Surprise

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 1 (1000 BCE – 100 CE) (2009)

  variety of Orthodoxy far to the north began revealing its potential as leader among the Orthodox: I outline the development of Russian Christianity. The Western Latin story resumes with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which tore the Western Church into fragments, but which also launched Christianity as the first world faith. From 1700, the three stories converge once more, as the world was united by the expansion of Western Christian empires. Despite their present variety, modern Christianities are more closely in touch than they have been since the first generations of Christians in the first-century Middle East. I seek to give due weight in these narratives to the tangled and often tragic story of the relations between Christianity and its mother-monotheism, Judaism, as well as with its monotheistic younger cousin, Islam. For most of its existence, Christianity has been the most intolerant of world faiths, doing its best to eliminate all competitors, with Judaism a qualified exception, for which (thanks to some thoughts from Augustine of Hippo) it found space to serve its own theological and social purposes. Even now, by no means all sections of the Christian world have undergone the mutation of believing unequivocally in tolerating or accepting any partnership with other belief systems. In particular I highlight the huge consequences when the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century monarchs of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) reinvented their multi- faith society as a Christian monopoly and then exported that single-minded form of Christianity to other parts of the world. I develop the theme which became (rather to my surprise) a ground-bass of the narrative in my previous book, Reformation: the destruction of Spanish Judaism and Islam after 1492 had a major role in developing new forms of Christianity which challenged much of the early Church’s package of ideas, and also in fostering the mindset which led in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the Enlightenment in Western culture. Here I examine the role of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European Christian empires in creating a reaction of fundamentalist intolerance within other modern world faiths, principally Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. Deeply embedded in Christian tradition is a vocabulary of ‘repentance’ and ‘conversion’, both words which mean ‘turning around’. So this book describes some of the ways in which individuals were turned around by Christianity, but also the ways in which they could turn around what Christianity meant. We will meet Paul of Tarsus, suddenly struck down by what he heard as a universal message for all human beings, who then quarrelled fiercely with other disciples of Jesus who saw their Lord as a Messiah sent only to the Jews. There is Augustine of Hippo, the brilliant teacher whose life was turned around by reading Paul, and who, more than a thousand years later, deeply influenced

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  From a sexual selection perspective, science is a set of social institutions for channeling our sexually selected instincts for ideological display in certain directions according to strict rules. These rules award social status to individuals for proposing good theories and gathering good data, not for physical attractiveness, health, kindness, or other fitness indicators. Scientists learn to derogate the normal human forms of ideological display: armchair speculation, entertaining narratives, comforting ideas, and memorable anecdotes. (Of course, this spills over into derogation of popular science books that try to present serious ideas in attractive form.) Science separates the arenas of intellectual display (conferences, classrooms, journals) from other styles of courtship display (art, music, drama, comedy, sports, charity). Science writing is standardized to channel creativity into inventing new ideas and arguments instead of witty phrases and colorful metaphors. Scientists are required to provide intellectual displays to young single people (through undergraduate teaching, graduate advising, and colloquium-giving), but are discouraged from enjoying any sexual benefits from these displays, so are kept in a state of perpetual quasi-courtship until retirement. These scientific traditions are ingenious ways of harnessing human courtship effort to produce cumulative progress towards world-models that are abstract, communicable, and true. It is surprising that science works so well, given the absence of referential content in the sexual signals of all other species, and our Scheherazade-style genius for fictional entertainment. Science is not asexual or passionless. But neither is it a result of some crudely sublimated sex drive. Rather, it is one of our most sophisticated arenas for human courtship, which is the most complex and conscious form of mating that has ever evolved on our planet.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  There's a curiosity about new food among the public, even when it's coupled with apprehension. "Saw you eatin' that snake heart on the TV. How'd that taste? That pho stuff didn't look half bad, though, I gotta say." And they can find pho themselves, because everywhere I go are Vietnamese restaurants; Thai, Hmong, and Chinese markets; families of emigres operating small businesses, many looking and tasting just like the ones back home. There are Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Pakistani joints popping up everywhere. America's cool, if you look hard enough, if you wander far enough from the strip malls and theme restaurants and Starbucks and Mickey D's. Things have changed. Things are different now. Every day. SWEET NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER Holy shit, Ainsley Harriott is fucking huge! I'm in Sydney, Australia, drinking vodka at Fix, the bar behind Luke Mangan's restaurant, Salt, when I look over and see Ainsley, whom I've said some very nasty things about in print (meant every damn word too), and realize that this guy, towering over the crowd, could—should he be so inclined—probably kick my ass. Watching him on TV, cudding housewives and doing the cooing, squealing Jerry Lewis schtick, I figured the guy had to be a shrimp. I figured a guy that flouncy wasn't the sort to maybe see me in a bar someday, reach down, smash a beer bottle against the wall, and then grind it into my neck. Now I'm not so sure. Jesus he's big! His shoulders are the size of basketballs . . . Maybe I should start worrying about Jamie Oliver too. Haven't been so nice to him either. He could be studying some lethal form of martial art; he's already got a fucking paramilitary, I heard. "Oliver's Army?" What is that? Are they like Saddam's Republican Guard? Do they do Oliver's bidding, up to and including eliminating his enemies? Is some glassy-eyed acolyte with a faux cockney accent gonna drive by on a Vespa and let loose with a full clip from a Tec-9? I'd really better think about this. Fortunately, the evening progresses without senseless butchery. Ainsley even sits down at the same table briefly, gives me a friendly smile and a knowing tap at a copy of my book—which either means he has the forgiving nature of a saint, or I simply haven't been nearly enough of a shit. Rick Stein, the very likable celebrity chef, restaurateur, and serial pyromaniac, sits across from me. Rick is apparently on a mission to burn down Australia, one cooking demo at a time. No television chef is as charming when confronted by sudden, unexpected columns of smoke or flames leaping from a pan. I like Rick.

• From Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (2021)

  Masters and Johnson were conducting their research at a time when the sexual double standard was ferocious. It was a period of intense post-war conservatism in the US, in which women’s domestic, familial, and maternal duties were stressed to the nth degree. (The word ‘pregnant’ could at this time still be bleeped out on television shows.) Their book, Human Sexual Response, published in 1966, and written in a purposefully jargon-ridden and leaden style (‘the stimulative factor is of major import in establishing sufficient increment of sexual tension’), sold out its first printing (of 15,000 copies) within three days, and was on the New York Times bestseller list for six months – despite, or thanks to, Masters and Johnson having persuaded the press to delay covering their work until publication. The findings were explosive, leading critic Albert Goldman to dwell with discomfort on the book’s ‘most indelible image, that of a woman mating with herself by means of a machine’. At the core of their findings was the proposed Human Sexual Response Cycle: a supposedly universal cycle during sexual activity, found in men and women. It consisted of four stages – arousal, orgasm, plateau and resolution. Significant, too, was the crucial importance of the clitoris for female pleasure (if not its key determinant), and the fact that the vagina and the clitoris were interrelated and mutually responsive. Masters and Johnson were not the first of the twentieth-century sexologists to emphasize the clitoris; Alfred Kinsey, in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in 1953, had suggested, on the basis of his examination of medical and anatomical literature, that the clitoris was the centre of female sexuality. But he had also argued that the vagina was deficient in nerves, and therefore also in sensation – largely in an attempt to dethrone what had become a veneration of the vaginal orgasm. Masters and Johnson based their conclusions on direct observation, claiming that women’s most intense orgasms came not through intercourse with a man, but through masturbation, in which they could control the kind and intensity of stimulation. Contra Kinsey, Masters and Johnson insisted that the vagina was highly sensitive, actively changing in response to sexual arousal, and in response to both penile penetration and clitoral stimulation.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  A dark-haired man in a blue coat passed, looking at his phone, and then backed up and faced the door fully. He grinned at her. He was around her age, with strange cheekbones, a face that was somehow wrong , skewed, scrambled. Then the features rearranged themselves, and rearranged themselves again, and instead of unlatching the door, letting him in, Fiona took a step backward, because she was looking at a ghost. This man could not be, but was, Julian Ames. And because he was still grinning at her—because what else was she supposed to do?—she finally stumbled forward and figured out the lock and tried to push the door before realizing she needed to pull, needed to flatten her body against the wall to make room. He clasped her arms, brought his face close to hers. He said, “Well, look at you !” 1988, 1989Charlie had an infected eyelid. This was what Asher told him, and then he said, “I’m not going to update you on every little thing, but I thought I’d tell you, and then I thought I’d ask how often you want a report. Basically, the doctors are saying this definitely counts now as rapid progression.” Asher’s Chevette was heading down Lake Shore Drive, and they both had to shout over the engine roar. Yale had grown skittish about public transportation, about the germs on the handrails, the spittle in people’s coughs. He’d do it occasionally, but he was tired today and the AZT made his legs weak, and so he didn’t feel bad taking Asher up on the ride home from support group. Besides which it was the first spring day when you could drive with the window down, and the lake looked like a glassy cliff, like if you walked to the horizon you could jump off the edge of the world. Yale said, “Mostly people have been filling me in on the drugs. Like I’m supposed to take some perverse pleasure in this.” Asher turned on the radio, but it was just ads. He said, “I want to throttle him. He could be doing so much good with that money.” About a year ago, thanks to the sudden proliferation of 1-900 numbers and the companies willing to spend a lot of money advertising them, Charlie’s paper had become, for the first time, quite lucrative—more lucrative than Yale had ever imagined a gay newspaper could be. On top of this, he’d sold off the travel agency—just cashed out, intending to spend his remaining time in luxury, if not in comfort. And then he had apparently spent all the money on coke. It surprised Yale, at least in the sense that Charlie had been, in the past, a highly selective drug user—and it also didn’t surprise him at all. But meanwhile the paper was falling apart, or at least the staff was. Rafael had defected to Out and Out , Dwight was dead, and Gloria was still there but wasn’t speaking to Charlie.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Such are some of the occurrences which seemed wonderful to the racy English historian. If he had read over the leaves of his Chronicles as we do, how many other events he might have singled out,—from the appearance of the elephant, a gift of the king of France to the king of England, which, as he says, was the first ever seen in England and the appearance of the sea-monster thrown up in Norwich,2151 to his instructive accounts of the doings of popes and emperors, and the chafings of the English people under papal injustice. Life was by no means a humdrum, monotonous existence to the people who lived in the age of the Crusades and Innocent III. On the contrary it was full of surprises and attractive movements, from every turn of the papacy and empire, to the expeditions of the Crusaders and the travels of Marco Polo and Rubruquis. A historical period is measured by the judgment passed upon it by its contemporaries and by the judgment of succeeding generations. What did the period from 1050 to 1294 offer that seemed notable to those who were living then and what contribution did it make to the progress and well-being of mankind? The first of these questions can be answered by the generation which then lived; the second, best by the generations which have come since. It is the persuasion of a school of mediaeval enthusiasts that this period was a golden age of faith and morals and tenable systems of belief, an age when the laws of God were obeyed as they have not been since, an age when proper attention was given to the things of religion, an age of high ideals and spiritual repose. Is this judgment justified or is the older Protestant view the right one that the Middle Ages handed down nothing distinctive—which has been of permanent value; but, on the contrary, many of the superstitions and false doctrines now prevailing in the Church are an inheritance from the Middle Ages, and it would have been better if the Church had passed directly from the patristic age and skipped the mediaeval.2152 Neither judgment is right. A more just opinion is beginning to prevail, and upon a modification of the extreme views of Protestants and Roman Catholics on the subject depends to a considerable extent the closer fellowship between the ecclesiastical communions of the West. Much chaff will be found there mixed with the wheat. On the other hand, in this mediaeval period were also sown the seeds of religious ideas and institutions which are now in their period of bloom or awaiting the time of full fruitage.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 2 (4 BCE – 451 CE) (2009)

  him to be a Greek Christos, not a Jewish Messiah – even though Greek-speakers beyond the Jewish milieu hardly understood what a Christos was, and quickly assumed that it was some sort of personal name.48 Historians might take comfort from the fact that nowhere in the New Testament is there a description of the Resurrection: it was beyond the capacity or the intention of the writers to describe it, and all they described were its effects. The New Testament is thus a literature with a blank at its centre; yet this blank is also its intense focus. The beginning of the long Christian conversation lies in the chorus of assertions in the writings of the New Testament that after Jesus’s death his tomb was found empty. He repeatedly appeared to those who had known him, in ways which confused and contradicted the laws of physics: he showed witnesses that he could be touched and felt and could be watched eating grilled fish, but he also appeared and disappeared regardless of doors or any normal means of exit and entrance. Many who at first found such claims absurd when others made them are reported as having being convinced when they had the same experience. Luke’s Gospel ends with one of the most apparently naturalistic-sounding and circumstantial of these encounters: a conversation between a stranger and two former disciples, one named as Cleopas, on the road from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. It was only later, over a meal in Emmaus, that the two recognized Jesus for who he was.49 The seventeenth-century Italian artist Caravaggio, in two of his most disturbing and exciting paintings, projected the astonishment and delight of that encounter into an ordinary room in his own time, but he also made it clear that this was a story with as many echoes as the stories in the infancy narratives (see Plate 18). The most casual viewer of Caravaggio’s paintings can see what the artist recognized in the biblical narrative: the meal of recognition at Emmaus is transparently the Church’s breaking of bread and wine, echoing the Last Supper or Eucharist of the Passion narratives. All Eucharists are celebrations of the man resurrected from the dead, who meets his disciples at a most unlikely time and place, just as he did at Emmaus, which was among the most unlikely of settings for such an encounter. For one dimension of the story is that Emmaus may not have been a real place near Jerusalem at all in first-century Judaea. Two centuries before, it certainly had been a real place: the site of the first victory of the Maccabean heroes over the enemies of Israel, where ‘all the Gentiles will know that there is one who redeems and saves Israel’.50 In terms of the Gospel story, Emmaus was beyond time, but it was the natural setting for the disciples to meet the one who had eclipsed the sufferings of the Maccabees in order to redeem the new Israel before the face of all people. After some time (the accounts are contradictory, implying either a few days or

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 2 (4 BCE – 451 CE) (2009)

  makes it all the more noticeable that the Jesus narratives in the Gospels still give such a prominent place to the selection of the Twelve and their role in his ministry. So Jesus was convinced of his special mission to preach a message from God which centred on an imminent transformation of the world, yet he spoke of himself with deliberate irony and ambiguity, and used a delicate humour that is revealed in the content of some of his sayings. He spoke of his special place in a divine plan, looked forward to a last judgement in which he would play a leading part, yet also saw that the way to this final conclusion might result in suffering and death both for himself and for his followers. He made crowds laugh. He shocked or excited them with irreverent comments on authority; so he caricatured rival religious teachers ‘straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel’. He produced outrageous inversions of normality – ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead,’ Jesus said to a man who wanted to postpone becoming his disciple in order to see to his father’s funeral.40 This saying is clearly authentic, since Gospel writers felt bound to preserve it even though it outrages every pious norm of the ancient world and a universal human instinct; moreover, Christianity has stonily ignored the command throughout its subsequent history. Jesus puzzled people with references which apparently needed spelling out in private even to his closest followers.41 He had power: around him, as with many charismatic leaders over the centuries, there gathered stories of exceptional healings, miracles of providing food and drink, even raising apparent corpses from the dead. For a large part of Christian history, these miracles have provided much of the fascination of Jesus for those drawn to his story, though for three centuries they have increasingly aroused unease or intellectual conflict for Christians formed by the Enlightenment of the West. Still, Jesus was a Jew immersed in the traditions that constituted the identity of his fellow Jews. He is recorded as taking a cavalier attitude to the Jewish Law or obeying its demands in ways which seem capricious, which caused anxious debate for generations about how far Christians should imitate him, and which are still puzzling after much very sophisticated modern analysis of the mixture. Maybe the answer is that Jesus did not care a great deal about being consistent on the issue, given his concentration on the imminent coming of the kingdom, in which all laws would be made anew. So he was not especially worried about special observance of the Jewish weekly holy day (the Sabbath), or various rules for ritual purity, but he cared a great deal about oaths, in particular about an agreement to enter marriage. In this respect Jesus was more hard line than regular Jewish practice embodied in the Law of Moses – too hard line indeed for the Church’s later comfort. We can tell that an absolute prohibition of divorce

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  One woman said, “I really didn’t feel like doing what you suggested, but I did anyway. Even though we had out-of-town guests, I initiated sex several times that week. When they left, I couldn’t believe what happened! Of his own volition, he started doing all these projects around the house I had been begging him to do for months. He put up wallpaper, grouted between the tiles in our dining room floor, and made plans for us to go out for dinner, something I always have to initiate! I couldn’t believe it!” Another woman joined in, “My husband hardly ever talks to me about his day. I get so mad at him because he never shares his life with me. Well, I got some new lingerie and was a lot more forward with him sexually. For the next few days, he talked so much, I couldn’t get him to stop!” Similar stories followed. It became clear that there was a strong connection between a more active sex life and a husband who had decidedly joined the land of the living. The women were shocked. They had no idea how powerful the Siren Solution could be. It really isn’t rocket science. When you show your love for your spouse by placing more importance on your sexual relationship—even if you’re out of practice—you trigger a solution cycle: your spouse becomes happier and more loving in return. And, not surprisingly, you start liking your spouse more and feeling more attracted to him or her, which inspires your spouse to be even nicer back, and so on. These women learned something else from this experiment. They noticed an additional side benefit to becoming more sexual. Several women said that when their relationships were more intimate emotionally, they felt sexier and more amorous. These women realized that contrary to what they thought, their sexual feelings hadn’t disappeared; they were simply camouflaged beneath feelings of frustration and hurt. And now that they were getting along better with their spouses, they rediscovered the siren within. In the last example, women were the lower-desire spouse. However, if you’re a man reading this, you need to know that the Siren Solution, despite its name, is gender blind; it can work just as well for you. If you’ve been feeling turned off because your wife isn’t the nicest person to be around, you might consider giving her a “nice pill” in the form of the Siren Solution. Her changes will amaze you. SEX SOLUTIONS The previous techniques focused on things you can do to start feeling closer to your spouse again, a first step in feeling more sexual for so many people. The following techniques are focused more specifically on things you can do to improve your sexual relationship. The Nike Solution If you want to boost your desire, consider adopting Nike’s wonderful slogan, “Just do it.” Are you wondering, “How will having sex with my spouse when I’m not in the mood boost my desire?” Here’s how.

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  In Chapter 3, you learned about a difference between people: some people need to feel close to their spouses before they’re interested in sex, while for others, it’s the other way around. They need to feel connected to their spouses sexually before they put effort into being close emotionally. In the section of this book that addresses your spouse, I will explain the importance of making you feel loved and appreciated if s/he wants you to be more committed to having a better sex life. I will make sure your spouse sees the connection between his or her behavior and how you respond. However, there’s another, equally viable way to motivate your spouse to be more loving toward you: you can pay more attention to your sexual relationship. This will make your more highly sexed spouse a much nicer person. Here’s an example of how this works. A while ago I was leading a group for women wanting better relationships. One evening, the women became unusually critical about their husbands, and their discussion bordered on male bashing. “He never talks to me.” “He promises to do things with the kids on the weekends, but he turns into a couch potato.” “He’s always so angry.” “I think he’s in the throes of a midlife crisis.” I surprised the group by asking a seemingly unrelated question. In the midst of one woman complaining that her husband never completed projects he started around the house, I said, “I’m just curious. I’d like to go around the group and have each of you rate your sex life on a 1-to-10 scale, with 1 being the pits and 10 being great.” After a few seconds of blank stares, the scores came rolling in. They were dreadful—Mostly 1s and 2s. I asked if they would try an experiment. They all agreed. I asked them to go home and for the next two weeks pay more attention to their physical relationships with their husbands. I asked them to be sexier, more affectionate, attentive, responsive, and passionate. I told them to initiate sex more frequently. And then, without offering an explanation, I suggested that they watch closely for any changes in their husbands. I then promptly ended the group. Although they were noticeably surprised by my homework assignment, no one was brave enough to challenge me openly. Two weeks later, the door to my office opened and in trickled the women, giggling like third graders. Dying of curiosity, I asked, “So how did these two weeks go?” The stories that followed explained their laughter.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 2 (4 BCE – 451 CE) (2009)

  also has to be said that the Paul of Acts does not always sound like the Paul of his own letters (letters which are never actually mentioned in Acts). The general excitement of the stories in Acts has frequently eclipsed the considerably more personally complex Paul to be met in his own words.54 The tent-maker from Tarsus turned from active hatred of Christianity to become the most prominent of its early spokespeople whose memory has survived. The circumstances of this conversion as described in Acts are dramatic; it came in the wake of his watching and approving of the stoning to death in Jerusalem of Stephen, the first known martyr for Christ after Christ’s death, some time in the early 30s CE. Maybe it was the effect of witnessing this violence which produced such a violent reaction in Saul. As he travelled on the road to Damascus, ‘suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”’55 It was Jesus himself speaking. Such was the trauma of this vision that Saul temporarily went blind and took no food or drink for three days. Paul’s own account in his letter to the Churches in the Roman province of Galatia (in central Asia Minor) is more reticent. It merely says that God ‘was pleased to reveal his Son to me’, and that his good news had come to him ‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’, but even this reference is coupled with the notice of a dramatic new direction for the proclamation of the good news: Paul claims that God had set him aside to preach Christ ‘among the Gentiles’ – that is, non-Jews. Paul also says that he did not consult any of the existing Jewish leaders of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, or indeed any ‘flesh and blood’. He went away to Arabia to preach Christ, then three years passed before his first encounter in Jerusalem with two of the earlier Apostles, Peter (whom he calls Cephas) and the leader of the Jerusalem Church, James.56 Acts says nothing of that first mission to Arabia, and the suspicion occurs that it was not a great success – though maybe this country remote from Tarsus and Jerusalem was also the crucial setting in which Paul’s extraordinary version of the Jesus message took shape. Paul’s journeys which we know about from Acts, some of which are also attested in his surviving letters, take him in an entirely opposite direction: the eastern Mediterranean, and finally to Rome, the scene of his death some time in the mid-60s CE. It was a momentous change, which in the long term was to turn Christianity from a faith of the Semitic East into something very different, in which the heirs of Greek and Latin civilization determined the way in which the Christ story was told and interpreted. For Paul was not merely a Jew: he was one of those countless subjects of the Roman Empire who had obtained grants of citizenship and could consider themselves privileged people entitled to the consideration of the emperor in Rome. It is

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  Our investiga- tions have taken us over a remarkable range of materials--historical movements, social groups, and literary works from before the days of Jesus through the early decades of the second century. In some ways, of course, we have only scratched the surface of this extraordinary segment of human history and the literature that emerged out of it. In this epilogue to our study I will make some brief comments on the fate of the earliest Christian writings after they were produced and pose a ques- tion that has probably never occurred to most peo- ple: Do we have the original New Testament? The answer may surprise you. THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT We do not have the original copies of any of the books of the New Testament or of any of the other Christian writings that we have examined in our study (or indeed of any literary text from the ancient world). The originals were lost or destroyed long ago, and all that we have are copies. For the most part, these copies were made hundreds of years after the originals, from other copies, rather than the originals. Let me explain the situation by giving a solitary example of how things worked. When the Thessalonians received Paul's first letter, someone in the community must have copied it by hand, one word at a time. The copy itself was then copied, possibly in Thessalonica, possibly in another community to which a copy was taken or sent. This copy of the copy was also copied, as were later copies, until before long there were a large number of different copies of the letter circu- lating in different communities throughout the Mediterranean, all made by hand at a pace that would seem outrageously slow to us who are accus- tomed to the world of photocopiers, word proces- sors, electronic mail, and desktop publishing. In this process of recopying the document by hand, the original was eventually thrown away or burned or otherwise destroyed. Perhaps it had been read so much that it simply wore out. In any case, the early Christians saw no need to preserve it as the "original" text, since they had copies of the letter. Possibly, they did not fully appreciate what happens to a text that is copied and recopied by hand, especially by scribes who are not trained professionals but simply literate persons with the time and money to do the job. Copyists, even if they are skilled specialists, inevitably make mis- takes.

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  intrinsic to who God is, so that their worship began to include him. There was a wide variety of expressions, names, and forms of behaviour with reference to Jesus, but the central tendency was to see him as having unlimited significance, liveliness, and goodness, inseparable from God. Not only that, his life was shareable in unlimited ways. This was expressed in the New Testament’s stories of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the risen Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit into his disciples. So the basic theological structure of the resurrection event could be summed up as: God acts; Jesus appears as the content of God’s act; and people are transformed through the Spirit that comes through him. That can be seen as the seed of the later doctrine of the Trinity. A creator God says ‘I will be what I will be’; and this God’s decisive self-expression and self-giving are in Jesus and the Spirit. It is directly in line with the God of the Burning Bush, but tries to do justice to a massive surprise. Yet it took over 300 years for these implications to be worked out and agreed in the doctrine of the Trinity. That process in itself says a great deal about the nature of Christian theology. The complex setting for theological thinking included teaching the faith to new members (culminating in their baptism ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’), continually worshipping this God, deciding on the contents of the New Testament, interpreting scripture and tradition, wrestling with the most sophisticated contemporary philosophy and culture, responding to challenges from pagans and Jews, settling internal Christian disputes, and engaging in ordinary living in faith. As the church moved from being a persecuted community to becoming a major force in the Roman Empire, there were also new political dimensions in Christian debates about doctrine. That was a messy, complicated process. It makes a fascinating story which it is essential to study in order to be educated in Christian theology. The points it suggests about the nature of theology as understood by Christians include the following: theological conclusions are not just deductions from authoritative statements, but are worked out by worshippers responsibly engaged with God, each other, scripture, the surrounding culture, everyday life, and all the complexities, the ups and downs of history; the Bible is the model for this sort of thinking which is deeply involved with both God and real life; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show the extent to which God is vulnerably involved in life, allowing people the freedom to misinterpret, misunderstand, and do great

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  It is no obstacle to theology that it cannot aim at conclusive demonstrative proof of the reality of God—there are many other worthwhile intellectual goals. The richest theological engagements are between those who acknowledge where they are coming from and then patiently study, communicate, and discuss with others (whether of their own or different persuasions) about matters of importance. It is a practice that regularly leads to transformations of one’s horizon and to unimagined surprises, not least in one’s ways of thinking about God and, inseparably, about oneself, others, and the created world. Chapter 4 Living before God: worship and ethicsThis chapter is an introduction to thinking theologically about what it means to be human. It starts from the phenomenon of worship as the key dynamic of human existence, then it moves into theological discussion of worship, followed by consideration of how God and worship connect with ethics. Finally, it draws together some of the implications for an understanding of human being. The phenomenon of worshipIt is possible to define worship so as to see all people and their communities as involved in worship. Paul Tillich spoke of ‘ultimate concern’ so as to make this apply potentially to everyone. Émile Durkheim spoke of ‘the compulsions which order society’, and these compulsions could be seen as a social form of ultimate concern which grips whole communities of people. Worship could be defined as the behaviour of individuals and groups which serves their ultimate concern. To be gripped by one great integrating, imperative concern or desire is like monotheism—worship of one divinity. To have your ultimate concern distributed in different directions is like polytheism—worship of many divinities. It is not hard to describe yourself or your community in terms of such concerns, compulsions, and obligations. In every major area of life there is a dimension that you do not experience as basically your own choice (though you may have many choices to make in relating to it) and which shapes your behaviour. Think of money and the whole realm of economic value and activity. These are inescapable, and they are capable of taking over the lives of individuals, groups, and even whole nations and global networks. An enormous amount of energy and intelligence is concentrated on serving the economy in various forms. If this takes practical priority over everything else in your life, then it is, according to the broad definition, a form of worship—it is, as the saying goes, ‘your religion’. Or, in the term I used in Chapter 1 , it is an ‘overwhelming’ which embraces your whole life as an ultimate reality. Similar points could be made about other fundamental aspects of life. You can be governed by involvement in and obligations towards your family, your race, your gender, or your nation in ways which effectively make them ultimate. Or you can be gripped by the need for justice in legal systems, societies, and the international community.

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  There are still intensive debates about the issues of that time, but as regards our present topic, God, there is to this day a remarkable agreement among the vast majority of Christians that the conclusions of those early centuries were right. It has become basic Christian wisdom that God is Trinitarian, and in the 20th century there was a new explosion of theologies of the Trinity. From many quarters the doctrine has been thought through afresh—by Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, feminists, liberation theologians, missiologists, natural scientists, psychologists, social theorists, musicians, poets, philosophers, Africans, Asians, Australians, theologians of world religions, and so on! So what are the theological lessons to be drawn about the meaning of the Christian God? They can be put in the form of ‘wisdom for worship’. First, there is a negative guideline: never conceive of God without taking all the dimensions of the Trinity into account—that God is creator and transcends creation; that God is free to be involved in all the messiness of history; and that God is self-giving and self-sharing in the Spirit. The rule is: Beware of relating to God in ways which ignore one or more of these dimensions. Second, there is the positive guideline: God is love, and therefore God’s very being embraces relationship—the Trinity is a dynamic relating of Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s unity is a rich, complex life of love which can embrace all creation. Third, be ready for more surprises from this God. There is always more to learn, and 20th-century theology can be seen having taken further the ‘Trinitarian revolution’—for example, exploring what modern natural science and Einstein’s theory of space and time mean in relation to God, or asking how to conceive the death of Jesus as in some sense the death of God, or doing justice to the Holy Spirit in the light of the Pentecostal movement. Fourth, there are likely to be many more surprises for Christians in understanding how this God relates to what others regard as divine: the Trinity has been central to some of the most fruitful theological engagements between Christians and those of other faiths. There can never be a human overview of what is happening when worshippers identify very differently their object of worship. But many doctrines of the Trinity allow ample scope for Christians to respect the worship of others and to remain agnostic about a great deal regarding the relationship of other faiths to God. The meaning of God: a conclusionWe have tried to enter into the meaning of God as worshipped by Christians. At each point further theological issues could have been raised, and the reader has probably already found questions springing up. In theology practically every statement on a major issue is bound to be contestable and controversial, and God is the biggest issue of all.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The first discovery of the catacombs was a surprise to the Christian world, and gave birth to wild fancies about the incalculable number of martyrs, the terrors of persecution, the subterranean assemblies of the early Christians, as if they lived and died, by necessity or preference, in darkness beneath the earth. A closer investigation has dispelled the romance, and deepened the reality. There is no contradiction between the religion of the ante-Nicene monuments and the religion of the ante-Nicene literature. They supplement and illustrate each other. Both exhibit to us neither the mediaeval Catholic nor the modern Protestant, but the post-apostolic Christianity of confessors and martyrs, simple, humble, unpretending, unlearned, unworldly, strong in death and in the hope of a blissful resurrection; free from the distinctive dogmas and usages of later times; yet with that strong love for symbolism, mysticism, asceticism, and popular superstitions which we find in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. CHAPTER VIII.CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.§ 88. Literature. I. Sources: The works of the Apostolic Fathers. The Apologies of Justin. The practical treatises of Tertullian. The Epistles of Cyprian. The Canons of Councils. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. The Acts of Martyrs.—On the condition of the Roman Empire: the Histories of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius, the writings of Seneca, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial. II. Literature: W. Cave: Primitive Christianity, or the Religion of the Ancient Christians in the first ages of the Gospel. London, fifth ed. 1689. G. Arnold: Erste Liebe, d. i. Wahre Abbildung der ersten Christen nach ihrem lebendigen Glauben und heil. Leben. Frankf. 1696, and often since. Neander: Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des christlichen Lebens (first 1823), vol. i. third ed. Hamb. 1845. The same in English by Ryland: Neander’s Memorials of Christian Life, in Bohn’s Library, 1853. L. Coleman: Ancient Christianity exemplified in the private, domestic, social, and civil Life of the Primitive Christians, etc. Phil. 1853. C. Schmidt: Essai historique sur la société dans le monde Romain, et sur la transformation par le Christianisme. Par. 1853. The same transl. into German by A. V. Richard. Leipz. 1857. E. L. Chastel: Études historiques sur l’influence de la charité durant les Premiers siècles chrét. Par. 1853. Crowned by the French Académe. The same transl. into English (The Charity of the Primitive Churches), by G. A. Matile. Phila. 1857. A. Fr. Villemain: Nouveaux essais sur l’infl. du Christianisme dans le monde Grec et Latin. Par. 1853. Benj. Constant Martha (Member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, elected in 1872): Les Moralistes sous l’Empire romain. Paris 1854, second ed. 1866 (Crowned by the French Academy). Fr. J. M. Th. Champagny: Les premiers siècles de la charité. Paris, 1854. Also his work Les Antonins. Paris, 1863, third ed. 1874, 3 vols. J. Denis: Histoire des theories et des idées morales dans l’antiquité. Paris, 1856, 2 tom. P. Janet: Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique. Paris, 1858,·2 tom. G. Ratzinger: Gesch. der kirchlichen Armenpflege. Freib. 1859.

• From Theology: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

  It is what is called a ‘theophany’, a manifestation of God, and it became one of the main texts used in Jewish and Christian discussion of God. Moses in the desert near Mount Horeb comes upon a bush that is blazing but not consumed, and a voice addresses him which says: ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (Exodus 3:6). The voice goes on to say: ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt … I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them …’ (3:7–8). God sends Moses to Pharaoh and promises to be with him, and when Moses asks God’s name he is told: ‘I AM WHO I AM’ (3:14. Other translations are: ‘I am what I am’ or ‘I will be what I will be’). What conception of God emerges from that? The discussion is inexhaustible, but for now three points are crucial. First, God is identified through key figures who worshipped him: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; their stories are the main way to understand who this God is. Second, God is known through God’s compassionate involvement in the sufferings of people, and is on the side of justice. Third, that mysterious name ‘I am who I am’ or ‘I will be what I will be’ means at least that God is free to be God in the ways God decides: there is no domesticating, there is ‘always more’, and God can go on springing surprises in history. Now leap over hundreds of years to Jesus (of whom much more will be said in Chapter 6 ). He is in this tradition of worshipping God. But, as his followers tried to come to terms with who he was and what had happened through his life, death, and resurrection, they came to affirm that he was one with this God. Is there any way of making sense of that extraordinary conclusion? His resurrection is the pivotal issue. We will look at it in more detail in Chapter 6 , but for now let us look at it from the standpoint of the early Christians. For the first Christians the resurrection was a God-sized event which affected their understanding of Jesus, of history, of themselves, and of God. In terms of the Burning Bush story, God was now decisively ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus’, and through Jesus God was compassionately involved in history at its worst. The resurrection was the great surprise. They ascribed it to God, seeing the raising of Jesus from the dead as comparable to creation. The content of this event was the person of Jesus, who in this way could be seen as identified with God by God. Jesus was seen as God’s self-expression (or Word), intrinsic to who God is, so that their worship began to include him.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  The first category is quite clear; it is those who were born Jews. So is the second; it is those who had converted from paganism to Judaism and had, since they are males, been circumcised. But who were those “God-worshipers,” of whom nine belonged to the city council? They were Gentiles who, while remaining as such—that is, if males, uncircumcised—had accepted Jewish monotheism and Jewish morality and regularly attended the synagogue . “On the seventh day,” wrote the Jewish philosopher Philo in The Special Laws, “there are spread before the people in every city…the regulating of one’s conduct toward God by the rules of piety and holiness, and of one’s conduct toward men by the rules of humanity” (2.15.62–63). And the Jewish historian Josephus notes in his Jewish Antiquities that the wealth of Jerusalem’s Temple comes from “all the Jews throughout the habitable world, and worshipers of God (sebomen [image "image" file=Image00048.jpg] n t [image "image" file=Image00048.jpg] n the [image "image" file=Image00048.jpg] n ), even those from Asia and Europe” (14.110). Still, those Aphrodisias statistics are rather stunning. Almost half of those ready, able, and willing to support its synagogue financially were Gentile “God-worshipers.” On any Sabbath day at the Aphrodisias synagogue was the congregation half Jewish and half Gentile? If so, was that an exceptional case or fairly representative of any city in at least the eastern Roman Empire? We have no evidence that Aphrodisias was radically exceptional, so my working hypothesis—pending evidence to the contrary—is that a fairly heavy representation of “God-worshiping” Gentiles was part of normal synagogue life. There was, in other words, a very significant middle way or third option between, on the one hand, those born Jewish or converted and, on the other, pure Gentiles in the ancient world. Furthermore, if Aphrodisias may be taken as representative, synagogue participation by those middle-way or third-option Gentile “God-worshipers” was public, powerful, prominent, and permanent. THIS CHAPTER WILL HAVE , like the two preceding ones, five main points, five major questions. The first point is a preliminary one. Why do I speak of Luke-Acts? Are they two separate, even if consecutive, books by the same author we call “Luke”? Or are they a single work conceived, planned, integrated, and published in two volumes? If so, how and why were they ever separated as in our present New Testament? The second point picks up that emphasis on “God-worshiping Gentiles” in the overture and asks this basic and constitutive question: Was that unknown author, whom we call “Luke,” himself a Gentile God-worshiper before he became a Christian? I answer that question affirmatively and give you my basic evidence for it. The third point has, once again, two steps, one negative and one positive. The first step concerns the negative attitude of Luke-Acts toward Jews and the Jewish religion. Whether dealing with Jesus in the first volume or Paul in the second one, Jews are presented as riotous and even murderous.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Compare, then, the following two endings of the Two Ways traditions as given in the Didache and the Teaching of the Apostles (which is as close as we can get to the former’s unredacted source): Teaching of the Apostles 5:2–6:1, 4 Didache 5:1–6:2 [A] Abstain, my son, from all these things. [A] May you be delivered, my children, from all these things. [B] And see that no one leads you astray from this Teaching; otherwise, you will be taught outside the true instruction. [B] Watch, lest anyone turn you away from this way of teaching, since such a person teaches you without regard for God; [C2 ] for, on the one hand, if you are able to carry the [entire] yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but, on the other, if you are not able, undertake that which you are able [to bear]. [C1 ] If you do these things daily with reflection, you will be near the Living God but if you do not do them, you will be far from the truth. Notice in passing (but recalling Rose-Gaier’s earlier point about the gendered equality of the Didach [image "image" file=Image00033.jpg] ), that difference in address between “my children” and “my son.” My main point, however, concerns a comparison of those twin conclusions. First, both agree in [A] on concluding the Way of Death with a general injunction against “all these things.” Next, both agree in [B] on a warning against anyone teaching apart from the Two Ways discipline just detailed. Finally, however, comes a very striking difference. The Teaching of the Apostles ends in good, disjunctive Two Ways style in C1 . It is an either/or with God and the truth on only one side of that choice. There are no in-betweens, no other options, no alternative selections. But, in C2 , Didache 6:2 omits any mention of that dichotomy and ends, instead, with a choice not between absolute Life and Death but between relative “being perfect” and “doing what you can.” Those latter options must certainly not refer to such deeds as magic or sorcery, abortion or infanticide, fornication or adultery, theft or murder. Those, surely, are not “Do what you can” situations. That distinction between “being perfect” and “doing what you can” refers. I suggest, to that earlier insertion at the start of the Didache’s Two Ways teaching. That initial redactional insertion in 1:3b–2:1 corresponds to this final redactional insertion in 6:2, and the opening “You will be perfect” in 1:4 corresponds with the closing “You will be perfect” in 6:2. It is those radical commands from the itinerant prophets that are accepted but contained, cited but controlled by that serene distinction between perfection and adequacy . When compared with an earlier Christian version of the Two Ways tradition, such as the Teaching of the Apostles , the Didache’s somewhat permissive conclusion is extremely surprising.

• From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

  This also explains the phenomenon, which has created so much surprise to certain moderns;--that a grave, well-informed historian like Tacitus should apply to Christians what sounds like abuse. Yet what is the difficulty, supposing that Christians were considered mathematici and magi, and these were the secret intriguers against established government, the allies of desperate politicians, the enemies of the established religion, the disseminators of lying rumours, the perpetrators of poisonings and other crimes? "Read this," says Paley, after quoting some of the most beautiful and subduing passages of St. Paul, "read this, and then think of _exitiabilis superstitio_;" and he goes on to express a wish "in contending with heathen authorities, to produce our books against theirs,"[231:1] as if it were a matter of books. Public men care very little for books; the finest sentiments, the most luminous philosophy, the deepest theology, inspiration itself, moves them but little; they look at facts, and care only for facts. The question was, What was the worth, what the tendency of the Christian body in the state? what Christians said, what they thought, was little to the purpose. They might exhort to peaceableness and passive obedience as strongly as words could speak; but what did they do, what was their political position? This is what statesmen thought of then, as they do now. What had men of the world to do with abstract proofs or first principles? a statesman measures parties, and sects, and writers by their bearing upon _him_; and he has a practised eye in this sort of judgment, and is not likely to be mistaken. "'What is Truth?' said jesting Pilate." Apologies, however eloquent or true, availed nothing with the Roman magistrate against the sure instinct which taught him to dread Christianity. It was a dangerous enemy to any power not built upon itself; he felt it, and the event justified his apprehension. 20.