Welcome once again to a new month on Eschewmenical, the blog of Christianity Stackexchange. The purpose of this blog is to choose an issue and highlight different doctrinal perspectives on that issue. This month’s issue is “Christian Conscience in the workplace.” This is an incredibly – and intentionally – broad subject. Because of this we are not even making an attempt to cover every aspect. Authors have been asked to share some thoughts and basically just choose their own adventure on this topic this month. However, it is a subject we are likely to revisit in a narrower capacity both in Q&A on the site and also through more focused treatment on this blog. The workplace also happens to be the theme of one of the newest stack exchange betas. Now on to introduce the topic:

So you’ve grown up a Christian, or maybe you found Christ in college, or maybe even only recently came to know him. Regardless of when or how you met Christ, if you’re an adult, you are likely to be working. Being a Christian and working raises an excellent series of questions:

• Should I act differently at work because I’m a Christian? If so, how?
• Am I less of a Christian because I am working a regular job instead of being a pastor/missionary/church employee?
• How do I/should I try to minister to people at work?
• Should I work on Sunday?
• As a woman am I allowed to work outside the home?

These are just a few of the questions that are likely on our minds as we enter – or continue – in the workplace as Christians, and (no guarantees here) some of them may get tackled in this series. Others might make excellent posts on the site (if they aren’t there already).

Let’s set our schedule and introduce our authors (note: this schedule is subject to change due to post availability):

• 6/4 Affable Geek (Episcopal- Jesus is Lord, and Other Hobbies)
• 6/11 Peter (Catholic—Sins of omission and sins of commission)
• 6/18 Bruce (United Methodist—justice and dignity in the workplace)
• 6/25 Jon (Evangelical)

Remember this is Eschewmenical; you don’t have to agree with the authors. In fact you are encouraged to disagree with them (we are eschewing ecumenicism here). Please feel free to post your disagreements or angry rants in the comments or join the authors in our blog chat room.

What is the Church? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is not simple at all. To most people, a church is a building where Christians go to worship. But for many Christians, a better definition is not the building but a body of people united together in the service of God. It was this sense of the word that John Wesley used in his sermon “Of the Church“.

This Church body is more than a single congregation. For example, when Paul writes, “To the saints who are in Ephesus,” he doesn’t necessarily mean they are all worshiping at a single location. When he writes “To the Churches of Galatia,” he has in mind all the congregations of believers in that region. By extension, the Church includes not merely the Christians of one city, one nation—or for that matter, one denomination—but all Christians throughout the earth who are united by a common faith. Wesley found the definition of the Church in Ephesians 4:1-6.

I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

The universal Church of God is animated by one Spirit. The Holy Spirit distributes gifts to the members of the Church to build up and sustain the entire Church body.

We have one hope, namely, the hope that this life is not all there is. Jesus’ resurrection serves as both a reminder and a confirmation of that hope.

We have one Lord, Jesus Christ, who has set up his kingdom in our hearts. To belong to the Church means to follow the commands of Christ with a joyful and willing heart.

We have one faith, which is the free gift of God. This faith is not merely an intellectual belief that there is a God who is merciful and just, who showers rewards on his followers. This faith permeates every aspect of our being; it transforms our very lives. Members of God’s Church can testify with the Apostle Paul, “The life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

We have one baptism, an outward sign of an inward grace which God has bestowed upon us.

We have one God and Father. To belong to the Church is to be adopted into the family of God.

In summary, Wesley’s answer to the question “What is the Church?” is this:

The catholic or universal Church is, all the persons in the universe whom God hath so called out of the world as to entitle them to the preceding character; as to be “one body,” united by “one spirit;” having “one faith, one hope, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in them all.”

But the Church does not merely exist for the sake of defining its membership. As Christians we are given a calling, and are expected to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”

This is no small thing. Wesley explains that to walk, in the New Testament usage of the term, “includes all our inward and outward motions; all our thoughts, and words, and actions. It takes in, not only everything we do, but everything we either speak or think.”

This walk involves “lowliness,” “meekness,” and “longsuffering,” according to the King James translation—or in modern language, humility, gentleness, and patience.

In humility we can do no better than to follow the example of Christ himself,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. [Philippians 2:6-8]

Gentleness comes from making wise choices and not following our own passions:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. [James 3:13]

In exercising patience, we follow God’s own example:

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. [2 Peter 3:8-9]

If we walk in humility, gentleness, and patience, we will be able to “forbear one another in love,” and in so doing, live up to the calling God has placed on each of his followers:

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” [1 Peter 1:14-16]

There are many strands of Christianity today, and we may disagree sharply on the finer points of doctrine. But we must not let doctrinal differences get in the way of living up to God’s calling. Scripture makes it clear that we are all to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This unity is the fruit, not of intellectual agreement, but of holy living. Wesley concludes:

In the mean time, let all those who are real members of the Church, see that they walk holy and unblamable in all things. “Ye are the light of the world!” Ye are “a city set upon a hill,” and “cannot be hid.” O “let your light shine before men!” Show them your faith by your works. Let them see, by the whole tenor of your conversation, that your hope is all laid up above! Let all your words and actions evidence the spirit whereby you are animated! Above all things, let your love abound. Let it extend to every child of man: Let it overflow to every child of God. By this let all men know whose disciples ye are, because you “love one another.”

Previously in this space, I noted four characteristics of the evangelical movement. George M. Marsden, a historian of American Evangelicalism, suggested a fifth: trans-denominationalism. In a nutshell, we don’t believe the Church instituted by Christ through His Apostles is confined to any human hierarchical structure, but is infused in all denominations in the form of individuals of faith. We are eager to cooperate with our like-minded Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant brothers and sisters because when God gathers together the Church in the end, there will be representatives from every Christian tradition.

Christians and non-Christians alike (though for different reasons) question how the proliferation of schisms, sects, denominations, synods, conferences, and offshoots fit in the plans of a monotheistic God. I don’t propose to answer that question here, but rather to tell a story of one significant split that I hope will help us think through the issues.

Our story begins in 1517 when a middle-aged, Augustinian monk named Martin Luther wrote a letter to his bishop protesting the sale of indulgences by a Dominican friar in Germany. Luther claimed that the transaction violated the Church’s mission to offer the free gift of salvation by faith to all people. This seemingly insignificant dispute sparked the first fire of the Reformation and simultaneously propelled Luther into a late-life career in which he translated the Bible into German, wrote numerous hymns and commentaries, standardized written German, and became a leading figure in the founding of the German state.

It was this last accomplishment that attracted German National Socialism to his writings. Sadly, the antisemitic movement found much in Luther’s work to reinforce their warped view of genetics and culture. Never mind that these opinions were expressed late in Luther’s life, opposed his earlier views, and were largely ignored after his death; any attack on Jews could be justified. (It probably didn’t hurt that Luther was particularly crass in those later years.)

Hitler himself was indifferent to Christianity, but many of his lieutenants were actively anti-Christian and wished to replace, what they saw as “the one immortal blemish of mankind” to quote Nietzsche, with something more Teutonic. Hitler was pleased to encourage the German Christian movement which busied itself promoting German interests and was only marginally Christian. In 1933, Germany reorganized Lutheranism into a centralized, national church. Initially, Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, a pastor who ran the Bethel Institution which provided care for orphaned children, mentally ill people and the poor, was elected to lead the new church as Reichsbischof.

But von Bodelschwingh resigned after political maneuvering a month later. Ludwig Müller, an obscure naval chaplain who was an early member of the Nazi party, eventually got himself appointed Reichsbischof. Within the year, he institituted the Aryan paragraph which removed pastors of Jewish decent, proposed removing the Jewish Scriptures from the Bible, and advocated a more “positive” Jesus. The last re-imagined the Jewish Jesus of the Gospels into what one German Christian called a “burst of Nordic light into world history“. A new German Religion based on Nazi ideals was poised to supplant Luther’s Christian denomination.

We might expect that interference of this level would prompt worldwide outrage within the Church Universal. It didn’t. Yes, there were great heroes to match the great villainy:

• Martin Niemöller who spent 8 years in prison for attempting to help people dismissed from church employment for being Jewish or being married to a Jew.
• Karl Barth who wrote the Barmen Declaration which was the founding document of the Confessing Church.
• Friedrich Weißler, the Confessing Church’s lawyer and a Jew, who was tortured to death for leaking to the foreign press a memo the church wrote to Hitler. The memo made the Führer look bad.
• Wilhelm Busch who was repeatedly arrested by the SS for leading youth in Bible study in his home and once for holding a church service that was too popular.
• Bishops, teachers, and pastors who defied Vidkun Quisling‘s attempts to duplicate Hitler’s results in Norway. (While I am proud of my distant cousins, they did have the benefit of seeing what a disaster appeasement brought in Germany.)
• Anglican Bishop George Bell who rescued many German pastors and their families from Nazi persecution, worked tirelessly to expose Nazi atrocities, and advocated for the German resistance movement.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose complicated life story (told in Eric Metaxas’ brilliant Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy) ended a few weeks before he would have been saved by the collapse of Nazi Germany.

But ultimately, the majority of German pastors did not oppose the German Christian heresy until it was far too late. International ecumenical movements presaged Chamberlain’s folly by continuing to recognize the German National church after it was reorganized on Hitler’s terms. At the moment of crisis, the Church proved as feeble and irrelevant as her critics predicted which hurried Europe’s long process toward secularization.

From a human perspective, the Church has, at times, succumbed to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. That is, the preservation of the organization has occasionally overcome the expressed purpose of the organization. We see it not only in huge, globe-spanning hierarchies, but even in the little Bible study I lead for years until I finally let it go last fall. (To be honest, it had lost its focus on the mission and became more about me than about the Word of God.)

From a Biblical and historical perspective, the Church was divided right from her birth. Immediately after Jesus announced the ceremony that signified the Church’s unity, one of his hand-picked followers left to bring arresting officers in exchange for money. The other 11 scattered when it became clear Jesus wasn’t going to call down fire from heaven or angels to rescue him. His lieutenant, who had sworn to follow Jesus to the death, refused to even admit he knew his leader. Only one male follower and a few women watched him die. It was not a propitious beginning.

Here’s how Augustine of Hippo explained the situation:

But let [the pilgrim city of King Christ] bear in mind, that among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be fellow-citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to bear what they inflict as enemies until they become confessors of the faith. So, too, as long as she is a stranger in the world, the city of God has in her communion, and bound to her by the sacraments, some who shall not eternally dwell in the lot of the saints. Of these, some are not now recognized; others declare themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they wear.
…
In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermixed until the last judgment effects their separation.

Nothing that we think of as the Church, from towering cathedrals to secret meetings in catacombs, will survive that last judgment intact, but neither will it all be lost. In the end, Jesus will draw out the true Church to Himself:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.—2^nd Corinthians 5:17-20 (ESV)

Come back next week for Bruce Alderman‘s answer to “What is the Church?”

When Jesus reached the age of 30, he began his ministry, going around Israel healing, rebuking, and spreading the word of God. Wherever Jesus was present, crowds were following him most of time. At that time, Jesus did everything; performing miracles such as reviving the dead or multiplying five pieces of bread and two fish to feed 20,000 people. (The 5000 came from only counting males.) And he did this miracle multiple times. But then Jesus ascended to heaven, and it was the crowd that followed Jesus that were doing these miraculous things. Disciples, or apostles, were healing the sick, reviving the dead, and preaching from Samaria to the ends of the world. Those crowds came together and formed this special community dedicated only to serving our Lord Jesus and spreading the very special and happy news: that Jesus died for our sins, that we are no longer in the reigns of Devil, and that by his blood we received our salvation. The thing is, Jesus was the one who commanded the disciples to do these miraculous things.

John 14:13-14: “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

This verse is essentially saying that we will be able to do anything we ask Jesus for. Here, this verse is NOT saying that he will “give” us anything if we ask in his name, he is saying that he will “DO” anything we ask him for, to show the glory of God. The apostles were doing the exact same things Jesus did in his ministry, and even more. How does one do this? It is written in Acts 1:4-5:

Acts 1:4-5: “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

And receive the Holy Spirit they did, on Acts 2:1-4:

Acts 2:1-4 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

So they began doing miraculous things as I have mentioned, and then the church began to receive persecution. Now, that seems like a bad thing, however, God uses many things to help us. The persecution believers received made them scatter, allowing them to spread the words of Gospel everywhere. The persecution Paul received during Acts 18 caused Paul to spread Christianity to Gentiles.

Philippians 1:12-14: “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.”

This is what a model church should be like. A place where the teachings of the apostles are alive. Our job is to follow what acts the apostles did to help the church, which is essentially what Jesus told them to do, as seen on Matthew 28:19-20:

Matthew 28:19-20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The sad fact of most churches today is that there are teachings given every Sunday, yet nobody lives by them. What is the point of teaching something, if we do not live by it? Yes, we are all sinners, we are bound by our flesh. However, it is a sad fact that there are many people out there claiming to be Christians, but they’re wearing coats of lambs to hide what they really are. We are supposed to do what is taught, and we are supposed to follow the apostles’ teachings and live by them. So what are the acts the apostles did? Let us look at Acts 2:42:

Acts 2:42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

Amen. This is what all of today’s churches should be doing. If we are taught to pray, we should pray every moment. If we are taught to evangelize, we should live by it.

Communion, the breaking of bread we have every month, symbolizes the Last Supper. Luke 22:19-20:

Luke 22:19-20: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

So having communion is essential. Let us look at 1 Corinthians, 10:19-21:

1 Corinthians, 10:19-21: “Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.”

Our communion we do every month is a version of the sacrifices made to the idols in other religions. However, we serve the one and only living God. The communion we do is to experience being one with God by body of Jesus and the covenant in his blood, and so it is one of the most important procedures of churches. One of the most important things we should do is to pray everyday, or if you are more of a extremist, pray every moment. Praying and repenting every day is the example that notable figures in the Bible gave. What is our excuse for not doing the same? The end of the days is closer than it was 2000 years ago; we should pray every day. Christians that set examples are what makes their church the model church, essentially what every church today should be. So what should be the model Christian? A person who prays and repents everyday, participates actively in fellowships, etc, but one of the most important things is to have a good reputation. Let us turn to Acts 6:3:

Acts 6:3 (NIV): “Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them”

Now, I admit that I was confused when I saw this verse. In my Korean Bible version, verse 3 specifically states “good reputation”, So I decided to look into the King James Version:

Acts 6:3 (KJV): “Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business;”

“good reputation”. I do not know why the NIV version translates this way, but as seen here, having a good reputation was essential to take part in operating a church, a lesson perhaps learned (this is my own interpretation) when they choose Mattias by casting lots. The Bible does not say whether thIs went well or not, but they never did use lots to fill a position ever again.

Now the thing about evangelizing is that the problem most Christians today face: they have no friends to spread the happy news to. As a person progresses into becoming a Christian, they slowly began losing their earthly friends. It is understandable; you might want to avoid them due to their sins and evil deeds they perform. However, it is also important to keep on making earthly friends. Why? To spread the joyous news with them. Fellow Christians, do not be afraid of earthly people. As Jesus said:

Matthew 10:28: “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

We are supposed to keep on preaching to those who are in darkness. You might think this as cumbersome and hurting to your personal reputation. However, why do you only think of yourselves? By sacrificing part of our daily life, those people who are blinded are able to see light and receive salvation! It is our duty, and no Christian should have the blood of another brother on his hands simply because they did not tell him the great news of our salvation. Do you know why people of earth always accuse of church of doing wrong ten things when church makes one mistake? I’ll tell you why: they are afraid of US. We should not be afraid of them. This fact saddens me: Christians these days have little faith. They just stay in their Christian circle, not going out to the world and preaching to them this good news. That is the way for the true fellowship. Readers, staying in your safe circle is not the way. The disciples were some of the first people to believe in Jesus Christ, and after Jesus rose up to heaven, did they stay in their safe circle, not telling other people of this happy news? No. They had to be brave enough to face all the persecutions they were given and they stayed strong even till death, preaching to other people about the fact that Jesus died for our sins to other people. That is what we should be doing. Did Jesus tell us to come up to the heavens in order to preach to us about the happy news? No. Did he abandon us, the sinners, when others mocked him for being friends with us? No. He came down to our level, and sacrificed himself so that we may receive our salvation. He became our Friend. Let us look at John 15:13-14:

John 15:13-14: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”

Let us think for a moment. Is it a good thing or a bad thing for Jesus to have us as his friend? It would be a bad thing. Why in the world would he associate himself with us, who are sinners? He feasted with sinners and tax collectors! This was the main reason rabbis condemned him! When John fasted and did not eat, they called him a demon, and when Jesus feasted with tax collectors, they called him a drunkard, friend of sinners. However Jesus did not come down to Earth for the righteous; he came for the sinners.

That is the example model Christians should be setting to other people. Simply believing is not enough; over time, we must become more and more similar to the personality of Christ himself. The convention of these people, who pray day and night, operate the church as a whole, and evangelize to other people constantly is what makes the model church, what every church in our generation should be like. For indeed, the end is near.

!> The Catholic Church (Dang, spoiler syntax doesn’t work on the blog.)

Well, anyway it’s the Catholic Church. Since this month’s Eschewmenical topic is “What is the Church”, I figured it would be prudent to answer the question as directly as possible. Different denominations seem to have different marks, but as a Catholic catechist, one of the rote knowledge sort of things I attempt to drill into my students are the four marks of the church. From the Nicene Creed, codified at the council of Constantinople, they are (and tell me if you’ve heard this one before): the Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

99% of the following is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church 813-933. However, as always, I must warn you that my only credentials are my Bronze Catholicism badge so take what I write with a grain of blessed salt.

Atomic – Oneness

The Catholic Church is a cohesive body. She is unified in her liturgy, in her sacraments and in her Traditions. The unity associated with the Church is modeled on unity of the Holy Trinity, but how many ‘unities’ does the Trinity have? One. How many unities do the United States and Canada have? I count seven.

We have one founder in Jesus Christ. The Church wasn’t invented by a plurality of minds. We don’t have framers, founders and papers to go off of. People can go back and say: “What was St. Paul thinking when he preached on marriage? What was St. Peter thinking when he preached on forgiveness?”, but they can’t go back and say, “What was St. Paul thinking when he instituted the Sacrament of marriage? What was St. Peter thinking when he instituted the Sacrament of reconciliation?” because these things were instituted by our Founder, Jesus Christ.

The Church has one soul, because only one soul can animate one body. It’s the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in those who make up its body that animates the Church. Jesus (and Lincoln to a lesser extent) said, a house divided cannot stand. He was talking about a wicked house but the logic (that a house split in two will fall to the ground) is true regardless if the house is a den of iniquity or the cenacle.

Aloof – Holiness

The Church is the spotless Bride of Christ. Spotless, pure, virginal, sacred, holy; these are all good words for what the Church is. Not necessarily the individuals within the Church. But for all we know, the Church could go on existing without a single member; so strong is the promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail over it. Because of that, we can confidently call the Church holy.

Jek Porkins in the Package

Holiness shares a lot of letters with hoity toity-ness. But it need not be a synonym for it. To make something holy is to have it set apart. It may be set apart for battle like Excalibur or your grandpa’s Winchesters. It may be set aside for a party, like my wife’s 2002 Chardonnay we never bothered to drink. But it’s not set apart like Jek Porkins in the package never to be played with or played with only by special people. The Church is to be opened and played with by all.

Ubiquitous – Catholic (universal)

Catholic means universal, as in applies to all. It’s easy to get confused by this word, but I’ll bet most Protestants who recite the Nicene Creed understand the meaning of the word catholic better than most Catholics. To a non-Christian however, it probably seems strange that with a few exceptions we name our denominations based on a portion of our teaching. There’s nothing magic about the name Catholic and there’s no reason to think that it’s better to stress universality than to stress baptism (Baptists) or teaching (Presbyterians/Orthodox) or the Gospel (Evangelicals) or churchiness (Congregationalists/Episcopalians).

The magic, however, is in the truth of the word, catholic. Because we hold that everyone is more or less in the Catholic Church, even those who inevitably write in the comments section of blogs such as these that they don’t want anything to do with my misogynistic, homophobic church run by women and gay priests. Everyone living or dead is pray-for-able. The Church does not damn anyone to Hell; she acknowledges that there are special folks in Heaven who intercede on our behalf and considers both them and us the living to be saints. Furthermore, she holds the dignity of the human person as the very most important thing and always and in what ever way seek to end human suffering.

Smells of Fish – Apostolic

The Catholic Church is brought to you today

by the letter A

and by the number twelve

The twelve apostles, ordained by Jesus, sealed with the Holy Spirit were sent forth to be fishers of men, making disciples of all nations; baptizing, casting out demons, forgiving sins, healing mind, spirit and body. They were the first to go out and do all that Jesus had taught them to do. In so doing, they chose men to act as preachers and sent them out (Romans 10:14-15) and they also chose men to aid in the preaching (1 Tim 3:8-10). They themselves were the first Bishops and those whom they chose to ordain were the next Bishops right down to our present day. Other denominations can’t really make that claim.

Founders of Christian Denominations

Name	Year	Founder	Origin
Catholic	33	Jesus Christ	Jerusalem
Lutheran	1524	Martin Luther	Germany
Episcopalian	1534	Henry VIII	England
Presbyterian	1560	John Knox	Scotland
Baptist	1600	John Smyth	Amsterdam
Congregational	1600	Robert Brown	England
Methodist	1739	John and Charles Wesley	England
United Brethren	1800	Philip Otterbein & Martin Boehm	Maryland, USA
Disciples of Christ	1827	Thomas & Alexander Campbell	Kentucky, USA
Mormon	1830	Joseph Smith	New York, USA
Salvation Army	1865	William Booth	London
Christian Science	1879	Mary Baker Eddy	Boston, Massachusetts USA
Four-Square Gospel	1917	Aimee-Semple McPherson	Los Angeles, California USA

_{From “The Faith of Millions” by Rev. John A. O’Brien, Ph.D.}

---

The Catholic Church was paid for

by the blood of martyrs

and readers like you, thank you!

Every week millions of people gather, usually on Sunday (or Saturday, or maybe even another day), usually in the same place. What they do varies, but it usually consists of singing and then listening to someone talk for a bit. Sometimes they gather again midweek, sometimes they go every single day. It’s church, sometimes we go because we want to, sometimes we go because we need to, sometimes we don’t go at all. But how often do we actually think about what it is and why we go?

This month in Eschewmenical we are going to explore the question “What is the church?” This is a rather ponderous question and several facets likely deserve their own entire month of treatment on this blog. However, this month is the general overview.

The church is a relatively common topic on Christianity.SE with several tags devoted to it including “church”, “church-local”, and “church-universal” among others.

What exactly is the church and who it consists of, and how to “do” church are all up for debate in this month’s blog. This month’s contributors are:

• 5/7 Peter (Catholic—One, holy, catholic, apostolic)
• 5/14 Chaos Gamer (Berean—What churches everyday should be)
• 5/21 Jon (Evangelical—The Church struggle)
• 5/28 Bruce (United Methodist—Walking worthy of the vocation to which we have been called)

So Saturday or Sunday, traditional or modern, universal, local or visible, this month we ask “What is the church?”

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Christ is risen! Truly, He is Risen!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,
θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,
ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!
 
‎”Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tombs,
Bestowing life!”

The above words are the Paschal Troparion from the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, first in Greek and then in English. This is sung every Easter in the Eastern Orthodox Church. My brothers in Christ have done an excellent job discussing the meaning of Easter in the past few weeks, and most of the things said apply also to Eastern Christians. So let us then focus on the differences between Eastern and Western Christians in regard to this feast, and let us begin by dispelling a common objection to the holiday: that of its pagan origins.

Isn’t Easter a pagan holiday?

This is a common objection to the celebration of Easter (and Christmas), even among some fundamental Western Christians. While there is somewhat of a valid argument as to the pagan origins of Christmas, there really isn’t one concerning Easter. The confusion lies in a heavily disputed comment made in 730 A.D. by St. Bede, an English monk and Christian historian. The comment concerns the origins of the name Easter, which St. Bede attributes to feasts dedicated to a fertility goddess named Eostre in the month of April that were celebrated in Nordic/Germanic culture. The problem with using this as justification for the pagan origins of Easter is that the Nordic/Germanic people were late converts to the Christian faith (late 6th century), and it is clear from history that the celebration of Easter was practiced by Christians as early as the second century. Christianity Today wrote a detailed historical analysis of Easter’s supposed pagan origins that is highly recommended for further information. The article goes to great lengths to demonstrate that it is highly unlikely that Easter comes from a pagan holiday.

But what about the Easter bunny and colored eggs? The Easter bunny comes from German legends, but the practice of coloring eggs is actually from Eastern Christianity, not from paganism. There are several legends about why Eastern Christians began coloring eggs, but what is clear is that Eastern Christians came to color eggs red in remembrance of Christ’s blood which was shed for us. Eastern Christians do not mingle cultural pagan customs such as the Easter bunny into their celebration of the liturgical feast.

Is the feast called Easter or Pascha?

For Eastern Christians, the title “Easter” has only recently begun to be used, and that only for convenience and ease of understanding as Eastern Christianity has spread to Western English-speaking countries. Since the times of the apostles and their direct disciples, Christians have called this holiday “Pascha,” from the Greek word Πάσχα meaning “Passover.” In the East, this holiday is clearly connected to the Jewish Passover. The Eucharist was instituted by our Lord on the Last Supper which was the Passover Seder meal. Scripture makes it clear that Jesus is our Paschal Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, defeating death and giving us life. The preferred and official title for the feast is Pascha in Eastern Christianity, as this has been the title of this feast in Christianity since the time of the apostles. In scripture we learn:

“I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will attack all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. The blood [of the slain lamb] will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12-13, NET, emphasis mine).
 
“God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness” (Romans 3:25-26, NET, emphasis mine).

Just as God passed over the Israelites, sparing their firstborn sons when He saw the blood of the lambs on their doorposts in Egypt, God passed over our sins and did not spare the Paschal Lamb, His firstborn Son Jesus Christ. Hence we celebrate Pascha in remembrance of Passover and its fulfillment in Christ. Jesus demonstrated His victory over death by His resurrection three days later on Sunday morning. This is why the day of worship for Christians was changed from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Sunday.

Why do most Eastern Christians celebrate on a different day than Western Christians?

The simple answer is that the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar while the Western Church uses the Gregorian calendar. In any given year it can be celebrated one to five weeks after Western Easter (or sometimes on the same day, such as in 2011). But a little elaboration is in order. The Roman calendar was being exploited by priests in order to control politics, so Julius Caesar instituted the Julian calendar in 45 B.C. to put an end to this. The Julian calendar was still the dominant civic calendar when the dating of Pascha was decided at the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, and since the Eastern Orthodox do not believe that anything can be changed without the approval of the entire Church at an Ecumenical Council, the Julian calendar continued to be used as the liturgical calendar even after many Eastern nations adopted the Gregorian reform to their respective civic calendars. The Roman Catholic Church began using the Gregorian calendar for liturgical feasts in 1582 and Western Christianity followed suit.

In 1923, an Eastern Orthodox synod was held in Constantinople that proposed a revised Julian calendar which would account for some of the discrepancies between the dating of Eastern and Western Christian holidays. But this decision is not accepted by all Eastern Orthodox Christians and is not without controversy:

The synod, chaired by controversial Patriarch Meletius IV of Constantinople, and called Pan-Orthodox by its defenders, did not have representatives from the remaining Orthodox members of the original Pentarchy (the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) or from the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, then under persecution from the Bolsheviks, but only effective representation from the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Serbian Patriarch….
 
While the new calendar has been adopted by many of the smaller national churches, a majority of Orthodox Christians continue to adhere to the traditional Julian calendar, and there has been much acrimony between the two parties over the decades since the change, leading sometimes even to violence, especially in Greece.
 
Critics see the change in calendar as an unwarranted innovation, influenced by Western society. They say that no sound theological reason has been given for changing the calendar, that the only reasons advanced are social. The proposal for change was introduced by a Patriarch whose canonical status has been disputed and who was a Freemason.
 
The argument is also made that since the use of the Julian calendar was implicit in the decision of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea (325) which standardized the calculation of the date of Pascha (Easter), no authority less than an Ecumenical Council may change it. The adoption of a new calendar has broken the unity of the church, undoing the whole purpose of the council of Nicaea, so once again, “on the same day some should be fasting whilst others are seated at a banquet….”
 
Proponents also argue that the new calendar is somehow more “scientific”, but opponents argue that science is not the primary concern of the Church; rather, the Church is concerned with other-worldliness, with being “in the world, but not of it”, fixing the attention of the faithful on eternity. Scientifically speaking, neither the Gregorian calendar nor the new calendar is absolutely precise. This is because the solar year cannot be evenly divided into 24 hour segments. So any public calendar is imprecise; it is simply an agreed-upon designation of days.

Many English-speaking Eastern Orthodox churches in North America use the revised Julian calendar, but many who still retain the language and culture of their homeland (many Eastern Europeans) still use the old Julian calendar (they are called new calendarists and old calendarists, respectively – often used derogatorily by those who are of the opposite persuasion). It is the position of most new calendarists that the First Council of Nicaea did not actually specify that the Julian calendar had to be used, it was simply used since it was the dominant civic calendar at the time, thus strict adherence to the original Julian calendar is not necessary for Eastern Orthodox Christian unity. Some Eastern Christians have even switched to using the Gregorian calendar and follow the dates of Western liturgical feasts.

How do Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha?

Detailed accounts and videos of the Pascha celebration exist, so this will only be a brief (and thus incomplete) summary. Eastern Orthodox Christians gather slightly before midnight on Great and Holy Saturday; the priest will remove the burial sheet (winding sheet) from the “tomb” and place it on the altar table where it will remain for 40 days until the Ascension (leave-taking) of Christ. The congregation will leave the building at midnight singing and process around the building. Then before the closed doors of the sanctuary the priest will announce the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, often by reading the Gospel concerning the empty tomb. At this point the Paschal Troparion quoted earlier will be sung. There is then continual singing and proclamation of “Christ is risen!” To which the people of God reply, “Truly, He is Risen!” (as was stated in the opening line of this post). This is often done in English, Greek, and/or any native languages of the congregation. The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom is then read, inviting the people of God to forget their sins and fully join in the feast of the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. The Eucharist may be celebrated at this time, where God’s people partake of the Paschal Lamb. The Paschal Troparion is sung numerous times, then the beginning verses of Acts are read, followed by the beginning of St. John’s Gospel. The Divine Liturgy then follows, with the Paschal Troparion being sung continually throughout.

“The celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church, therefore, is once again not merely an historical reenactment of the event of Christ’s Resurrection as narrated in the gospels. It is not a dramatic representation of the first Easter morning. There is no ‘sunrise service’ since the Easter Matins and the Divine Liturgy are celebrated together in the first dark hours of the first day of the week in order to give men the experience of the ‘new creation’ of the world, and to allow them to enter mystically into the New Jerusalem which shines eternally with the glorious light of Christ, overcoming the perpetual night of evil and destroying the darkness of this mortal and sinful world” (OCA website).

After Divine Liturgy, a large meal is celebrated as the family of God. Food is brought to be blessed by the priest, and the faithful break their fasting together. Not all Eastern Orthodox practice all of this the exact same way – this is a general outline of how the feast of Pascha is observed. It is a long night, beginning before midnight and extending into the early morning hours. Sometimes people leave and return later in the morning or afternoon for various aspects of the feast.

Every Sunday is Pascha

The final point that I’d like to share is that every Sunday is Pascha (Easter). The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the center of the Christian faith. St. Paul says that if Christ is not raised from the dead, then our preaching and faith are in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). Jon did a great job establishing the centrality and reliability of the resurrection a few weeks ago. Because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, Sunday came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” which is symbolic of the first day of creation and the last day – or as it is called in Holy Tradition, the eighth day of the Kingdom of God. Every time we gather we proclaim that “Christ is risen!”

Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Christ is risen! Truly, He is Risen!

When I was in seminary, I took a class on Christian worship. I didn’t take it at the Baptist seminary I was attending. Instead, I got permission to take Worship with a personal friend who was far, far more liturgical than I was. I knew that my Baptist class would dig deep on the theological foundations of worship, I wanted something more. I wanted something deeper. I wanted to experience the historical worship of the church at my core. I wanted know what it means to feel worship.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Baptists. I still believe we are the most cerebral, most thoughtful group of scholars out there. But what I fear we miss is the heart and soul of what we study.

That class was my first exposure to the Church calendar – the cycle of birth, suffering, death, and life that played itself out every year. There was a time to feel the anticipation of Christmas. There was a time to put away at Lent. There was the burst of excitement that is Easter, and there was the humdrum of Ordinary Time. And then, there was Good Friday. The one day that encompassed it all.

Wendy, of course, knew that I was a Baptist, and so when I would submit worship service plans, she’d encourage me to make them in a way that my church would be able to use them. But then she assigned the final project. The assignment was to write up plans for five worship services. One for Palm Sunday, One for Easter, and three for Holy Week.

I had to call Wendy. “Wendy, you realize that my little Baptist church probably couldn’t even name three Holy Week services that weren’t Easter or Palm Sunday?”

“You don’t do the Great Vigil? That’s an amazingly Scripture-filled service!”

“I agree. More Scripture is read there than a lot of churches I know will preach in a month!”

“How about Maunday Thursday?”

“Well, I suppose I could do a Christian sedar. I could use that as a teaching about the Passover that Jesus was celebrating. My church will like that.”

“Ok. Do that. And then, I guess all you need is Good Friday.”

“Problem, Wendy. My church wouldn’t ever do Good Friday. Its just not their custom!”

“What do you mean they don’t do Good Friday? How can you possibly do Easter without Good Friday?”

How did I ever do Easter without Good Friday? That question haunted me for quite a while. Indeed, I probably didn’t get over that question until I, like Wendy, became an Episcopalian.

Oh, to be sure, I still love Easter. What Christian doesn’t feel a little stir when they gather in the church parking lot just before Sunrise, pulling out the hard, uncomfortable sitting chairs, waiting for the organist on the little portable piano to start tapping out “Up from the Grave He Arose!” (With a mighty triumph o’er his foes!) If you’re a Christian, you know that feeling of hope meeting reality on Resurrection morning. The Christ was was crucified is alive! We celebrate know that the victory is won – O grave, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? It is a happy rebirth of all that we hold dear.

But without Good Friday, can we really say that?

You see, before you can celebrate the Resurrection, you must first mourn the death.

When I became an Episcopalian, I started seeing how we would have a simple reflection period on Good Friday. From noon until 3 – as Jesus was hanging on the cross. We put aside our busy schedules and simply sit in silence. Our rector will, every half hour, read a small meditation on what Christ did for us, but mostly, it is corporate silence. We are free to focus on just one thing – the depth of Jesus’ love.

That feeling, that experience, speaks to my heart in ways that are deeper than those thoughts which might fill my head. Sitting on that worn bench, the cerebrial thoughts can percolate down to my cardiac core. Realizing that the Messiah wasn’t engaged in some theological sophistry as the thorns pierced his brow or the whip lashed his back. Good Friday beckons me to contemplate not the theology but the physicality that he endured.

Before the Resurrection, there was death. His, mine, and ours.

As Christians we want to skip to the end so fast. Jesus is back! Jesus is Alive! Jesus is going to be our friend and be with us in heaven! What glorious news!

But how can we really appreciate how good that news is until we appreciate what our fate should have been.

We were the ones supposed to be on that cross. We were the ones who should have died. But Jesus took our place. He was mocked. He was beaten. He was stripped. He was forced to wear a crown of thorns. He was violated and crushed and bruised. All for us. All for me.

It was the ultimate act of love. There was no good feeling on the cross, but it was the ultimate act of love. As Johnny Hart, the late writer of the comic strip B.C. once wrote: “Why do we call Good Friday good? A term too oft misunderstood. You who were bought by the blood of his cross. You alone can call Good Friday Good.”

When we realize what was lost. When we realize what was bought. When we realize that the bleakness of Good Friday is all we had – only when we have internalized that everything truly was dead – only then can we truly celebrate Easter.

I’m writing this in the middle of March, so Alleluia’s and Gloria’s and Resurrections and Ascensions are the just pie in the sky nonsense and me and my billion strong Catholic cohort are lumbering through the lonely days of Lent, eagerly awaiting the promise of new life that comes at Easter.

What is Easter to a Catholic?

• It is a relief from the self-imposed and ecclesiastically imposed mandates of Lent.
• It is the end of the intensity of Holy Week
• It is the celebration commemorating Christ’s glorified walk with us.
• It is the time to mark the coming of the Holy Spirit on Our Lady and the Apostles and the beginning of the Church.

Moreover, it is a time to rejoice in the fact that even though Jesus rose into Heaven, He has left us a Helper, built us a Church and given us His mother.

If you’re not a Christian or not one of us who uses a fancy liturgical calendar then you may think that

Easter Bunny

is the holiday after

Not St. Patrick

which happened a few weeks ago and is gone until next year.  But, just as Christmas day is the beginning of the Christmas season, Easter Sunday is the beginning of the Easter Season. Likewise, both events are the ends of their respective seasons of preparation (Advent and Lent); seasons of joy after seasons of penitence.

After being on Christianity.SE for a while (only the robots signed up for the beta before me) I know I’m writing mainly to my Christian brothers who haven’t given much thought or may even be disdainful of marking times and seasons.  So, since I know I’m not writing to many Catholics who would find this extremely boring.  I’ll give the short version of the Lent/Easter season and you can tell me how boring it is, seen through a new pair of eyes.

As the calculation for Easter Sunday changes every year, I’ll just use this year’s calendar to highlight the principle feasts, solemnities and other observances.

So that’s how Catholics warm up to celebrate Easter. We all have our own traditions; our own cuts of meat we prefer. But as a whole, it’s the liturgical celebrations that bind us all together. Unfortunately, in this American’s experience, we don’t properly know how to celebrate Easter. The priest wears his white duds, the Easter flowers wilt and are composted, the decor of the physical church remains pretty paschal (or was it pastel). But the body that compromises the church, well, we don’t whoop it up as much as we ought.

We get our Alleluia’s and our Gloria’s back at Mass. We can order burritos without worrying about what day it is. If we pray the Angelus, now we pray the Regina Coelli. But unless one is somehow attuned to a wavelength coming straight from the Source of Unending Joy. There’s really not a whole lot else to do, or is there…

Thus passeth the 7 Sundays of Easter and the various moveable feasts affected thereof. So, get out there and celebrate or, at the very least, know what to expect when you go in to a Catholic Church!

¹ A bane to timeclock programmers like me.

^+J+M+J+ Shameless plug for Marian Consecration

Next week the Affable Geek is going to take us back and remind us Why we need Good Friday. While Catholics have moved on to Easter and baseball, we all remember that

“As much as we love the Brewers, unlike Jesus, they didn’t die for your sins.” – Archbishop Jerome Listecki

Last month, I gave a definition of Evangelicalism that mentioned one of our four core values: “crucicentrism”. We believe (along with most Christians) that the cross of Christ represents the turning point in human history and the start of God’s victory over evil. That the early Christians interpreted the death of their Messiah as a victory and not the defeat of a failed revolutionary rabbi stands testimony to their belief that Jesus stepped out of the tomb alive.

Here’s how Paul of Tarsus put it in a letter to the church in the Roman colony city of Corinth:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.—1^st Corinthians 15:3-9 (ESV)

Scholars agree that the letter was written by Paul sometime between 53 and 57 AD, which places it, at most, 27 years after the events surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. Interestingly, the Corinthians were skeptical that Jesus could have risen bodily from the tomb and Paul gives this passage as evidence. A portion of the passage (“that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures”) was most likely a creed or statement of belief that scholars have dated to within 5 years of the crucifixion. So it’s not so much evidence of the resurrection per se as evidence of the belief of the Jerusalem church.

The creed lists witnesses to the events in chronological order of when they saw the risen Jesus. Most intriguing is the mention of more than 500 brothers (and possibly sisters—the Greek is ambiguous on the point). We have independent accounts of when Jesus appeared to all the other witnesses (including Paul) but we don’t know for sure who the 500 plus were. However, Paul did and almost challenges his readers to contact them: “most of whom are still alive”.

It wasn’t an idle challenge either. We look back on ancient travel and communication as dangerous and unreliable. There’s truth to that, but in the ancient context, the Roman system of roads and sea routes was vital to the operation of empire. Corinth (or Corinthus) was a critical waypoint between the Eastern and Western provinces. Acts 4:33 talks about apostles “giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” and Paul mentions apostles traveling to Rome before he got there, so the Corinthians likely had direct access to witnesses of the resurrection.

Paul also refers to a problem that was fast approaching: “Some have fallen asleep” is a euphemism meaning “some have died”. How would the church continue to bear witness to its creed when the eyewitnesses had gone? Sometime between 65 and 80 AD somebody wrote down the first Gospel (or biography of Jesus). The book includes an account of the resurrection:

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.—Mark 16:1-8 (ESV)

Believe it or not, that’s how the story ends; Mark 16:9-20 is marked as a later insertion in most modern editions. There are several theories about why Mark ended there, but it’s possible the author intended the reader to seek out a Christian to answer the burning question: “What happened next?” In any case, Mark began a transition from a largely oral tradition to written history. In the decades to follow, Christianity produced a remarkable corpus of four written accounts of the life of Jesus.

To understand why our written history of Jesus is so remarkable, let me turn our attention to one of the biggest stories of the early Roman Empire: the Great Fire of Rome. That event had roughly a million eyewitnesses. In terms of significance, it was in the same league as 9/11. We have three surviving accounts, all of which are secondary and at least 50 years removed from the event. In turn, those sources draw on three primary sources which are now lost. None of the accounts, however, agree on the central facts: who set the fire and why, and where Nero was at the time. Even so, with a great deal of detective work, historians feel confident in claiming the fire was an accident that Nero blamed on the Christians.

Considering there were at most a few hundred witnesses to the risen Jesus, it’s remarkable that we have four written histories. Occasionally skeptics point to the various contradictions between the gospels as evidence that the story is made up. But the truth is that multiple historical accounts increase our certainty that the event happened. Historians usually extrapolate from meager evidence in ancient text (a passing reference or an incomplete narrative), so four secondary sources that reflect at least as many primary sources is highly unusual. We have orders of magnitude more biographical data about Jesus than we do about, for instance, Shakespeare who we know mostly from scraps of business and legal documents outside of his plays and poetry.

As it turns out, all four accounts agree with the three points of the creed Paul repeated:

1. Christ died
2. he was buried
3. he was raised on the third day

They agree that third day was the first day of the week: Sunday. They also agree on several details that seem to have no theological significance: the first witnesses were women who worried about how to move the stone door of the tomb, which was donated by Joseph of Arimathea. Quite likely Paul left out the women in his list of people who saw Jesus alive after the cross because, in the ancient world, they would not be seen as reliable witnesses. But without the women, the gospel writers would be left without a narrative.

When it comes to disagreements among the gospels, probably the most famous concerns the messengers who were already at the tomb when the women arrived. Were they angels or men? Did they sit on the stone or were they inside the tomb? How many were there: one, two, more? What, if anything was their message? These stories are difficult, even impossible, to harmonize. But these are exactly the sort of oddities we should expect from several, independent memories of the same event.

There is no solid archaeological evidence for the empty tomb. Most likely, the site was destroyed by the city of Jerusalem remaking herself. At any rate, the tomb might have looked like this one, which was uncovered in 1874:

Early Christianity showed little interest in the site of the tomb, or even in travel to Palestine before the 4^th century, which isn’t surprising since the New Testament asserts that there was no body to be found there. For the gospel writers, the important thing to establish was that Jesus had, in fact, risen.

There is so much more to tell, but I need to stop somewhere. If you would like to explore more, I suggest N. T. Wright’s article “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins” or, for the ambitious, his book The Resurrection of the Son of God. Don’t worry if the material above made you question presuppositions; as I was writing the post I had many doubts. But doubt is the sign of self-honesty, so it’s a good thing.

Tune in next week when Peter Turner writes about something many Evangelicals wouldn’t expect.