Howard Porter and the 1971 Villanova Wildcats

Tomorrow, hard to believe, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable college basketball games of my lifetime, the 1971 NCAA Championship game at Houston's Astrodome between my underdog hometown Villanova Wildcats and the dynastic UCLA Bruins of John Wooden, who were in the midst of winning championships for 7 straight years and 10 of 12. The 'Cats were only the seventh Philadelphia Big 5 team to make the Final Four, and were attempting to be only the second, after Tom Gola's 1954 LaSalle Explorers, to win the championship (see my post about the Big Five and the Final Four written in 2013, before Villanova shockingly won two titles in the space of three years in 2016 and 2018). 

No one was shocked when Wooden's Bruins disposed of the Kansas Jayhawks, 68-60, in the semifinals to reach the title game. To be sure, these were not the 1967-69 Bruins of Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), who went 88-2 to win three straight titles, or the 1972-73 teams of Bill Walton, who went 60-0 and won two consecutive championships before falling to David Thompson's eventual champion NC State Wolfpack in the '74 semifinals. But these Bruins, who lost but one game all season―a 7-point loss at Notre Dame in January― still had three future NBA players on the roster: Curtis Rowe, future 76er Henry Bibby, and consensus All-America Sidney Wickes. The 'Cats … not so much. Indeed, for the entire regular season, they weren't even the best team in the city. That honor went to the 3rd-ranked, Ivy League (!) Penn Quakers who, after going 25-2 in 1969-70, finished the 1970-71 regular season at 26-0. Led by Bob Morse and future NBA players Corky Calhoun and Dave Wohl, the Quakers easily swept the City Series, including a 78-70 win over the 'Cats on January 23 at the Palestra. Indeed, for most of the season Villanova probably wasn't even the city's second-best team. When they lost to Ken Durrett's LaSalle Explorers, 73-69, at the Palestra on February 13, the Explorers stood at 14-2 and were ranked 10th in the nation (A devastating knee injury to Durrett after 21 games for all practical purposes ruined LaSalle's season and derailed what looked to be NBA superstardom for Durrett). And not far behind were their most heated rivals, the St. Joe Hawks who, after a slow start, rebounded to win 19 games and make the NCAA tourney after beating LaSalle in the Mid-Atlantic Conference tournament.

Villanova's success in 1971 was not totally surprising. Led by 3-time All-Big 5 player and 2nd Team All America forward Howard Porter, what they lacked in depth they made up for with an estimable, iron man starting five that also included front court stars Hank Siemiontkowski and Clarence Smith, and future NBA backcourt players Chris Ford and Tom Inglesby. And they did what UCLA couldn't: on February 11, they defeated Notre Dame, 99-81, at the Villanova Field House (cheekily dubbed the "Cat House" by most Philadelphians). But when they lost their next game, the aforementioned 73-69 City Series thriller against LaSalle at the Palestra, they stood at 15-6 and dropped out of the national Top 20. It was to be their last loss of the season prior to March 27.

After defeating Boston College, 90-77, on March 2 to end the season at 20-6, they snuck into the 25-team NCAA tourney and were put in the East Regional. Their first game was played at the Palestra against their city and "Holy War" arch-rivals, the Jesuit St. Joseph's Hawks. Led by Porter's 26 points and 18 rebounds, the Main Line's Augustinian Wildcats easily dispatched the Hawks, 93-75, with Siemiontkowki adding 23 points and Inglesby 20 to offset Hawks' star Mike Bantom's 20. At this point the going would ostensibly get tougher. They would next play 26-2, 9th-ranked Fordham at Reynolds Auditorium in Raleigh. But, with Porter scoring 25 to lead all five starters in double figures, the Rams proved no more difficult, as the 'Cats moved out to an 11-point halftime lead and coasted to an 85-75 triumph.

This led to the East Regional Final and a rematch with Penn, who had upped their record to 28-0 by defeating Duquesne and blowing out 6th-ranked South Carolina in the tourney's first two rounds. What ensued was the most shocking game I have ever watched (and that includes the Eagles' victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII). The 'Cats opened up a 41-16 lead in the first half before expanding it to 59-22 in the second, ultimately coasting to a 90-47 blowout. Porter exploded for 35 points and 15 rebounds, Siemiontkowski added 20 and Smith 15, while no Quaker even reached double figures. It was the single greatest team performance I have ever witnessed in college basketball, with the possible exception of Villanova's 1985 championship game victory over Patrick Ewing's Georgetown Hoyas.

In the semi-finals, Villanova would face Jim McDaniels and 7th-ranked Western Kentucky. Despite the Hilltoppers attempting 32 more shots and grabbing 11 more rebounds than the 'Cats, Villanova prevailed, 92-89, in double overtime, as Siemiontkowski played the greatest game of his career, scoring 31 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, while Porter added 22 and 16. This put Villanova in the final against UCLA.

By this point, my youthful enthusiasm for my hometown team reached a point hitherto reserved for Jack Ramsey's great St. Joe's teams of '65 and '66, both of whom ultimately let me down in the tourney. I truly believed, after the Penn game and the nail-biter against Western Kentucky, that they would prevail. Sure, Sidney Wickes was the consensus player of the year, but he was no Alcindor! But, as seemed inevitable to a young Philadelphia sports fan disappointed by the Hawks of '65-'66, not to mention one whose first season of following the Phillies was the ill-fated 1964, things immediately didn't go as I had hoped. Wooden's teams were always prepared, and they were prepared, as almost all others were not, for Jack Kraft's famous 2-3 zone defense. Indeed, the Bruins' two best players, Rowe and Wickes, were held to a combined (!) 15 points, but UCLA couldn't seem to miss―they shot 55% from the field for the game―and nobody was prepared for the career-best performance of center Steve Patterson, a 13-a-game scorer who exploded for 29 on 13-18 shooting. Meanwhile, nobody for Villanova save for Porter and Siemiontkowski could hit the broad side of a barn. When UCLA opened up a 45-37 halftime lead, my hopes had dwindled considerably.

But then Wooden made what, though it appeared to be a sound decision on paper, turned out to be a mistake. For the second half, Wooden made the decision to stall, going to a four corner offense (remember, these were the days before a shot clock) in order to force 'Nova out of their zone into a man-to-man. But this backfired, as Porter et al. showed themselves more athletic than the Bruins. The 'Cats steadily-but-slowly whittled away at the lead, until they came within three, 63-60, with a minute to play. Alas, Porter missed a 15-foot jumper and UCLA escaped with a 68-62 win and their 5th straight championship. Porter, however, who scored 25 in this, his last game, went away with the Most Outstanding Player trophy for the tournament.

But even this was not to be. Rumors had circulated for a couple of months that Porter had signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Condors of the ABA, which would, if true, have made him ineligible. When the Chicago Bulls of the NBA drafted him, the Condors objected, and the agreement he had signed with the Condors in December was made public. As a result, he was stripped of his Most Outstanding Player award and Villanova was forced to forfeit all their games dating back to December 16, 1970. Hence both the award and the runner-up slot for the tourney are officially "vacated" in the record books. But all of us who watched the game, let alone those of us with an emotional investment in the team, will never forget what happened on the court that day in the Astrodome.

Porter, it seems to me, having watched the Big 5 for 56 years, remains the 5th-best player I ever saw play in the unofficial association, behind only the aforementioned Durrett, LaSalle's Lionel Simmons, St. Joe's Jameer Nelson, and Villanova's Kyle Lowry. And this is out of dozens who eventually played in the NBA. Porter himself, though never achieving the stardom anticipated for him because of an inability fully to transform himself from a back-to-the basket post player to NBA small forward, nevertheless played seven years in the league, three times averaging more than 10 points a game. His best season came with Detroit in 1976-77, when he averaged 13.2 points and 5.9 rebounds. One thing that never left him was his beautiful rainbow jumper, which he learned from reading a book by NBA legend Oscar Robertson.

Villanova, of course, has now made it to the Sweet Sixteen in its 31st trip to the tournament in the ensuing 50 years. Nine times it has reached the Regional Finals, has made the Final Four four times, and won the National Championship in 1985, 2016, and 2018. This record is nothing short of astonishing for a smallish Catholic University with only a D-2 football program. Porter, meanwhile, struggled mightily after the end of his playing days, despite having graduated on time with his degree back in 1971. He had problems with cocaine, and ended up sleeping at his mother's house while managing a 7-11 store in Sarasota, Florida. Eventually, he seemed to manage to escape his problems, moving to Minneapolis―in his words, he was the only person in America who ever moved from Florida to Minnesota!―and becoming a probation officer. However, on the night of May 18, 2007, Porter called on a prostitute in St. Paul, who led him to an apartment in which two men were waiting to rob him. After assaulting him, they dumped him in a Minneapolis alleyway, where he was discovered the next day and died a week later at the age of 58. This was a sad, sobering end to the life of one of my favorite players. But my memory still recalls vividly his exploits of 50 years ago, and that sweet jumper of his swishing through the net.

Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 3b

I was raised and schooled in a strand of Protestant evangelical Fundamentalism known as "Dispensationalism," a method of reading Scripture popularized in the late 19th century by lawyer/politician-turned-Congregationalist pastor and Bible teacher C. I. Scofield, whose immensely popular Scofield Reference Bible was published by Oxford University Press in 1909. What distinguished old school Dispensationalism was its relentlessly literalist hermeneutic, which insisted that Old Testament promises and prophecies―even of the apocalyptic variety―should be understood "normally," i.e., literally, precisely the way 20th century readers in Britain and America would do by default. Thus YHWH's covenant promises to Abraham (Genesis 12, 15), David (2 Samuel 7), and to Judah mired in Babylonian captivity (Jeremiah 31) were yet to be fulfilled for the ethnic people of Israel and not―in conscious distinction from historic Christian tradition, not least of the Reformed tradition―in the context of the church, except insofar as additional aspects of the promise were, in the "progress of revelation," made clear via the authors of the New Testament.

Hence, the promise to David of a "son" who would reign over a "forever" kingdom (2 Samuel 7:11-16) referred to kingdom that was, as was David's, both earthly and political, a static realm more than it would be a dynamic reign or kingly rule. Thus, when John the Baptist and then Jesus began proclaiming an imminent kingdom of God/heaven in 1st century Palestine, the referent was, to the old school Dispensationalists, clearly to this promised and long-awaited political kingdom. And, as we saw in our previous post, this was certainly the understanding of Jesus' first hearers, some of whom, according to the Fourth Evangelist, intended to install him as king by force after they witnessed the staggering "sign" of his multiplying the loaves and fish along the shores of the Sea of Galilee (John 6:15). It was also obviously the understanding of the bemused, not-worried-at-all Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate who, after hearing Jesus' claim to a kingdom "not from this world" (John 18:33), nonetheless cynically identified Jesus as "King of the Jews" in a sign placed on the gibbet over Jesus as he was crucified as a Messianic pretender (John 19:19).

The problem is, of course, that this political kingdom never materialized. The explanation offered by the old school Dispensationalists was that "the Jews"―an unwitting assimilation of John's use of the expression hoi ʼIoudaioi throughout his Gospel―by rejecting Jesus' offer of this kingdom, missed out on their window of opportunity, as a result of which this kingdom was "postponed" until Jesus' second advent, at which time it would be set up and last for 1000 years with Jesus reigning in person from Jerusalem. On this reading, in terms of God's ultimate, eternal purposes, in 5/4 BCE Jesus did not come in order to serve in the capacity of king, but rather as the "suffering servant" of Isaiah 52:13-53:12. His offer of the kingdom (and its preordained rejection) was the divinely-ordained way to get Jesus to the cross in order to fulfill his role as the Suffering Servant.* Jesus is both Suffering Servant and Messiah-King, to be sure, but these roles, though performed by the same person, are done so at different times and in different contexts.

Such an inelegant "solution" to the vagaries of salvation-history betrays the good theological instincts that many of the old Dispensationalists had. But the problem isn't mere inelegance. More problematic is that it runs aground on the jagged rocks of Scripture itself, in our case Jesus' claim to be the "Good Shepherd" in John 10. Indeed, as we have seen, Jesus is the "Good Shepherd," that is, the promised Davidic shepherd-king of Ezekiel 34, precisely because he "lays down his life" for the sheep in the exercise of his role as shepherd. In other words, for John, Jesus' death by crucifixion on a Roman cross was a royal/messianic act.

This immediately raises the question of where John, and the early Christians more generally, got this notion of a suffering/dying king. Of course, at a general level one can say that it was Jesus' resurrection-vindication that precipitated a re-thinking and reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus' putative relation to, and claimed fulfillment of, them. Indeed, twice in John's Gospel, the author claims that after the resurrection the disciples "remembered" what had been written beforehand in Scripture and now believed had reference to events in Jesus' ministry. The first occurs in the context of Jesus' so-called "cleansing of the temple," front-loaded in John's telling of the story (John 2:17a, 22a), where the text at issue is Psalm 69:9: "Zeal for your house will consume me." The second is at the close of John's "Book of Signs" (John 12:16), where the disciples' are said to have retrospectively remembered Psalm 118:25-26 and Zechariah 9:9 with reference to Jesus' meek and not stereotypically king-like entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

John nowhere argues that Jesus, despite his rejection by the Jewish leaders and execution by the Romans, was the king or "Messiah" promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. Rather, it is for him a matter of presupposition, and thus the claim lies implicit in the substance of his narrative. Indeed, as Richard Hays reminds us,* John 12:12-16 is the only place where John ties Jesus' kingship/Messiahship to any particular Old Testament texts. By adding the expression "even the king of Israel" to the Psalm quotation and appending the quotation from Zechariah, John skillfully hints at the radical redefinition of kingship precipitated by the historisch events of Jesus' life more than a half century prior to his writing.

More telling, however, are the various texts in John's passion narrative which are said to have been "fulfilled" in Jesus:

• Psalm 41:9 ― A close, trusted friend would betray him (John 12:37-40)

• Psalm 69:4 (cf. 35:19) ― The "world" has "hated" both Jesus and his Father "without a cause" (dōrean) (John 15:24-25)

• Psalm 22:18 ― Soldiers divided up Jesus' clothes (John 19:23-24)

• Psalm 69:21 ― Jesus, upon claiming thirst, was offered vinegar to drink (John 19:28-29)

• Psalm 34:20; Zechariah 12:10 ― Jesus' legs were not broken, but his side was pierced (John 19:36-37)

Significantly, Jesus' last words on the cross in John are not, as the Markan tradition has it (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46; quoting Psalm 22:1), "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" but the single word tetelestai, "It has been completed" (John 19:30), which fits well with his relentless emphasis on the "fulfillment" of Scripture in these events (hina hē graphē plērōthēi). It is not so much a matter of predictions of what would eventually happen to Jesus, but of patterns that would find their climax, as designed, in the events of Jesus' life as he, through his death, brought God's purposes for his people to fruition.

That is why it is so important that, apart from the prophecy from Zechariah cited in John 19:37, all the Scriptures "fulfilled" in these events come from Davidic lament psalms, which of course had reference, at the most basic level, to experiences in the psalmist's life, which made him the paradigm of the "righteous sufferer." Particularly important is the two-fold reference to Psalm 69 in view of Jesus' reported use of the same psalm, noted above, in John 2 in connection with the identification of Jesus as the new Temple. By applying the psalm's first person utterance to Jesus, John thereby points to Jesus as the de facto speaker of the psalm;*** and by doing so makes the theological point that the sufferings of the psalmist are epitomized in the (greater) sufferings of Jesus. And when one considers that each of these psalms was traditionally attributed to David, the greater theological point, by no means limited to John, was this: Jesus, far from attaining his kingship and exercising its prerogatives in traditional fashion, fulfills the role of Messiah-King precisely through his embodiment of the role of the righteous sufferer adumbrated by David himself.

Thus far John, though perhaps significant for the relentlessness of this emphasis, is not unique in his conviction. After all, the Markan tradition, quoted above, quotes Psalm 22:1 as the content of Jesus' last words before "breathing his last."**** John, however, goes beyond this to make a staggering theological claim. Elsewhere in the New Testament it is routinely assumed that Jesus was enthroned as King―to use the language of the classic coronation Psalm, when the Father said to him, "You are my son; today I have become your father" (Ps 2:7)―at his resurrection (e.g., Romans 1:4) or ascension (with Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:5, 13). For John, however, as New Testament scholars uniformly recognize, the moment of Jesus' enthronement is brought forward temporally precisely to the moment of his crucifixion.***** At many spots he locates Jesus' "hour" (cf. John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1), that is, the hour of his "glorification" (John 12:23; 13:31), at the climax of his ministry, in particular his death at Passover in Jerusalem. He reinforces this with an idiosyncratic usage of the verb hypsoō to refer, in a classic case of double entendre, to Jesus' being "lifted up" both in terms of the method of his death by crucifixion and to the symbolism this method of death conveyed: Jesus' crucifixion was the moment of his being "lifted up" or exalted as Israel's king (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32, 34).

But how did John come to this apparently outrageous conclusion? The answer lies at the intersection of John's totalizing Christology, in which the Hebrew Bible in its entirety, both in its personages and in Israel's prescribed liturgical calendar, points forward in anticipation of Jesus and his work at the climax of salvation-history, and in his use of the classic rabbinic exegetical tool known as gezerah shavah. The key text is John 3:13-15, at a point where Jesus' conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus imperceptibly glides into a Johannine message directed to readers of a later generation and cultural location:

And no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so also must the Son of Man be lifted up, in order that every one who believes in him might have eternal life. (trans. JRM)

John's text clearly alludes to the story found in Numbers 21:4-9, where Moses erected a bronze snake to ward off death for those bitten by the poisonous snakes sent by God in response to the people's impatient grumbling. Interestingly, however, instead of the Torah's "put it up on a pole," John substitutes the verb "lifted up" (hypsōsen). Why? Because the latter verb is used in the opening words of the Fourth Servant Song of Isaiah 40-55:

Behold, my servant will understand, and will be exalted (hypsōthēsetai), and will be glorified (doxosthēsetai), and will be raised up on high exceedingly. (Isaiah 52:13, LXX [trans. JRM]).

By implicitly bringing these texts together in conversation, John does two things. First, he thereby interprets Jesus' death by crucifixion in terms of the work of the Isaianic servant, who made his life a guilt offering (Isaiah 53:10; MT ʼāšām; LXX peri hamartias, "sin offering" [cf. Romans 8:3]) and who, by bearing the sin of "many," justified them (Isaiah 53:11-12). In other words, Jesus' death is being portrayed as an atoning death, and those who "believe" in him receive eternal life as certainly as the Israelites who looked on the serpent in the desert had their lives preserved. Second, John's use of the verb hypsoō as the keyword uniting the passages indicates that he likewise views Jesus' death paradoxically as his exaltation.

There is one further text which completes the picture. This is the famous Daniel 7:13-14, from where the figure of the "Son of Man," Jesus' favorite, enigmatic self-referent, is derived:

I saw one like a human being
    coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
    and was presented before him.  To him was given dominion
    and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
    should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
    that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
    that shall never be destroyed. (NRSV)

In Daniel's vision, the "son of man" figure is, as the language would suggest, a human figure in contrast to the beasts who represented the Gentile nations who had held Israel and Judah under their thumbs for centuries. This figure, in Daniel's interpretation, refers to the nation of Israel, "the people of the Most High" (Daniel 7:27), who ultimately would be vindicated after their suffering. The significant point, for our purposes, is that this "son of man" ascends to the throne to be given dominion, the "glory" associated with the kingship granted to him. In John's interpretation of this vision, it is Jesus, the "Son of Man" and thus Israel's representative who, having descended from heaven in his incarnation (John 1:1-18), will thus ascend and be given this dominion and kingship by God precisely through his being "lifted up," exalted, in death on a Roman cross.******

Thus Christ's dual vocations as King and Suffering Servant are not to be artificially separated, let alone separated by 2000+ years. They may be notionally differentiated, of course, but it is good Johannine theology to understand that he is King precisely because he is the servant, that his messianic enthronement occurred at the very time he was apparently defeated by the Romans for the world to see. Going back to John 10, Jesus makes it clear that the beneficiaries of this death are his sheep. Who are these sheep? It is to that question that we turn in our next installment.

Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 3a

Bernhard Plockhorst (1825-1907),
"The Good Shepherd"

 

In our previous explorations into the image of Jesus as the "Good Shepherd" (here and here), we discussed the "parable(s)" (paroimia) spoken by Jesus in verses 1-5 and interpreted by him in verses 7-18, both in terms of its surface meaning and the Christological significance implied by his use of the figure. Jesus presents himself both as the "gate" for the sheep and as their genuine shepherd, in that he knows them intimately, leads them out to pasture for nourishment, and protects them from death at the hands of "wolves" by laying down his life for their benefit. What his hearers would have understood by this self-designation―and which, considering the question asked by the "Jews" in the Temple precincts at Hanukkah (John 10:24)―was an implicit claim to being the "one shepherd" promised for the eschaton in Ezekiel 34 (cf. Ezekiel 37:24). Jesus the Good Shepherd is Jesus the long-awaited Davidic ruler. In other words, the Johannine Jesus was making an implicitly messianic claim.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the "interpretation" offered by Jesus to the parable is his claim that being the "good" (agathos) shepherd entailed, not his ability to ward off devouring predators and, hence, his willingness to die to protect the sheep, but rather actually dying―tithēsin, "lays down," in the present tense!―for them to give them life. Not only is the notion of the death of the shepherd absent from the parable per se; one could also justifiably wonder whether warding off the sheep's enemies by staying alive to defeat them would be a more effective strategy for their protection than dying. Reflecting on this peculiarity simply underlines the obvious: John's presentation of the parable and its interpretation reflects the course Jesus' ministry took in history, a course John understood to be a theological necessity (dei) as well (John 3:14; cf. the Markan tradition of Jesus' prediction of Peter's denials of Jesus, quoting Zechariah 13:7: "I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered" [Mark 14:27]).

Large swaths of Second Temple Judaism, of course, anticipated an eschatological deliverer or deliverers of various types. Perhaps the most common hope was for a kingly "messiah" based on God's covenant promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, one who would militarily defeat the Gentiles who had oppressed them and kept them in de facto "exile" for six centuries and counting. One expression of this hope may be found in the (Pharisaic?) 1st-century BCE Psalms of Solomon 17:

See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of Dauid,

    at the time which you chose, O God, to rule over Israel your servant.

And gird him with strength to shatter in pieces unrighteous rulers,

    to purify Ierousalem from nations that trample her down in destruction,

in wisdom and righteousness, to drive out sinners from the inheritance,

    to smash the arrogance of the sinner like a potter's vessel,

to shatter all their substance with an iron rod,

    to destroy the lawless nations by the word of his mouth,

that, by his threat, nations flee from his presence,

    and to reprove sinners with the thought of their hearts

(Psalms of Solomon 17:21-25, NETS)

John, of course, like the Synoptic Evangelists that preceded him, wholeheartedly affirmed that Jesus was the "Messiah" or Davidic king for whom many Jews hoped. Near the close of his programmatic Prologue, he makes the cryptic, by no means perspicuous claim, "Because the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ" (= "Messiah," the Anointed One; John 1:17, trans. JRM). Then, in what looks like what was intended as the climax of the original form (first edition?) of the Gospel, John articulates his purpose for writing: "But these things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31, trans. JRM).

In between these bookend affirmations, many people confess Jesus to be this Messiah-King. Early on, one of John the Baptist's disciples, Andrew, upon seeing John pointing at Jesus as he was passing by and calling him the "Lamb of God," immediately left to follow Jesus. After spending the day with him, Andrew left to find his brother Simon (Peter), to whom he made the astounding claim, "We have found the Messiah (Messias), which, translated, is 'Christ'" (John 1:41, trans. JRM). The very next day, Jesus called on Philip to follow him; upon doing so, Philip found his friend Nathanael and told him they had found the one "promised by Moses and the prophets." After Jesus, by displaying an uncanny knowledge he could not have come to by ordinary means, allayed his initial skepticism that any good could "come from Nazareth," Nathanael confesses, "Rabbi, you are the son of God; you are the King of Israel" (John 1:49).* Later, in contrast to the Synoptics' record of the confession of Peter (Mark 8:29 et par.), John places the climactic confession of Jesus' identity on the lips of his friend Martha: "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world" (John 11:27, trans. JRM). Shortly after this Jesus is hailed as king by the crowds as he enters Jerusalem triumphally for the Passover, seated on a donkey's colt (John 12:12-15). Besides these confessions and acclamations, the narrative provides glimpses of discussions as to whether or not Jesus fit the bill for such a role―some hopeful, as with the Samaritan woman from Sychar (John 4:29); some merely inquisitive, as here in John 10; and at one other time, in a bit of classic Johannine implicit irony, dispute about how a would-be Messiah could come from Nazareth instead of Bethlehem (John 7:25-44).**

Most significant for our purposes, however, are two of the four texts in which the title "king" (basileus) is used in connection with Jesus. The first is John 6:15, where, after his "sign" of the feeding of the 5000, he quickly withdraws to solitude on the mountain when he came to realize "they were about to come and grab hold of him to make him king" (trans. JRM). Considering the fact that John has already tacitly identified Jesus as the "King of Israel" and indicated the latter's own implicit acceptance of the role, Jesus' scurrying off to the hills should not be understood as a spurning of the title, but rather as a rejection of the crowd's misunderstanding both of what genuine messianic kingship would entail and from whom it could be granted.***

The second reference is the famous confrontation between Jesus and the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate on Good Friday morning (John 18:33-38). In response to the "Jews'" charge that Jesus had claimed to be king, Pilate asks Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus' response to the man who had the political power over his life and death**** is a classic of ambivalence and redefinition. He first asks Pilate whether or not he came up with the question on his own or whether others had put him up to answer the question (18:34). Shortly he comes around to answering the question substantively:

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:36-37, NRSV)

Nowhere in John's Gospel before this incident does Jesus claim to be "king." By contrast, his preferred identification is as "son" to his "father." Even here, under direct questioning, he simply responds, "You say that I am a king" (sy legeis hoti basileus eimi). Yet, from the preceding verse, in which he claims a "kingdom," it is apparent that his reticence is due to ambivalence rather than denial. Yes, he is a king, but not the kind of one his adversaries―or, needless to say, Pilate himself― imagined or feared.***** His kingdom, Jesus memorably states, is not from this world (hē basileia hē emē ouk estin ek tou kosmou toutou); it is not from here (enteuthen) (18:36). It is certainly for the benefit of the world, and one day will be consummated on earth. But his kingdom differs from normal earthly kingdoms both in its authorization and execution; it is sourced in the realm from which he came and exercised in the service of truth rather than military power (18:37). For Jesus, as John narrates so forcefully, the path to his kingly throne and exercise of royal authority is the path that leads straight to the horrors of death on a gibbet on Calvary.

But how did John―or Jesus, for that matter―come to this alternative understanding of messianic kingship? To be sure, John, like all the writers of the New Testament, looked back at Jesus life, and from there back to the sacred texts of the Hebrew Bible, in light of the resurrection. As Richard Hays has so forcefully argued, he "read backwards" from Easter to re-examine those texts and discern within them patterns and foreshadowings earlier readers―and authors!―would certainly not have recognized.******

For John, Jesus the Good Shepherd would exercise his kingly role precisely by dying for the benefit of his sheep, not merely to protect them from devouring predators, but to give them life. He knew this from the events that took place in Jerusalem in 30/33 CE. Perhaps it is not without merit to ask what scriptural basis he had for making this extraordinary claim, counterintuitive and contrary to rampant contemporary expectations as it was. After all, texts such as Psalms of Solomon 17 were laced with scriptural allusions. Are they simply to be ignored? For that, we will have to wait for the next installment of this series.

Evangelicals and the Coronavirus Vaccines: Shame, Shame, Shame

Next week I am scheduled to receive my second Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. And I am thrilled. The prospect of finally, after one whole year (so far!), seeing light at the end of the tunnel and the beginning of the end of of a nightmarish lost year, of a full calendar year of having to move into my garage and keep socially distant from my kids and grandkids, is a thrill people of my age rarely experience.

Alas, one demographic isn't fully on board with the program and, consequently, may slow efforts to bring about the herd immunity necessary for the country to return to something resembling "normal." And I'm sure you're not shocked to hear that this group is white evangelical Christians. Last week, the Pew Research Center and YouGov for Yahoo News each released surveys on the state of vaccine acceptance in America. In each case the results were somewhat heartening, showing increased, though still suboptimal, levels of acceptance. The fly in the ointment was, of course, the fact that 36% of "white Republicans" and 30% of "white Americans with no college education" say they would "never" get the vaccine. Quite troubling, for those of us who are confessing Christians, is that only 54 percent of white evangelicals “definitely or probably” plan to get vaccinated. Worse, only 48 percent of white evangelicals said they would consider the community health effects “a lot” when deciding to be vaccinated. When compared with the 70 percent of Black Protestants, 65 percent of Catholics and 68 percent of unaffiliated Americans who answered the question affirmatively, the light this sheds on the thinking and, yes, morality, of these self-described "evangelicals," is troubling indeed.

Some evangelicals, thankfully, have responded to the horror of these revelations, including Washington Post columnist, former Bush 43 head speechwriter, and Wheaton College graduate Michael Gerson. Even more substantive was the newsletter written by the evangelical Presbyterian David French, in which he made the case that "Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is both an information problem and a spiritual problem (emphasis his)." He goes on:

Yes, you can and should flood the zone with more and better information about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, but we also need to flood the zone with better and more effective spiritual teaching about loving our neighbors and—critically—about trust, faith, and courage. 

"Low information" is, to be frank, not unexpected from this demographic. A 2017 survey by Statistica Research Department showed that only 15% of white evangelicals have earned 4-year college degrees, a far lower percentage than adherents of other Christian traditions or non-Christian faiths. It is also what I have found to be true in my own experience, where distrust of academic achievement and "elitism," even in matters of biblical and theological studies, has run rampant in the churches and even in the educational institutions with which I have been involved. And if this is true in theological matters, the problem is exponentially more severe in matters of science, whether it be biology, geology, astronomy, climate science, or―what matters now―virology and epidemiology.

To be sure, in my efforts to disabuse students or evangelical acquaintances of such opinions, I have often been reminded of Paul the Apostle's words to the Corinthians:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe …

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18-21, 26-29, NRSV)

Of course, to use one of the most brilliant men of his age, using learned rhetoric to reinforce the Corinthians' belief in the counterintuitive―for both Jews and Greeks!―"wisdom" of the Christian faith, is self-defeating. God's elective choice may may not take learning into consideration, but that fact has nothing to say about the desirability of training one's mind academically, and of valuing expertise in all fields whenever and wherever it is to be found. Indeed, the history of the church, from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther to John Calvin to Jonathan Edwards to Joseph Barber Lightfoot to Martin Hengel to N. T. Wright, or―to move into the scientific sphere, from Blaise Pascal to Lord Kelvin to James Clerk Maxwell to George Washington Carver to Werner Heisenberg to Francis Collins―demonstrates this beyond dispute. Where one gets one's information matters, and there is no excuse for anyone in the Western world, in this day and age, to fall for presupposition-friendly disinformation, let alone crackpot conspiracy theories.

It is French's second accusation, however, that really got my attention. In their articles, both Gerson and French refer to the aforementioned Collins, the UNC (MD)- and Yale (PhD)-educated Director of the National Institutes for Health and former Director of the Human Genome Project. Gerson cites an interview Collins had with the Christian Broadcasting Network, in which he said, “This is a ‘love your neighbor’ moment, where we all have a chance to do something not just for ourselves but for everybody around us.” 

Jesus, when asked by a scribe what the "first" or "foremost" (prōtos) commandment of the Torah was, answered:

Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31, NRSV).

I have often been disappointed with many of my fellow Christians, most notably evangelicals, who seems genuinely confused about what being a Christian means or entails. Indeed, many confuse being a Christian with becoming one, and thus say things like, "I'm no different from anybody else; I'm just forgiven." This may have about it the air of humility, but it is bad, indeed very bad, theology. Being a Christian means more than being a sinner with free, God-given fire insurance for the inevitable day of one's demise. Years ago I remember reading the late Anglican theologian Philip Edgcumbe Hughes's commentary on Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. The book remains packed up in a box somewhere in my daughter's attic, but I well remember the gist of what he wrote on the famous 2 Corinthians 5:17. Whereas many, influenced by the cadences of the old King James Version, have gloried in being "new creatures" as Christians, Hughes rightly saw otherwise. Paul's text is cryptic: ei tis en christos, kainē ktisis ("If anyone is in Christ, [there is a] new creation"). Hughes captured the thought well, to the effect that anyone who is united to Christ by faith is a reborn microcosm of the eschatological macrocosm of the new heavens and new earth. When I read this, a light bulb went on in my mind, giving me one of my first glimpses of Paul's theology of the new creation. A Christian is indeed such an eschatological microcosm because he or she is now a member of the eschatological, worldwide family promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 (cf. Galatians), and has been given the eschatological gift of the Spirit as the down payment (arrabōn) guaranteeing their full inheritance to be received at the resurrection on the last day (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:14).

What matters is this. No one, as Paul argues forcefully in Galatians, is "justified" or becomes a member of this eschatological covenant people of God by adherence to the "works of the Torah." But the Torah still matters, and not merely for antiquarian interest.* When Judah had been taken into exile by Babylon, YHWH spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, promising a new covenant, unlike the one promulgated at Sinai, in which "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV). Likewise, the exilic prophet Ezekiel relays this promise from YHWH:  "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:27-28, NRSV).

The defining characteristic of people who would be beneficiaries of this new covenant would be an interiorized Torah, both motivating and enabling them to live in ways that please God. Paul the Apostle reflects these texts when he writes, in his most important letter:

For what the Law was unable to do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering. He condemned sin in that flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4, trans. JRM)

This is what it means to be a Christian. To be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth necessarily entails a commitment to fulfilling "the righteous requirement of the Law," summed up by Jesus, in classic rabbinic fashion, in terms of the Shema and the love command. It is a Christian's duty, as a Christian, to be neighbors to everyone who comes across his or her path―cf. the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 10:25-37―including one's enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). And in the present circumstances, this means to wear a mask. It means to commit to social distancing. And it means to take the vaccine as soon as one can get it. Just do it.

Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 2

Last week I began a series focusing on the presentation of Jesus as the "Good Shepherd" in John 10. In it I discussed what, at least as far as I had been taught from childhood and conditioned by my ecclesial background, could be considered the "surface meaning" of the figure in John's Gospel. In his "interpretation" of the parable found in John 10:1-5, Jesus claims to be both the "gate" whereby the sheep enter the fold and the noble "shepherd" who both leads the flock to pasture and, by laying down his life for their benefit, protects them from perishing. As valid as this reading is and (thus) consonant with the theology found in the Gospel, it merely scratches the surface of the theological significance the author intends by employing the figure.

   William Dyce, Jesus the Good Shepherd (1859) 

Beginning in chapter 2, with the placement of Jesus' "cleansing" of the Temple at the outset of his ministry and the uniquely Johannine miracle at Cana of Galilee, it becomes clear that John is telling his story of Jesus in terms of Jesus' relation to the Judaism that provides the hermeneutical matrix within which his significance is to be understood. By changing the water associated with Jewish purity rituals to wine, he thereby signals the plenty of the eschatological age he would bring about (2:1-11); his body, which would be destroyed and, in three days, rebuilt, supersedes the Temple in Jerusalem as the locus of God's presence (2:12-22); he would provide the water of eternal life that satisfies thirst at a far deeper level than that provided by Jacob's well (4:13-15); most shockingly, his healing of a paralytic on the Sabbath signals that the age to come to which the weekly Sabbaths pointed, the age of the resurrection, was even then being inaugurated (5:1-45).

Nowhere is this dynamic more clear than with regard to the various festivals that routinely pop up in the narrative. These are not simply time markers to provide historical context or verisimilitude to the proceedings. As always with John, his choice to include these stories is determined by their theological significance as pointers to Jesus. Indeed, the premise of John's understanding of the relation between Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures is found in a logion placed on the lips of Jesus himself: "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf" (John 5:39, NRSV, emphasis added).

So it is with the various festivals that punctuated Israel's yearly cycle of worship.  For John, the symbolism of these festivals was divinely designed to point eschatologically to Jesus, who embodied their significance and thus transcended and superseded them. This is true, first of all, with regard to Passover, mentioned repeatedly in the Gospel, not only in conjunction with Jesus' death, but also as the time signature for John's record of the twin signs of the Feeding of the 5000 and Jesus' Walking on the Sea.* Jesus, who was crucified at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, and whose bones were thus not broken (John 19:14, 28-37), not only is the true, eschatological paschal lamb of the hoped-for Second Exodus (John 1:29); his miraculous feeding of the 5000 is illustrative of his being the eschatological "bread from heaven" corresponding to the manna given to the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings (John 6:25-59), and his walking on the sea (6:16-21) corresponds to the Israelites' passing through the Sea of Reeds in their Exodus from bondage in Egypt.

The same is true of the harvest festival of Sukkoth (Tabernacles), designed to commemorate the wilderness wanderings prior to the Israelites' entrance into land under Joshua. This festival featured prominently in the prophet Zechariah's apocalyptic vision of the day, following the judgments of the anticipated Day of YHWH, when "The LORD will be king over the whole earth" (Zech 14:9) and Sukkoth would be celebrated, not only by Israel, but by the survivors from among the nations as well (Zech 14:16). Most significant is Zechariah's description of that day:

And there shall be continuous day (it is known to the LORD), for at evening time there hall be light. On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter (Zech 14:7-8, NRSV).

As a result of this expectation, the rituals at Sukkoth included, in addition to the reading of the Torah, both the pouring of water and the lighting of lamps. Thus it is no accident that it was at Tabernacles that Jesus both encouraged listeners to come to drink of him as the one from whose belly the promised "streams of living water" would flow (John 7:37-38)** and proclaimed himself to be "the light of the world" who would bring "the light of life" to his followers (John 8:12), illustrating that claim by his healing of a blind man on the Sabbath at the festival (John 9:1-12).

It is not surprising, in view of the Jewish hope for a new Exodus, that Sukkoth would kindle hopes for the promised eschatological deliverer. Hence no one should be surprised that Jesus' teaching at the feast kindled speculation as to whether he could be the Messiah (John 7:25-44). Neither is it insignificant that Jesus tells his parable in John 10 in connection with his dispute with the Pharisees consequent upon his restoration of the blind man's sight (John 9:13-41). The "spiritually blind" Pharisees who quibble about the timing of the healing and thus conclude that Jesus is not from God (John 9:16) are, on the face of it, the targets of Jesus' barbs in describing the "thieves and bandits" who came into the fold the wrong way and were not listened to by the sheep (John 10:1, 8; cf. 9:35-39, where the formerly blind man believes in Jesus, thus not taking the counsel of the Pharisees).*** By contrast, Jesus as the Good Shepherd is the fulfillment of what Sukkoth both signified and anticipated.

The same is true as well with regard to the Festival of Hanukkah (ḥǎnukkǎ; Gk. enkainia, "renewal") (John 10:22-42), where Jesus also refers back to his previous discussion about sheep. Hanukkah, of course, was not among the three prescribed pilgrimage festivals, celebrating, as it did, the rededication of the Temple by Judah Maccabee in 165 BCE after it had been desecrated for three years by the Syrian ruler, Antiochus IV "Epiphanes," culminating in the "abomination of desolation," the sacrifice of a pig on an altar to Zeus in the Holy Place (1 Maccabees 4:36-61; on the "desolating sacrilege," cf. Daniel 9:26-27; 11:31). Alas, the renewal of Jewish temple worship and political independence was short-lived; indeed, the steady spiritual decay of the Hasmonean priesthood long pre-dated the loss of political independence to the Romans under Pompey in 63 BCE, and the death of the Idumean "King of the Jews" Herod the Great in 4 BCE led to a split-up of his kingdom and ultimately direct Roman rule of Judea through prefects beginning in 6 CE. The yearly celebration of Hanukkah brought to the fore the suboptimal situation in Palestine and thus focused hopes on the promised ultimate deliverance from Gentile overlordship through the Davidic ruler promised in Scripture.

Hence it is not coincidental that John sets the stage by locating Jesus in "Solomon's Colonnade" (John 10:23), the enclosed cloister on the east edge of the Temple Mount. Solomon, of course, was David's Son and successor, the likely immediate subject of David's famous Royal Psalms (e.g., Psalms 2 and 110) and prototype of the promised "Son of David" who would fulfill the covenant made with his father (2 Samuel 7:12-16) and reign as king in Jerusalem. The Evangelist is setting the scene for the question which follows: "So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, 'How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly' (John 10:24, NRSV)."

In effect, Jesus had in fact already answered their question, but he had done so obliquely by using the figure of the Good Shepherd.**** Apparently, his hearers got the message, but wanted to make sure they were hearing him correctly. Indeed, it is well that Jesus cloaked his claim in this vivid metaphor, for, as N. T. Wright says, "the statement was as dangerous a claim as Jesus could have made."***** The Jews were certainly not alone in the ancient world in picturing rulers as shepherds. But the image, evocative as it would have been in such a pastoral society, whose greatest historical king, David, had been a shepherd in his youth, had particular resonance in their prophetic literature of the exilic period when the people were scattered as sheep due to the spiritual malfeasance of the shepherds that had been placed over them.

Of particular significance is the classic chapter 34 of the Book of  Ezekiel. There YHWH, through the prophet, excoriates the nation's shepherds for their failure to protect the flock, which as a result had been scattered to the four winds. In response, YHWH makes this promise: 

For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land (Ezekiel 34:11-13, NRSV).

What follows speaks directly to what can be referred to as the nation's messianic hope:

I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken … 

They shall know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord GOD. You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture and I am your God, says the Lord GOD (Ezekiel 34: 23-24, 30-31).

Jesus the Good Shepherd is Jesus the promised Davidic King, the Messiah expected by large swaths of Palestinian Jews in the first century CE. But did the Jesus of John's Gospel fit their expectations? Did he even intend to do so? John chapter 10 has much to say in that regard. That will be the focus of my next installment.

QAnon, Failed Expectations, and the Return of Christ

 From Amanda Marcotte in Salon yesterday:

The day of "The Storm" keeps moving for QAnon, the loosely-affiliated cult that sprang up online with Donald Trump as its god-like savior figure. At first, the belief was January 6 was the prophesied day when Trump would supposedly ascend to his true power and have all their political enemies, who QAnon adherents believe are blood-drinking pedophiles, arrested. After all, Trump himself repeatedly signaled that January 6 was "go" time and the faithful did as they were told, storming the Capitol in an effort to turn the prophecy into reality.

That failed and many QAnoners found themselves in handcuffs while their leader, Trump, escaped without consequence. But while some got disillusioned and dropped off, many more just did what cultists do and moved the day of the prophecy down the calendar, to March 4 as the new day for Trump would ride into town and kick Joe Biden out of the White House, kicking off "The Storm" for real.

As Giovanni Russonello reports in the New York Times, however, as March 4 grew closer, the QAnon ringleaders started to get cold feet, knowing as they did that "reports" that Trump would take the White House that day were pulled directly out of their nethers. Many of them "started throwing cold water on the March 4 idea, though it had been theirs in the first place," he reports. They realized "it might not be wise to bring a group of fervid supporters to Washington for the arrival of a leader who doesn't show up," and started instead to float conspiracy theories blaming "antifa" — which is the bogeyman they blame most things on — for stirring the pot around the March 4 date in the first place. 

(Read the whole article here).

The QAnon conspiracy "theory" is patently absurd. Not only is its description of the bogeymen (bogeypersons?) ridiculous on its face; its portrayal of Donald Trump―the amoral, narcissistic, profoundly ignorant and incompetent Donald Trump!―as the hero of the story would cause uproarious laughter were it not so pathetic … and damning to the so-called "Christian" nationalists who comprise an outsize number of its adherents. Marcotte's article was sobering in its reinforcement of the realization that the most personally invested of these adherents will, instead of using the theory's failure to materialize as evidence of fraudulent wishful thinking, instead reinterpret the prophecy, either altering the date of its hoped-for fulfillment or allegorize it in some fashion.

What also struck me, amazingly for the first time, is how the QAnon theory of Trump's coming vindication and subjugation of his enemies looks like a secularized and transferred version of the Danielic vision of the "coming of the Son of Man" on "the clouds of heaven" to receive an everlasting kingdom from the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13-14). This vision, which promised ultimate vindication of the oppressed and exiled people of Israel/Judah, was of course taken up by Jesus, who used the expression "Son of Man" as an enigmatic self-referent and who spoke of the future "coming of the Son of Man" in his famous Eschatological Discourse during the last week of his life before he was "crucified under Pontius Pilate" (Mark 13:26 et par.). This prophecy, of course, became the basis for the early Christian hope of a second "coming" or parousia of Christ at the end of the age to establish his kingdom "on earth as in heaven."*

The earliest record of Jesus' prophecy is found in Mark's Gospel, written (most likely) either immediately before or after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In Mark's version of the Eschatological Discourse, Jesus says, somewhat to the surprise (and disregard) of many later Christians: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" Mark 13:32, NRSV).** That ostensibly clear statement hasn't stopped intrepid preachers from confidently setting dates for Christ's return, whether in the 19th century (famously, the Baptist preacher William Miller, who set the date for some time in 1843; after the so-called "Great Disappointment" precipitated by its failure to materialize, Millerism spawned a family tree including the evangelical, orthodox, and Millenarian Advent Christian sect, the unorthodox Seventh Day Adventists and, further down the line, among others the infamous Branch Davidians) or the 20th/21st (e.g., the erstwhile Christian Reformed radio preacher Harold Camping). Camping is especially instructive. Just like QAnon believed Trump would be vindicated on 6 January and later postponed the date to 4 March, Camping did likewise. After initially predicting Christ would return on 6 September 1994, and then, what it didn't happen, 29 September and then 2 October, Camping finally settled on 21 May 2011. He died in 2013, needless to say without the parousia having come. I wonder, how do folks indoctrinated in such ways respond when these predictions are demonstrated to be false (see here for a short discussion on the matter)?

This inevitably brings up the question about the doctrine of Christ's return itself. When I was studying New Testament in graduate school, one hoary notion, perpetuated in critical studies for generations, concerned the generative effect of the so-called "Delay of the Parousia." Hermann Samuel Reimarus*** in the 18th century and Albert Schweitzer**** at the beginning of the 20th, the bookends of the first so-called "Quest of the Historical Jesus," each saw Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who forecast his own imminent return and the end of the world. Of course, if he did so he was definitively shown by subsequent events to have been mistaken (Of course, the two scholars came to different conclusions about the significance of this: Reimarus viewed later, apostolic Christianity to be a fabrication; Schweitzer famously viewed Jesus as a hero to be emulated, leading to his own missionary work in Africa). In the 20th century, the notion that the delay of the parousia caused a massive re-think and reformulation of developing/evolving "Christianity" dominated the academy, particularly in Germany.***** The result of this postulated "delay of the parousia," so the theory goes, was the development of what they referred to as "Early Catholicism." In this scenario, the "church," which was initially characterized by "charismatic" leadership in the short interval before the parousia, later supplanted this Spirit-directed structure with a more formal sacramentalism and an "official" ministry geared for the long haul. Such "Early Catholicism," so the theory goes, is already evident in later New Testament texts as Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 2 Peter, and came to its full flowering in the early 2nd century letters of Ignatius of Antioch.

Now, it is of course plausible to see something of a development in the Apostle Paul's outlook regarding Christ's return. In one of his earliest letters, 1 Thessalonians, written ca. 50 CE, when discussing the parousia with a young community worried that dead believers would miss out on Jesus' return, Paul attempts to comfort them by speaking of himself and the Thessalonians as "we who are alive (hēmeis hoi zōntes [present tense]), who are left (hoi perileipomenoi [present tense]) until the coming (parousian) of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:15). From this one could perhaps surmise that the apostle fully expected to live straight through to that event. In later epistles, however, he seems to allow for the possibility that he might pass from the scene in the interim (e.g., 2 Corinthians [ca. 56 CE] 5:1-10; Philippians [ca. 55 CE {if written from prison in Ephesus} or 62 CE {if written from prison in Rome}] 1:19-26; note also the valedictory recorded [posthumously?] in 2 Timothy 4:6-8). Yet, despite the plausibility, which anyone who has been a Christian for decades can relate to, one wonders whether we are reading too much into his early word of consolation to the Thessalonians. An imminent expectation, to be sure, but one can hardly exclude the distinct possibility that all he was expressing was the hope of still being alive when the saints meet (apantēsis) the Lord in the air. After all, even in the later Philippians he can affirm that "the Lord is near" (ho kyrios engys).

The same can be said regarding the even more difficult saying of Jesus about the "coming" of the Son of Man. What may seem the "clear" meaning of this text to 21st century Christians, especially those raised in apocalyptic, millenarian circles, is anything but clear or easy to interpret. To begin with, the original prophecy in Daniel speaks not of a "coming" of the representative Son of Man figure down to earth, but rather up to the throne of God to receive authority to reign and judge. This "coming" was the act of vindication of the people of Israel who had been under the thumb of Gentile powers for centuries. Jesus, by referring to himself in this way, was implicitly claiming the role of Messiah―the representative Israel-in-miniature, if you will―whose reign would bring the nation's history to its climax. But questions remain: When did/will this "coming" occur? What will this "coming" look like here on earth? Would it arrive in the events preceding the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE within a generation of his uttering these words? Would it come at the end of the age, when he returns visibly and in person to consummate the kingdom inaugurated in his death and resurrection? Or is the answer, "Both," with both initial and ultimate fulfillments intended, even if the human Jesus, like the prophets of old, did not distinguish the two? The issues are far too complex to settle in a short blog post (or even in a book!). The point is that dates were not set, either by Jesus or Paul, for the return of the Lord. 

I will let the recently departed James D. G. Dunn have the last word:

Most intriguing, however, is the continuity/discontinuity between the expectation of Jesus himself and that of the post-Easter believers. To be sure, as already noted, it could be argued that Jesus' expectation was at least in part fulfilled by what Christians believe happened to Jesus (his resurrection and exaltation). But the whole issue of the first Christians' imminent expectation of the return (parousia) of Jesus from heaven remains unclear, both as to its origin (did Jesus himself expect to return?) and as to the effect of its disappointment ('the delay of the parousia'). In fact, there is little indication in the literature of the first generation that 'the delay of the parousia' was regarded as a problem: a degree of imminent expectation seems to have been a sustained feature of Paul's own Christ-devotion to the end (e.g., Phil. 4.5), and James is remembered as warning that 'the Judge is standing at the doors! (Jas. 5.9). But to what extent did the disasters of the 60s change things? The deaths of the three first-generation leaders and the disaster of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE must surely have influenced Christian eschatological thinking in at least some measure ― particularly if Jesus' own prediction of the temple's destruction and the coming of the Son of Man were already seen in Christian circles as heralding the end time.******

One of my earliest memories is of listening to my dad preaching (from 1 Thessalonians 4, as it so happens) and saying. "We're not looking for signs; we're looking for the Savior!"  That's as it should be, if one wants to be a "biblical" Christian. So-called "imminence" does not imply immediacy. It simply means that there are no definitive signs of its coming, which could occur at any time. It will come, as Paul wrote, "as a thief in the night" (1 Thess 5:2), as people go about their business in seeming normalcy. Jesus himself claims not to have known when the "coming" of the Son of Man would occur. It would be presumptuous for any of us to claim such knowledge, would it not?

If I Hear One More Lament about "Canceling" …

I had planned on writing another post on John 10 today, but the interminable fusillade of complaints over the past week by the incessant culture war grievance factory known as the Republican Party and its tethered right-wing infotainment complex over "cancel culture" made me change my mind. I can't take it any more. Hence, John 10 can wait.

It's no longer simply offensive politicians who, though still holding office and free to blare their nonsense to millions of folks on Fox, claim to being "canceled" by the nefarious and, one would surmise, all-powerful Left. Now, to listen to such towering intellects as Donald Trump, Jr., Tucker Carlson, and Glenn Beck, irreplaceable icons of Western Civilization like the Muppets, Mr. Potato Head, and even Dr. Seuss―horror of horrors !―are being sacrificed at the altar of "political correctness."

The mendacious Texas Senator Ted Cruz, of Cancun infamy, is representative of those expressing faux outrage at such developments. With regard to the putative "canceling" of the beloved Dr. Seuss, he tweeted this yesterday:

Of course, not one of these so-called "cancelings" is anything of the sort … which means that all such claims are either ignorant or disingenuous, made in bad faith (Kevin McCarthy, Josh Hawley, and Ted Cruz, I'm looking at you). For instance, the "canceling" of the Muppets consisted of Disney's adding disclaimers to 18 episodes because of potentially offensive content. Not one episode was removed from circulation. Likewise, all those getting a case of the vapors over Hasbro's rebranding of the Potato Head brand, bemoaning a supposed gender-neutral apocalypse, should note that it is the brand, not the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head figures themselves, which is being rebranded in the interests of inclusivity.

Perhaps the most ridiculous "controversy" concerns the beloved Dr. Seuss, about which the aforementioned Cruz waxed so inelegantly and untruthfully in his tweet yesterday (and, gathering by my Facebook feed yesterday, has precipitated the most misdirected outrage among the "base"). Did Joe Biden―to anybody who's been around the past 50 years, think about that for a minute: Joe Biden!―or the Democrats "cancel" Dr. Seuss, as Cruz implied? Did they ban his books from being sold or force libraries to remove them from their collections? Of course not. Actually, it was Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Inc. who made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of 6 of the author's 36 children's books―none of them the famous ones like Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham that keep finding their way into horrified posts critical of the "canceling"―because, to quote the company, "These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."

I would like to ask all these folks critical of this decision whether or not they have taken the time to look at the drawings in question. I have. And the portrayals of, for instance, Africans and Chinese are indeed demeaning and redolent of a white supremacy, or at least normalcy, that is, to be blunt, unacceptable in the de facto multicultural global environment in which we live in the 21st century.

The controversy reminds me of one which has swirled over the past decade concerning the Cleveland Indians' decision to abandon their longstanding Chief Wahoo logo from their caps and uniforms. Truth be told, in my earlier years I always liked the cartoonish insignia, blithely insensitive in my comfortable whiteness to its offensiveness to the people it represented. I have had to repent of that insensitivity, one precipitant of said change of heart being the following trenchant image:

(Image credit: Jesse Alkire)

Insensitive images, like insensitive words, hurt. And thus they should be avoided―"canceled," if you will―at all costs, no matter how venerable. To those who decry the decisions of Disney, Hasbro, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and all others who are rethinking and correcting their former practices and products, I would like to ask why they react so viscerally to such changes? Who is hurt by such corporate calculations? Washington Post columnist Philip Bump rightly noted in his column on Tuesday with regard to Dr. Seuss:

The answer, of course, is people who perceive criticism of the casual racism of the past as criticism of their own behavior or as a reminder of how the world around them is changing. It’s not that some Dr. Seuss books are being taken out of rotation. It’s that Seuss is a benchmark for a particular sort of American upbringing. Calling out Seuss’s — infrequent! — racist imagery is therefore an attack on that view of American identity.

To my Christian friends, do you not see how such matters as gender inequality and assumed white hegemony are inherently offensive, not to mention incompatible with genuine Christian faith? (If you still live as if it were 1955 and don't see these things when they appear right before your eyes, the lenses through which you read the world need to be changed.) Is being a "conservative" with a "traditional American" worldview an end in itself, more important than being good? Or, worse, if you do see these things, do you not care? Are patriarchalism and white supremacy hills you are willing to die for? If so, you need more than a change of cultural lenses.

One more thing. The current right wing assault on "cancel culture" is not simply ignorant and/or disingenuous. It is inherently hypocritical as well. For, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez pointed out a couple of weeks ago, "conservatives have a long and illustrious history of their own cancel culture." One is reminded of the delicious irony that at last weekend's CPAC conference in Orlando, the theme of which was "America Uncanceled," one scheduled speaker, the online commenter, Young Pharaoh, had to be canceled because of expressly anti-Semitic comments, such as the claims that "Judaism is a complete lie" and "made up for political gain." It seems such "conservatives," though they may have tolerated a Golden Calf, of sorts, in the gold fiberglass statue of Donald Trump that was made in China, at least had some standards. But demonstrating those minimal standards gave the lie to their constant whinging about "cancel culture." "Canceling" is fine, one supposes, so long as it doesn't hold them to account for their own characteristic transgressions. One also might ask Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, Adam Kinzinger, and Jaime Herrera Beutler how efficient the G.O.P "cancel machine" has been the past month.

The same could be said of conservative Christian institutions as well. Ask yourself how long professors who espouse such things as the "New Perspective on Paul," egalitarianism/mutuality, a redemptive movement hermeneutic, or―even worse!―vote for a Democratic candidate will generally keep their jobs, no matter how rigorous their scholarship or orthodox their theological confession. This, of course, doesn't mean that standards are illegitimate. The problem is that the standards that typically exist are too often unexamined and tied to power dynamics that have no place in Christian community.

The one question all of us have to answer is this: What hills are we willing to die for? The hill of an unexamined traditional Americanism, with all its assumed gender and racial stereotypes, is not such a hill. Indeed, it is better to look at the hill called Golgotha where the Son of God died a slave's death on a Roman cross for you. What would following the crucified Lord entail, both for one's thoughts and deeds?