Mind boggling. Thanks for sharing. Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 1, 2018, at 17:05, Chris Hahn <[email protected]> wrote: > > Great article Billy. I forwarded it to my pastor. > Chris > > From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Billy Rojas > Sent: Sunday, April 1, 2018 9:27 AM > To: Centroids Discussions <[email protected]> > Cc: Billy Rojas <[email protected]> > Subject: [RC] Wall Street Journal -article about Easter > > > > Wall Street Journal > > The Easter Effect and How It Changed the World > > The first Christians were baffled by what they called ‘the Resurrection.’ > Their struggle to understand it brought about astonishing success for their > faith > > > > > ‘Resurrection of Christ’ by Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi). PHOTO: BRIDGEMAN > IMAGES > > By > George Weigel > March 30, 2018 10:05 a.m. ET > 578 COMMENTS > > In the year 312, just before his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge > won him the undisputed leadership of the Roman Empire, Constantine the Great > had a heavenly vision of Christian symbols. That augury led him, a year > later, to end all legal sanctions on the public profession of Christianity. > Or so a pious tradition has it. > > But there’s a more mundane explanation for Constantine’s decision: He was a > politician who had shrewdly decided to join the winning side. By the early > 4th century, Christians likely counted for between a quarter and a half of > the population of the Roman Empire, and their exponential growth seemed > likely to continue. > How did this happen? How did a ragtag band of nobodies from the far edges of > the Mediterranean world become such a dominant force in just two and a half > centuries? The historical sociology of this extraordinary phenomenon has been > explored by Rodney Stark of Baylor University, who argues that Christianity > modeled a nobler way of life than what was on offer elsewhere in the rather > brutal society of the day. In Christianity, women were respected as they > weren’t in classical culture and played a critical role in bringing men to > the faith and attracting converts. In an age of plagues, the readiness of > Christians to care for all the sick, not just their own, was a factor, as was > the impressive witness to faith of countless martyrs. Christianity also grew > from within because Christians had larger families, a byproduct of their > faith’s prohibition of contraception, abortion and infanticide. > > For theologians who like to think that arguments won the day for the > Christian faith, this sort of historical reconstruction is not particularly > gratifying, but it makes a lot of human sense. Prof. Stark’s analysis still > leaves us with a question, though: How did all that modeling of a compelling, > alternative way of life get started? And that, in turn, brings us back to > that gaggle of nobodies in the early first century A.D. and what happened to > them. > > What happened to them was the Easter Effect. > > There is no accounting for the rise of Christianity without weighing the > revolutionary effect on those nobodies of what they called “the > Resurrection”: their encounter with the one whom they embraced as the Risen > Lord, whom they first knew as the itinerant Jewish rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, > and who died an agonizing and shameful death on a Roman cross outside > Jerusalem. As N.T. Wright, one of the Anglosphere’s pre-eminent biblical > scholars, makes clear, that first generation answered the question of why > they were Christians with a straightforward answer: because Jesus was raised > from the dead. > > Now that, as some disgruntled listeners once complained about Jesus’ > preaching, is “a hard saying.” It was no less challenging two millennia ago > than it is today. And one of the most striking things about the New Testament > accounts of Easter, and what followed in the days immediately after Easter, > is that the Gospel writers and editors carefully preserved the memory of the > first Christians’ bafflement, skepticism and even fright about what had > happened to their former teacher and what was happening to them. > > > ‘The Incredulity of St. Thomas’ by Caravaggio. PHOTO: BRIDGEMAN IMAGES > > In Mark’s gospel, Mary Magdalene and other women in Jesus’ entourage find his > tomb empty and a young man sitting nearby telling them that “Jesus of > Nazareth, who was crucified…has risen; he is not here.” But they had no idea > what that was all about, “and went out and fled from the tomb…[and] said > nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” > > Two disciples walking to Emmaus from Jerusalem on Easter afternoon haven’t a > clue as to who’s talking with them along their way, interpreting the > scriptures and explaining Jesus’ suffering as part of his messianic mission. > They don’t even recognize who it is that sits down to supper with them until > he breaks bread and asks a blessing: “…and their eyes were opened and they > recognized him.” They high-tail it back to Jerusalem to tell the other > friends of Jesus, who report that Peter has had a similarly strange > experience, but when “Jesus himself stood among them…they were startled and > frightened, and supposed that they saw a ghost.” > Some time later, Peter, John and others in Jesus’ core group are fishing on > the Sea of Tiberias. “Jesus stood on the beach,” we are told, “yet the > disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” At the very end of these > post-Easter accounts, those whom we might expect to have been the first to > grasp what was afoot are still skeptical. When that core group of Jesus’ > followers goes back to Galilee, they see him, “but some doubted.” > > This remarkable and deliberate recording of the first Christians’ > incomprehension of what they insisted was the irreducible bottom line of > their faith teaches us two things. First, it tells us that the early > Christians were confident enough about what they called the Resurrection that > (to borrow from Prof. Wright) they were prepared to say something like, “I > know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s what happened.” And the second thing it > tells us is that it took time for the first Christians to figure out what the > events of Easter meant > —not only for Jesus but for themselves. As they worked that out, their > thinking about a lot of things changed profoundly, as Prof. Wright and Pope > Emeritus Benedict XVI help us to understand in their biblical commentaries. > ‘The Easter Effect impelled them to bring a new standard of equality into the > world.’ > The way they thought about time and history changed. During Jesus’ public > ministry, many of his followers shared in the Jewish messianic expectations > of the time: God would soon work something grand for his people in Israel, > liberating them from their oppressors and bringing about a new age in which > (as Isaiah had prophesied) the nations would stream to the mountain of the > Lord and history would end. The early Christians came to understand that the > cataclysmic, world-redeeming act that God had promised had taken place at > Easter. God’s Kingdom had come not at the end of time but within time—and > that had changed the texture of both time and history. History continued, but > those shaped by the Easter Effect became the people who knew how history was > going to turn out. Because of that, they could live differently. The Easter > Effect impelled them to bring a new standard of equality into the world and > to embrace death as martyrs if necessary—because they knew, now, that death > did not have the final word in the human story. > > The way they thought about “resurrection” changed. Pious Jews taught by the > reforming Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed in the resurrection of the dead. > Easter taught the first Christians, who were all pious Jews, that this > resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse, nor did it involve the > decomposition of a corpse. Jesus’ tomb was empty, but the Risen Lord appeared > to his disciples in a transformed body. Those who first experienced the > Easter Effect would not have put it in these terms, but as their > understanding of what had happened to Jesus and to themselves grew, they > grasped that (as Benedict XVI put it in “Jesus of Nazareth–Holy Week”) there > had been an “evolutionary leap” in the human condition. A new way of being > had been encountered in the manifestly human but utterly different life of > the one they met as the Risen Lord. That insight radically changed all those > who embraced it. > > Which brings us to the next manifestation of the Easter Effect among the > first Christians: The way they thought about their responsibilities changed. > What had happened to Jesus, they slowly began to grasp, was not just about > their former teacher and friend; it was about all of them. His destiny was > their destiny. So not only could they face opposition, scorn and even death > with confidence; they could offer to others the truth and the fellowship they > had been given. Indeed, they had to do so, to be faithful to what they had > experienced. Christian mission is inconceivable without Easter. And that > mission would eventually lead these sons and daughters of Abraham to the > conviction that the promise that God had made to the People of Israel had > been extended to those who were not sons and daughters of Abraham. Because of > Easter, the gentiles, too, could be embraced in a relationship—a > covenant—with the one God, which was embodied in righteous living. > > > Pakistani Christian worshipers during an Easter Mass in Lahore, 2015. > PHOTO:LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES > > The way they thought about worship and its temporal rhythms changed. For the > Jews who were the first members of the Jesus movement, nothing was more > sacrosanct than the Sabbath, the seventh day of rest and worship. The Sabbath > was enshrined in creation, for God himself had rested on the seventh day. The > Sabbath’s importance as a key behavioral marker of the People of God had been > reaffirmed in the Ten Commandments. Yet these first Christians, all Jews, > quickly fixed Sunday as the “Lord’s Day,” because Easter had been a Sunday. > Benedict XVI draws out the crucial point here: > “Only an event that marked souls indelibly could bring about such a profound > realignment of the religious culture of the week. Mere theological > speculations could not have achieved this... [The] celebration of the Lord’s > day, which was characteristic of the Christian community from the outset, is > one of the most convincing proofs that something extraordinary happened [at > Easter]—the discovery of the empty tomb and the encounter with the Risen > Lord.” > > Without the Easter Effect, there is really no explaining why there was a > winning side—the Christian side—for Constantine the Great to choose. That > effect, as Prof. Wright puts it, begins with, and is incomprehensible > without, the first Christians’ conviction that “Jesus of Nazareth was raised > bodily to a new sort of life, three days after his execution.” Recognizing > that does not, of course, convince everyone. Nor does it end the mystery of > Easter. The first Christians, like Christians today, cannot fully comprehend > resurrected life: the life depicted in the Gospels of a transphysical body > that can eat, drink and be touched but that also appears and disappears, > unbothered by obstacles like doors and distance. > > Nor does Easter mean that everything is always going to turn out just fine, > for there is still work to be done in history. As Benedict XVI put it in his > 2010 Easter message: “Easter does not work magic. Just as the Israelites > found the desert awaiting them on the far side of the Red Sea, so the Church, > after the Resurrection, always finds history filled with joy and hope, grief > and anguish. And yet this history is changed…it is truly open to the future.” > Which perhaps offers one final insight into the question with which we began: > How did the Jesus movement, beginning on the margins of civilization and led > by people of seeming inconsequence, end up being what Constantine regarded as > the winning side? However important the role of sociological factors in > explaining why Christianity carried the day, there also was that curious and > inexplicable joy that marked the early Christians, even as they were being > marched off to execution. Was that joy simply delusion? Denial? > > Perhaps it was the Easter Effect: the joy of people who had become convinced > that they were witnesses to something inexplicable but nonetheless true. > Something that gave a superabundance of meaning to life and that erased the > fear of death. Something that had to be shared. Something with which to > change the world. > > Mr. Weigel is distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy > Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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