Prayer, hard work, and God’s unchanging providence

With help from Kierkegaard I advanced some ideas last month about prayer to an unchanging God, and here I want to start some related thoughts about God’s providence.  A theology with no theory of prayer is a study without a method.  All real theologies describe and account for the function and object of prayer, and this always relates back to their theories of divine providence.

First principles should be simple and biblical, and I think a good theory of material providence can be founded on a saying of Jesus about the manner of God’s care for the birds.

“…look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Mt 6:26).

Most importantly for any good principle of providence, this one does not rule out hard work.  Because anyone who follows the advice of Jesus and actually takes a ‘look at the birds’ will see that they work their little tails off all day long seeking and finding all their free provisions.

An abundance of seeds and water, of insects and other prey are available to the birds by their habitual conformity to material laws as they find them.  This kind of material providence doesn’t feature a ‘system’ designed by the birds nor a being who is propitiated by the birds.  It is instead a system which supports the very possibility of material good.  In my view, God’s perfect material providence works for us in the same way (I’ll get to the spiritual later, and the problem of evil).

Why does Jesus give no place in his material providence to purposeful (anxious) work such as sowing, reaping, and storage?  Doesn’t God help those who help themselves?  But sowing and reaping are not despised – Jesus built plenty of teaching material around the whole subject of agriculture.  And yet no farmer brings in a good crop if his acts are not in conformity to the same unchanging laws as God has laid out for his feeding of the birds.

In the same verse Jesus asks, “Are you not of more value than they?”

Divine material providence (like competition between species) is one of those delicate situations calling for this kind of rhetorical question which invites us to join the teacher’s thought on the next level (i.e. we don’t take these words as justifying any dissing of the avian races ).

For Jesus I think ‘the next level’ is the level of our material anxiety, especially our vain hopes and false fears for tomorrow.  But he’s not giving in to these.

1.  He doesn’t suggest that we have in fact a claim on God’s love to bind him to special provisions of material needs.

2.  He’s not suggesting that any laws are subject to change to suit these needs.

3.  And in no way is he suggesting that special consideration is due to any farmer as reward for ‘good behavior’ that is not related simply to good farming.

This providence gives no place to ancient pagan beliefs – that a farmer or his priest may request dispensations of rain, or sunshine, good germination, absence of pests, tall corn, efficient harvest, and a fine excess.  This providence suggests only gracious prayers of thanksgiving for God’s loving foundation of unchanging material and spiritual laws.

(to be continued)

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Empyrean Dialogues 4 – The Mandate

While Moses briefs the Divine Son in the Empyrean prior to the Incarnation, the subject turns to the difficulties inherent in the Incarnation Mandate, and the possibility of rejection by Israel.

MOSES:  All the saints pray for Israel’s acceptance of your mission, Sire, but anyone can see Father’s mandate for your incarnation is bad news as far as priesthood and temple are concerned.

THE SON:  No question.  Father wants me to feature nothing less than the whole truth about his divine forgiveness.

MOSES:  So he’s clearly talking about a complete de-authorization of the temple system of atonement – both ritual and sacrifice.

THE SON:  You know yourself it wasn’t Father’s idea in the first place.

MOSES:  We had no temple – nor any of the current sacrifices – during the 40 years in the wilderness, Sire.

THE SON:  Right.  But what is left of the sacred record of such truths?

MOSES:  The Book of Amos, Sire.  End of Chapter 5.

THE SON:  Yeah great.  It’s going to be front-paged when I’m finished.

MOSES:  Don’t be too sure.  Sacrifice is an ancient meme.  What if they spin you as the new sacrifice?

THE SON:  Oh God.

MOSES:   I’m just sayin’.  Never mind.

THE SON:  We know it won’t be popular with the priests and scribes.

MOSES:  But the temple sacrifices are a lucrative business for some of the biggest names, Sire.  They can invoke the highest sanctions against you and could really hurt your overall numbers.

THE SON:  And it’s not just the temple, Mo.  Father wants a new Sabbath as well.

MOSES:  I saw that.  So the temple gets common cause with the synagogues against you.  Terrific.

THE SON:  A perfect storm.

MOSES:  But I understand why He’s upset about how that day of rest turned out – we set that day aside for the people in order to free them from man-made taboos, not to bind them.

THE SON:  Well He’s calling it all in.

MOSES:  Clearly.  This is the big one.  The saints are in awe of Father’s new dispensation. It looks like He’s preparing to shake both the highlands and the low places.

THE SON:  Even the very foundations of Jerusalem.  Nevertheless I’m getting one more chance to gather her under his wing.

MOSES:  Nice, except she believes she’s already there.

THE SON:  Yes, but I find this very real and present trust in God an irresistible quality in this people Israel.

MOSES:  It can’t be denied – even in the face of all their historic failures.

THE SON:  Their sublime trust in Father’s faithfulness has surpassed in power all human intellectual assent to beliefs about Him and His Anointed.

MOSES:  And always will.

THE SON:  In fact, the hope inspired by such trust is what forbids my knowing their final decision until they make it.

MOSES:  Sire, everybody here is thrilled by your sworn faithfulness and hopes you will be preaching forgiveness in the temple right down to the elders’ last possible moment of decision.

THE SON:  Count on it.

MOSES:  It’s just … You may never be able to convince them.  I know this people.

THE SON:  Nothing is impossible with God.

MOSES:  Maybe not, but I think Father is showing a lot of wisdom in featuring both an acceptance scenario and a rejection scenario.

THE SON:  The thing with that is either one of Father’s scenarios manifests His will for man in full.

MOSES:  Believe me, I think you’ll get a pretty good idea which one is in play before the end of your first year in public.

(to be continued)

Empyrean Dialogues:

1 – Annunciation

2 – Of Times and Seasons

3 – The Forerunner

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Lustful looking – when is it sin and when is it not sin?

When Jimmy Carter confessed to adultery-of-the-heart in 1976 he uttered a commonplace (and false) assumption that an unexpressed desire is equivalent with actual sin:

Carter:  “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times [cites Matthew 5:27-28].  This is something that God recognizes that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it… Because I’m just human and I’m tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us.”

Impossible standards? Well yes, if Carter seriously believes that the profound teaching of Jesus at Mt. 5:27-28 applies to unexpressed desires, or to feelings of attraction or arousal in the act of looking at a woman. A little exegesis, however, should show that Carter has allowed a widespread misinterpretation of the Bible to create the illusion of impossible standards - and the illusion of sin.

I say give Jesus a break! Look for the true point of his teaching by seeking a true moral principle in connection with the true Biblical meaning, and not in a ridiculous evangelical can of corn like ‘psychological sin.’

In Mt. 5:28 Jesus’ meaning comes to us on the back of two Greek words: blepon, watching or looking on; and epithymesai, evil desire, lust, covetousness.  But these two words possess a common meaning tone that make it impossible to equate adultery with every feeling of desire at the sight of a woman’s beauty.

First, look at the scripture meanings generally conveyed by forms of the Greek word epithymesai:

Epithymesai is rarely used of a merely passive desire – it always gets or seeks its fill of its object – it’s not just an empty wish that you had something that was someone else’s – it’s the way the wicked covet other people’s fields before they seize them, as in Micah 2:2, cf. Ex 15:9, where we read, “My desire shall have its fill”

Not only does Epithymesai enthrall the subject, it finds ways of testing its object to see if it will deliver its craving unto it, as in Ps 78:18, “demanding the food they craved” (as a test)

It requires the hands to reach out and get a hold on its object, implied in Prov 21:25-26, “desires kill the sluggard, for his hands do not choose to do anything”

The key to understanding this kind of desire is that it is not random or unconscious or accidental but is headstrong and has a selfish plan of conquest, like the “stubborn hearts” in Ps 81:12, “which follow their own counsel” (see also Ex. 20:17; Ps. 10:3; Acts 20:33; Col. 3:5; 1Tim 6:9-10; Jas.  1:14-15; 2 Pet 1:4).

Now look at the second word, blepon.

In three significant places in the Greek Old Testament, the word used by Jesus is not used to signify ‘looking upon’ nakedness:

Gen 3:7 - blepon is not used where there is a need to express the way Adam and Eve ‘look upon’ each other’s nakedness after the fall.

Gen 9:22-23 - blepon is not used to express the way Ham ‘looked upon’ the nakedness of his father Noah.

2 Sam 11:2 - blepon is not used to express the way David ‘looked upon’ the nakedness of Bathsheeba.

Check it out. The word family chosen by ‘the 70′ wise translators was idein and not blepon.

Why?  Because blepon is used in OT and NT not so much for a ‘seeing’ of things in front of you in space but more often for a foreseeing of things, a looking ahead to a situation that is not yet realized in time, such as things seen in a vision – or in a wicked plan (like a seduction).

So Jesus was indeed talking about a sin that is committed in the heart before it has been enacted, but it involves the kind of looking forward with wicked desire to possess that implies overt action with intent to seduce or allure someone, and not simply the childish indulgence of ‘a look.’

But beware, because Jesus has chosen his words so well that they clearly imply that this flirtatious action with intent to seduce is ’adultery’ even in cases when it is unsuccessful.  If the targeted partner rejects your tacit invitation, or if your aims are frustrated by the least miscellaneous condition or event – Jesus is saying that is still adultery.  You’re liable even if you failed in your aim.

I think this is quite a serious and godly warning against sin, and doubly effective, since it applies to women as well as to men.

What about pornography?  Well there are issues of involvement that make it sin, but I would argue it is not mortal sin on the level of adultery.  Comments about that?

(to be continued)

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Apocalypse now and then

I have absolutely no doubt that warnings about a day of the Lord scheduled for May 21 of this year are false.

In fact, nobody could be as sure as I am that this is a bad call unless they were themselves a ‘seer’ into such dark matters.  All right then.  It so happens I’ve had a vision.

What’s different about my vision is that it grants me not a view of the future but a hindsight of the past – in the light of which I most solemnly warn you that the end of the first Christian dispensation has already happened.

I cannot account for the fact that such old news has been vouchsafed only to me (or perhaps to a few others too cowardly to come forward).  But I know the Pope and the Archbishops were never told – not even the Synod or the NCC had a clue.  And forget about the Evangelicals and the Jews – God tells them nothing.

As to times and seasons, God knows - the past is almost as inscrutable as the future.  I claim no knowledge of specific dates, but only a kind of ballpark figure.  But what I’m seeing is not pretty and it’s as clear as rain - God very quietly and unequivocally wrote off the old Christian dispensation as ‘not good enough’ for his Son at some point during or shortly after the First World War.  Believe me.

NO, this is not about the Apocalypse called by the Jehovah’s Witnesses for the year 1914 – that was no different than this latest May 21^st deal – a makeshift built on Daniel’s well-known figure of 1260.  It always comes down to these numbers in Daniel, and it’s always wrong.  It was a lucky hit for the Witnesses that a World War started that year.  For them the excitement ended Jan. 1, 1915, when it was evident God was featuring no special effects other than the destruction of Christian civilization.  Whatever, membership was up, the mistake was forgotten, they moved on.

But for God this was a big thing.  Again, I can’t pin-point the year for you, but I’m telling you what I know.  ‘The End’ of the old Christian dispensation came during one of those crazy, shifting, catastrophic years between our two secular World Wars – after a near-total failure by the Christian leadership to stand by the Gospel of Jesus in the summer of 1914.  From then on the Reformation ‘gospel’ was out on the dung heap with the Pope’s tiara as far as God was concerned.

Meanwhile God’s life goes on in temples not made with hands…  but those external, sectarian forms of Christianity we see ‘still rolling along’ are moving not by the grace of God any more but only by virtue of an original divine impetus – the same kind of motion a long train would exhibit on a very gentle but steady backwards downgrade after being decoupled from its engine.

The plan was not for Christianity to go away (clearly) but God definitely wanted a new model, a second dispensation, with an effective peace testimony and an end to the awful man-made creeds which had been mistaken for faith and only got in the way of his Son’s offer of love and salvation to all who sought him in spirit and in truth (God’s still waiting).

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Empyrean Dialogues – 2

Moses has greeted the Son in the divine Empyrean prior to the incarnation.  The prophet has suggested a review of future ‘possibilities’ – since the Father has not yet unequivocally revealed whether Israel shall accept or reject his Anointed.

The Son:  It’s just as you say, Moses – our Father’s counsel of mystery with regard to Israel’s reception of my mission extends even to myself.

Moses:  Many of the saints marvel, Sire, that you are no less ‘in the dark’ than the rest of us on this issue which seems so central to your success.

The Son:  I hope it will not offend the saints to learn that our ‘success’ is not dependent upon either acceptance or rejection by the Jews.

Moses:  Right.  On the other hand, many of us take the view that Father’s decision reflects material conditions perfectly.

The Son:  Well it would be disingenuous of me to offer peace to the world through Israel without my sincere hope of her acceptance of Father’s actual terms.

Moses:  Exactly.  In view of the ambiguity of Israel’s prophetic record regarding his Anointed, the feeling is that – depending on how they read it – the Jews could go either way.

The Son:  But these unfortunate ambiguities mean we can only hope that Israel will find and choose the thin but golden thread revealing Father’s true will.

Moses:  Don’t look at me, Sire.  You know I have not vouched for the clarity of their sacred history for over 400 years – not since the Priestly re-write during the exile.

The Son:  And it is not my intention to sort that problem out for them, Moses.  Father and I are going with the current textus receptus.

Moses:  So you must fearlessly feature the new over the top of the old, and desire their complete acceptance of your mission. 

The Son:  There you have both sides of the issue in a nutshell.

Moses:  It always comes down to human free will, doesn’t it Sire?

The Son:  That, and the authority of Scripture.    But I will not see my mission descend to acrimonious debate over the twin unfathomables of written history and editorial fictions.

Moses:  Verily.  I agree that literary criticism of their scriptures would be a fool’s game at this point.

The Son:  On that – and the rest – I am completely one with Father.

Moses:  How did I know? - - But speaking of unfathomables, Sire, things have been recently complicated by a kind of pre-millennial, futurist thing that has been ‘in the wind’ down there at least since Daniel.

The Son:  Actually since Malachi. 

Moses:  All those guys.  We’re seeing a lot of ‘end-time’ writers lately featuring rather violent scenarios about the Day of the Lord.

The Son:  There has been a certain amount of informed and disinformed anticipation of my coming.  It seems it couldn’t be helped.

Moses:  Well the more recent apocalypses have hooked up with certain miscues in the canonical texts to create a frothy boil in the minds of many of your people.

The Son:  We’ve seen it, and heard it in their prayers.

Moses:  I trust, Sire, that in holy prayer Father will steer your human mind clear of these vain eschatological desires.  But I worry that the Forerunner may not be spared from entertaining such thoughts.  Can we talk a little about that?

[to be continued]

Empyrean Dialogues – 1

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Karl Barth saw Christmas the way I do (almost)

Found this from Karl Barth in a quote from a book entitled Christmas posted by blogger ajmoyse :

“The man who is God’s own Word, does not send forth His radiant light from afar, encountering the “darkness” of other men as a king, hero or sage; but the Light that “shines in the darkness” is an ordinary man and gives light to ordinary people. This is incomprehensible, and yet because of it revelation is real and the Christmas gospel is quite different from both the sweet sadness and the false optimism of mere reverie. The Word of God is where we ourselves are, not where we should perhaps like to be, on one of those heights to which by some luck and strong effort we might attain; He is where we really are, whether we are king or beggar, in our torn condition in which we who face death appear–in the “flesh” …

 (Karl Barth. “The Word Made Flesh,” In Christmas. Translated by Bernard Citron. [Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959], pp. 12-13.)

I was gratified that so high an authority has understood the ‘Christmas’ side of divine Incarnation as I tried to articulate it in my last post.

More Barth:

“Therefore the Word can give power to real people in the world, to become the sons of God. Therefore real people can accept Him and believe in Him… He does not appear in the form of an angel nor of an ideal man (how can anyone who is not as real as we are, address us?) but as Paul writes, in “the form of a servant” ( Phil. II.7), so that we who ourselves exist in this form, are able to hear Him. He encounters the riddle of our “darkness” on its own ground.” (Ibid)

However, Professor Dr. Barth, in his usual way, cannot go very long before attempting to move his theology along purely by means of a rhetorical flourish - and I find my agreement mixed with disagreement.   By a very strange leap of thought Barth attempts to force Golgotha into the Nativity picture as if the two were inextricably joined:

“We can sum up these comments in this way: Revelation
remains revelation by which the veil of divine mystery is
rent. In other words, except we see the Cross of Golgatha,
we cannot hear the Gospel at the crib of Bethlehem.” (Ibid)

I reject this little tour-de-force (one which I hear all the time from evangelicals at Christmas time).  I do see the similarities between the humility of the nativity and the humility of the cross.  But this kind of similarity is only the stuff of good homiletics and cannot support valid theological inferences.

I think the ‘wish’ to see Golgotha at Bethlehem is  incompatible with a full acceptance of the pre-baptism life and the pre-Calvary Gospel of Jesus.   Barth obviously doesn’t agree.  So I’ve got some explaining to do (later).

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The test of the Ten-thousand Days

What I like to see in the Christmas story is a divine lord who has donned our own messy and precarious humanity in the trauma of childbirth and family.  Here at the beginning he embarks upon the trial of a full humanity – what I am here calling the test of the ten-thousand days* – a test which he meets in full before his baptism at Jordan.

I think at Christmas Jesus invites us to celebrate with him and in him the obscure but vital humanity he enjoyed with mother and family and friends before he felt called to go out to meet the son of Zechariah.  Does it really matter that our scriptures are almost blank in its regard?  Do we really have no clue as to what an obscure childhood, youth and adulthood might look like?

If at Christmas we contemplate the fullness of Christ’s humanity, maybe we will find that this young lord accomplished, in the daily course of life while he was yet this side of Jordan, a work in which he did not leave our lives wholly unredeemed.

It is on this human side of the incarnation history that we may allow Jesus more fully to meet us as one who knows the potentiality of an obscure setting in life.  I think anyone who will let him live with them for any single part of a year or week or hour may see that he knows well the ins and outs from childhood to adulthood.  And it is neither smart nor even permissible to believe he was without sin if we do not accept his nearness to the temptations and inspirations of our quotidian struggles.  I say this Christmas give him a chance to show his power in the inevitable crises of an uncelebrated human life.

* 10,000 days equals 27 years, 19 weeks, and a day.  If we figure Jesus to be not facing any of the large or small frustrations of life without Mary’s constant assistance until at least age 3, the Ten-thousand day trial puts him on the banks of Jordan with John at “about his 30th year.”

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Empyrean Dialogues 1 – Annunciation

The scene is the Empyrean just prior to the divine Son’s incarnation.  His servant Moses enters.

Son:  “I can see you have good news.”

Moses:  “Everything’s at the cusp, Sire.  Mary will hear your new name by announcement of our messenger as soon as she’s with child.  You’re to be ready at a moment’s notice.”

Son:  “Then call me Je’shua - ‘God is salvation.’”

Moses:  “The name, Sire, is supposed to help you remember it’s not about you.”

Son:  “We both know that a true Son of Man cannot forget God and neighbor.”

Moses:  “First order of business will be son of Mary and Joseph.”

Son:  “My immersion in the flesh.  Dear Moses, it’s a mystery even to me how I shall ever, in the fullness of my humanity, recall my divinity.”

Moses:  “Trust in God.  His will for you now is that you be made man.  And the child is always father to the man.  You have a nice family there, I’m sure eventually you will find him who sent you.  But you find him best by seeking him first with all your human mind and heart and strength, as the God of your fathers.”

Son:  “I know it must be first things first, if one day the last shall be first, and the first last.”

Moses:  “May those words come to mean more to them than directions for leaving synagogue after Sabbath service!”

Son:  “I so look forward to childhood, youth, and manhood - to know and suffer them as you did.”

Moses:  ”Aye, in family and in tribe and temple, for duty and country.”

Son:  “Day in, and day out – until I find him who sent me.”

Moses:  “And remember how you shall seek him.”

Son:  “Neither here, nor there…”

Moses:  “Perfect.  And when he reveals himself within you, you will preach this inner reign of God so that all might hope that a saving measure of what is yours by divine nature may be theirs by divine grace.”

Son:  “I’m solid, Mo.  And so is Father.  If I can learn to get some private prayer time down there we’ll be on the same page by the time the forerunner finishes his course.”

Moses:  ”Well enough, Sire.  And since you mention your later career – you know Father hasn’t revealed to us whether your person and teaching will be accepted or rejected by the rulers in Israel.  I think we both see the wisdom of that, but it wouldn’t hurt to run down the possibilities one more time before you’re off …”

[to be continued]

Note:  the Empyrean Dialogues is a recent experiment of mine to see if I can manage a piece of didactic fiction which both entertains a little and presents interpretations of the Bible I believe to be worthy of reflection and discussion from the standpoint of incarnation and divine pre-existence.

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Paul’s two perspectives on Jesus

I hope it is not controversial to say that Saul of Tarsus before his conversion must have shared what was probably the majority view in Israel – that Jesus of Nazareth was an offender against the Torah and a misleader of the people, who had rightly suffered the death of one accursed.

Even our first record of Jesus’ early career (Mark) moves immediately from a 16-verse introduction to a string of 88 verses in which ten out of twelve stories portray Jesus transgressing the literal sense of seven different points of the Law:

1. Sabbath-breaking (Mk 2:24 & 3:6)

2. Neglect of fasting (2:18)

3. Neglect of family (3:33)

4. Contact with lepers (1:41)

5. Eating with sinners (2:16)

6. Blasphemy i.e. Authority to forgive sin (2:7)

7. Alliance with Satan (3:22) i.e. authority over demons (1:27, 34, 39, 3:11)

Mark’s source for the early career of Jesus clearly relies heavily on stories of apparent law-breaking, most of which are accompanied by Jesus’ own prophetic rationale for setting aside the Law.  Can it be doubted that many reports of the deeds of Jesus were circulating without benefit of the sayings attached by Mark?  I think Mark’s emphasis suggests that lawbreaking was an issue for Jews who criticized the mission of Jesus in his lifetime and after the crucifixion.

To an unsympathetic ear it would make no difference if these stories circulated with or without Jesus’ rationale attached.  Because it was I think a matter of common knowledge – also confirmed by Mark (8:11-12) – that Jesus had refused to provide the test-sign demanded by the religious authorities in proof of his authority.  This constituted for them a warrant of the Law itself for disregarding Jesus’ prophetic claims.

I think this is the perspective of the old Saul - knowing that Jesus, despite his alleged works, had after all refused to authorize his mission by the sign required by Moses, Saul had judged that the Law justly regarded his sin as worthy of condemnation and death.

The perspective of the new Saul is best seen from the standpoint of his brief and electrifying encounter on the way to Damascus (Acts 9:2-9).  I trust this report to represent not a dream or myth but a genuine revelation event.  Saul sees and hears for himself what the martyr Stephen had claimed to see – that this Jesus who for all appearances had set the law aside – who under the Law of God was made to be sin and was crucified - is now in the power of the spirit alive.

Saul’s revelation doesn’t give him faith in the fact of the resurrection (one doesn’t ‘have faith’ in experienced facts).  The true object of Saul’s faith is his rapidly-developing view of the meaning and value of the resurrection.  This view was illuminated by Saul’s faith in God, which was never in question.  In its light he comprehends that it is the God of Israel who has raised Jesus from the dead.  A corollary to this faith is the belief that the risen one is God’s anointed, the hope of Israel.

All of which will be quite formative and quite problematic for the future of Christianity.

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The belief and unbelief of the Apostles

“your disciples … were not able” (Mark 9:18)

All three gospel records agree that the epileptic boy and his father enter the picture immediately after the events described on the mount of transfiguration.  Whatever we believe about the mountain-top experience, this sequel has a strong historical flavor – indisputable even by the unbelieving Jesus scholar who knows nothing outside of his poor ‘embarrassment principle’ – because it certainly reports a shameful failure of faith and power in the alleged Messiah’s chosen men.

Jesus, Peter, James and John return to camp to find the other apostles overwhelmed by defeat.  Two or more of them had tried and failed to perform an exorcism in a case obviously complicated by epilepsy.

Confronted with the scene, Jesus lumps the chagrined disciples together with the crowd and the scribes as one and all “faithless” (Mk 9:19).  “How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” These expressions reveal an almost sorrowful astonishment, a mingling of disdain and divine homesickness.

“Faithless.”  In the absence of Jesus the disciples have been tested and proven ‘unable’ – they have tried and failed to exercise one of the hallmarks of messianic authority (power over demons).  What form might this failed exercise have taken?  I think it is fair to assume for it a standard form of prayer in his name, something like: ‘In the name of Jesus the Messiah of Nazareth, I bid you come out of him.’  Examples of the apostolic use of similar forms for healing are attested in the Acts.

But why had the authority of the messianic name been here invoked in vain?  Not because they lacked belief that Jesus was their Messiah.  These nine apostles had been present at Peter’s recent profession (Mk 8:29) of belief in their master’s messianic status.  And they had certainly seen wonders aplenty to confirm this special knowledge about Jesus.

And yet Jesus clearly viewed their failure as some kind of failure of belief, an example of faithless action, of unbelief.  In fact it looks very much like Jesus judges their current belief in his person and his mission not as belief but as unbelief.

“I believe, help thou my unbelief!” This cry of dilemma by the distraught father in Mk 9:24 is easily imagined in the mouths of the disciples later, when they asked about their failure privately (Mk 9:28).  And what did Jesus tell them they lacked?  Nothing but prayer (Mk 9:29).

So here is a group of logia with a strong warrant of historical authenticity which suggests two things:

(1) there are cases of belief about Jesus’ person and mission which are viewed by Jesus as a type of unbelief;

(2) there are forms of belief without which ‘prayer in his name’ cannot effect anything.

In a later post I will get some help from Martin Buber (Two Types of Faith, ET 1951) in further analysis of this story’s meaning for faith and belief – and unbelief.

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