So this blog has at least something in common with giant peaches and chocolate factories with no health & safety regulations.
Sheds are excellent 'personal creative spaces'. Probably something to do with controlling the environment. They let you start simple, and stay there - only putting really necessary things in there. (Assuming you have somewhere else for the lawnmower etc.) Mostly, you can avoid putting distractions in there. It helps to be in the garden too, away from people trying to get you to join the RSPCA, have your loft insulated or your (perfectly functioning) computer fixed. Though such isolationism isn't something I can sustain post-sabbatical.
In my distraction-free shed I have a couple of garden chairs, an old cardigan and a blanket. This would presumably meet the criteria of most monastic traditions. The great Celtic monks loved their cells where they would eat, sleep think and pray away their days.
They sometimes had fires for warmth though. As the weather gets colder, I may have to consider how to keep warm in a wooden shed. I don't have electricity - so no light either.
That's not too important as I can read my iPad in the dark - and I should mention that I can get a WiFi signal too. And a 3G phone signal. So, apart from being able to find almost any piece of information known, and being theoretically able to contact anyone in the whole world, I'm just like one of those heroic Celtic monks of old when I'm in my shed.
Roald Dahl's shed is apparently in a poor state of repair. Sheds are not really meant to last like houses are. They are temporary dwellings. Nice to stay a while, but I'll get back into the house and sleep in a warm bed inside, thank-you. The distinction between a temporary and a permanent dwelling is an important one in scripture.
Tom Wright points out in Surprised by Hope, that the start of John 14 is often misrepresented in the context of bereavement (it's the most common reading at funeral services). The Father's house of many rooms is equated with heaven and permanently resting in peace. Since the word translated 'rooms' is mone, meaning a temporary resting place, we should think of this as representing a step along the way to bodily resurrection. And this is what the early Christians had in mind.
John 14 GNB
“Do not be worried and upset,” Jesus told them. “Believe in God and believe also in me. 2There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so. 3And after I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that you will be where I am. 4You know the way that leads to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; so how can we know the way to get there?”
6 Jesus answered him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.
Before Jesus, the Pharisees and Essene Jews (i.e. majority of Jews) believed that when you died, your spirit hung around in a conscious state in the presence of the righteous (if so deserving) and then one day would be raised with a restored and perfect physical body.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe the Father's House is merely a motel and all the rest is as it was, then the conversation between Jesus and Martha in John 11:24-27 makes no sense. Jesus here is hearing the standard Jewish view of the time (verified by Luke 16 and Josephus on Hades) and showing something new: He 'is' the resurrection. He 'is' the life. [John 11:25] When we are 'in Christ' we 'never die' [John 11:26].
Compare that with Jesus providing a temporary room for us - which seems most Gospel-worthy news?!
The 'mone' room stems from 'meno', to abide. It is often for a time but check out John 6:27 where we are told not to work for bread that endures for just a while but for that which 'meno' (abides/endures) 'unto eternal life'. Now, seeing as 'eternal life' starts at the point of belief (we never die as above) then this must be an eternal abiding. Again in John 6:56 we 'abide' in Jesus. Do we ever stop doing so?!
John 8:35 has the servant not 'abide' forever but the son does 'abide' forever
So Wright's argument doesn't stand true in John's Gospel.
Interesting. I thought that one reason for Jesus’ delay in John 11 was to confound the belief that the spirit hung around for 3 days? Maybe that’s just me. And I confess I have as yet been very conservative with funeral eulogies.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know what Tom Wright really said you’ll read the book!
He does say that Jesus is merely reinforcing the standard Jewish afterlife views of the time, and, especially as Jesus often speaks in parables (e.g. Luke 16:19-31) we shouldn’t look here for fresh teaching.
I don’t see a problem (for Tom’s view) in Jesus’ conversation with Martha. I see the wonderful paradox used at the start of a funeral service - that the dead (in Christ) will not die - as a promise to be fulfilled in the necessarily continuous consciousness of the deceased. It’s good news that death is defeated, no matter what transitional stages might occur before bodily resurrection. I’m afraid I don’t follow your logic that ‘eternal abiding’ is affected one way or another by the idea of a ‘waiting room’.
I don’t understand what you’re saying about John 8:35 either – to me this just shows that ‘abiding’ can be either temporary or permanent?
I might add that John 6:27 and John 6:56 with sacramental overtones of bread and wine (also John 15:5), remind me of the temporality of food & drink, and the need to keep on consuming – or abiding – and the need for fresh manna. i.e. continuing to abide is a choice. This would tie in with Tom’s bigger theme that Jesus was generally speaking about the present life more than the life to come, and the problem with our usual interpretation is that we fail to see this.
In John 8:35 etc - yes, I was showing that 'abide' can mean for any duration including eternal. My point is that Wright has no grounds to say "This is a temporary room" - there is no specific or even implied time limit for staying in these rooms.
ReplyDeleteOn Martha's conversation, do you believe then that Jesus' claim is simply replacing a belief that you sit on Abraham's lap with a belief that you sit on Jesus' lap and then get the same bodily resurrection as you did before? Is the only change that Jesus made to Jewish belief that you get to choose who to be with while you wait?!
Surely the way Jesus responds to Martha is in stating the difference between what she believes and what Jesus' followers should believe: She says he will live, but on the last day - and Jesus responds that in Christ people 'never die'.
I like your observation that Wright's approach to John 14's rooms "would tie in with Tom's bigger theme...." Yes. That is what I have seen in his videos on Youtube - but I am not convinced. He uses G.Vermes as support for some of his ideas - a scholar who I find suffers from the same porblem that at times he seems to make the text fit his ideas rather than the other way round.
Ooops - out of time - not re-read this so hope it is postable!
Agreed that you can't argue a temporary abode from John 14 - but you can't rule it out either. I expect Tom was just saying it's a possible -( I'm away at the moment and don't have the book) he's arguing the pre-resurrection case from elsewhere - sorry if I misled you.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you can equate Abraham with Jesus in that way, especially given John's high Christology. Jesus is talking to Martha in the context of the Lazarus miracle, so that 'resurrection' is in the mix too. Jesus demonstrates that he is the resurrection and the life - it's what he does not just what he says.
Not heard of G. Vermes. I did come across this in a commentary though:
"the figure in John 14:2–3 is wholly unapocalyptic; rather it is eschatological, as the related comparison of tent and house in 2 Cor 5:1 (see the full discussion of the possibilities of interpretation in G. Fischer, Die himmlische Wohnungen: Untersuchungen zu Joh 14,2f, 58–74)." (WBC)
ReplyDeleteThat's going a bit too deep for me - my knowledge of German derives mostly from WW2 movies!
Oh no - I typed loads in and it came up with a null cookie error and lost it!
ReplyDeleteAnyway ....
Guten abent!
Geza Vermes = major Dead Sea Scrolls scholar - has Jesus down as just a Jew
On John 11, when Lazarus is raised.
Martha: "He will be raised on the last day"
As you point out, we need to look at Lazarus as a demonstration of the conversation - so -
Lazarus: Hey - not on the last day - Jesus has made it possible for me to be raised right now!
Rev 20:4-6. The 1000yrs. Are you amillenial? This span is the here and now. Those who have died already (v4), like Lazarus, are raised now - the first resurrection. Those who remain on earth when the Last Day arrives will be raised then (the second resurrection). Nobody is raised twice.
So when the earth is wrapped up (Mark 13:31), the new heven and earth arrived - paved with gold as in Revelation? I hope not so literal! The picture is of a place soaked in divine glory - a picture. But the picture is not of restored Eden. It is not a rerun of earth doen perfectly but comes out of heaven - a heavenly parallel to the earthly Jerusalem.
Wright seems to want a 'restored earth' so that we will care about it and our work will be worthwhile rather than thrown away. I can understand this but he is missing out on the orginal Christian view. They saw things on earth as being a shadow of things in heaven (Hebrews 8:5) so when we act on earth, there is an impact in heaven (Luke 10:17-18). This is a view which comes from the apocalyptic writings from c200BC to and beyond the time at which the Gospels were written.
When the Lord's prayer says "You kingdom come.... on earth as in heaven" it is not an indication that Jesus promoted God's kingdom as being brought upon earth to end up here. It is showing he parallel between actions on earth and heaven which was the way in which First Century Essenes and Pharisees thought. Wright does seem to understand something of this but not have a full grasp of the implications.
I studied the Dead Sea Scrolls alongside books like "The Watchers" (1Enoch): How did they influence the Gospels? The idea that a person has a spirit which lives beyond the lifespan of the earthly body is clearly a part of Jewish thinking in these apocalyptic writings. Jews saw the spirit being reubited refurbished body, rather like the JWs (and Wright) but there is no reason to move away from the view that we will be raised with a 'glorious' (Phil 3:20-21) body which is heavenly, incorruptable and presumably not so physical - though exactly whether or what remains unknown - even to NT Wright.