Born Again: A Different Take

Jesus & Nicodemus

Things aren't necessarily what they seem to be or what most people (or tradition) say they are.  Take, for example, our understanding of the term, "born again."

In his famous discussion with the Pharisee, Nicodemus, which is recorded in John 3:1-21, Jesus insisted repeatedly that in order to have a full life with God Nicodemus had to be "born again."  At least, that is how the King James Version translation of John 3:1-21 puts it in verses 3 and 7.  According to the KJV, in verse 3 Jesus says, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." In verse 6-7, he says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."  Interestingly, the American Standard Version (ASV)  and the Revised Standard Version (RSV) both translate "born again" as "born anew."  That change in translation evidently reflects the meaning of the original Greek as well as does "born again".  It is an important transition because both the ASV and the RSV are revisions of the KJV and stand in what we might term "direct lineal descent" from the KJV.

The most recent descendent of the KJV, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) further revises "born anew" into "born from above," which Robert V. McCabe in an article entitled "The Meaning of 'Born of Water and the Spirit' in John 3:5" says is an equally valid translation of the Greek.  So, in the NRSV Jesus says in verse 3, ""Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." In verse 7, he says, "You must be born from above."  The Message (MSG) and Laughing Bird (LB) paraphrase versions of the passage also translate "born again" as "born from above."

The point is that there is an important difference in our understanding of what it means to be "born again" as opposed to "born from above."  If we are "born again," our original birth is superseded and, in a sense, rejected as being inadequate.  In recent centuries, this sense of what it means to be "born again," has led to the idea in many Christian circles that one must undergo a conversion experience, an experience that involves rejection of the past and embracing a "born again" life in Christ.  The meaning of the original Greek allows such an interpretation of the idea of being "born again."  It is not wrong to argue that Jesus was demanding a conversion experience of Nicodemus.

If, however, we translate the original as meaning "born from above," we can understand Jesus' meaning in another way.  Just as our physical bodies are born, so too must our spiritual nature go through a birth process.  The Laughing Bird paraphrase thus has Jesus saying, "“Listen again, for it is important that you get this. There is only one way into the full life of God, and it is through a birth of water and Spirit. A baby that emerges from a womb got its body from the bodies of its parents. But a growing person is not just a body, and the life-force within them emerges from the womb of the Spirit. So don’t be surprised that I said you have to be born from above." (verses 5-7)  We have a physical birth.  We experience a spiritual birth.  The experience of our first birth, thus, is the model for our second birth.  There is no rejection of our previous life involved.  Following Christ is more of a bringing to completion the birthing process.  This feels more like Genesis 1 where God created the physical universe and humanity and found these things, these physical things, "good" (meaning aesthetically pleasing, beautiful).

In Christian circles, we often talk about repentance as being taking a "U-turn" away from the way we were going and toward God's way.  But, maybe we can just as well look on repentance as a process of growth, coming to fruition, or maturing.  We don't do a "U-turn" so much as we follow the path upward.  When we graduate from college, we don't somehow reject or renounce our high school diploma.  In fact, we build on it.  As we seek to be "born from above," we build on the life given us through our first birth.  Obviously, some things are going to change.  But rather than reject our first birth, we embrace it and seek to be crafted into something still more aesthetically pleasing and beautiful through the work of the Spirit on us.

For some, the idea of being "born again" best describes their experience and journey.  For others, the life of faith is more like being "born from above."

Eyewitness Accounts in New Testament Times (xl)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 40th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

In an article on Jesus' resurrection as history, Wolfhart Pannenberg makes the following observation about Paul's evidence for the resurrection: "...Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, did not think a mere demand for faith was enough, but he gave the list of the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus. This is a proof as it was commonly used in legal proceedings. The Greek historians, for instance Herodotus, also gave their proofs in such a way. Historical evidence was obtained by an interrogation of the eyewitnesses. It is not without reason that Paul emphasized the point that most of the witnesses were still alive and could still be submitted to an interrogation (I Corinthians 15:6). The proof Paul gave was for his time a historical proof, a first-hand proof beyond doubt."

What I've been arguing is the possibility that the author of Mark based his History of the Life & Times of Jesus of Nazareth, in part, on "an interrogation of the eyewitnesses." Pannenberg's observations, assuming they're correct, makes that possibility yet more credible. Oral evidence had a certain legal standing in Roman times. Ancient historians made use of such data.

Those observations also throw into doubt the distinction between gospel and history. It's possible that the Gospel of Mark is a historical work, although one written according to the conventions of ancient rather than modern historiography. That is an intriguing possibility. It suggests that Mark's account just might take us closer to the "historical Jesus" than many scholars have allowed. It may also mean that the author of Mark took a view of the past not that dissimilar from our own. He didn't simply make up fictionalized accounts to package the "sayings tradition" of Jesus that, in turn, solved problems in his home church. He was, instead, communicating to his readers important information for their time and place about the meaning of events that really did take place in a past time and place.

More Evidence - Mark 2:13-17 (xxxix)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 39th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

Gerd Theissen's insightful treatment of the calling of Levi and Jesus' eating with sinners in Mark 2:13-17, in The Shadow of the Galilean (p. 127), brings into focus the issues we've been wrestling with concerning Marks' use of evidence. On the one hand, Theissen states, "A story was needed in early Christianity in which Jesus ate together with toll collectors and sinners. This could provide justification for Gentile and Jewish Christians eating together, even if the Gentiles did not observe Jewish food laws. The problem became acute at the end of the forties in Antioch. Did the story come into being in order to solve the problem?" On the other hand, he notes that the story presupposes a frontier toll station by the Sea of Galilee. In Jesus' time the area in question was a border area and there could have been a toll station. That boundary disappeared after 39 CE. There was no boundary again throughout the first century. Theissen writes, "In other words, the story of the toll collector's party presupposes conditions which only existed in the time of Jesus, and no longer held after AD 39. This brings us to a time in which meals shared between Jews and Gentiles in the early Christian communities were still no problem." He concludes, "So could it be that the tradition of the toll collector's party contains a historical reminiscence? There is no doubt that it was used later to solve problems about eating together in the community." Theissen leaves unanswered questions concerning the historicity of the event.

We have, then, an incidental historical fact that came from Jesus' own time, or shortly thereafter, embedded in the story. It's impossible to believe that the author of Mark inserted the fact to fool his readers. There's no reasonable doubt that the story with its embedded fact came together. If this is the case, the story came from Jesus' day. It's at least possible, perhaps even likely, that what we have here is the memories of a witness to the event who told the story as she or he remembered it. The telling including as a matter of course a detail that most people at Mark's time wouldn't have known. None of this precludes the author's having included the story because it addressed the problem of Gentiles and Jews eating together. That problem had arisen, in the first place, because of Jesus' habit of eating with sinners, and the story reflected the way the empirical Jesus acted and quite possibly also recalled an actual event in his life. Theissen's remarks, in any event, lend just a tad more credence to the possibility that the Gospel of Mark is based on oral data collected from people who knew Jesus and the events of his life personally.

An End & A Beginning in Syracuse

First Presbyterian Church United, Syracuse

A recent news posting entitled, "One of Syracuse's oldest churches closes on Easter," on Syracuse.com, reports that the historic First Presbyterian Church United, Syracuse, will hold its final worship service this coming Easter, April 8th.  Once a congregation of over 1,000 members, it has now only 85 members and can no longer maintain its facilities.  It hasn't had a full-time pastor for five years.

But something is happening at First Presbyterian, Syracuse, which is happening in other places in the U.S.  This dying congregation is giving birth to a new, as yet unnamed, congregation that will operate out of smaller, more humble facilities and focus on developing a ministry to the urban poor begun by First Presbyterian.  Roughly 30 of the remaining members will join in non-traditional worship and pursue a vision of renewed life devoted to the service of its neighbor hood.

For two generations or so, the churches of the future have been evangelical churches including most notably large independent churches, which have experienced explosive growth.  The rise of modern-day evangelicalism has witnessed a parallel, continuing decline in mainline (a.k.a. "oldline") churches such as First Presbyterian, Syracuse.  This is something like the transition millions of years ago from the age of the dinosaurs to that of mammals.  When the transition started the (mainline) dinosaurs were huge and dominant while (new age evangelical) mammals scurried around in the underbrush.  Now, the evangelical megachurches have become the dinosaurs, and the remnants of the declining mainline churches more and more are like the scurrying mammals of our metaphor.  Perhaps, something new is happening again, and we are witnessing the early stages of the next stage in ecclesiastical evolution.  In Britain, a church renewal movement called, "Fresh Expressions," has led to the establishment of numerous alternative congregations.  Here in the United States, the "Emerging Church" movement provides a variety of models for developing new congregations in ways adapted to contemporary society.

The process we're watching is an evolutionary one.  As older forms of the church fail to adapt to rapidly changing contemporary society, they decline.  But those older churches had (and many of them still have) spiritual vitality, which finds new forms of expression more fitting to new times.  It is a messy, jumbled process as a variety of these new forms "compete" to see which are most likely to be vital churches useful to the Spirit.  Today, we have vital historic churches.  We have vital evangelical congregations.  We have emerging churches that are fresh expressions of church life.  In all of this, there is a huge amount of spiritual vitality expressed in the faithfulness and creativity of new generations of Christians.  And that is cause of hope.

It is sad, of course, to witness the passing away of what was once itself a large, vital part of the body of Christ. But...but...but, it is also exciting to consider the prospect of the new church First Presbyterian Church United, Syracuse, is birthing.  Amen.

Thank You, Rush

Sandra Fluke & Rush Limbaugh

Unintentionally, Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host and political commentator, has done the English language a favor with his incendiary attacks on the Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, who spoke to members of the House Democratic caucus about contraception and public policy. Rush, as most readers know, called her a "slut," among other things, which sparked a furor in the social media and blogosphere. At first he doubled down on his comments, but then he issued a personal apology to Ms. Fluke, explaining that he only intended to use absurd terms to describe what he considered to be absurd.

What Rush has done for us is to call attention to the usage of the word "slut," which is usually applied only to women (although according to the Wiktionary definition of slut, it can be applied to homosexual men as well) and means a sexually promiscuous woman or an immoral woman. Thesaurus.com provides the following list of synonyms for slut: call girl, concubine, courtesan, fallen woman, floozy, hooker, hussy, lady of the evening, loose woman, nymphomaniac, painted woman, slut, streetwalker, strumpet, tramp, and whore.  Among these synonyms, not one can be applied to a sexually promiscuous man.  Such men are sometimes called "studs," which term doesn't carry the negative sense of the word slut.

That is, sexually promiscuous men are studs, which seems almost something to be admired, while sexually promiscuous women are sluts, something to be looked down on, something disrespectful.  The term, in other words, is like an archeological artifact that reflects the usages of older times.  Slut is a word from our past when we used other words and terms  to discriminate against women without malice aforethought.  Like the "n word" in race relations so now the "s word" in gender relations is something we can do without.  Thanks to Rush we have dug it up, listened to its usage, and not liked what what we've heard.  It is time to get rid of it.  Thank you, Rush.

Faith & Reason

"Reason is the precondition of faith; faith is the act in which reason reaches ecstatically beyond itself...reason is not bound to its own finitude.  It is aware of it and, in so doing, rises above it."

Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (2001 [1957]), p. 87

Understanding Our Differences

The most recent outbreak of the culture wars, having to do with contraception, is but the latest episode in the high stakes clash of cultures that is taking place in the U.S.  We are finding it increasingly difficult to talk across the boundaries of our differences.  Congress both exemplifies and has become a symbol of the breakdown in communications between Right and Left in America.  In the church, the same thing has happened, and if anything the split between evangelical and mainline churches is deeper and wider than that between the political parties.  We do not seem to be able to talk to each other even though we all take the name of Christ.

What's going on?  Nothing new, actually.  As bad as things seem at the moment, it's been worse, and we are simply going through a particularly forceful upsurge in ideological tension, which is otherwise always with us.  If science reporter Chris Mooney is correct (here), our contemporary culture wars are rooted in our biology.  He points to a growing body of research (here) that is exploring biological differences between self-identified liberals and conservatives, and it appears that we are "wired" differently biologically.  The research suggests that conservatives tend to approach stressful or fearful encounters defensively and to react more forcefully to perceived threats.  Liberals tend to approach potentially threatening situations less defensively and less forcefully—or so the research suggests.

Mooney concludes,

An increasing body of science suggests that we disagree about politics not for intellectual or philosophical reasons, but because we have fundamentally different ways of responding to the basic information presented to us by the world. These are often ways of which we are not even aware--automatic, subconscious--but that color all of our perceptions, and that effectively drive us apart politically.

We have to be cautious here.  First, the research into our ideological differences is ongoing and conclusions such as these are tentative.  Second, the researchers would tend to fit into the category of "liberal," and thus we should take their conclusions with a grain of salt.  That being said, it does make some sense that we are wired differently for a reason.  Some of us are inclined biologically to push the boundaries, explore new possibilities, and see threats as challenges so that society takes up those new possibilities and doesn't stagnate.  Others of us are inclined biologically to see the danger in threats and seek to be protective and stay safe so that society doesn't bite off more than it can chew or go charging off in dangerous directions.

It is hardly surprising that in an age of increasingly rapid change the biologically conservative side of the equation would become increasingly protective and defensive—or that the biologically liberal side would become increasingly willing to head off in potentially dangerous directions (nanotechnology being one of the most promising and scariest).  There is, obviously, more to the culture wars than biology, but it is at least helpful to know that there is a biological component to it all.  We're only doing what humans do, and there is a good reason why we're doing it.

A Source of Spirituality

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

quoted at goodreads.com

Another Voice on Contraception

North Country Public Radio recently interviewed the Rev. Laurena Will, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ogdensburg, NY, concerning her views on the current debate over Planned Parenthood, abortion, contraception, and religious freedom.  The posting, entitled, "Pastor sees personal choice threatened in health coverage debate," presents an alternative view to that of the Catholic Church and various evangelical Protestant denominations and groups.  The posting includes both the audio interview and a transcript, and I recommend RPK readers check it out.

Eyewitness Testimony - Mark 2:1-12 (xxxviii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 38th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

In his commentary on Mark, entitled Mark (p. 63), Lamar Williamson Jr. observes that Mark 2:1-12 is "unusually detailed and vivid," which leads "some commentators" to take these vivid details as evidence for eyewitness testimony. As has been clear in previous postings, I'm increasingly convinced that those who think Mark availed himself of first hand oral history data are correct. It seems entirely likely that Mark actually interviewed people in assembling his gospel. There was a tradition in the later early church that the author of Mark received his information from Peter. There's no way to assess now the truth of that tradition, but it could be that the early church was recalling, at the very least, that Mark was based on oral sources close to the events recorded.

If the author of Mark relied on oral data, that reliance has important implications for the historian's use of Mark. On the one hand, oral historical data is notoriously unreliable because it's dependent on fallible human memory. People remember even important events incorrectly. They get details wrong or can't remember them. It's the bane of church historians in Thailand that they have to rely heavily on oral data for studying Thai local church history. In the case of Mark, one can account for the confusing mix of concrete details and broad generalizations as being partly a consequence of having to rely on oral data.

On the other hand, judiciously used, oral history data reveals the texture of the past in a way difficult to obtain from written records. Imagine the opportunity Mark may have had in interviewing people who knew Jesus intimately. Their experiences with Jesus would have given him a vivid sense of who Jesus was, how he spoke, and the impact he made on others. And, again, we find in Mark just such a vivid, startling account of the man Jesus.

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2012 reflections:  When it comes to the study of the past, it is generally not that wise to claim, "There's no way to assess now the truth of that tradition."  Scholars are using inventive new approaches and techniques, some based on computer analysis, to do just that.  I've mentioned Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006) as one example.  Bauckham devotes a chapter to  what he calls the "Petrine perspective" of the Gospel of Mark and concludes on the basis of his research that, "...it is entirely plausible that this kind of individuality [of Peter as portrayed in Mark] is the kind that was conveyed by Peter's own recounting of the Gospel stories."  I don't think that Bauckham settles the matter, but he does demonstrate how new research approaches can give us plausible scenario's concerning the material used in the gospels.  Thus it is better to say that the matter of Peter's role in the writing of Mark remains unclear rather than baldly, boldly claim that we'll never know what it was.