matter.

Although the social and even psychological effects of sin are handed down from one generation to the next, the moral burden of sin is not. Each man will answer for himself and his own moral decisions, not for those of his grandparents. The retributive principle is always: “The soul that sins shall die.”

Meanwhile, the possibility of moral change remains for each of us as long as we are alive. A bad man can become good, and a good man can become bad. Our moral fate depends on what we become, not on what we were before.

The closing part of this oracle stands as a strong witness against any religious theory claiming that God is glorified even by someone’s eternal loss. No, eternal loss is a pure waste of proffered salvation. God is not glorified by anyone’s going to hell.

First Peter 4:1-11: Once gain the Apostle turns to the theme of Christ’s sufferings (cf. 2:21-24; 3:18) in order to draw out the practical implications of the Cross in the life of Christians (verse 1). Considering the Passion of Christ, believers are to arm themselves (hoplisasthe with “the same way thinking” (ennoian). That is to say, they are to take the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings as the guide to their thoughts and sentiments.

Saturday, April 28

Ezekiel 19: This passage is a “lamentation” (verses 1,14), descriptive of Jerusalem’s recent history, in a tripartite allegory. The lioness, Judah, gave birth to two kings—-the two lions—whose stories are told in the first two parts of this allegory.

The first king (verses 3-4) is Jehoahaz, who took the throne when the great Josiah was killed in 609 at the Battle of Megiddo. His very short reign (only two verses here) came to an end that same year, because he was deposed by Pharaoh Neco and taken in bondage to Egypt (2 Kings 23:31-34).

The second king (verses 5-9) is Jehoiakin, deposed by the Babylonians in 597 after an unsuccessful rebellion on his part, and carried away to exile in Babylon, along with the cream of Judah’s leadership, a group including Ezekiel himself (2 Kings 24:8-16).

At the time of this oracle, both of these deposed “lions” are still alive—one in Egypt, the other in Babylon—but they are impotent to help their mother, Judah. This mother is then portrayed as a vine in the third and final section of the oracle (verses 10-14), which describes the devastation attendant on the inept and irresponsible government of Judah’s last king, Zedekiah.

First Peter 4:12-19: Outside of the Acts of the Apostles, this section contains the only place in the New Testament where we find the word “Christian”: “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed” (verse 16).

Two observations may be made in regard to Peter’s use of the term “Christian” here.

First, Peter himself had been active in the founding of the Church at Antioch, where this term was first used (Acts 11:26; Galatians 2:11). It was from Antiochian usage that he adopted the term.

Second, it is significant that this name “Christian,” first used by non-Christians to describe the new group at Antioch, tended to be used in the context of persecution, as is clearly the case here in 1 Peter (verses 14-16). This context is identical to that of the only other place where we find the word “Christian,” the trial of Paul before Agrippa (where it is also heard from the lips of a non-Christian: “Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You almost persuade me to become a Christian’” (Acts 26:28).

It is useful for Christians to bear in mind, when they call themselves by this name, that original context of enmity and even persecution. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the name was first used by those who actually hated Christians. Consequently, it should not surprise us if even today the word is used as an epithet of contempt, as is fairly often the case in the secular media and some political discourse.

At the same time, the impending judgment of God, says Peter, begins “at the house of God” (verse 17). This fact is important, because there abides the temptation for Christians to imagine that they will somehow be exempted (either by a rapture or in some other way) from God’s final judgment on history. This is emphatically not the case. The Book of Revelation, which so vividly describes the final judgment of the world, begins with His judgment of the churches (chapters 2-3).

Sunday, April 29

Ezekiel 20: This oracle, delivered on August 14, 591 B.C., was occasioned by an inquiry made to Ezekiel by a group of exiled Jewish elders, apparently undeterred by their earlier failure in 14:1-11.

So Ezekiel answers them: Beginning with Israel’s ancient sojourn in Egypt, prior to the Exodus, idolatry has been an abiding sin of God’s Chosen People. That rebellion against the Lord in Egypt was simply continued during the people’s wandering in the desert of Sinai. During both of those periods God spared His people, so that their enemies (and His) might not take comfort from their destruction.

Indeed, because Israel constantly violated the Lord’s ordinances, these ordinances proved not to be good for them, inasmuch as the very disobedience rendered the people morally vulnerable (verses 23-26). (This is a motif, of course, that St. Paul will later develop in his Epistles: the futility of the Law to bring about salvation.) Then, even after their settlement in the Promised Land, the people continued their ancient infidelities.

Now, after all this, do these elders dare to come and “inquire of the Lord”? They are told that this inquiry amounts to a mockery. They have always known God’s will, yet they have decided to disobey it. Why should the Lord have anything further to say to them? (We should particularly observe here that, among the sins of Israel specifically named, child sacrifice is very prominent. Since the murder of unborn children is one of the most serious offenses of our own society, this oracle seems especially relevant today.)

Even after conveying this oracle, however, Ezekiel goes on in verses 32 to 44 to deliver a prophecy of Israel’s eventual restoration. Although Israel’s kings have brought the nation low, God is still Israel’s true king (20:33).

First Peter 5:1-14: There are two things that may be noted about Christian humility:

First, the mutual humility that Christians are to cultivate with respect to one another is rooted in each person’s humility before God. That is to say, to be properly humble to one another, it is necessary that each of us be humbled under the mighty hand of God. Our spirit humbled before God is the source of our proper relationship to one another. A person habitually humbled in God’s presence is not a person who will be haughty or proud toward anyone else.

Second, the person who lives in this humble disposition will be without anxieties: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (verses 6-7). Pride, after all, is the source of many of our anxieties. We become anxious in large measure because we have some status to maintain or some image of ourselves to be advanced.

Only the truly humble person, therefore, can really cast all his anxieties on the Lord, because the Lord really does look out for the humble. The proud, on the contrary, are the objects of God’s active resistance (verse 5). The proud cannot rely on the care of God, for the simple reason that God does not take care of the proud.

Humility and freedom from anxiety are two sides of the same coin, each necessary to the other. The habit of humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God is inseparable from casting all our anxieties on Him.

Monday, April 30

Ezekiel 21: The deep, very personal lamentation in this text will remind the reader of Ezekiel’s older contemporary, Jeremiah, who expressed very much the same sentiments during that decade immediately preceding the fall of Jerusalem in 586.

There are four oracles in this chapter (the first oracle actually beginning in 20:45), three of them against Jerusalem, and the fourth against the Ammonite capital of Rabbah (the present city Amman, capital of the modern country of Jordan). Even as Ezekiel speaks, the Babylonian army, with its “well polished sword,” is already on the march toward those two cities.

The imagery alternates between fire (particularly a forest fire, with Jerusalem being the timber) and sword, both images combined in that of the lightning.

The references to the “Negev” in the first oracle (20:45—21:7) should be understood simply as “the south,” which is often the case in Ezekiel. The invading army, marching from Babylon, did not go directly westward toward Jerusalem, a march through the Arabian Desert being quite prohibitive. Instead, it marched up and around the Fertile Crescent, following the course of the Mesopotamian and Syrian rivers, so that now it has turned southward, in the direction of the Negev Desert, tramping toward Jerusalem and Rabbah.

In the second oracle (verses 8-17) Ezekiel addresses the Babylonian sword itself, which is the instrument of God’s vindication. The Babylonians, though they are acting as God’s instrument in history, do not know this, no more than a sword recognizes who wields it.

The third oracle (verses 18-27), continuing the image of the Babylonian sword, portrays another of Ezekiel’s symbolic actions, which must be explained to those who witness it. It pantomimes a fork in the road; which city, Jerusalem or Rabbah, will Nebuchadnezzar strike first?

The final oracle (verses 28-32) addresses to Rabbah the same threats that have been spoken to Jerusalem.

Ephesians 1:1-14: Who were these original “saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus”? Most of the extant manuscripts identify them as Ephesian Christians, but this identification appears improbable. Certain considerations indicate the improbability:

First, the designation “in Ephesus” is not supported in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts, such as Papyrus 46 and the original hands in the manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the early fourth century.

Second, our earliest witness to this epistle, Marcion (early second century), knew it as the “Epistle to the Laodiceans.”

Third, there is no indication in the body of this work that Paul was addressing a congregation he had ever visited, much less that he was writing to a place at which he had lived for most of three years (cf. Acts 20:31). There are no greetings to particular persons, no mention of problems or circumstances in a specific community, nothing to suggest that Paul was at familiar with those whom he addressed.

The present epistle is virtually unique in this “impersonal” quality. In fact, it is more impersonal than Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Colossians, two churches that he had not visited at the time he wrote to them. In short, of all Paul’s epistles the present work is the least tied to a particular congregation.

Tuesday, May 1

Ezekiel 22: This chapter contains three oracular prophecies, joined together by a common theme: ritual uncleanness, understood either literally or as a metaphor. Ezekiel, as a priest dedicated entirely to the correct worship of the true God, was particularly sensitive to this matter of cleanness, or purity, in both the sacrifice and the priest.

The first oracle (verses 1-16), directed against Jerusalem, is full of the imagery of blood, any flowing of which rendered a person ritually unclean. Blood is also, however, an image of violence.

The second oracle (verses 17-22) is directed against all unfaithful Israelites, who are described as dross (that is, metallic impurity), which God will clean away in the coming smelting process of His historical judgment. Ezekiel doubts that any true metal will be found once this process is complete.

The third oracle (verses 23-31) is against the Holy Land itself, which suffers uncleanness because of those who live there. These have defiled God’s land with bloodshed and other forms of impurity, rendering the land unholy and no longer fit to contain the Lord’s true worship.

John 4:43-54: The story of the Samaritan woman—a story John surely knew from the lady’s own account—portrays a growth in her faith. As the narrative progresses, we observe a development in her understanding of Jesus, a development indicated in the various ways she addresses him. When she first meets Jesus, he is called simply “a Jew” (John 4:9).

This is important to the story as a whole, because Jesus himself will presently declare, “salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). On this woman’s lips, nevertheless, the designation “Jew” indicates two things: First, it says that she assesses Jesus only within a certain class of people. He is not yet a distinguishable person. And second, the word “Jew” indicates the woman’s sense of separation from Jesus, because “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”

Next, she addresses Jesus as “Sir” (John 4:11; presumably the Aramaic Mar). The woman is making a significant step here in terms of personal respect. It indicates a change of attitude of her part. Then, within four verses “Sir” becomes “prophet” (4:19), when Jesus directs the woman’s attention to her own moral failings. The conversation next takes a new bound forward, when Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah. Finally, when the other Samaritans meet him, he is called “the Savior of the world.” This is a considerable doctrinal development within a single story!

The woman from Samaria has now come a long way. Starting out that day, hardly suspecting what lay ahead, she laboriously carried her sins to the well, where she met a Jew, who asked her for a drink of water. The
Jew presently became a “Sir,” and then a “prophet” who reminded her that she was a sinner. No matter, though, for he did not press the point. He was, after all, the Messiah. And because this Messiah was likewise the Savior of the world, he knew exactly what to do with her sins.

Wednesday, May 2

Ezekiel 23: About to see the ruin of Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, Ezekiel thinks back to the year 722 B.C., when the Assyrians had destroyed Samaria, the capital of Israel. As Samaria fell then, Jerusalem will fall now. How closely the two cases resemble one another, the prophet reflects, both cities unfaithful to God, like two loose women who cannot be trusted. This comparison of the two cities is the basis of the long allegory that fills the present chapter.

Once again, Ezekiel traces the problem back to Egypt, where the Israelites first learned the seductions of idolatry (verse 3). Samaria, having handed herself over to Assyrian seductions, was finally destroyed by Assyria (verses 5-10). Jerusalem was worse, falling under the idolatrous sway of both Assyria and Babylon in turn (verses 11-18). In addition, as a final irony, Jerusalem was now turning once again to the gods of Egypt (verses 18-21), Ezekiel’s reference to King Zedekiah’s recent appeal to Egypt against the Babylonian overlord.

The various nations of the Fertile Crescent (verse 23), all now part of the Babylonian Empire, will attack Jerusalem from the north (verse 24). History, Ezekiel saw, was about to be repeated. Thus, in this chapter the prophet extends the metaphor of marital fidelity that was the theme of Chapter 16.

John 5:1-16: We come now to the Third Sign in John’s Gospel, the healing of the paralytic. John, having called our attention to the first two Signs, no longer feels the need to do so. He permits the reader to count them for himself.

John does not identify the feast in verse 1 (probably to be read without the definite article). One suspects that this mention of a Jewish feast day is inserted simply to explain why Jesus was in Jerusalem (after being in Galilee in the previous chapter).

The name of the pool was Bethzatha, or Bethdaida, or Bethesda. The pool may have had each of these names at one time or another. Even to this day, one can visit the pool (which, alas, is now completely stagnant and fetid) and see five sides originally covered by porticoes. It is a trapezoid transected into two parts; these are the “five” sides. The pool is near the lovely church of St. Anne.

It is also near the site of the ancient Sheep Gate, on the northern side of the city. John’s text has been expanded by an addition to verse 3 and the insertion of verse 4. Missing in the better textual witnesses, these later additions were intended to explain the conversation in verse 7.

The important point is that “Jesus saw him lying there.” This is a very important word in John’s Gospel:

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to Him, ‘How do You know me?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you’” (1:47-48).

“Now as [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth” (9:1).

“Therefore, when Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled” (11:33).

“When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’” (11:33).

This “seeing” by Jesus is an expression of prevenient grace. It is the first step toward salvation and blessing, and Jesus is the one who makes it. The important thing is to be seen by Jesus.

Jesus heals the man with simply a word of command (verse 8). The observer does not actually witness the healing; he witnesses the results of it.

Thursday, May 3

Ezekiel 24: This chapter is constructed of two quite separate parts, the first being the allegorical oracle of a pot cooking on the fire, the second being a prophecy and prophetic action connected with the death of Ezekiel’s wife.

The first oracle (verses 1-14) is dated on January 15, 588 B.C., the day that Nebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem. This siege is compared to the flames surrounding a pot until its contents are cooked. This pot is, of course, Jerusalem, where the long siege has begun. The rust on this metal pot, which is the same color as blood and is likened to blood, carries forward the image of dross from Chapter 22.

The second oracle (verses 15-27) is occasioned by the sudden death of Ezekiel’s wife. He is not the only biblical prophet whose “home life” becomes part of the prophetic message. Thus, Hosea was obliged to marry a prostitute as part of his prophetic vocation, both Hosea and Isaiah were told to give strange and symbolic names to their children, and Jeremiah is commanded to remain celibate as a witness to the imminent passing of the era.

In the case of Ezekiel, he is ordered not to mourn at the death of his wife, no matter how grieved he feels. He must then interpret this strange behavior to his neighbors, giving him the opportunity to explain why, in their concrete historical circumstances, it would be inappropriate for them to mourn, even though their hearts are broken. Thus, in his grief Ezekiel himself becomes a “sign” to the people who are soon to see their beloved city destroyed.

Ephesians 2:11-22: The great theme of the Epistle to the Ephesians is the reconciliation of all things in Christ. Paul introduces this theme early in the epistle, speaking of “the mystery of [God’s] will . . . that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times that He might gather together in one all things in Christ” (1:9-10). For Paul this universal reconciliation is not a theory about history. He sees it being visibly worked out already in the actual events of history. The first fruits of this universal reconciliation can already be observed in the founding of the Church, because the Church herself is founded on a specific act of divine reconciliation—namely, the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in one community. This unexpected and improbable reconciliation, which was already being enacted in Paul’s own lifetime, was the beginning of a more universal, even cosmic reconciliation of all things in Christ.

Therefore, correctly to understand God’s final purpose in history, the key is to grasp this reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in the one body of the Church. We may remark on three aspects of this reconciliation:

First, the source of this reconciliation is the Cross, where the death of God’s Son neutralized the difference between Gentile and Jew. Christ Himself, after all, “is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.”

This Law, given on Mount Sinai, was what separated Jew and Gentile, but in his death on the Cross Christ “abolished” that wall of separation. By reconciling all men equally to God on the Cross, Christ reconciled them to one another. So, says, Paul, “through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

Second, God effected this reconciliation, not by taking away the special place of the Jews in the history of salvation, but by raising the Gentiles to share in the dignity and honor of the Jews. Thus, Paul says to the Gentiles, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

In writing these lines of great comfort, Paul is extending an image he had used just a couple of years earlier in his Epistle to the Romans. In that letter he had described the Gentile believers as branches grafted onto the ancient stock of Israel, so that they became participants in the promises and blessings of Israel.

Friday, May 4

Ezekiel 25: Chapters 25 through 32 of Ezekiel contain oracles directed against the other nations with whom the Lord has reason to be displeased: Israel’s neighbors to the east and west (Chapter 25), the north (Chapters 26 to 28), and the south (Chapters 29 to 32). Chapter 25 is critical of the neighbors to the east (the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites) and to the west (Philistines).

Those to the east are criticized in order, going from north to south. Since the oracles refer to the unseemly and unconscionable rejoicing of these nations at Jerusalem’s destruction, they should be dated no earlier than the summer of 586. Otherwise, the oracles in this chapter are not dated.

Oracles of this sort, scathing moral criticisms of Israel’s neighbors, go back to the earliest of Israel’s literary prophets, Amos, in the eighth century before Christ. Ezekiel’s references to the “people of the East,” who will punish these offending nations, may refer to the Babylonians, but the reference is perhaps more probably to the marauding Bedouin tribes that frequently attacked from the Arabian Desert.

Psalms 40 (Greek & Latin 39): The correct “voice” for Psalm 39 (Hebrew 40) is not in doubt. We know from Hebrews 10 that these are words springing from the heart of Christ our Lord and have reference to the sacrificial obedience of His Passion and death.

We may begin, then, by examining that interpretive context in Hebrews, which comes in the section where the author is contrasting the Sacrifice of the Cross with the many cultic oblations prescribed in the Old Testament. These prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, says Hebrews, possessed only “a shadow of the good things to come.” Offered “continually year by year,” they were not able to “make those who approach perfect” (10:1). That is to say, those sacrifices did not really take away sins, and their effectiveness depended entirely on the Sacrifice of the Cross, of which they were only a foreshadowing. Indeed, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins” (v. 4).

In support of this thesis, the author of Hebrews quotes our psalm: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire / . . . In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin / You had no pleasure” (vv. 5, 6). In fact, this theme appears rather often in the Old Testament itself. Isaiah, for example, and other prophets frequently attempted to disillusion those of their countrymen who imagined that the mere offering of cultic worship, with no faith, no obedience, no change of heart, could be acceptable to God.

The author of Hebrews, therefore, is simply drawing the proper theological conclusion when he writes: “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (v. 11). What God seeks, rather, is the perfect obedience of faith, and such an obedience means the total gift of self, not the mere sacrificial slaughter of some beast.

Friday, April 20
Ezekiel 11: The first oracle in this chapter addresses a slogan going around Jerusalem at the time, descriptive of the city’s coming destruction. The slaying of Jerusalem’s citizens, says the oracle, will ultimately be the fault of their leaders, not of the Babylonian besiegers. The latter are but instruments in the divine judgment.

The leaders back at Jerusalem planned big things for themselves, and their big plans are addressed in the second oracle. When Ezekiel and his other companions, including the cream of Jerusalem society and its most competent citizens, were taken hostage to Babylon in 597, some of those Israelites who remained in the Holy Land began to feel pretty good about their own prospects, now that the better rivals were gone. With respect to their brethren who had been carried away, they reflected: “Well, too bad for them, but that leaves more for us.”

The burden of this second oracle is to reassure those captives in Babylon that the Lord had not forgotten them and that He was determined to restore them. Indeed, it was on them that His coming blessings would fall, for their restoration is the substance of the great prophecy here about newness of heart, which becomes so important a theme in the New Testament (See especially Hebrews 8.)

As this chapter ends, the Cloud of the divine glory moves east onto the top of the Mount of Olives, and Ezekiel is restored to Babylon, where he narrates his visions and oracles to his companions in exile.

Psalms 16 (Greek & Latin 15): We may be sure that Psalm 16 was among the psalms interpreted by the risen Christ, for this was the first psalm that exegeted by the Church in her very first sermon when she came rushing with power from the upper room on Pentecost. According to the Apostle Peter, who preached that sermon, Psalm 15 describes the Resurrection of Christ:

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David says concerning Him: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face, / For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. / Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; / Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. / For You will not leave my soul in Hades, / Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. / You have made known to me the ways of life; / You will make me full of joy in Your presence” (Acts 2:22–28).

Even though it was King David saying these things, the voice speaking more deeply in Psalm 15, according to St. Peter, is the voice of Christ. As the forefather and type of Christ, David was speaking in the tones of prophecy.

Saturday, April 21

Ezekiel 12: Once again Ezekiel is charged to act out an elaborate pantomime as a message for his fellow Israelites in exile. Whereas the previous such actions, in Chapters 4-5, had to do with the destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings of her citizens, the present instance is concerned with the experience of the coming new exile of those who still remained back home.

When his fellow exiles ask him, “What are you doing?” (12:9), Ezekiel responds with a stirring oracle by way of explanation: To those Jewish exiles already in Babylon who are imagining that they may soon be returning to the land of Judah, Ezekiel is stressing the point, “You think this is exile? You haven’t seen anything yet!”

He emphasizes in particular the suffering destined for Zedekiah, the King of Judah. Ezekiel’s walking with covered face (“that you may not see the land”) is an eerie prophecy of the day when the Babylonians would gouge out the eyes of Zedekiah, so that the execution of his sons would be the last thing he saw in this world before going into exile (2 Kings 25:4-7; Jeremiah 39:4-7; 52:7-11).

In verse 17 the prophet begins yet another pantomime, this one much simpler, and in verses 21-28 Ezekiel is charged to challenge two more cynical slogans popular at the time. These slogans, concerned with apparently unfulfilled prophecies, will lead into his condemnation of false prophets in the next chapter.

Matthew 24:1-14: In all three Synoptics this eschatological discourse is the link between the public teaching of Jesus, culminating in His repeated conflicts with the Jewish authorities, and the account of His Passion. Indeed, it was Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the Temple (verses 1-2) that provided the accusations brought forth at His trial before the Sanhedrin (26:16), and it was the subject of the jeers that His enemies hurled at Him as He hung on the cross. Moreover, the position occupied by our Lord’s prophecy here indicates the relationship between the death of Jesus and the downfall of Jerusalem. We observe that in both Mark and Matthew this prophecy follows immediately on Jesus’ lament over the holy city.

With respect to Matthew 24 as a whole (as well as Mark 13 and Luke 21), this discourse forms a sort of last testimony of Jesus, in which the Church is provided with a final injunction and moral exhortation. In this respect it is similar to the farewell discourses of Jacob (Genesis 49), Moses (Deuteronomy 33), Joshua (Joshua 23), and Samuel (1 Samuel 12). That is to say, the present chapter serves the purpose of instructing the Christian Church how to live during the period (literally “eon” in Greek) that will last until the Lord’s second coming.

Sunday, April 22

Ezekiel 13: This chapter contains an oracle against the false prophets (13:2-16) and an oracle against false prophetesses (verses 17-23). The major problem with all such folk is that they “prophesy out of their own minds” and “follow their own spirit” and “divined a lie.” Thus, grave spiritual harm befalls those who listen to their fantasies and follow their counsels.

Even though a wall is just about to fall, says Ezekiel, they daub it with whitewash to make it look new and secure. Well, the whole thing is about to come down, he warns, in spite of the false hopes raised by false prophets.

In his oracle against the false prophetesses, Ezekiel speaks of wristbands and headbands (if these things are, indeed, what these rare Hebrew words refer to), evidently the paraphernalia of their rituals and incantations. We should probably think of these women as fortune-tellers, the sort of charlatans that are still among us. The prophet’s point here is that this sort of thing is not harmless; foolish individuals, who probably need sound counsel for important decisions, really do pay heed to such imposters, rather often to the harm of their souls. God will thwart the designs of these deceivers, says Ezekiel, by showing their predictions to be false.

First Peter 1:13-25: This section is an invitation to hope (verses 13,21). Christian hope is sustained by a twofold consideration: First, it is inspired by the final goal of the life in Christ (verses 13-17), and second, by the initial grace of the life in Christ (verses 18-21).

With respect to the first, hope is directed to the final “revelation of Jesus Christ,” his “being made visible” (apokalypsis—verses 7,13; 4:13). Relying “completely” (teleios) on this hope, believers refuse to conform to the deeds of their past, aware of their responsibility to be holy, even as God is holy (verses 14-16; Leviticus 19:2; 18:1-5,30; Clement of Rome, To the Corinthians 29.1—30.1).

In the New Testament the expression “be not conformed” (me syschematizesthe, in which we observe the English word “schema”) is found only here (verse 14) and in Romans 12:2—“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (We observe in passing that both of these works are associated with the church at Rome.) No less than the Chosen People of old, Christians are called to be a holy people in the midst of an unholy world. The latter is characterized by “ignorance” and “passions” (verse 14). We may compare this passage with 1 Thessalonians 4:5—“not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God.”

Monday, April 23

Ezekiel 14: In verses 1-11, the elders who came to consult Ezekiel got more than they anticipated, because the prophet was given insight into the deeper idolatry of their hearts. These men were apparently looking for some prediction about the future, only to be told that God’s prophetic word is not truly available for the unrepentant. That is to say, the prophet’s task was not to satisfy human curiosity about future events, but to call sinners to the due consideration of their souls. To borrow a concise expression from Saint Augustine, the prophet’s task is often that of prescribing, not predicting: praecipientis videlicet, non praedicentis modo—The City of God15.7).

Thus, instead of responding to their query about the future, Ezekiel summons these men to look inside themselves, at the idolatry in their hearts, before it is too late.

The second oracle in this chapter (verses 12-23) insists that the whole society, if it is unfaithful to God, will be punished as a whole. The Lord will not spare any society simply for the sake of a few just men in it, even if these latter include the likes of Noah, Daniel, and Job. While the just individuals themselves will be respected, this will have no affect on the lot of the whole, because God is fair and will render to each man according to his deserts.

Before God’s throne of judgment, therefore, it will not matter “who you know.” This thesis, which will be repeated throughout the Book of Ezekiel, is identical to that in the Book of Jeremiah (for instance, 15:1-4), and is a great deal tougher than we find, for instance, in Genesis 18, where it appears that the presence of five just men would have spared the destruction of Sodom.

First Peter 2:1-12: Peter’s metaphor of milk was common among the early Christians and referent to the catechesis associated with Baptism (1 Corinthians 3:1-2; 1 Thessalonians 2:7; Hebrews 5:13; The Odes of Solomon 8.13-16; 9.1-2). Very early (at least by the second century, but perhaps earlier) this image affected even the liturgical customs at Baptism, when the newly baptized were given a cup of milk mixed with honey (Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition 23.2; Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.14; The Crown 3.3).

By means of this spiritual milk of Christian teaching, we “grow unto salvation” (avxsehete eis soterian). Salvation has to do with growth (cf. Mark 4:8,20; 2 Corinthians 10:15; Ephesians 4:15; Colossians 1:10). Few texts in the New Testament are more emphatic that salvation is the term of a growth, not a once-and-for-all event that is behind us. Salvation still lies before us (1:5,7,9). Drinking milk, therefore, is more than an obligation; it is a need.

Believers, having tasted this milk, know by experience that the “Lord is gracious” (verse 3; Psalms 34 [33]:9; Hebrews 6:5). In Greek this expression, chrestos ho Kyrios, differs in only one letter from “Christ is the Lord”—Christos ho Kyrios. The psalm cited here (Psalms 34, but 33 in the Greek and Latin texts used by the Church) has long been a favorite at the time of receiving Holy Communion (cf. Apostolic Constitutions 8.13.16; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 5.20; Jerome, Letters 71.6), nor is the imagination overly taxed to think that this may already have been the case at the time of St. Peter.

Tuesday, April 24

Ezekiel 15: This parable of the vine wood is more reflective than ecstatic, more analytical, and rational than poetic; it conveys the studious, logical aspect of Ezekiel’s thought.

And the message of this parable could hardly be more straightforward or less complicated: Vines and their stocks are of no constructive use unless they are still in the process of growing grapes. Once they have stopped doing that, they are useless for any constructive purpose. Unlike other kinds of wood, the vine wood cannot be used to fashion homes or furniture or even basic tools. Indeed, one cannot employ such wood to make an instrument so elementary as a wall peg on which to hang a pot in the kitchen. (The partial burn damage in verse 5 alludes to the partial exile of Jerusalem’s citizens in 597, some five years earlier.)

However, the parable proceeds to say, this wood can still be burned! No matter how otherwise useless, it still makes decent fuel. So, says the Lord, let Jerusalem take heed, because He has not seen any fruit on that vine for many a year.

The motif of this parable should put one in mind of Jesus’ cursing of the barren fig tree in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. Both Ezekiel’s parable and Jesus’ parabolic action had to do with impending destructions of Jerusalem.

Inasmuch as Jerusalem is also a mystic symbol of the soul, the moral sense of this parable is applicable to us all on a daily basis. It is the other side of the Gospel injunction that we are to live lives that bear fruit; otherwise we are useless to God for any constructive purpose.

First Peter 2:13-25: Since Christians from the very beginning have struggled to understand how the Gospel affects their duties in whatever state they find themselves, it is not surprising, therefore, that early Christian pastors addressed such concerns at length. This is true of the Apostle Paul (Colossians 3:18—4:1; Ephesians 5:22—6:9; 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 6:1-2; Titus 2:1-10), Ignatius of Antioch (Polycarp 4.1—6.3), Polycarp of Smyrna (Philadelphians 4.2—6.3), and Clement of Rome (Corinthians 270-275,286-291). It also appears in standard pre-baptismal catechesis of the period (Didache 4.9-11; Pseudo-Barnabas 19.5-7).

This is the social setting for Peter’s treatment of the same theme in the section that we come to now. Even while we are sojourners in this world, he says (2:11), we are still citizens that have obligations to society and the government, including the emperor [Nero!] (verses 13-17). Some of us are servants, with obligations to our masters (verses 18-25). Some are wives, with duties to our homes and husbands (3:1-6), and others are husbands, responsible for the wellbeing of our wives (3:7).

In the present chapter Peter speaks of Christian citizenship under the authority of the State and of Christian servants under the authority of their masters.

Wednesday April 25

Ezekiel 16: This parable is more elaborate than the one in the previous chapter, showing more evidence of allegorical detail. Both parables convey roughly the same message. Each parable is an illustration of failure. A beautiful but egregiously unfaithful wife is as useless as a cut and dried vine.

Several of the various details in this account of the harlot refer to specific periods and events in Israel’s history: the origins of the people, the time of the Covenant, the founding of the united kingdom and the prosperity of the Solomonic era, and the division into two kingdoms.

The oracle’s final part prepares the listeners for Jerusalem’s impending doom, which is to be like the earlier total destructions of Sodom and Samaria. Jerusalem, says the Lord, is more evil than either of these.

At the very end, however—after Jerusalem has fallen—appears a message of hope and renewal. Even the prophets most pessimistic about Jerusalem at this time, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, never cease to trust in God’s ultimate mercy. In particular, God will not hold children responsible for the sins of their parents, a theme to be elaborated in Chapter 18.

First Peter 3:1-12: In the first few verses Peter finishes his treatment of social duties, continued from the previous chapter.

He begins with the wives, whom he exhorts to be submissive to their husbands. This is to be the case, says Peter, even in those instances where the husband is an unbeliever (verse 1). (This is the situation in which a woman already married becomes a Christian. In no case may a Christian woman actually marry an unbeliever—2 Corinthians 6:15-18.) In this case, as in the case of a Christian living in civil society (2:15), Peter hopes for the good influence of the believer on the unbeliever.

Peter probably intends some of his comments here to pertain to Christian women generally, and not just to wives. This is surely the case respecting chastity and modesty (verse 3-5). His concern in this regard is similar to that of Isaiah (3:16-24), who apparently enjoyed poking fun at the way the women in the eighth century loved to preen themselves.

In spite of Abraham’s frequently unhappy home life, much of it caused by his wife’s dramatic mood swings, Peter still holds out for Christian wives the example of Sarah (verse 6). This is not the only time in the New Testament where Sarah is “given a pass” (cf. Hebrews 11:11 compared with Genesis 18:12-15).

Christian husbands are to be good husbands precisely because they are Christians (verse 7). What is owed to the wife is “honor,” and this because she is “weaker.” This does not refer to physical weakness generally (and certainly not to any alleged intellectual or moral weakness in women, something that only an inexperienced fool would fancy), but to a certain psychological delicacy in the female. Peter is quietly presuming that a woman’s constitution, which is far more “complicated” than a man’s, renders her inherently more vulnerable to danger, much like the delicacy of an expensive vase. Indeed, Peter even uses the metaphor of a “vessel.” This is a dining room vessel, not a ship. Certain things of beauty and delicacy in the home are given special honor. Wives are to be treated in a similar way by Christian husbands. They are NEVER to be handled roughly, not even in thought, and most certainly not in word.

The affection, respect, deference, courtesy, compassion, and tenderness necessary to life in the home is to be extended to the larger home of the Church, and thence to the rest of society (verses 8-9). This effort will be expressed in a stern control of one’s tongue (verse 10) and the steady quest to create atmospheres of peace (verse 11). Blessing must cover all things (verse 9). (I refer the reader here to the Book of Ruth, where he is counseled to count the constant blessings that its sundry characters heap on one another. Christians must pass up no opportunity to bless.)

Thursday, April 26

Ezekiel 17: This allegorical riddle is concerned with the geopolitical maneuvering dominant in the royal court at Jerusalem during the period between 597 and 586 B.C.

The first eagle in the riddle is the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562); the second is Pharaoh Psammetichus II of Egypt (595-589). Sitting at either end of the Fertile Crescent, both Babylon and Egypt sought to make their military, economic, and political power felt throughout the region, and each of these two great centers had its friends and confederates within the Jerusalem court.

The removed branch in the allegory is King Jehoiakin of Judah, deposed from his throne in 597 and transported to Babylon. The new seed in the allegory is King Zedekiah, who replaced Jehoiakin and served as a vassal of Babylon. Because of the many machinations in his court, Zedekiah’s foreign policy was marked by vacillation and instability. Unable to maintain his covenant with God, he was likewise unable to maintain his vassal covenant with Babylon. The one infidelity led to the other (verses 11-19).

Even though he was thriving under Babylonian suzerainty, the allegory goes on to say, Zedekiah endeavored to forsake his political obligations to the authority at the western end of the Fertile Crescent, and began to cultivate friendship with the eastern end, Egypt. Now he must pay for it. His sin consisted in seeking a purely political solution for a mainly spiritual and moral problem.

This oracle ends, nonetheless, on a note of future hope for the house of David, a hope that the Christian knows is fulfilled in great David’s greater Son.

First Peter 3:13-22: To be baptized into Christ is to be associated with His sufferings. As Christ was victorious over death by His Resurrection, so will be those who belong to Him. Baptism, because it unites believers with the Resurrection of Christ, is a pledge and promise of their own victory over death.

In verses 18-22 Peter speaks of Christ’s descent into hell, which took on so pronounced an emphasis in Christian faith and worship that it became an article in the Nicene Creed. Peter says that Christ “went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The relationship of Christian Baptism to the Flood and Noah’s Ark, found here explicitly for the first time, became a common trope in Christian biblical exegesis.

Friday, April 27

Ezekiel 18: This is an oracle about personal responsibility, a matter on which the mind of Ezekiel may be contrasted with modern sensibilities. Modern ideas of individual moral responsibility often run along such lines as, “You must not do anything you can’t live with.” According to this perspective, moral norms are established by the limits of a person’s psychological comfort; what is evil or good is determined by whether or not a person can endure having done it.

Ezekiel knows nothing of such nonsense. For him personal moral responsibility means that a man must ultimately be responsible, not to the dubious dispositions of his own conscience, but to the all-righteous God who gave the law.

Each man must respond for himself, however, not for either his ancestors or his progeny. The people at Jerusalem needed to hear such a message, because some of them contended that they were being punished—with doubtful justice!—for the sins of their fathers. Ezekiel was charged to set them straight on this matter.

Although the social and even psychological effects of sin are handed down from one generation to the next, the moral burden of sin is not. Each man will answer for himself and his own moral decisions, not for those of his grandparents. The retributive principle is always: “The soul that sins shall die.”

Meanwhile, the possibility of moral change remains for each of us as long as we are alive. A bad man can become good, and a good man can become bad. Our moral fate depends on what we become, not on what we were before.

The closing part of this oracle stands as a strong witness against any religious theory claiming that God is glorified even by someone’s eternal loss. No, eternal loss is a pure waste of proffered salvation. God is not glorified by anyone’s going to hell.

First Peter 4:1-11: Once gain the Apostle turns to the theme of Christ’s sufferings (cf. 2:21-24; 3:18) in order to draw out the practical implications of the Cross in the life of Christians (verse 1). Considering the Passion of Christ, believers are to arm themselves (hoplisasthe with “the same way thinking” (ennoian). That is to say, they are to take the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings as the guide to their thoughts and sentiments.

Friday, April 13

The Resurrection and the Christian Hope: Jews at the time of Jesus—particularly those represented by the Pharisees—looked forward to a resurrection from the dead as part of God’s final judgment of history. The early Christians believed the Resurrection of Jesus was a vindication of that hope. Thus, at one of his trials Paul declared, “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged!” (Acts 23:6; cf. 24:15, 21; 26:6-8).

Because the Resurrection of Christ was seen to vindicate the Jewish expectation of a general resurrection, it served as the basis of Christian hope. In our extant literature the earliest testimony to this thesis comes from about A. D. 50, when Paul wrote to the new congregation at Thessaloniki, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Paul wrote in similar terms to the brethren at Philippi: “We also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21). To the congregation at Corinth, he wrote, likewise, “But now Christ, risen from the dead, has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).

The hope of the early Christians, therefore, was very different from the hope entertained by many of their contemporaries, particularly the disciples of Plato. These latter looked forward to a spiritual afterlife, following the dissolution of the body. The more fervent among them longed to be set free from the body, as from a garment no longer needed. Theirs was an immaterial hope.

Not so the Christians. Paul declared,

For we know that if our earthly house of skin is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, everlasting in the heavens. For at the present we groan, earnestly longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven—if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked! For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:1-4).

The object of Paul’s hope was not to be stripped naked—to become an immaterial spirit—but, rather, to become “further clothed” (ependynasthai). That is to say, “what is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43).

Those possessed of such a hope, Paul believed, should manifest it in their lives—even in their lifestyle. They should not mourn, for example, “as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Most of all, they must eschew the sort of dissipation that is rooted in despair. Paul found an illustration of this in the Book of Isaiah. That eighth century prophet, describing the despondency that descended on the citizens of Jerusalem as they faced a siege of the Assyrian army, quoted them as saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die “ (Isaiah 22:13).

Paul, who saw signs of this despair in the fun-loving attitude of some of the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21-22; 11:20-22), quoted this verse of Isaiah by way of warning. It was no wonder, the Apostle reasoned, that they lived such worldly lives, if they had lost hope in the coming resurrection (15:12; cf. Luke 12:19).

The word “resurrection,” in short, meant more than an assent to an event in the past; it conveyed also a hope for something in the future. Belief or unbelief in the Resurrection of Christ was not a purely speculative decision; it was weighted with practical consequences regarding how the believer, or unbeliever, conducted his life.

Unbelief induced a life of dissipation born of despair, the sort of feasting described by Herodotus as a celebration of death itself: “Drink and have fun—pine te kai terpev—for you will be dying like this” (Histories 2:78). Those who professed faith in the Resurrection of Christ, Paul was convinced, would not live this way. Their manner of life would be characterized by a patience and discipline born of hope.

Saturday, April 14

First Corinthians 15:20-34: To appreciate Paul’s introduction of Adam in order to elucidate the mystery of the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:22), it is important not to lose sight of the immediate setting of his argument: He was addressing the denial—on the part of some Corinthians—that the dead can be raised. Their denial was a general proposition; they contended that a bodily resurrection was impossible for all human beings. They affirmed, “there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12). Such an expectation, they claimed, was not part of the human inheritance.

We observe that the denial made by those Corinthians did not specifically address the Resurrection of Jesus (to which, apparently, they had given little thought), but the resurrection of human beings as such. Consequently, it was Paul’s task to take the Resurrection of Jesus as a premise—antecedently established by apostolic testimony (15:3-8)—in order to make his case for a universal resurrection.

This was the reason Paul introduced Adam into the discussion. Adam, whose very name means “human being,” was not just an individual; he was the father of the human race, the “universal man” in the sense that he bequeathed to humanity the full inheritance of what it meant to be human. That universal inheritance, Paul promptly observed, included the experience of death: “In Adam, all died” (15:22). Fallen Adam was the cause and exemplar of universal death. Adam’s Fall was the final word.

An underlying theological proposition prompted Paul to argue this way—namely, the thesis that Christ “rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.” In the light of that reference—“according to the Scriptures”—it was a plain fact that Christ’s Resurrection stood in defiance of Adam’s Fall. Since Christ rose from the dead, Adam no longer had the final word about the human expectation.

On the contrary, a new order had been introduced, an order in which death was no longer the last chapter of history. That is to say, the risen Christ was not simply an exception to the Adamic curse but the initiator of a new order; his Resurrection was the cause and exemplar of what could be expected. It radically remodeled human iconography and changed the content of man’s inheritance. With respect to our ultimate destiny, Christ replaced Adam.

Paul elaborated the contrast between Adam and his replacement: “And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam, a life-giving spirit” (15:45).

The first Adam had been formed from that very element to which the Fall reduced him: “The first man was of the earth, of dust” (15:47). Inasmuch as we are descended from that fallen Adam, we are heirs of that reduction: “As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust’ (15:48). That is our expectation as children of Adam. But our lot is changed by reason of Christ’s Resurrection. The human iconography has been altered: “And as we have borne the icon of the ‘dustly,’ we will also bear the icon of the heavenly” (15:49).

The word chosen by Paul to express the universal significance of Christ’s Resurrection was aparche, properly translated as “first fruits” (15:20, 23). This term, derived from Israel’s theology of sacrifice, referred to the practice of giving back to God—by way of oblation—the initial yield of the harvest.

Even before Paul’s use of the term, it already served as a metaphor, signifying an initial portion of any kind, but it conveyed, as well, the implication that more was expected. That is to say, the aparche represented, by way of guarantee, the harvest as a whole. This was the sense Paul had in mind when he spoke of the risen Christ as “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep”: His Resurrection was the “first act,” the pledge and assurance of what lay in store for the rest of humanity.

Accordingly, Paul viewed the mystery of the Resurrection in distinct stages, or, more accurately, “groups” (tagma): First comes “the first fruits, Christ,” in whom the Resurrection begins. Next, there are “those who belong to Christ, who will arise at his appearance [parousia].” These will have priority with respect to rising from the dead (15:3; compare 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18; Philippians 3:20-21). Finally arrives “the end [telos], when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father” (15:24).

St. Thomas Sunday, April 15

First Corinthians 15:20-34: When Paul answered the skeptics at Corinth—those so-called Christians who denied the Resurrection—he became a bit agitated at one point. As he answered this denial, his language was unusually harsh. “Fool!” he said (aphron—1 Corinthians 15:36).

It is significant, I believe, that the noun here is in the singular, not the plural. If Paul intended simply to address the Corinthian skeptics, we would expect him to write, “Fools!” Let me suggest the reason he didn’t.

First, I believe Paul would not have felt comfortable addressing fellow Christians with such a term of opprobrium. After all, Jesus had warned against this very thing (Matthew 5:22). Paul probably came closest to doing it when he reproached the Galatians: “Oh thoughtless Galatians”—O anoetoi Galatai

Second, at the point when Paul used the word “fool” in 1 Corinthians, he had already answered the skepticism of those Corinthians who denied the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). Paul’s mind had moved on.

Third, the expression “fool” was addressed, nor directly to the Corinthians, but to a hypothetical interlocutor: “But someone will say.” Paul did not accuse the Corinthians of asking, ““How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” The person posing this question was imaginary; he was a conjectural “someone” (tis) Paul introduced as a partner in his argument.

The Greeks referred to this form of argument as a diatribe; literally a “wearing away,” in the sense of a pastime. The term was often used of arguments based on hypothetical objections. At this point, in other words, Paul was going beyond the mere unbelief of the Corinthian skeptics. He was pushing the question of the resurrection in a new direction, for the purpose of clarifying it.

The hypothetical skeptic, who pretended to dismiss the resurrection by asking what sort of body the dead rise in, is a fool, said Paul, because he contradicted the sovereign power of the Creator: “God gives a body as He pleases” (15:38). To deny God’s ability to raise the dead was to affirm that death lies beyond the reach of God’s power. This was an irrational, or foolish, claim.

Jesus, we recall, argued the same case when the Sadducees questioned him about the woman who had been married seven times. They, too, had raised a hypothetical objection to the resurrection: “Now there were seven brothers. . . . Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife” (Mark 12:18-23). In answering the Sadducees, Jesus put his finger on the lack of logic in their denial. It was based in part, he said, on their unfamiliarity with “the power of God” (12:24; cf. Acts 23:7).

The sovereign power of God over death also served the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. When he wrote of Abraham’s resolve—in obedience—to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham took this step of faith, he said, “considering that God is able to raise from the dead”—ek nekron egeirein dynatos ho Theos (Hebrews 11:19).

We find the same presumption in all three of these sources: If there is an almighty God, then there can be no a priori argument against the resurrection.

For Paul, this power of the Creator was manifest in the great variety of bodies He had already brought into being (1 Corinthians 15:39-41). The God who could bring a large living plant from a puny seed—a seed which did not even slightly resemble the plant—will certainly not be taxed to transform a mortal body into a body filled with glory (15:37).

Paul went on to elaborate this agricultural illustration, in which the dead body, “sown” in the earth, represented the seed from which will spring the harvest of immortality. The dead body and the resurrected body are numerically the same body, but what a difference: “What is sown in corruption, is raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power. Sown a psychic body (soma psychikon), it is raised a spiritual body (soma pnevmatikon)” (15:42-44).

To me it seems likely that Paul derived and extended this agricultural analogy from a metaphor in the treasury of the apostolic preaching. It preserved a parable of Jesus: “Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24).

Monday, April 17

Psalms 1—3: A progressive scheme of images is developed through the first three psalms: First, the Man (Psalm 1), then the Messiah (Psalm 2), and finally the Suffering Servant (Psalm 3). Since this triadic pattern of reference runs throughout the Psalter, one may regard these three psalms as the book’s proper “introduction.” They form the tripod on which the whole Psalter stands.

First, there is the Man: Psalm 1 is not a prayer in the usual sense, inasmuch as there is no direct address to God. It is, rather, a meditation on a specific Wisdom theme: How the righteous man lives and what he hopes for. The affirmations in this psalm are made in the calm, apodictic style of Proverbs and the Bible’s older Wisdom tradition.

If the form of the psalm is given by the Wisdom literature, its matter is from the early pages of the Torah. Who, after all, is this Man of Psalm 1?

Well, to begin with, he is the first Man of the Torah—righteous Adam—Man before the Fall, when he was still God’s friend. As Adam tilled the Garden irrigated by four rivers (Genesis 2:8-15), the Man in Psalm 1 is likened to “a tree / planted by the rivers of water, / that brings forth its fruit in its season, / whose leaf also shall not wither, / and whatever he does shall prosper.”

Of the Man described in this psalm, we are told that his “delight is in the Lord’s Torah, / and on His Torah he meditates day and night.” The “day and night” of this psalm were also introduced, we recall, at the beginning of the Torah; they are the most basic divisions of time.

In contrast to the stability of this godly Man, Psalm 1 speaks of the “wicked”—the rasha‘im, who are likened to “the chaff which the wind drives away.” Just as the former does not stand in the path of sinners nor sit in the seat of pestilence, so “the rasha‘im shall not stand in the judgment, / nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.”

Second, there is the Messiah: In Psalm 2, Adam becomes David, so to speak. The Man is transformed into the King, God’s Anointed One.

At this point the pace of the Psalter dramatically quickens, as it moves from the calm meditation of Wisdom to the robust narrative of conflict. Here, the Torah and the Wisdom Literature are replaced by the Former Prophets, particularly the Samuel/Kings saga.

Likewise, the contrast between good and evil in Psalm 1 grows into the conflict>/i> of good and evil in Psalm 2. Indeed, open rebellion is afoot, as the “kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Messiah.”

For this reason, the style of the Psalter moves from apodictic declaration in Psalm 1 to energetic inquiry in Psalm 2: “Why did the nations rage, and the people conspire at something futile?”

As the ungodly in Psalm 1 were as “chaff which the wind drives away,” so in Psalm 2 “You shall break them with a rod of iron; / You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Third, there is the Suffering Servant: The trouble is serious and personal in the third psalm. Here, the Second Adam of Psalm 1 and the New David of Psalm 2 become the persecuted righteous man, so memorably depicted in the Book of Isaiah. In this respect, it is significant that Psalm 3 now speaks, for the first time, of “salvation”—Yeshu‘ah.

The vile activity of the ungodly in Psalm 1 and of the raging nations in Psalm 2 is now experienced first-hand in the persecution of the Suffering Servant, who “will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that besieged me all around.” As for the ungodly—those rasha‘im introduced in Psalm 1—Psalm 3 declares, “You have broken the teeth of the rasha‘im.

In these three opening psalms, then, three major Christological themes are set forth: the Incarnation, the Messianic Fulfillment, and the Suffering Servant.

These three psalms also establish the patterns of meditation, narrative, and prayer, which will be found throughout the Psalter. Likewise, these three psalms introduce other large blocks of Sacred Writ: Torah, Prophecy, and Wisdom—all of which find a place in the Psalter.

In the first two psalms, God was never directly addressed—“You.” This changes completely in Psalm 3: “Lord, how increased they are who afflict me! / Many they are who rise up against me. Many, as well, are those who say of me, / ‘There is no help for him in God.’”

In addition, these three psalms exemplify various “voices” to be found in the Psalter. First, we attend to the meditating wise man, next the raging nations, then the Messiah (“The Lord said to Me”), next the Father, who addresses both us (“I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion”) and the Messiah (“You are My Son”). Finally, the Suffering Servant declares: “Yeshu‘ah is of the Lord. / Your blessing be upon Your people.”

Tuesday, April 17

John 21:15-25: The Greek word anthrakia (cf. the English derivative “anthracite,” a type of coal), meaning a charcoal fire, is found only twice in the New Testament, both times in the Gospel according to St. John. The first instance is in 18:18 and designates the courtyard fire where the officers and servants of the high priest stood warming themselves through the chilly night of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin. Simon Peter likewise came to that place and stood near a cousin of Malchus, a servant of the high priest. It was there by the charcoal fire that Simon thrice denied even knowing our Lord, going so far as to confirm the denials with an oath.

It is most significant, surely, that that event, so embarrassing to the chief of the Twelve Apostles, is narrated in detail in each of the four canonical Gospels, for it is thus made to stand fixed forever in the memory of Holy Church.

The second charcoal fire in John’s Gospel is the one in its final scene, the fire kindled by the Lord Himself, over which He prepared breakfast for His dispirited Apostles (21:9). After breakfast it was at this fire that Jesus would put to that same Simon Peter his threefold question: “Do you love Me?” The Apostle understood, of course, why the question was asked of him three times, for it was the very number of his own denials. At this point the chastened Peter, no longer trusting himself, relies completely on the Lord’s knowledge of his heart (21:17).

But there is more to the story. Simon Peter’s threefold profession is followed by a reference to his eventual martyrdom, which had already happened by the time this text was written down later in the first century. Indeed, the author of John 21 clearly presupposes his readers’ familiarity with Peter’s martyrdom. The story of the Apostle’s crucifixion on Vatican Hill in Rome in the mid-60s was so widely reported among the churches that John could simply refer to the stretching out of Peter’s hands as “signifying by what death he would glorify God” (21:18–19).

The point required no further explanation. The early Christians were so familiar with the circumstances of Peter’s martyrdom in Rome that around the turn of the century Clement of Rome (Ad Corinthios 5.4), writing from Rome, and Ignatius of Antioch (Romans 4), writing to Rome, felt no need to elaborate on the details and circumstances. That this Johannine passage (“you will stretch out your hands . . . signifying by what death he would glorify God”) did in fact refer to Peter’s crucifixion in Rome was perfectly obvious to Tertullian, writing in Africa slightly after the year 200. Citing that Johannine verse, he wrote: “Then was Peter ‘bound by another,’ when he was fastened to the cross” (Scorpiace 15.3).

Wednesday, April 18

Ezekiel 9: The marking of the foreheads of the Remnant is a sort of renewal of the marking of the houses of the Chosen People in Egypt on Passover night.

Those thus marked will be spared on the day of wrath, for the simple reason that they “sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in Jerusalem.” Sometimes the just man is left so powerless in this world that all he can do, in the face of overwhelming evil, is “sigh and groan.”

Not only does the temple offer no sanctuary from the punishment; those in the temple are the first to fall, because they have defiled God’s house. The divine judgment begins, then, not with the world, but with the household of God.

The seven heavenly figures—the scribe and the six executioners—are angelic figures representing God’s just will in what is about to transpire in Jerusalem. Revelation 7 is a very good text to read with this chapter, which is surely in part its literary inspiration.

Psalms 119 (Greek & Latin 18):1-24: This longest of the psalms is constructed of twenty-two stanzas of eight lines each; we pray the first three stanzas today.

While there are several other psalms that are called “alphabetical,” in the sense that each verse, or pair of verses, begins with the next sequential letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Psalm 119 is alphabetical in a more extreme way. In this instance every verse in each stanza begins with the same letter of the alphabet. Thus, in the first stanza, each of the eight verses commences with the first Hebrew letter, aleph. Each line of the second stanza begins with beth, and so on, through all twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

If the artificiality of this alphabetic arrangement is not the stuff of powerful poetic impulse, it does serve, nonetheless, an important theological purpose. Psalm 119 is concerned entirely with the Law of God, the Torah, and its structural use of the alphabet serves here the purpose of asserting that the Law of God is the inner core and essential substance of human language.

This is a very deep reflection. Language is the gift of God. Its primary function, in the Bible (cf. Gen. 2:19, for example), is the formation of thought in accordance with reality, and the world’s deepest created reality, according to the rabbis, is the Torah, the eternal Law of God, on which the inner being of all created reality is based. The eternal Law of God, the Torah, reflects in turn the very being of God, and the final purpose of language is to lead man’s thought to the knowledge of God. Language and Torah, thus, are inseparable. In Psalm 119 Law and Word tend to be used interchangeably.

Thursday, April 19

Ezekiel 10: The wooden statues of the Cherubim, with their wings spread over the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, were but symbols of the angels of the Presence, the heavenly Cherubim who serve to support the Throne of God.

Now Ezekiel sees these heavenly spirits themselves, and they are identical with the Four Living Creatures that he had beheld in his inaugural vision in Chapter 1, where they bore, as here, the Cloud of the divine Presence. They will appear again, of course, in Revelation 4.

The burning coals from within their whirling wheels, full of the divine holiness, are destructive of those whose brows have not been marked by the angelic scribe, who also appears again in this chapter.

Besides destroying the wicked, this divine fire purifies God’s loyal servants (cf. Isaiah 6:6f). As the chapter closes, the action moves to the east gate of the temple, facing the Mount of Olives. It is at this gate that Ezekiel will receive the two oracles in Chapter 11.

Psalms 18 (Greek & Latin 17): We should see the fallen angels in so many lines of this psalm, for against them the Lord waged a combat without quarter: “I will pursue My enemies and overtake them, nor will I turn back until they are perished. I will crush them, and they will not stand; they shall fall beneath My feet. . . . Like dust before the wind will I thrash them, and trample them down like mud in the streets.”

This crushing of the Lord’s demonic foes is vividly described in the Bible’s final book: “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:9, 10). Obviously, in the ongoing war of the spirit, neither this last book nor the Psalter was composed for noncombatants.

Many lines of Psalm 18, however, lay greater stress on the rich blessings of the Lord’s triumph over evil. For example, the calling of the Gentiles to salvation. Rejected by the Jews at His trial (cf. Matt. 27:25; John 19:15), Jesus speaks of the other nations: “You will set me at the head of the nations. An unknown people have served me. . . . For I will confess You among the nations, O Lord, and praise will I sing to Your name.” Later the Apostle Paul will quote this verse from our psalm by way of explaining his thesis that “the Gentiles [should] glorify God for His mercy” (Rom. 15:9).

Friday, April 20
Ezekiel 11: The first oracle in this chapter addresses a slogan going around Jerusalem at the time, descriptive of the city’s coming destruction. The slaying of Jerusalem’s citizens, says the oracle, will ultimately be the fault of their leaders, not of the Babylonian besiegers. The latter are but instruments in the divine judgment.

The leaders back at Jerusalem planned big things for themselves, and their big plans are addressed in the second oracle. When Ezekiel and his other companions, including the cream of Jerusalem society and its most competent citizens, were taken hostage to Babylon in 597, some of those Israelites who remained in the Holy Land began to feel pretty good about their own prospects, now that the better rivals were gone. With respect to their brethren who had been carried away, they reflected: “Well, too bad for them, but that leaves more for us.”

The burden of this second oracle is to reassure those captives in Babylon that the Lord had not forgotten them and that He was determined to restore them. Indeed, it was on them that His coming blessings would fall, for their restoration is the substance of the great prophecy here about newness of heart, which becomes so important a theme in the New Testament (See especially Hebrews 8.)

As this chapter ends, the Cloud of the divine glory moves east onto the top of the Mount of Olives, and Ezekiel is restored to Babylon, where he narrates his visions and oracles to his companions in exile.

Psalms 16 (Greek & Latin 15): We may be sure that Psalm 16 was among the psalms interpreted by the risen Christ, for this was the first psalm that exegeted by the Church in her very first sermon when she came rushing with power from the upper room on Pentecost. According to the Apostle Peter, who preached that sermon, Psalm 15 describes the Resurrection of Christ:

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David says concerning Him: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face, / For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. / Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; / Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. / For You will not leave my soul in Hades, / Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. / You have made known to me the ways of life; / You will make me full of joy in Your presence” (Acts 2:22–28).

Even though it was King David saying these things, the voice speaking more deeply in Psalm 15, according to St. Peter, is the voice of Christ. As the forefather and type of Christ, David was speaking in the tones of prophecy.

Good Friday, April 6

The Bridegroom is Taken Away: If we paint the subject with a large brush, we may be prompted to see two major kinds of Christology abroad in this country: Christ as Teacher and Christ as Savior.

It is no surprise that non-Christians prefer to concentrate on Christ as Teacher. This picture of Christ is attractive, not only to devout Hindus and Buddhists, but even to secular people who are ethically serious.

Such folk find comfort and support, for example, in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They reason—not without cause—that world peace would certainly be attained if everyone simply turned the other cheek when offended and refused to return evil for evil. In this view, Jesus becomes a great teaching of universal morality. His maxims are compared favorably with those of Gautama, and Socrates, and Confucius.

This is rather often the case among non-Christians who are attracted by the picture of Christ as Teacher. If he is conceived as Savior, it is in only in the sense that he instructs human beings how to live a moral life.

This view is very far off-base, because the teaching given by Christ is inseparable from the salvation given by Christ. The attempt to extract the teaching of Christ from the person, work, and vocation of Christ infallibly leads to a misunderstanding of that teaching.

Stating the thesis in another way, let us affirm that the Mount of the Beatitudes cannot be correctly understood apart from Mount Calvary. Since both hills are presented in the Gospel of Matthew, let us examine the question as Matthew presents it.

Matthew’s description of the Passion of Christ is the consummate illustration of his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. The particulars of this demonstration are clear and unmistakable, leaving no doubt about Matthew’s intention.

We may consider these particulars in two respects, one formal, and the other material.

First, there is the formal perspective of Matthew’s presentation of the moral life. Here we are faced with the motif of Jesus’ heavenly Father. In the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, the believer’s consciousness of the heavenly Father is the formal, determining principle of the moral life.

The disciple’s constant thought and remembrance is the heavenly Father. In all things—whether in fasting, prayer, or almsgiving—he endeavors to please this Father, “who sees in secret” (6:4,6,18). It is in Him that the believer puts his entire trust, convinced that the heavenly Father knows his every need (6:8,32). It is the heavenly Father’s glory that he seeks above all things (5:16). The disciple’s love for others is simply his endeavor to imitate the perfection of his Father in heaven (5:48).

If he forgives, it is for the sake of being forgiven by his Father in heaven (6:14-15). His sole interest is in doing the will of the heavenly Father (6:10; 7:21), to whom he prays (6:9; 7:11). He does all of these things for the purpose of being a child of the heavenly Father (5:45). He seeks his reward only from the Father in heaven (6:1). The sustained consciousness of the heavenly Father—all through the three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount—is the formal, determining principle of the moral life. Christ’s teaching in that sermon cannot be abstracted from that formal principle.

Now, it is a fact that such a preoccupation with the Father in heaven is exactly what we find in Matthew’s description of Jesus’ Passion. He is aware that the heavenly Father would answer his slightest wish to be supplied with twelve legions of angelic warriors, were he to request it (26:53). He will not request it, however, convinced that this is not the Father’s will.

Indeed, the resolve to do the will of his Father is obviously what most deeply moves and strengthens Jesus in the Passion. Having instructed His disciples—in the Sermon on the Mount—to pray that the Father’s will should be done on earth as it is in heaven, Jesus models this petition when he prays at the beginning of the Passion. Three times, Matthew tells us (26:44), Jesus makes the same prayer: “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will”(26:39,42).

Indeed, the Greek text for “Thy will be done”—genetheto to thelema Sou—is identical in the Sermon on the Mount (6:10) and the Agony in the Garden (26:42). In both cases this prayer is specifically addressed to the Father (6:9; 26:39,42). Thus, the prayer of Jesus in his Passion exemplifies the prayer given in the Sermon on the Mount. In the conscious intention of his Passion, he illustrates the formal moral principle of the Sermon on the Mount.

Second, let us consider the material content of the Sermon on the Mount. In that Sermon Christ instructed his disciples on the blessedness of “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (5:10) and suffer the pain of false accusations (5:11). He warned the disciples against retaliation against evil and exhorted them not to resist those who use violence against them (5:38-42). He cautioned them against holding grudges against injuries (6:12,14).

In his Passion Jesus illustrates and exemplifies these components of his moral teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, when one of His disciples grabs a sword to resist those who came to arrest the Savior, Jesus immediately puts a stop to the violence, because “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (26:51-52).

Resolved to live and die by the rules that he laid down in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus endures without complaint the manifold injuries and injustices inflicted upon him: the unwarranted arrest, the false witnesses, the accusation of blasphemy, the beatings, mockery, and insults, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the manifold sufferings of the Cross.

We misunderstand the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount if it is reduced to an abstract and idealistic ethical code—something separable from the life, work, and vocation of the one who preached it. It must be understood and interpreted, rather, in the way Jesus modeled it in his Passion.

It is imperative that those resolved to follow the Sermon on the Mount be conscious that nothing less is involved than the mystery of the Cross, in which God’s Son gave himself in selfless obedience to the will of the heavenly Father. From the Mount of the Sermon it is but a short step to the Mount of Golgotha.

Holy Saturday, April 7

Psalm 16 (Greek and Latin 15): In addition to showing His disciples the truth of His Resurrection “by many infallible proofs, being seen of them for forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3), the newly risen Lord took special care likewise to explain to the Church the authentic meaning of Holy Scripture. Indeed, we know that the day of Resurrection itself was partly devoted to this task (cf. Luke 24:25–27, 44, 45).

Thus, the Church’s proper interpretation of Holy Scripture down through the centuries is rooted in what the Lord Himself taught her during those forty days spoken of in Acts 1:3. The correct—that is to say, the orthodox—understanding of the Bible is based on what the Church learned directly from the risen Christ. Her interpretation of Holy Scripture is inseparable from the hearing of the living Lord’s voice (John 20:16), the handling of His flesh (Luke 24:39, 40; 1 John 1:1), the touching of His wounds (John 20:27). The Church’s experience of the risen Christ is the source of all correct understanding of Holy Scripture.

These considerations, moreover, bear a special relevance to the interpretation of the Book of Psalms, for this section of the Bible, which became the Church’s official prayer book for all times, was singled out for specific consideration (Luke 24:44). On Pascha, the Sunday of the Resurrection, when the Lamb came forward and “took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne” (Rev. 5:7) and began forthwith to open its seals (6:1), the Church commenced likewise her understanding of the psalms. From that day forward, the prayer of the Church would be rooted in the vision that the Lord gave her in His opening of the Psalter.

We may be sure that Psalm 16 was among the psalms interpreted to the Church by the risen Christ, for this was the first psalm that she exegeted in her very first sermon when she came rushing with power from the upper room on Pentecost. According to the Apostle Peter, who preached that sermon, Psalm 15 describes the Resurrection of Christ:

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. For David says concerning Him: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face, / For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. / Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; / Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. / For You will not leave my soul in Hades, / Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. / You have made known to me the ways of life; / You will make me full of joy in Your presence” (Acts 2:22–28).

Even though it was King David saying these things, the voice speaking more deeply in Psalm 16, according to St. Peter, is the voice of Christ. As the forefather and type of Christ, David was speaking in the tones of prophecy. Peter goes on to explain:

Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses (Acts 2:29–32).

Psalm 16 may thus serve to prepare for the celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection each following Sunday, when the Lamb begins to open the seals.

And as David prayed Psalm 16 in persona Christi, looking forward to the one who was to come, so do Christians, when they pray this psalm, identify themselves in hope with the risen Christ, for we too will rise with Him: “And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power” (1 Cor. 6:14); “He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus” (2 Cor. 4:14); “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11).

Easter Sunday, April 8

The Resurrection of Jesus: The revelation of God’s purpose and power in the Resurrection of His Son was accomplished, not only through the event itself, but also in the altered awareness of those to whom it was revealed. Moreover, our own knowledge and understanding of the Resurrection is determined by the historically effected consciousness of its original witnesses. For this reason, it seems important to reflect on the manner in which the Resurrection was revealed to them.

We must first remark that none of those witnesses actually saw the Resurrection. They did not watch it happening; the significance of their witness did not consist in their objective observation of it. Although we Christians hold the Resurrection of Christ to be an objective historical fact, Holy Scripture does not present its plain and unadorned objectivity as the form of its revelation. Not one of those original “saints,” to whom the faith was once delivered, was permitted to view the Resurrection as one might view a waterfall or the flight of a bird.

I want to inquire what this circumstance—well known to readers of Holy Scripture—means with respect to revelation and faith. After all, it was undeniably possible for God, if He wished it, to arrange the Resurrection in such a way that the Apostles and the holy women would be eyewitnesses to the act itself. Precisely because God chose not to do so, I propose to consider the possibility of it, hoping to throw light on what we do mean when we speak of “revelation” and “faith” with respect to the Resurrection:

So, let us fancy, for a moment, that the Resurrection was presented to the saints simply as an objective fact, a thing they empirically observed like any other historical occurrence. Let us suppose the Apostles knew the Resurrection pretty much the same way, for instance, Dr. David Hosack, an eyewitness to the event knew that Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton: Hosack saw the event as a self-contained fact, an “it” to which his testimony remained external.

If the original believers had observed the Resurrection in this way, I submit—if the saints had known the Resurrection the same way Hosack knew what happened in the Burr-Hamilton duel—we would mean something quite different when we spoke of the Resurrection as “revealed.” The witnessing saints would have remained merely external observers of it. Their testimony would have remained independent of their identity.

The Resurrection of Jesus, however, was not revealed this way. The truth of it was conveyed, not by the factual observance of an “it,” but through the personal encounter with a “thou.” The fact of the Resurrection was conveyed to the saints in a completely interpersonal context. Believers learned the objective fact of it through their encounters with the risen Christ. The fact of the Resurrection was subsumed into a personal presence.

The consciousness of the chosen witnesses, then, was altered, not by the observance of an event external to themselves, but by seeing, hearing, and touching the beloved Savior, who called them by name and forcefully intruded his person into their conscious experience. The revelation of the Resurrection was inseparable from this transpersonal intrusion, in which the risen Lord, whose overpowering presence was brought to bear on their attention, effected a new and non-negotiable awareness.

I submit, moreover, that this mode of the original revelation qualifies also its transmission; our own knowledge of the Resurrection is rooted in—and determined by—the historically effected consciousness of the “saints.” The risen Jesus is conveyed to us, not as a known external object, but as a personal presence: “what we have seen and heard we declare to you” (1 John 1:3). This is what we mean when we speak of “the faith once delivered to the saints.”

Moreover, in the apostolic writings we also perceive how the historically effected consciousness of the saints prompted their immediate reflection on the theological significance of the Resurrection. That is to say, a “theology” of the Resurrection began to develop within the revelation itself. We observe, for instance, how the encounter of the risen Jesus with the two Emmaus-bound disciples assumed a theologically reflective form, relating the experience to the understanding of the Scriptures. Their hearts burned within them as they listened to the explanation of biblical prophecy (Luke 24:13-28).

We find this pattern throughout the New Testament. Even the first apostolic sermon developed a theology of the Resurrection through the exegesis of certain specific psalms (Acts 2:24-36). Jesus did not simply “rise.” He “rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4).

Monday, April 8

The Resurrection and Human Expectation: From the beginning, the proclamation of the Gospel has always involved a claim that the full weight of universal human wisdom declares to be impossible: the resurrection of a man who had been dead in his grave for a couple of days—as distinct from the mere resuscitation of someone who was presumed to be dead.

This claim—without which there is no Gospel—is the primary component of the “folly” mentioned by the Apostle Paul as inevitably characteristic of the Christian message. That is to say, those who proclaim the Gospel must face the fact that everybody knows it cannot be true!

For this reason, those who believe the Gospel inevitably find themselves separated from what the rest of the human race considers normal and sane. They willingly place themselves outside of every premise and expectation common to the race of men. From the minute they accept the Gospel thesis, they implicitly declare that they no longer care a fig about what the rest of the world thinks; they are prepared to be regarded as fools on the earth. Believers go for broke. They have burned their bridges with respect to this world. All their eggs are in the Easter basket.

This detachment from the expectations of the world is the source of an immense practical freedom for the Christian people. Believers are aware that the world—if it is wrong with respect to its most fundamental premise and most tenacious preconception—may be wrong with respect to just about anything. Consequently, they may now start from scratch with respect to human opinion on any matter whatever. If they cannot concede to human wisdom at least that point—the physical finality of death—there is never again a compelling reason to concede any point to human wisdom. They have nothing to fear from the world!

The first preachers of the Gospel were well aware of this fact, being quite familiar with the world’s ingrained prejudice about death. They faced the problem squarely, armed only with the convictions of conscience.

They were especially careful not to let the Resurrection of Christ be interpreted as referring to some sort of “spiritual” experience. Had they spoken of the risen Christ as a kind of incorporeal vision or phantom, someone who spiritually “lived on” after death, their message would surely have met acceptance from many of their contemporaries. The world would—at least—have tried to make an accommodation.

Christians did not succumb to that temptation, however. They insisted that Jesus rose in his very body, the body numerically identical to the one in which he died on the cross.

The Gospel accounts—in the measure they reflect Christian apologetics—are emphatic on this point. The risen Jesus commands his friends: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:38). The post-Resurrection accounts depict Jesus as being touched (John 20:27), embraced (Matthew 28:9), and clung to (John 20:17).

These experiences were physical. The Apostle Peter later described them to the friends of Cornelius: “God raised him up on the third day, and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God—to us who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). One of those meals was a hot breakfast, which the risen Jesus prepared for his friends (John 21:9). There was nothing incorporeal or visionary about that breakfast picnic on the beach.

At the same time, those who preached the Resurrection of Christ did not think he had simply been restored to what he was before. He was not a resuscitated corpse. They knew him to be alive in an entirely new way—alive beyond the reach of death. He was risen, said the Apostle Paul, “in power” (Romans 1:4). To those who believed in the Gospel, the physical body of Jesus, risen from the grave, was proof that death had been definitively conquered: “Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. In that he died, he died to sin once for all; but in that he lives, he lives to God” (Romans 6:9-10).

Even though Jesus’ risen body was physical, therefore, those who bore witness to it also mentioned that it had been set free from the usual physical limitations. Just as it was free from the domination of death, so it was liberated from ordinary physical restrictions, such as those imposed, for example, by closed doors. That is to say, rising from the dead, Jesus showed himself completely free from every human expectation—not only death, but even the laws of physics.

Tuesday, April 10

The Resurrection and Jewish Expectation: Having reflected that human beings—generally considered—have never expected that the dead should rise, we must at once recognize an exception to this rule among certain Jews. In several places in the New Testament it is clear that some of Jesus’ contemporaries did expect a resurrection of the dead. Thus, Martha of Bethany said of her brother, Lazarus, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 11:24).

This expectation seems to have taken its rise, in an explicit and unmistakable way, during the Maccabean period in the second century before Christ, in the context of the Seleucid persecution of faithful Jews. The Book of Daniel provides what may be our earliest text on this theme: “And at that time your people shall be delivered, / everyone who is found written in the book. / And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, / some to everlasting life, / some to shame and everlasting contempt. / Those who are wise shall shine / Like the brightness of the firmament, / and those who turn many to righteousness / Like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:1-3).

This hope was reflected in the words with which a devout Jewish mother exhorted her sons, who were suffering martyrdom for their fidelity to the Torah: “But the Creator of the world, who formed the birth of man, and who discerned the origin of all—He will, in His mercy, restore to you again both breath and life, inasmuch as you now despise yourselves for the sake of His laws” (2 Maccabees 7:23). This persuasion of a future resurrection is found in several other verses of Second Maccabees, especially in chapters 7, 12, and 14, as well as in the Qumran manuscripts and other intertestamental sources (cf. 1 Enoch 102-104, but especially 108:11-15; Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 32:3-5; 49:1-52).

At the time of Jesus, the hope of a future resurrection was chiefly preserved by the Pharisees. Indeed, the Apostle Paul, a self-described Pharisee (Philippians 3:5), argued that the Resurrection of Jesus provided the necessary historical warrant for that hope and expectation. In this respect he viewed his Christian faith as an extension of his hope as a Pharisee. Thus, accused of false teaching before Israel’s high count, Paul pleaded, “Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged!” (Acts 23:6).
This line of argument produced the effect Paul evidently had in mind: it divided the judicial assembly into those who expected a resurrection and those who didn’t: “And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and the assembly was divided, because the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection” (23:7).
Later on, Paul’s appeal to this belief of the Pharisees was less successful. This was the incident in which the Apostle was being jointly questioned by King Herod Agrippa and the Roman Procurator, Porcius Festus. Addressing himself directly to Agrippa, Paul once again argued for the hope of the Pharisees, a hope which he suspected Agrippa to favor. Before recounting his Christian conversion, Paul inquired, “For this hope’s sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews. Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?” (26:7-8).
When, however, the Apostle finished his narrative, the pagan Festus blurted out his incomprehension and complete incredulity on the matter of the resurrection: “You are mad, Paul! Too much book learning is driving you to madness!”—Mainei, Pavle, ta polla se grammata eis manian peritrepei (26:24).
It is significant that the pagan Roman, not the Jewish king, took offense at the idea of resurrection from the dead. It seems clear, in fact, that Agrippa felt favorably disposed to Paul’s message, for his response to it was vastly different from that of Festus: Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You almost persuade me to become a Christian’” (26:28). Moreover, Agrippa was persuaded, if Paul had not already appealed to a court at Rome, “he might have been set free” (26:32). For all that, however, Agrippa was not prepared to argue with his Roman counterpart with respect to the resurrection of the dead. He, too, would have been thought crazy!

There is no doubt that this Jewish expectation was a source of embarrassment for those Jews who wanted to make a favorable impression on pagans. Such Jews did not relish the idea that pagans would accuse them of holding weird, unfashionable ideas. They wanted “fit in” with pagan expectations.
For example, when the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus—a writer contemporary to the New Testament—came to describe for his pagan readers the beliefs of the Pharisees, he deliberately distorted their view of resurrection. He expressed the Pharisaic belief, rather, in terms of the immortality of the soul and the transmigration of souls into other bodies. This was, after all, a notion with which Greco-Roman culture was more familiar, and with which, he could presume, it felt more sympathy. Josephus wrote of the Pharisees, “They say that every soul is incorruptible, but that only the soul of the good passes over (metabainein) into another body, and that of the wicked is punished with eternal retribution” (The Jewish Wars, 2.14.163). Josephus thus avoided what might be called “the scandal of the resurrection.” He was one of those many Jews who coveted the approval, or at least the tolerance, of the pagan world, and for such Jews the Pharisees’ expectation of a bodily resurrection was a genuine embarrassment.

Wednesday, April 11

The Resurrection and Pagan Persistence: When Flavius Josephus misrepresented the faith of the Pharisees—claiming they believed in the transmigration of the soul, instead of the resurrection of the body—he did so to avoid ridicule from contemporary Greco-Roman pagans. Although the latter differed among themselves with respect to an after-life, none were disposed to take seriously a belief that the dead would really rise.

Even the most broadminded of pagans—those Athenians who “spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing”—were unable to tolerate the notion that the dead would rise. It is true that they were prepared to sit and listen patiently while the Apostle Paul discoursed on every aspect of God and man, but “when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, ‘We will hear you again about this’” (Acts 17:22-32). Paul had strayed well past the wide boundary of their tolerance. What he had to say was a bit too new.

From Athens, Paul journeyed to Corinth, where his efforts met with apparently better results. He catechized the Christians there for eighteen months (18:11). Yet, five years or so after leaving them, Paul discovered that some of those Gentile Christians still did not truly believe in resurrection! He questioned them, “Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

Paul went on to argue that this belief was absolutely essential to Christian faith: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty” (1 Corinthians 15:12-13).

At one time those Corinthian Christians had confessed the Resurrection of Jesus. Otherwise, they would not have been baptized. Paul had handed on to them, as a matter of highest importance, that Christ “was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (15:4). They knew this.

Yet, these same Christians still persisted in the pagan persuasion that resurrection from the dead was impossible! Elementary logic had not yet disclosed to them the massive inconsistency in their minds.

It was necessary, then, for Paul to take them through a simple series of hypothetical syllogisms, a list of “if” clauses: “If the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (15:16-19).

Had these Corinthians “spiritualized” the belief in the Resurrection of Christ, regarding it as simply a metaphor for the immorality of the soul or some other form of spiritual survival? Perhaps. We do know that some members of that church regarded themselves as pnevmatikoi, “spiritual people” (2:14-16). Perhaps these were the ones whom Paul accused of denying the resurrection from the dead.

Whoever they were, Paul regarded these people as courting spiritual danger. Had their original belief been in vain? Paul recognized the possibility: “I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain” (15:1-2). “In vain” here means “empty words.”

The merely verbal declaration of the Lordship of Jesus was insufficient for salvation without the doctrinal affirmation—inwardly seized and adhered to—that God raised him from the dead: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Belief “in the heart” means that the believer’s mind grasps and adheres to the doctrinal content of the verbal affirmation. In this case, the heart knows and holds fast to the fact of Jesus’ Resurrection.

This fact, Paul argued, was not simply a matter of history; it necessarily implied certain truths of metaphysics, psychology, and cosmology. Specifically, the fact of the Resurrection denied, at a radical level, the widespread pagan persuasion that only the soul was ultimately important.

As a Pharisee, Paul had always believed in a resurrection from the dead. At Corinth, however, he discovered certain Christians who believed less than the Pharisees!

Thursday, April 12

The Resurrection and the Creed: Discussing the earliest theology of the Resurrection, we are restricted mainly to the sermons and discourses in the Acts of the Apostles. The theological horizon is broadened considerably, however, when we turn to the Church’s first literary theologian, St. Paul. His epistles, composed over a dozen or so years and addressed to a variety of pastoral circumstances, demonstrate how the power and purpose of the Resurrection took theological shape in Paul’s mind. As we move through these epistles in their chronological order, it is proper to speak of a “development” in his understanding of the Resurrection.

It appears that three chief factors served as impulses for this development:

First, there was Paul’s continued scrutiny of the Hebrew Scriptures through a Christological lens. In this respect, the evolution of Pauline theology should be regarded as continuing the interpretive patterns in the apostolic preaching (e.g., Acts 2:14-36).

Second, the development of Paul’s theology of the Resurrection was stimulated by the need to address the sustained opposition this doctrine provoked among those to whom he preached it. According to St. Luke, Paul encountered this opposition near both the beginning and the end of his ministry to pagans (cf. Acts 17:18-32; 26:23-24).

Third, Paul’s theology of the Resurrection took shape as an aspect of his ongoing experience of its effective power in his own life and in the lives of those he instructed (cf. Ephesians 1:19-20).

We suspect that this third impulse was rarely separated from the other two. That is to say, it seems likely that Paul’s experience of the Resurrection’s transforming power was integral to the other components of his ministry: the study of Holy Scripture and the defense of sound doctrine.

In 1 Corinthians 15 we perceive a concrete example of how these three impulses were joined: In the spring of A.D. 55 (1 Corinthians 15:8), two groups of emissaries from Corinth (1:11; 16:17) arrived at Ephesus, bearing reports of sundry problems that had arisen during Paul’s absence. Among those problems was a denial of the bodily resurrection by some members of the Corinthian church (15:12-17). In the course of answering this denial, Paul provided for all Christians the fruit of his Spirit-filled thinking on this subject.

He began by reminding the Corinthians of the catechesis they had received from his mouth during the eighteen months he had been with them several years earlier: “I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures’ (15:3-4).

This message—the significance of the death and Resurrection of Christ—was nothing less than “the Gospel which I preached to you”—to evaggelion ho evaggelisamen hymin (15:1). That was the task that had brought Paul to Corinth in the first place.

He insisted that he had handed down only what he had received: the foundational proclamation common to all Christian believers. In short, Paul was giving the Corinthians a message they had already heard and—presumably—believed. By mentioning this fact, he had in mind to preclude any misunderstanding: A denial of the coming resurrection was a repudiation of the Gospel and the process of salvation (15:2).

In this brief notice at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, we observe that the Gospel was proclaimed as a narrative of the Lord’s death, burial, and Resurrection, the same sequential account later included in the four written gospels.

That narrative about Jesus, however, was integrated into a longer history and larger corpus of literature: the Hebrew Scriptures. All that happened to Jesus, Paul wrote, happened kata tas graphas, “according to the Scriptures.” That is to say, the very proclamation of the Gospel included a Christological understanding of salvation history and the Old Testament. This larger narrative was part of the Gospel itself. For this reason, the Gospel mandate was given immediately after the Lord “opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

Friday, April 13

The Resurrection and the Christian Hope: Jews at the time of Jesus—particularly those represented by the Pharisees—looked forward to a resurrection from the dead as part of God’s final judgment of history. The early Christians believed the Resurrection of Jesus was a vindication of that hope. Thus, at one of his trials Paul declared, “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged!” (Acts 23:6; cf. 24:15, 21; 26:6-8).

Because the Resurrection of Christ was seen to vindicate the Jewish expectation of a general resurrection, it served as the basis of Christian hope. In our extant literature the earliest testimony to this thesis comes from about A. D. 50, when Paul wrote to the new congregation at Thessaloniki, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Paul wrote in similar terms to the brethren at Philippi: “We also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21). To the congregation at Corinth, he wrote, likewise, “But now Christ, risen from the dead, has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).

The hope of the early Christians, therefore, was very different from the hope entertained by many of their contemporaries, particularly the disciples of Plato. These latter looked forward to a spiritual afterlife, following the dissolution of the body. The more fervent among them longed to be set free from the body, as from a garment no longer needed. Theirs was an immaterial hope.

Not so the Christians. Paul declared,

For we know that if our earthly house of skin is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, everlasting in the heavens. For at the present we groan, earnestly longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven—if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked! For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:1-4).

The object of Paul’s hope was not to be stripped naked—to become an immaterial spirit—but, rather, to become “further clothed” (ependynasthai). That is to say, “what is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43).

Those possessed of such a hope, Paul believed, should manifest it in their lives—even in their lifestyle. They should not mourn, for example, “as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Most of all, they must eschew the sort of dissipation that is rooted in despair. Paul found an illustration of this in the Book of Isaiah. That eighth century prophet, describing the despondency that descended on the citizens of Jerusalem as they faced a siege of the Assyrian army, quoted them as saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die “ (Isaiah 22:13).

Paul, who saw signs of this despair in the fun-loving attitude of some of the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21-22; 11:20-22), quoted this verse of Isaiah by way of warning. It was no wonder, the Apostle reasoned, that they lived such worldly lives, if they had lost hope in the coming resurrection (15:12; cf. Luke 12:19).

The word “resurrection,” in short, meant more than an assent to an event in the past; it conveyed also a hope for something in the future. Belief or unbelief in the Resurrection of Christ was not a purely speculative decision; it was weighted with practical consequences regarding how the believer, or unbeliever, conducted his life.

Unbelief induced a life of dissipation born of despair, the sort of feasting described by Herodotus as a celebration of death itself: “Drink and have fun—pine te kai terpev—for you will be dying like this” (Histories 2:78). Those who professed faith in the Resurrection of Christ, Paul was convinced, would not live this way. Their manner of life would be characterized by a patience and discipline born of hope.