Thy Kingdom Come: A New Paradigm To Repair The Breach

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded The Forgotten Hero: James and the Origins of Christianity with

Jeffrey J. Butz' words of:

 

(p.178) It was because of Paul's untiring efforts that " all the Gentiles "

would indeed come to hear the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. While James prevailed

over Paul in life, it was Paul, with whom he wrestled, who prevailed in death;

for--just a few short years after Paul's death--James and Jewish Christianity

were disappearing from history, while Paul's Gentile churches would go on to

conquer Rome and shape two thousand years of subsequent Western civilization.

James the Just would most unjustly become the forgotten hero of Christianity,

and it could be argued, of Western civilization. In the end, James the Just was

indeed the righteous martyr, who " died " so that his brother might live.

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity) Chapter 9, pg.

178.

 

Here now, in Section 5: The Nature of the Descendants of Abraham--is Thy Kingdom

Come: A New Paradigm To Repair The Breach.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

 

Thy Kingdom Come: A New Paradigm to Repair The Breach

 

'On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its

breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old'... Amos

9:11

 

(p.180) In the last chapter we raised the question, What would Jesus have

thought of the development of the early church? In this chapter we raise the

further question, What would Jesus think of the state of the Christian church

today? Based on his " exceptional " practice in reaching out to Gentiles, Jesus

would surely have approved of Paul's mission. If we accept Paul's witness and

the historicity of Acts, the risen Christ in fact commissioned that mission. As

we saw, Paul's mission was the salvation of Jesus' teaching. But in that the

success of Paul's mission was so harmful to Jesus' own people and kin, he would

surely have disapproved. Like Jesus' voluntary death for all, James, given a

choice, would certainly have willingly died so that his brother's message might

live. But let us not keep crucifying James. For all the injustices that the

Pauline church has visited upon not only James but all Jews to this day, Jesus

surely weeps and weeps. If we are to be true to Jesus' teaching, we must, like

James, not only accept others but, like Paul, actively create compromises that

unite us.

 

Christianity may well owe its survival to the fact that at the Jerusalem

Council the early church followed neither Paul's wishes nor the wishes of the

more conservative Jewish Christians, but rather, thanks to James, synthesized

vital insights from both sides in the stipulations of the Apostolic Decree, thus

making it possible for Gentiles to enter into the new messianic community

without first becoming Jews. Paul was surely right in seeing the Law, especially

circumcision, as unworkable for Gentiles. And the Jewish Christians were also

surely right in not wishing to lose or dilute the legacy of the Abrahamic

covenant or the Law in opening the door to Gentiles. It was James who enabled

Paul to continue his mission to the Gentiles on mutually agreeable terms, and it

was thanks to the efforts of both Paul and James that the Gentiles did indeed

come streaming " into Israel " as the prophets had foretold.

 

While they had their significant differences, in the end, Paul and James,

true to their common Jewish heritage, understood Jesus in the same way: as the

Messiah of both Israel and the nations. They both understood the new community

that was gathering around Jesus to be the eschatological Israel--the beginning

of the New Jerusalem foretold by the prophets and reaffirmed for the church in

the vision of John of Patmos, recorded in the majestic conclusion to the Jewish

Christian book of Revelation:

 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first

earth had passed away...And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down

out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard

a loud voice from the throne saying,

 

" See, the home of God is

among mortals.

He will dwell with them as

their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be

with them;

he will wipe every tear from

their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain

will be no more,

for the first things have

passed away. " (Rev. 22:1-4)

 

(p.182) Recorded here is the Jewish Christian community's understanding of

the Day of the Lord, the consummation of all things. In light of all that we

have learned about Jewish Christianity in our investigation into James, it is

perhaps ironic that the book that serves as the conclusion to the Christian

canon is (with the possible exception of the letters of James and Jude) the most

thoroughly Jewish book in the New Testament, as evidenced, above all, by the

centrality it grants to Jerusalem. The prophecies and visions recorded by John

were seen by the Jewish Christian community for whom he wrote to be the

fulfillment of the final prophecies of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The

most well known of these prophecies among Christians is the assigned Old

Testament reading for Christmas Eve in mainline Christian churches:

 

Arise, shine; for your light has come,

And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you...

Nations shall come to your light,

And kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Lift up your eyes and look around;

They all gather together, they come to you...

....the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,

the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

A multitude of camels shall cover you,

the young camels of Midian and Ephah;

all those from Sheba shall come...

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you,

The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you;

they shall be acceptable on my altar,

and I will glorify my glorious house. (Isa. 60:1-7)

 

" My glorious house, " of course, refers to the Jerusalem Temple, but it is the

Temple that is pointedly absent in the description of the New Jerusalem in the

book of Revelation. (p.183) In the conclusion to the twenty-first chapter, for

example:

 

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the

Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of

God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light,

and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. (Rev. 21:22-24)

 

In the New Jerusalem, the Temple will be replaced by the new eschatological

community of all nations centered around the Lamb of God--the crucified, risen,

and triumphant Messiah:

 

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count,

from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the

throne and before the Lamb, robed in white with palm branches in their hands.

(Rev. 7:9)

 

Thus, the " Temple " in the New Jerusalem is the " body of Christ " --the

eschatological community of all nations. This is the same eschatological Temple

in which James, Peter, and John are the " acknowledged pillars " according to Paul

himself (Galatians 2:9). Pertinently, it was only days before his death that

Jesus had predicted that the earthly Temple would soon be destroyed: " Not one

stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down " (Mark 13:2), and

the Temple was indeed razed by the Romans four decades later, only a few years

after the death of James.

 

At the Jerusalem Council, some two decades or so prior to the Temple's

destruction, James concluded his decision on the matter of the Gentiles with the

quote noted earlier from the prophet Amos: " After this I will return, and I will

rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other people may seek the Lord "

(9:11). James and the Jewish Christians believed that, through Jesus, God was

restoring the House of David, and that this same Jesus, whom God had raised from

the dead and lifted up to his right hand in heaven, would soon return to claim

his throne and establish his Kingdom on earth.

 

It is important to note that one of the major beliefs common to both the

Jamesian Jewish Christians and the Paulinist Gentile Christians was that God had

raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus would soon return as the victorious

conquering Messiah. In a very real sense, Jesus did return to defeat Israel's

enemies. (p.184) While the Romans crucified the earthly Jesus, in the end the

risen Christ did return to conquer Rome when Christianity became the official

religion of the empire, even making Rome (and, pointedly, not Jerusalem) the

seat of its power. It is fascinating to speculate on how differently the history

of Western civilization might have played out if Jerusalem had remained the seat

of Christendom.

 

But Christendom's political triumph over Rome was also its Achilles'

heel--for the Church quickly succumbed to the trappings of power and wealth that

Jesus and James had so firmly stood against, for which they had boldly

criticized the Temple authorities, and for which they both were crushed. It is a

lesson still to be learned that anytime religion becomes entwined with politics,

both religion and politics are inevitably corrupted. The great wisdom of the

founding fathers of the United States is seen nowhere more than in their

erection of a sturdy wall of separation between church and state, something that

Jesus would surely endorse, considering his command to " [r]ender unto Caesar

that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's " (Mark 12:17). In fact,

it was this teaching of Jesus that laid the basis for the Western conception of

the separation of the secular and the religious, a concept unheard of in major

religions other than Christianity. Another factor in this development was, of

course, early Christianity's reaction to being a persecuted minority under the

Roman government.

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity)

Chapter 10, pg. 180-184

Jeffrey J. Butz

Inner Traditions - Rochester, Vermont

ISBN 1-59477-043-3