Atheist Anne Rice’s Surprising Discovery
Bestselling Author Anne Rice:
Noted for the painstaking research behind her historical fiction, an atheist of 36 years makes a surprising discovery when she turns her attention to the mystery of the historical Jesus
Excerpt from Author’s Note in Christ The Lord Out Of Egypt
©2006 Anne O’Brien Rice. Used by permission.
Every novel I’ve ever written since 1974 involved historical research. It’s been my delight that no matter how many supernatural elements were involved in the story, and no matter how imaginative the plot and characters, the background would be thoroughly historically accurate. And over the years, I’ve become known for that accuracy.
If one of my novels is set in Venice in the eighteenth century, one can be certain that the details as to the opera, the dress, the milieu, the values of the people- all of this is correct.
Without ever planning it, I’ve moved slowly backwards in history, from the nineteenth century, where I felt at home in my first two novels, to the first century, where I sought the answers to enormous questions that became an obsession with me that simply couldn’t be ignored.
Ultimately, the figure of Jesus Christ was at the heart of this obsession. More generally, it was the birth of Christianity and the fall of the ancient world. I wanted to know desperately what happened in the first century, and why people in general never talked about it.
Understand, I had experienced an old-fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940’s and 1950’s, in an Irish American parish that would now be called a Catholic ghetto, where we attended daily Mass and Communion in an enormous and magnificently decorated church, which had been built by our forefathers, some with their own hands.
Classes were segregated, boys from girls. We learned catechism and Bible history, and the lives of the saints. Stained-glass windows, the Latin Mass, the detailed answers to complex questions on good and evil – theses things were imprinted on my soul forever, along with a great deal of church history that existed as a great chain of events triumphing over schism and reformation to culminate in the papacy of Pius XII.
I left this church at age eighteen, because I stopped believing it was “the one true church established by Christ to give grace.” No personal event precipitated this loss of faith. It happened on a secular college campus; there was intense sexual pressure; but more than that there was the world itself, without Catholicism, filled with good people and people who read books that were strictly speaking forbidden to me.
I wanted to read Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. I wanted to know why so many seemingly good people didn’t believe in any organized religion yet cared passionately about their behavior and the value of their lives. As the rigid Catholic I was, I had no options for exploration. I broke with the Church. And I broke with my belief in God.
When I married two years later, it was to a passionate atheist, Stan Rice, who not only didn’t believe in God, he felt he had had something akin to a vision which had given him a certainty that God didn’t exist. He was one of the most honorable and conscience-driven people I ever knew. For him and for me, our writing was our lives.
In 1974, I became a published writer. The novel reflected my guilt and my misery in being cut off from God and from salvation; my being lost in a world without light. It was set in the nineteenth century, a context I’d researched heavily in trying to answer questions about New Orleans, where I was born and no longer lived.
After that, I wrote many novels without my being aware that they reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God. As I said before, I was working my way backwards in history, answering questions for myself about whole historical developments—why certain revolutions happened, why Queen Elizabeth I was the way she was, who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays (this I never used in a novel), what the Italian Renaissance really was, and what the Black Death had been like before it. And how feudalism had come about.
In the 1990’s, living in New Orleans again, living among adults who were churchgoers and believers, flexible Catholics of some sophistication, I no doubt imbibed some influence from them.
But I also inevitably plunged into researching the first century because I wanted to know about Ancient Rome. I had novels to write with Roman characters. Just maybe, I might discover something I’d wanted to know all my life and never had known:
How did Christianity actually “happen”? Why did Rome actually fall? To me these were the ultimate questions and always had been. They had to do with who we were today.
I remember in the 1960’s, being at a party in a lovely house in San Francisco, given in honor or a famous poet. A European scholar was there, I found myself alone with him, seated on a couch. I asked him, “Why did Rome fall?” For the next two hours he explained it to me.
I couldn’t absorb most of what he said. But I never forgot what I did understand—about all the grain for the city having to come from Egypt, and the land around the city being taken up with villas, and the crowds being fed the dole.
It was a wonderful evening, but I didn’t leave with a feeling that I had the true grasp of what had happened.
Catholic Church history had given me an awareness of our cultural heritage, although it was presented to me early and quite without context. And I wanted to know the context, why things were the way they were.
When I was a little child, maybe eleven or younger, I was lying on my mother’s bed, reading or trying to read one of her books. I read a sentence that said the Protestant Reformation split Europe culturally in half. I thought that was absurd and I asked her, was this true? She said it was. I never forgot that. All my life I wanted to know what that meant.
In 1993, I dug into this early period, and of course went earlier, into the history of Sumer and Babylon and the whole Middle East, and back to Egypt, which I’d studied in college, and I struggled with it all. I read specialized archaeological texts like detective novels searching for patterns, enthralled with the Gilgamesh story, and details such as the masonry tools which the ancient kings (statues) held in their hands.
I stumbled upon a mystery without a solution, a mystery so immense that I gave up trying to find an explanation because the whole mystery defied belief. The mystery was the survival of the Jews.
As I sat on the floor of my office surrounded by books about Sumer, Egypt, Rome, etc., and some skeptical material about Jesus that had come into my hands, I couldn’t understand how these people had endured as the great people who they were.
It was the mystery that drew me back to God. It set into motion the idea that there may in fact be God. And when that happened there grew in me for whatever reason an immense desire to return to the banquet table. In 1998 I went back to the Catholic Church.
But even then I had not closed in on the question of Jesus Christ and Christianity. I did read the Bible in a state of utter amazement at its variety, its poetry, its startling portraits of women, its inclusion of bizarre and often bloody and violent details. When I was depressed, which was often, someone read the Bible to me, often literary translations of the New Testament—that is, translations by Richmond Lattimore that are wondrously literal and beautiful and revealing and that open the text anew.
In 2002 I put aside everything else and decided to focus entirely on answering the questions that had dogged me all my life. The decision came in July of that year. I had been reading the Bible constantly, reading parts of it out loud to my sister, and poring over the Old Testament, and I decided that I would give myself utterly to the task of trying to understand Jesus himself and how Christianity emerged.
I wanted to write the life of Jesus Christ. I had known that years ago. But now I was ready. I was ready to do violence to my career. I wanted to write the book in the first person. Nothing else mattered. I consecrated the book to Christ.
I consecrated myself and my work to Christ. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it.
Even then I did not know what my character of Jesus would be like.
I had taken in a lot of fashionable notions about Jesus—that he’d been oversold, that the Gospels were “late” documents, that we really didn’t know anything about him, that violence and quarreling marked the movement of Christianity from its start. I’d acquired many books on Jesus, and the filled the shelves of my office.
But the true investigation began in July of 2002.
In August, I went to my beach apartment, to write the book. Such naiveté. I had no idea I was entering a field of research where no one agreed on anything—whether we are talking about the size of Nazareth, the economic level of Jesus’ family, the Jewish attitudes of Galileans in general, the reason Jesus rose to fame, the reason he was executed, or why his followers went out into the world.
Vast Landscape of Jesus Scholarship
As to the size of the field, it was virtually without end. New Testament scholarship included books of every conceivable kind from skeptical books that sought to disprove Jesus had any real value to theology or an enduring church, to books that conscientiously met every objection of the skeptics with footnotes halfway up the page.
Bibliographies were endless. Disputes sometimes produced rancor.
And the primary source material for the first century was a matter of continuous controversy in which the Gospels were called secondary sources by some, and primary sources by others, and the history of Josephus and the works of Philo were subject to exhaustive examination and contentions as to their relevance or validity or whether they had any truth.
Then there was the question of the Rabbis. Could the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the Talmuds be trusted to give an accurate picture of the first century? Did they actually mention Jesus? And if not, so what, because they didn’t mention Herod, who built the Temple, either.
Oh, what lay in store.
But let me backtrack. In 1999, I had received in the mail from my editor and longtime mentor a copy of Paula Fredriksen’s Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. I had read a substantial part of this book in which Fredriksen re-created beautifully the Jewish milieu in which the boy Jesus might have lived in Nazareth and in which he might have gone to the Temple for Passover along with his family.
Fredriksen made the point strongly that Jesus was a Jew. And that this had to be addressed when one wrote about him or thought about him, or so it seems to me.
Now six years later, I have produced a book which is obviously inspired by that scene which Fredriksen wrote, and I can only offer my humble thanks to her and acknowledge her influence.
Of course my beliefs are the polar opposite of Fredriksen’s as the book Christ the Lord reveals. But it was Fredriksen who steered me in the right direction as to exploring Jesus as a Jew, and there my serious research of him began.
Health Crisis
But to return to the year 2002. As I began my serious work, a call came from my husband. He was experiencing the first symptoms of a brain tumor from which he died in less than four months.
We had been married for forty-one years. After my return to the Church, he had consented to marry me in the great old church of my childhood with a priest who was my cousin saying the words. This was a marvelous concession coming from a committed atheist. But out of love for me, my husband did it. Forty-one years. And he was gone.
Was I given the gift of purpose before this tragedy so that it would sustain me through it? I don’t know. I do know that during his last weeks, my husband when he was conscious became a saint. He expressed love for those around him, understanding of people he hadn’t understood before. He wanted gifts given to those who helped him in his illness.
Before that he had managed, though half paralyzed, to create three amazing paintings. I must not neglect to say that. Then after that period of love and understanding, he slowly lapsed into a coma, and he was gone.
He left more than three hundred paintings, all done in fifteen years, and many books of poetry, most published during the same period, and thousands of unpublished poems. His memorial gallery will soon move from new Orleans to Dallas, Texas, where he was born.
I went on with my quest right through his illness and his death. My books sustained me. I told him about what I was writing. He thought it was wonderful. He gave me glowing praise.
From that time on, December 2002 when he died, until 2005, I have studied the New Testament period, and I continue to study. I read constantly, night and day.
I have covered an enormous amount of skeptical criticism, violent arguments, and I have read voraciously in the primary sources of Philo and Josephus which I deeply enjoy.
Having started with the skeptical critics, those who take their cue from the earliest skeptical New Testament scholars of the Enlightenment, I expected to discover that their arguments would be frighteningly strong, and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud. I’d have to end up compartmentalizing my mind with faith in one part of it, and truth in another.
And what would I write about my Jesus? I had no idea. But the prospects were interesting. Surely he was a liberal, married, had children, was a homosexual, and who knew what? But I must do my research before I wrote one word.
These skeptical scholars seemed so very sure of themselves. They built their books on certain assertions without even examining these assertions. How could they be wrong?
The Jewish scholars presented their case with such care. Certainly Jesus was simply and observant Jew or a Hasid who got crucified. End of story.
I read and I read and I read. Sometimes I thought I was walking through the valley of the shadow of Death, as I read. But I went on, ready to risk everything. I had to know who Jesus was—that is, if anyone knew, I had to know what that person knew.
Now, I couldn’t read the ancient languages, but as a scholar I can certainly follow the logic of an argument; I can check the footnotes, and the bibliographical references; I can go to the biblical text in English. I can check all the translations I have and I have every one of which I know from Wycliffe to Lamsa, including the New Annotated Oxford Bible and the old English King James which I love.
I have the old Catholic translation, and every literary translation I can find. I have offbeat translations scholars don’t mention, such as that by Barnstone and Schonfield. I acquired every single translation for the light it might shed on an obscure line.
What gradually came clear to me was that many of the skeptical arguments—arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts—lacked coherence. They were not elegant. Arguments about Jesus himself were full of conjecture. Some books were no more than assumptions piled upon assumptions. Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all.
In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if hew knew about it—that the whole picture which has floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years—that case was not made. Not only was it not made. I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.
I saw almost no skeptical scholarship that was convincing, and the Gospels, shredded by critics, lost all intensity when reconstructed by various theorists. They were in no way compelling when treated as composites and records of later ”communities.”
I was unconvinced by the wild postulations of those who claimed to be children of the Enlightenment. And I had also sensed something else. Many of these scholars, scholars who apparently devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt. This came between the lines of the books. This emerged in the personality of the texts.
I’d never come across this kind of emotion in any other field of research, at least not to this extent. It was puzzling.
The people who go into Elizabethan studies don’t set out to prove that Queen Elizabeth I was a fool. They don’t personally dislike her. They don’t make snickering remarks about her, or spend their careers trying to pick apart her historical reputation.
They approach her in other ways. They don’t even apply this sort of dislike or suspicion or contempt to other Elizabethan figures. If they do, the person is usually not the focus of the study. Occasionally a scholar studies a villain, yes. But even then, the author generally ends up arguing for the good points of a villain or for his or her place in history, or for some mitigating circumstance, that redeems the study itself.
People studying disasters in history may be highly critical of the rulers or the milieu at the time, yes. But in general scholars don’t spend their lives in the company of historical figures whom they openly despise.
But there are New Testament scholars who detest and despise Jesus Christ. Of course, we all benefit from freedom in the academic community; we benefit from the enormous size of biblical studies today and the great range of contributions that are being made. I’m not arguing for censorship. But maybe I’m arguing for sensitivity—on the part of those who read these books. Maybe I’m arguing for a little wariness when it comes to the field in general. What looks like solid ground might not be solid ground at all.
Another point bothered me a great deal.
All these skeptics insisted that the Gospels were late documents, that the prophecies in them had been written after the Fall of Jerusalem. But the more I read about the Fall of Jerusalem, the more I couldn’t understand this.
The Fall of Jerusalem was horrific, and involved an enormous and cataclysmic war, a war that went on and on for years in Palestine, followed by other revolts and persecutions, and punitive laws. As I read about this in the pages of S.G.F. Brandon, and in Josephus, I found myself amazed by the details of this appalling disaster in which the greatest Temple of the ancient world was forever destroyed.
I had never truly confronted these events before, never tried to comprehend them. And now I found it absolutely impossible that the Gospel writers could not have included the Fall of the Temple in their work had they written after it as critics insist.
It simply didn’t and doesn’t make sense.
These Gospel writers were in a Judeo-Christian cult. That’s what Christianity was. And the core story of Judaism has to do with redemption from Egypt, and redemption from Babylon. And before redemption from Babylon there was a Fall of Jerusalem in which the Jews were taken to Babylon. And here we have this horrible war.
Would Christian writers not have written about it had they seen it? Would they not have seen in the Fall of Jerusalem some echo of the Babylonian conquest? Of course they would have. They were writing for Jews and Gentiles.
The way the skeptics put this issue aside, they simply assumed the Gospels were late documents because of these prophecies in the Gospels. This does not begin to convince.
Before I leave this question of the Jewish War and the Fall of the Temple, let me make this suggestion. When Jewish and Christian scholars begin to take this war seriously, when they begin to really study what happened during the terrible years of the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the revolts that continued in Palestine right up through Bar Kokhba, when they focus upon the persecution of Christians in Palestine by Jews; upon the civil war in Rome in the ‘60s which Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., so well describes in his work Before Jerusalem Fell; as well as the persecution of Jews in the Diaspora during this period—in sum, when all of this dark era is brought into the light of examination—Bible studies will change.
Right now, scholars neglect or ignore the realities of this period. To some it seems a two-thousand-year-old embarrassment and I’m not sure I understand why.
But I am convinced that the key to understanding the Gospels is that they were written before all this ever happened. That’s why they were preserved without question though they contradicted one another. They came from a time that was, for later Christians, catastrophically lost forever.
As I continued my quest, I discovered a scholarship quite different from that of the skeptics—that of John A.T. Robinson, in The Priority of John. In reading his descriptions, which took seriously the words of the Gospel itself, I saw what was happening to Jesus in the text of John.
It was a turning point. I was able to enter the Fourth Gospel, and see Jesus alive and moving. And what eventually emerged for me from the Gospels was their unique coherence, their personalities—the inevitable stamp of individual authorship.
Of course John A.T. Robinson made the case for an early date for the Gospels far better that I ever could. He made it brilliantly in 1975, and he took to task the liberal scholars for their assumptions then in Redating the New Testament, but what he said is as true now as it was when he wrote those words.
After Robinson I made many great discoveries, among them Richard Bauckham who in The Gospels for All Christians soundly refutes the idea that isolated communities produced the Gospels and shows what is obvious, that they were written to be circulated and read by all.
The work of Martin Hengel is brilliant in clearing away assumptions, and his achievements are enormous, I continue to study him.
The scholar who has given me perhaps some of my most important insights and who continues to do so through his enormous output is N. T. Wright. N. T. Wright is one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever read, and his generosity in embracing the skeptics and commenting on their arguments is an inspiration. His faith is immense, and his knowledge vast.
In his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, he answers solidly the question that has haunted me all my life. Christianity achieved what it did, according to N. T. Wright, because Jesus rose from the dead. It was the fact of the resurrection that sent the apostles out into the world with the force necessary to create Christianity. Nothing else would have done it but that.
Wright does a great deal more to put the entire question into historical perspective. How can I do justice to him here? I can only recommend him without reservation, and go on studying him.
Of course my quest is not over. There are thousands of pages of the above-mentioned scholars to be read and reread.
But I see now a great coherence to the life of Christ and the beginning of Christianity that eluded me before, and I see also the subtle transformation of the ancient world because of its economic stagnation and the assault upon it of the values of monotheism, Jewish values melded with Christian value, for which it was not perhaps prepared.
There are also theologians who must be studied, more of Teilhard de Chardin, and Rahner, and St. Augustine.
It was this. The challenge was to write about the Jesus of the Gospels, of course!
Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a gay Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The “Quest for the Historical Jesus” had become a joke because of all the many definitions it had ascribed to Jesus.
The true challenge was to take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Gospels which were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first-person witness, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell—to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and try to get inside him and imagine what he felt.
Then there were the legends—the Apocrypha—including the tantalizing tales in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas describing a boy Jesus who could strike a child dead, bring another to life, turn clay birds into living creatures, and perform other miracles. I’d stumbled on them very early in my research, in multiple editions, and never forgotten them. And neither had the world. They were fanciful, some of them humorous, extreme to be sure, but they had lived on into the Middle Ages, and beyond. I couldn’t get these legends out of my mind.
Ultimately I chose to embrace this material, to enclose it within the canonical framework as best I could. I felt there was a deep truth in it, and I wanted to preserve that truth as it spoke to me. Of course that is an assumption. But I made it. And perhaps in assuming that Jesus did manifest supernatural powers at an early age I am somehow being true to the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus was God and Man at all times.
I am certainly trying to be true to Paul when he said that Our Lord emptied himself for us, in that my character has emptied himself of his Divine awareness in order to suffer as a human being.
This is a book I offer to all Christian—to the fundamentalists, to the Roman Catholics, to the most liberal Christians in the hope that my embrace of more conservative doctrines will have some coherence for them in the here and now of the book. I offer it to scholars in the hope that they will perhaps enjoy seeing the evidence of the research that’s gone into it, and of course I offer it to those whom I so greatly admire who have been my teachers though I’ve never met them and probably never will.
I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ in the hope that you will see him in these pages in some form. I offer this novel with love to my readers who’ve followed me through one strange turn after another in the hope that Jesus will be as real to you as any other character I’ve ever launched into the world we share.
After all, is Christ Our Lord not the ultimate supernatural hero, the ultimate outsider, the ultimate immortal of them all?
As for my son, this novel is dedicated to him. That says it all.
I returned to faith in Christ, and to the Roman Catholic Church on December 6, 1998. It was after a long struggle of many years during which I went from being a committed atheist, grieving for a lost faith which I thought was gone forever, to realizing that I not only believed in Jesus Christ with my whole heart, but that I felt an overwhelming love for Him, and wanted to be united with Him both in private and in public through attendance at church.
The process for me had been gradual and somewhat intellectual. I’d lost faith in atheism. It no longer made sense. I wanted to affirm the presence of God because I felt it. Yet I was tormented by a multitude of theological questions and social issues that I couldn’t resolve. No matter how strongly I believed in God I still considered myself a conscientious humanist.
How, I asked myself, could I express the love for God that I felt by becoming a member of a community of believers when I didn’t know what I thought about the literal truth of Adam or Eve or Original Sin?
How could I join with fellow believers who thought my gay son was going to Hell? How could I become connected with Christians who held that there was no evidence for Darwinian evolution, or that women should not have control over their own bodies? How could I affirm my belief in a faith that was itself so characterized by argument and strife?
Well, what happened to me on that Sunday that I returned to faith was this: I received a glimpse into what I can only call the Infinite Mercy of God. It worked something like this. I realized that none of my theological or social questions really made any difference. I didn’t have to know the answers to these questions precisely because God did.
He was the God who made the Universe in which I existed. That meant he had made the Big Bang, He had made DNA, He had made the Black Holes in space, and the wind and the rains and the individual snowflakes that fall from the sky. He had done all that. So surely He could do virtually anything and He could solve virtually everything.
And how could I possibly know what He knew? And why should I remain apart from Him because I could not grasp all that He could grasp? What came over me then was an infinite trust, trust in His power and His love, I didn’t have to worry about the ultimate fate of my good atheistic friends, gay or straight, because He knew all about them, and He was holding them in His hands.
I didn’t have to quake alone in terror at the thought of those who die untimely deaths from illness, or the countless millions destroyed in the horrors of war. He knew all about them. He had always been holding them in His hands.
He and only He knew the full story of every person who’d ever lived or would live; He and He alone knew what person was given what choice, what chance, what opportunity, what amount of time, to come to Him and by what path.
That I couldn’t possibly know all was as clear to me as my awareness that He did.
Now this was not totally understandable to me in words at that time. I couldn’t have explained it in this way then. But it is essentially what happened: faith became absolutely real to me; and its implications became real. I found myself in a realm in which the beauty I saw around me was intimately connected in every way with the justice, the wisdom, the mercy and the love of God.
Did this mean that I thought doctrine and principles didn’t matter? No. Did it mean I thought everything was relative? Certainly not. Did it mean I did not continue to ponder a multitude of ideas? God forbid. What it did mean was that I put myself in the hands of God entirely and that my faith would light the pages I read in the Book of Life from then on.
Now why did this happen to me? Why did this love and trust fill my heart at that particular moment in time? The honest answer is: I don’t know. Had I prayed for faith? Yes. Had I searched for it? Yes. But faith is a gift, and it was a gift I received on that day.
Over the next few years, my conviction and my awareness of God’s love deepened; and no matter what crisis or dilemma I confronted, that trust in the power of the Lord remained.
In the summer of 2002, as I’ve explained above, I consecrated my work to Christ, but I really didn’t make good on my promise to work only for Him until December of that year. From that time on, I have been committed to writing the life of Our Lord in fictional form.
At the time that I began this work, I had no idea that my life would be transformed by this task, that the anxiety I took for granted as part of life before 2002 would almost entirely disappear. In fact, had anyone told me this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed such a thing. But my life has been completely changed.
Now what happened in 2002 was this: I was praying, I was talking to the Lord, I was discussing my writing with Him, and what came over me was the awareness that if I believed in Him as completely as I said I did, I ought to write entirely for Him. Anything I could do ought to be for Him. I told Him so. I set out to put this into practice.
As I said, I didn’t succeed to full commitment until December of that year. But the day when I told the Lord I’d write for Him, and Him only, I now see as the most important single day of my entire life. Truly not the simplest things have been the same since. I am united in mind and body as never before. In fact it seems that every aspect of my life has been brought into a coherence that I’d never expected to see.
My early religious education, my long quest, my many experiences both dramatic and trivial, my losses, my developing writing skills, my research skills—all are united now in one single goal. There is a feeling in me at times that nothing, no matter how small, that I experienced has been lost. And of course I wonder if it isn’t this way with every human being; it’s just that most of us can’t see it most of the time.
There is much more I can say about my journey to conversion but I think this gives the emotional picture which is lacking above.
Finally, allow me to say this about the crafting of a novel about Our Lord.
As Christians, I feel most of us in the creative community must seek to be more than scribes. If Diarmaid MacColloch is right in his immense history, The Reformation, we had plenty of Christian scribes on the eve of that enormous and painful upheaval.
But it was the printing press that enabled the great thinkers of that time, both Reformer and Catholic, to transform our “assumptions about knowledge and originality of thought.” I suggest now that we must seize the revolutionary media of our age in the way that those earlier Christian and Catholics seized the printed book. We must truly use the realistic novel, the television drama, and the motion picture to tell the Christian story anew.
It is our obligation to tell that story over and over and to use the best means that we have.
In that spirit this novel was written—with the hope of exploring and celebrating the mystery of the Hypostatic Union as well as the mystery of the Incarnation—in a wholly fresh way.
But we, O Lord, behold we are Thy little flock; possess us as Thine, stretch thy wings over us, and let us fly under them. Be thou our glory.
-St. Augustine
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July 12, 2006
Go here to learn more about Anne’s book “Christ The Lord Out Of Egypt”
Anne Rice recommends the following books and scholarly works on the question of Jesus:
On the Historical Jesus and the Gospels:
David Alan Black’s simple and straightforward Why Four Gospels
Jean Carmignac’s The Birth of the Synoptic Gospels
The First Edition of the New Testament by David Trobisch
Craig S. Keener’s truly magnificent A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew
Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke by John Wenham
I’m also profoundly grateful for the writings of Fr. Benedict Groeschel CFR, J. Augustine Di Noia OP, Gerald O’Collins SJ, and the works of the great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar
Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
Craig L. Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel
On apocryphal writings and artistic representations of Jesus in the early church:
The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church by J. K. Elliot
Art & the Christian Apocrypha by David R. Cartlidge and J. Keith Elliot
The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England by Mary Clayton
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre
Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary 800-1200 by Rachel Fulton
The Golden Legend, published as Legenda Sanctorum in 1260
1-Page Summary: What We Know About Jesus and the Resurrection
Comment first, then a question: Romans 10 : 17 says (NIV) Faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard from the word of Christ.
Question: Would you agree that a better translation would be: “Faith comes from understanding the Word and the Word is Jesus Christ”. Ref: St. John 1 : 14
Is the world as we know it doomed to an unending state of human conflict and atrocities in accordance with the Will of God?
This excerpts really provoke my thought “how could I possibly know what He knew? And why should I remain apart from Him because I could not grasp all that He could grasp?”
Truly, it better to believe in the existence of GOD and found out there is none than to believed that HE does not exist and later found out that HE does
Perhaps some answers to Anne’s quest could be found here- http://www.letterdash.com/walmul/thoughts-for-christmas
kind regards
Walter Muller.
Oops.
To Perry Marshall (from whom I received an unsolicited email about this post) and all who commented… I suggest you do a bit of homework. Anne Rice renounced the Catholic Church on July 29, 2010 over gay rights, birth control and other issues.
She states she remains committed to Christ.
You dont have to read a lot of History to prove the reality of Jesus or God. Just “taste and see that the Lord is good” by accepting Jesus as your Lord. Pray, Read the Bible, Fellowship, and Tell others about Christ regularly; then we will see what will happen to you.
Can someone explain to me why if god is so omipotent he allows so much carnage and destruction to take place, i am reading Forgotten Voices by Lyn Smith about some of the survivors of the holocaust and their stories, all are horrendos, why did he let over 6,000,000 poeple die without doing nothing, i have been to jad vassem in jerusalem to the place where they read out in english, polish, russian, and german the names of the 1,500,000 children who were murdered, where was he then, i am in israel now and have also been to dachau and auschwitz, and the more i see, the more i am convinced that atheism is the only way to accept all this.
See http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/evil-and-suffering/
The problem with atheism is that genocide becomes just another instance of natural selection; ie at the end of the day, might is right. Any moral objection to it is nothing more than someone’s subjective preference. Dismissing evil as nonexistent won’t make it go away.
This isn’t merely an academic or philosophical abstraction. It is a well known fact that atheist governments have put 3x more people to death in the last last 100 Years than all religious wars in all history.
hitler who is responible for the holocaust was a roman catholic not an atheist, stalin and mao were atheists but did not do what they did for religous reasons, This argument is always put forward that it was because they were atheists they did what they did, they were physcopaths and did what they did for that reason. Homo sapiens sapiens went down to @2,000 people in africa at one stage and were on the edge of exstinction, where would we be now if that had happened ? 99.8 % of every living thing on this planet since the hadean (hades)period has become exstinct, this planet would have gone on wether we were here or not, we are nothing special at all jsut a biological offshoot of evolution. I do not understand that for 96,000 years god did nothing about the human race, then suddenly in a desert swept insignificant part of the middle east he appears, and people have been fooled ever since because they refuse to accept the fact that we simply are born, live and die like every other entity on this planet and we try to make ourselves special, we are not.
I think Stalin and Mao did what they did for very much religious reasons. Why, after all, did Lenin say, “Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism“?
If what you say is true – if there is nothing special about us – if we are simply born, live and die, then how can you even begin to object to genocide? Why not treat all our fellow human beings like cattle – just as Mao and Stalin did?
Even thought i do not belive in religion i still think that everyone has a right to his or her own life while they are here on planet earth and should not be inculte into the relgion their parents are, babaies have no choiece in the matter, this is wrong. As for stalin he kept the catholic church alive during the second world war as he needed ther support, mao should have been eliminated as he was simply a despotic maniac with no moral values at all, you cannot simply blame this in his atheism.
In egypt (misr)Akenahton (his wife was nefertiti) did away with all the priests and charlatans and rebuilt a new city, where he stated thet there was only one god, this was the beginning of monotheism, the god was called Ra (the sun god)the religios people were very mad about this, as their nice little world was gone with all its privileges etc. When akenanton died the staues of him were defaced and destroyed, nearly all mention of him in written texts was eliminated. The priests got back their old city and carried on as before. Sigmund Freud actually wrote a short book suggesting that akenhaton and moses were on of the same, or that the idea of moses (musa in arabic) arose from this period.
Like Anne and others here I only lost my faith in organized religion, never God.
Raised as a Catholic, I finally decided that it’s inconsistencies and contradictions told me more about Catholicism than 12 years of Catholic education ever did and, still today, I have not the slightest qualm about leaving the Church.
To address your question, I found an answer within the text of A Course in Miracles. Certainly this study isn’t for everyone, let alone every Christian but it’s the only thing I’ve found that makes sense.
I don’t believe that I’d be allowed enough characters here to explain – or, in the end, that I could do your question justice at all – but if you really wish an answer to it join a ACIM message board and ask the question. I’m sure you will receive many thoughtful replies.
Amen Ann! I’m very similar to you in many ways. I do believe however, you haven’t quit being a Christian (follower of Christ) but rather, you’ve quit being religious and associated with “organized” religion. I know no one, after truly and personally having had a life changing revelation from and about God, to still blindly and passively remain in religion.
I’m glad for Anne that she claims to have encountered and experienced Jesus Christ personally; but, I have serious problems with anyone within the Catholic Church, growing in any meaningful way, biblically, all the while entraped with the maze of man-made ‘Dogma’ of Catholicism, i.e., the Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession to a Priest, the doctrine of pugatory, etc, etc, none of which have any basis in sound Biblical Theology.
Augustine’s Prayer to Mary For Salvation, is so typical of Catholicism, lets hear a bit of this prayer from Augustine to Mary.
“Blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily repay you with PRAISE and thankgiving for having rescured a fallen world by your generous consent? What songs of PRAISE can our weak humane nature offer in your honour, since it was through you that it has found the way to salvation. Accept then such poor thanks as we have to offer, unequal through they be to your merits. Receive our gratitude and obtain by your prayers the pardon of our sins. Take our prayers into the sanctuary of heaven and enable them to bring about of peace with God… For you are the ONLY HOPE of sinners, we hope to obtain the forgiveness of our sins through you. Blessed Lady, in you is our hope of reward.” ( Saint Augustine (d.430) Dictionary of Mary (Catholic Book Publishing C.: New Jersey, 1997, 195, p. 532) Sorry, but this is blatant idolatry and blasphemy, unscriptural heresy, and this is just scratching the surface of such like false doctrine within Catholicism.
How can Anne or any other person who claims to know Jesus as saviour and Lord, grow spiritually within Catholicism, with all of this false doctrine?
Hi Carlos,i appreciate your critical mind.I liked it since i myself am a critical person.However,i could see in your approach antiCatholicism if i am not mistaken.This is what made many people quit christianity as some have mentioned above.Better be a constructive critic.Concerning the sacrifice of the mass and the confessions and some other doctrines have Biblical foundations.The only limitations which i myself recognize is that,the catholic church mostly takes things for granted without looking and establishing its Biblical ground.I am not criticizing your position just to present my view point concernining the topic.Thanks.Happy Christmas.
Thank you, thank you, I am in tears as I read this on Christmas morning. All my life I’ve struggled with those questions and am still on my journey. I do like my parish, though. Never a word of politics, homilies are based on the liturgy, emphasis on trust and love of God and each other. And the people are kind, caring Christians. I am blessed.
Let us hear from the self-authenticating absolute, authority of God’s Word, the Bible, not the decrees and dogmas of Catholicism.
“I am the Lord, that is My Name; and My glory I will NOT give to another, Nor My praise to carved images.” ( Isa. 42:8) emphasis added.
The Glory of the Father is inherent in the Son, and the Holy Spirit, for they are ONE in all eternal attributes, and this sovereign Glory is NOT shared or given to anyone outside of the Eternal Godhead. This is why Jesus said:
“father, the hour has come, Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over ALL FLESH, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.”
“And this is eternal life, that they may KNOW (Who?) You, the only true God, and (Who?) Jesus Christ ( not a mention of Mary!) whom You have sent,’ I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with THE GLORY which I had with You before the world was” ( John 17: 1b-5) emphasis added.
You cannot interpose Mary, or any other departed soul, to interceed for anyone on earth, and NOT only is it utterly and completely un-Scriptural, it is also absurdly and downright illogical, based on the sovereign declaration in God’s Word, and all that Jesus said, as divinely recorded in His Word:
Listen again to God’s Word, which is absolute:
“God who at various times and in various ways sopke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by HIS SON…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding ALL THINGS by the word of His power when He had ( with the consent of Mary, NO! NO! NO!) by HIMSELF purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.” (Heb. 1: 1-3) emphasis added.
And what does the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, do for us here on earth, let us hear from God’s Word, yet again:
“But He (Jesus) because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore, He is also able to (Do what?) SAVE ( to what extent?) TO THE UTTERMOST those who (first go to Mary, NO!) Who come to God (directly) THROUGH HIM, (Why?) since He always lives (to do what?) To make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24) emphasis added.
Let us now by contextual analysis, bring together a few other text to show emphatically, from God’s Word, the Scriptures, that ONLY the sovereign, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, eternal Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are the ONLY ONES, who are not only capable, but the ONLY ONES declared in Scripture, that are absolutely necessary to hear us pray, and who alone can effect any communication for firgivess of sins, and eternal life.
1) “Jesus saith unto him, I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE, no man cometh unto the father BUT BY ME” ( John 14:6)
How do we know that this means that Jesus is the ONLY mediator between the Father in the Spirit realm and mankind on earth?
Hear God’s Word again:
2) “For there is ONE GOD, and ONE MEDIATOR between (who and where?) God ( In Heaven) and men” ( On earth) (I Tim. 2:5) emphasis added.
Now, the next text is absolutely potent with confirmation, that ONLY the Eternal Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are able, capable, and absolutely sufficient to hear any one on earth when we pray, NOT MARY or any other departed soul!
Listen again, to God’s Word:
“For through HIM ( The Lord Jesus Christ) we both HAVE ACCESS, ( by how many spirits?) ONE SPIRIT ( The Holy Spirit) UNTO THE FATHER” ( Eph. 2:18)
This resolutely, rules out any other departed spirit, Mary included, from not only being unnecessary, but renders it totally un-scriptural to expect her to hear the prayers of any one on earth, as only the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent; therefore, to ascribe such attributes to Mary, which is the only logical way she could function in such a capacity, is tantamount to blasphemy against the Godhead, and gross idolatry!
Truth by definition is absolute, God’s Word is absolute, Catholicism has violated God’s Word, by either adding or taking away from, His sovereign Word, what is Anne going to do with this absolute truth, and other Catholics?
Hello, Notice that Anne may not even know this website exists. Someone at “CoffeeHouse Theology” just quoted her book for us to read. That’s why we read at the beginning of the article….”Used with permission”
“Let us hear from the self-authenticating absolute, authority of God’s Word, the Bible, not the decrees and dogmas of Catholicism…”
Do you really think the Lord SHOUTED at least once on every second LINE in order to get HIS POINT across? It would certainly make it look like there’s NO ROOM for DISCUSSION if that were the case. Also, all of the DIRECT QUOTATIONS you use are written in English, which, oddly enough, did not exist around 33 A.D. Ever consider it possible that your source, the Bible, the “self-authenticating absolute, authority of God’s Word” might be the source of the confusion?
Hi Freddie, I am NOT shouting when I use Caps Lock, not at all, I’m just using it for emphasis and augmentation, OK!
Secondly, the Holy Spirit inspired the Greek New Testament text, it was HE who used the words, that were then rendered in English, you either believe the Word of God, the Bible or you do not, its either/or, not both/and; it IS Jesus Christ all the way or nothing, no praying to Mary or other departed saints, no sacerdotal priesthood (priestcraft) or any of the other pagan false doctrine, i.e., Sacrifice of the Mass, confession to a priest, etc, etc, as Catholicism has mixed with the absolute truth of God’s Word1
many bible readers overlook or ignore my favorite passage””the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth”
a book worth reading is Peter Kreefts ” Seven reasons to be Catholic.”
Sincerely,
Frank Martin
I advise you should not just be proud of returning to faith. Try as much as possible to continue to find out the will of God and the truth. There are lots of confusion in the faith of men because people are not giving themselves to the potter. I appreciate you believing in God again but then you are not yet holding the truth. This is my own conviction. If you continue, you will be holding the truth in few years.
Don’t be too sure about your conviction. The woman sounds much clearer, coherent and calmer about the truth (whether of God, Christ and the Gospel) than you sound or most of us do. I’m impressed and convinced she is going to d well and the Holy Spirit will lead her into all the truth as she believes.
It’s good to know that she has returned to the faith. It is also important to be true to God’s Word. Anything contrary to God’s Word has to be rejected completely. I doubt if she will be able to grow as a mature Christian, led by the Holy Spirit,as she has returned to the catholic Church. Jesus alone is the saviour. She must be baptised in water according to mark 16:16. We are in the last days. I would suggest a Bible-believing Pentecostal Church where the Spirit of God works! Amen. God bless you.
”Great peace have they who love your law.” Psalm 119: 165.
Yes she needs to fellowship in a Bible believing Church where the Holy Spirit’s move is welcome and the everlasting Gospel of Christ is preached NOT where the (Holy) Spirit is moved and temporal motivations are rendered by empty presumptuous economic orators.
The Lord will help her if she truly seeks the Lord for spiritualities not for temporalities.
All wonderful of you is that you have studied only and only western thought of God which can be negated very simply. Please go through the truths of eastern too.
Truth is Truth whether eastern or western. Truth is that one wholesome and transforming explication of reality and being which is
1) Logically Consistent
2) Empirically Adequate
3) Experientially Relevant
The Truth of the Gospel of Christ preached and transmitted by His Apostles is the Truth for the west and the east, nothing else could be.
Dear Anne , I suggest you read ‘the Gospel as it was revealed to me’ by Maria Valtorta. I don’t know the exact title in English as I’m reading it in French. I know some people don’t approuve of this, ie it doesnt have a ‘style’ but she, maria valtorta, was a simple woman who had never been to Israel and could not have made up the story. It is useful to read it in conjunction with ‘with Jesus from day to day’ (not sure of English title) by jean Aulagnier. In my opinion these 2 books tell you everything about the life of Jesus.
sorry to interfere in a subject that is not my real religion, but we muslims think that Jesus Christ glory be to him he is very much respected in our holy book the Quran more than I read in the New testament, but we regard him as a messenger of God like the other messengers who came to quide the humanity to the clear path of God and we beleive that he is so glorified by the almighty God that the Jews could not crucify him but the done that to their follower that the almighty God made him look like Jesus and I think this is all tru and clear and much Jesus repeats in the holy book that I am the son of the man and he eats and drinks and sits and talks with people, is I am right in my statement if its wrong please guide me, thankin you.
Thanks for you kind thoughts and regard for Jesus Christ. But if you really have regard for Him, you should also regard His choice of Apostolic eye-witnesses and the testimony they bore about Him. Don’t you think so? If you disagree with these witnesses, is really respectful or spiteful rather? I think the Apostolic witness in the New Testament is the most reliable source of the truth about the Real Jesus Christ. The Koran tried but in challenging or contradicting the Apostles, the Koran lost its own credibility. Is my analysis logical and clear? Thanks and God’s blessings.
Dear Issa
What is very important to realise is that Jesus Christ (and no other imposter or substitute from God) must have been crucified in order for His crucifixion to have meant anything. This is because without blood there is no remision of sin and only a perfect person (like Jesus) could have paid for the sins of humanity, otherwise that person’s death would have meant nothing at all. I really value your honesty a lot and can “hear” you are seeking. Please seek in the right place, i.e. the only holy book ever written, the Bible. Even in the quran it mentions that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that is truly so. He is also the only way to God and the Bible says he who have not the Son, have not the Father. Incidentally the Bible is also the only book that God is called Father, because that is exactly who He is, a loving, Holy and compassionate heavenly Father. May God bless you in your search and may you find the true fullfilment and freedom you’re looking for.
I wonder where the churches (Christian) would be today if Paul would of taken the same position in regards to “not being a part of Christianity”? Does not “Christianity” mean or represent “en mass” the people who believe in and follow “Christ”? Paul fought for the strengthening of the early church(es) through his journeys and letters (yes, to partaking and ministering to organized congregations with the mindset and intent for the purpose of them being and representing the body of Christ) What reason would God of had for approaching Paul personally and in all probability instilling in him the intuitions and sensitivity in regards to “codes of conduct” that were conducive to Gods” very own nature and character and intent; especially when these “codes of conduct” would be unchanged and run parallel from the time when he created Adam and Eve? And the code of conduct would of definitely included issues like “homosexuality” or “gay rights” etc. There is a huge distinction between being a “Christian and Christianity” and organized “religion” which is a man-made invention! Religion is man’s way of attaining his own agendas and conveniences, and to my mind this is definitely representative of the “Catholic church” and/or other faiths!
You are right about religion. In Christianity the issue is not religion as it is of redemption or salvation which is all about being reconciled to God. This reconciling to the divine would not go without regeneration and transformation from our unreconciledness to the reconciledness. he issue in Christianity however is what Christ has done to make this transformation possible and fruitful I would forfeit anything if I found something exceedingly far better. Won’t you?
Thanks for sharing. This was a very interesting and well written article!
So many things confuse me here and trouble me greatly.
How could a cradle Catholic, who allegedly spent a great deal of time intellectually indulging in her faith, have such basic misunderstandings of the teachings of her former Church?
She “calls out” the Catholic Church for being the following: anti-gay, anti-woman (anti-feminist / opposing a woman’s “control over her own body”), and other obviously liberally inspired attributes.
If she had spent any time at all researching her claims, she would know that first and foremost, the Catholic Church teaches that we are to love every person of every orientation, viewing them exactly the same as everyone else. Of course, sexual acts contrary to the natural law–harmful to the participants or which use the procreative organs in ways contrary to their purpose–are condemned, and for good reason. The Catholic Church is not going to use political correctness and make attempts to avoid offending the uneducated, relative to this issue. Never has the Church taught that being gay is a sin. Never has the Church taught that being gay means that person is going to Hell. Every person is responsible for their actions, for seeking God, avoiding sin, and seeking God’s will above and beyond their own. Anne Rice let her emotions get in the way of truly understanding the Church and her position towards our brothers and sisters of a homosexual orientation.
As for a woman not having control over her own body, I almost feel this phrasing and the brief mention of abortion was included solely to offend–almost as if to wear this poorly constructed argument as a badge of pride for her ignorance. Whereas most of a pro-choice persuasion will argue that the wants of the mother supersede the rights of her unborn child, the pro-life movement along with the Catholic Church argues a diametrically opposite perspective, keeping in mind that both the mother and her child are human beings, infinitely valuable, and neither can be ignored. In regards to 99% of abortions procured in the United States, the mother fully consented to “control her body” in a chosen act of sexual intercourse, and so where exactly does the argument stand that the Church is denying a woman the right to her own body? Of course I will mention rape. This is a taboo argument; far too many outside of the sphere of such a scenario would argue that a raped woman should keep her child. I will, too, argue here that the Catholic Church is in the right in opposing abortion in all circumstances, including rape. Personally, I have reviewed psychiatric studies of raped women, of those who sought an abortion and those who didn’t, and the results are clear as day: keeping the child is the greatest factor in the healing process, the greatest help in recovering from a rape. The child may be half the father’s, but likewise this child is half the mothers–he or she is just as much her child, her baby. On this Christmas day, I think back to the incarnation of Christ. Mary, at the age of 14, was asked by God to conceive and bring to term a child who she did not plan in advance on having. And with this unexpected pregnancy, at her young age, how did she respond? She responded with a resounding “yes” (fiat) to God’s will for her. I truly believe this is a glaring example that as Catholics, as Christians, we are called to see all children as gifts from God, keeping in mind that if God blesses us with a child, He has plans for that child, and of course He will get us through any trials the pregnancy will bring. It is always deeply painful to see a Christian who attempts to justify abortion. There must be few things prevalent in the modern world which offend God more than abortion.
God bless you, Anne Rice. You have made great strides, but give it your all. There is much to learn, more every day.
Wow! Great article by an apologist for the RC Church! The only thing is that it totally fails to actually comprehend and sense of and the reality of Ms. Rice and her own experience. As a highly experienced researcher and RC, I suspect that she knows the dogma of the Church and everything about it. As a highly intelligent and cogent woman, I suspect she has a very good sense of herself and her life both in and out of the Church. Certainly more so than the responder here. To simply dismiss her as a religious know-nothing about the Church, her experience there and her life as a woman is typically male. It is also harsh and uncaring for her as an individual who has spent decades searching for the truth behind the Church’s dogma and how she must relate not only to the Church, but to life, her life, as a whole.
This responder just doesn’t get it, prefering instead to simple blather about what the Church may preach and teach, but doesn’t really communicate at the ground level.
What a sexist, uneducated and immature comment.
Do you have anything to say aside from how much you approve of the article and oppose my response, despite not understanding (or reading in their entirety) either?
Come back with a response that makes sense and uses something I like to call an “argument.”
Evan-
Are you referring to me? If so, you couldn’t be more wrong about what I wrote in response to Carlos’s comments. My response was purely sarcastic and was actually in defense of Ms. Rice.
I don’t know how my comments got into where they are as I am a new poster, but they were not intended for you as I see your contribution as very meaningful.
Mea culpa-my apology.
Warren
Hmmm. Evan, I will admit to being new to the blog and the fact that i am not really sure how to put things where I may want them, and I was confused with my comment re your comments above, thinking they were those of Carlos. However, as it turns out, I was replying to your comments and I quite meant what I said about them.
Apparently you do not have many people criticiazing what you have to say, but I really am not concerned about that at all. While you may believe that I am sexest and whatever, I assure that is not the case and I am strongly supportive of Ms. Rice. That is not sexism, Evan, It is understanding and empathy. I know where she is because I have been there. If you are unable or unwilling to comprehend such as that, then I feel sorry for you.
Your arrogance and put-downism toward me is inexcusable and certainly unwarranted. Certainly you appear to see yourself as an expert on what you talk about and perhaps you are. Fine. However I suggest that your practice some of the love, etc., that you say the Church has for others. I don’t see any.
Warren
Love does not involve encouraging misinformation. I was well warranted in every comment I made, and you were further incorrect in straw manning my remarks. I will now clarify:
QUOTE: “To simply dismiss her as a religious know-nothing about the Church, her experience there and her life as a woman is typically male.”
This is nothing but sexist, and you have no means of arguing otherwise. If you would have read my initial comment, you would have noticed Rice’s critical misunderstandings, despite her alleged experience. It is very possible to have experience which does not bring one to the truth. This was, clearly, the case for Rice.
QUOTE: “I suspect that she knows the dogma of the Church and everything about it.”
This is uneducated. If you would have read through Rice’s ENTIRE message, as I did, and if you had years of practice and research within Catholic apologetics, Rice’s apparent ignorance of true Catholic teaching would be GLARINGLY obvious to you! As this was not the case, all you could do was express that you did not know, in fact, by openly stating that Rice’s Catholic opinions were absolutely right–they were almost absolutely wrong in some regards.
And, of course, sexism is immature, and so my claiming you were behaving immaturely was correct as well.
I am sorry I had to be as blunt as I was in my initial comment. I have a tendency to see things as black and white, forgetting that I’m dealing with imperfect people at times–people who form opinions without a full understanding of the topic matter. I’m kind of a perfectionist.
I just ask you please, if you have a critique of anything I have said, make sure it is well warranted, and I am sorry for offending you.
I think she thinks she does not want to be dogmatic and judgmental but rather be frank about her perplexity and leave some things outside her scope of authority. I hope she also lets the Church’s dogma and discipline outside her scope of authority too. I think she seems to.
Anne, Gbenda said, “If you continue, you will be holding the truth in a few years.” Very abstract! Nothing specific, not good at all!
Whereas, Jesus, specifically said:
“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall KNOW the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall make you free.” ( John 8: 31,32) emphasis added.
‘Know’ from the above verse is from the Gk (ginosko) and means ‘To perceive, understand, recognize, gain knowledge, come to know, (Ginosko) is the knowledge that has an inception, a progress and an attainment, it is the recognition of TRUTH by personal experience.
This knowing of the TRUTH, can only come by knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, as your personal Saviour and Lord, which can then only grow through serious, systematic study of HIS WORD, the Bible, which is forever settled in Heaven!
I have read Ann Rice’s transformation from an atheist to strong believer with interest. Westerners ,I am not one, are generally ignorant or do not want to believe that Jews were at the time of Jesus and even to day to some extent orientals Asians and perhaps dark skinned. So was Jesus. What he preached during his life is probably not well reflected in gospels and it does not matter whether the gospels were written earlier to or after the fall of Jerusalem.That gospel have undergone serious revisions and modifications can not be denied even by the most faithful. After all they are referred to as synoptic without a reason. The events that took place after the Roman empire embraced Christianity was a constant attempt to unify faith and that was possible only when the gospels ceased to be at variance.
As for the writers of gospels were Marc and Luke present where Jesus preached? Paul never met Jesus when he was preaching. Therefore we must assume that these writers wrote from hearsay.What stands in the way of our not accepting these is because as Ann puts it strongly the faith implanted upon by the Church, Priests and devote parents when our mind are young,and reasoning power is weak. Taking all these into account along with the present theories of big bang and so on a position of being an atheist or believer is less tenable than being an agnostic. After all was it not Socrates who said that the only knowledge he has is that he knew nothing. So we search and explore. Perhaps one day we will come to know a few things with absolute certainty. Till that time let us hold on to what we suspect we know.
Thanks.
George Cherian,
Pune 26th December 2010.
India
George,
Where is the historical support for your assertions that “What he preached during his life is probably not well reflected in gospels”?
Are you aware that Matthew and John were written by firsthand witnesses?
Are you aware that Mark was Peter’s scribe and that Peter was a first hand witness?
Are you aware of the geneologies of documents and NT manuscripts? Are you aware that your statement “That gospel have undergone serious revisions and modifications can not be denied even by the most faithful” is false? Do you know that we have hundreds of manuscripts dating from the 2nd century forward and we can build extensive genealogies of NT documents and trace every copying error? Do you know that the differences between manuscript are minor at most, and that the OT and NT are by far the best preserved documents from ancient history?
If you come and question scholarship here you are going to be expected to back up your statements with factual information.
Do you have any manuscript evidence to defend your own statements as anything but… hearsay?
Nicely put, Marshal. Well done.
Thank you for real data! It is hard to come by these days.
The concept of “Messiah” is the product of Judaism.” Messiah means simply anointed one for a special purpose. Scripture doesn’t say the anointed one is an individual. But somehow in the Jewish mind an idea grew that “Messiah” will be an individual in the lineage of their great king David. This idea developed into a firm faith, and when they edited the scriptures to make it one book, it influenced the editors and it resulted in the scriptures.
When the Jewish Bible scholars began to interpret Bible naturally their faith influenced their interpretation also. Thus the expectation of the arrival of a messiah deep rooted in the minds of Jews. This faith was so deep rooted in the Jewish mind that not even a single Jew dared to examine the correctness of this faith.
As the culmination of this faith some Jews happened to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And that Jews preached, ”Jesus is the Messiah”. And they wrote many gospels as stated by Luke. We must remember one thing. Jesus didn’t write any thing about his preaching. His apostles also wrote nothing. Others who heard the preaching of apostles wrote the gospels. There were many other gospels. (See.Luke 1:1-3) Church destroyed all other gospels which does not support the view of the church except what are included in the New testament..
The Gospel writers do not claim that they wrote it according to the instruction of God , holy spirit or Jesus. It may be noted that in the old testament every prophets claims Yahweh told this and that. See St.Luke says, like others who also wrote a gospel he also thought to write a gospel, he doesn’t say, he is writing the gospel not according to the instruction received from God or from holy spirit. That is why its heading is given like this “ Gospel according to Mathew, Gospel according to Mark, Gospel according to Luke, Gospel according to John” And the gospels are written the with sole intention to make others believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. St.John has admitted “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is Messiah, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31)
The early Christians believed that the Christ event in history was the immediate prelude to the end of the world and final judgment of humankind. St. Paul in his epistles wrote that the present generation, his own, would see the apocalypse. In the Synoptic gospels they wrote Jesus also claimed that the people around him would still be alive for the last .. Anticipating the immediate end of the world at any moment, the early Christians felt no need to record the life or sayings of Jesus. During this time, the life and sayings of Jesus circulated in an oral form through Christian teachers and public speakers. This oral material included stories and sayings attributed to Jesus, but they did not exist in any systematic, organized, or universal form.
At the same time these stories and sayings were circulating around the early Christian world, another set of stories about Jesus were being created. When Paul reinvented Christianity as a religion of a dead and risen God, Christians soon found themselves having to legitimate Jesus of Nazareth as deserving that status. The very first thing that needed to be accounted for was the death and resurrection of Jesus. The history of Jesus’ death, called the Passion (“suffering”), and the resurrection are probably the oldest strata of the stories surrounding Jesus. They began to interpret his words in such way to prove that Jesus had predicted his death and resurrection.
The early Christians needed more than the Passion and Resurrection to legitimate Christ as having divine status. So the early Hebrew teachers of Christianity turned to the prophetic and messianic tradition of Judaism and began to develop proofs of Christ’s divinity by aligning events in Jesus’s life with older prophecies, for instance, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin. This process also included configuring the humbly born Jesus of Nazareth as a descendant of King David through his father, Joseph, since the messianic prophecies were clear that the Messiah would come from the line of David..
Actually we don’t know who are the authors of the existing gospels in the New Testament. At first it was not even known as “ Gospels”. At an early date Gospel of Mathew was titled as “ Kata Mathaion “ (According to Mathew) . Gospel according to Mark was titled as “Kata Markon”, gospel of Luke was titled as “ Kata Loukon” and gospel of John was titled as “ Kata Ioannen”. The word gospel was added to it later.
The Gospels are not written according to the order of the events took place or according to the order of statements Jesus made. ( See Luke 1:1-2) Gospels are written for the sole purpose that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of god, and that believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31) That means in the gospels the words and deeds of Jesus are arranged in such a way to make you believe that Jesus is the Christ and son of God. The Gospel writers do not claim that they wrote the Gospels according to any instruction received from Jesus or God. Luke has plainly admitted this fact. See Lk.1:1-3
These gospels were not, however, immediately recognized as authority. As late as 96 AD, Clement, the Bishop of Rome, proclaimed the only authoritative texts of Christianity to be the Old Testament and the various sayings attributed to Jesus in circulation. The Gospels didn’t appear in Christian writings until around 135 AD.
Jesus was born in a Jewish family. Hence he was a Jew. He was bought up as a Jew. He died as a Jew with a jewfish prayer on his lips. He always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret he said nothing. (John 18:20) Some of the Jews found their messiah in Jesus (John1:41) Jesus spoke in the way as all other prophets. Jesus said ,” 12:49 “ I have not spoken from my own authority, but the Father himself who sent me has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak.” There is abundant evidence in the Gospels that Jesus considered his teachings to be for Jews only. Nowhere does Jesus construct his teachings or the religion he’s espousing as anything other than for Jews. Jesus never tried to invent a new religion. Why should a person create a new religion when he is expecting the end of the world is very near? But the Gospel writers very cleverly make others to believe that the mission of Jesus was not only for the Jews but it was for the whole humankind and he established the Christian religion.
What is reflected in the Gospels is all there is that is important for salvation. These other political angles were clearly avoided by them as engendering more ungodliness:
2Ti 2:14-17 GNB
(14) Remind your people of this, and give them a solemn warning in God’s presence not to fight over words. It does no good, but only ruins the people who listen.
(15) Do your best to win full approval in God’s sight, as a worker who is not ashamed of his work, one who correctly teaches the message of God’s truth.
(16) Keep away from profane and foolish discussions, which only drive people farther away from God.
(17) Such teaching is like an open sore that eats away the flesh. Two men who have taught such things are Hymenaeus and Philetus.
One of the most beautiful, spiritually fufilling and informative books I’ve read about the life of Jesus comes from a book titled The Urantia Book. Part 4 of the book is titled “The Life and Teachings Of Jesus.” This section takes up about one third of the two thousand or so page book. It portrays the “human Jesus” the “Son of man” and the glorified Jesus “Son of God” After reading this you really want to know the man whom everyone called “Master” after having met him.
Imagine the kindest, smartest, patient, loving and caring man you have ever met. When He looks in your eyes you know instantly He loves you, with a love like you’ve never felt. Once having met Him you are compelled to do good and be of service to others because that’s what He did and what He expects of you. There is no dogma or creed only Truth, Beauty and Goodness in the brotherhood of man, the Fatherhood of God. He brought the Kingdom of Heaven down here to earth for every man, woman and child to live in. Nothing less.
When you really find the Truth, you’ll be both dogmatic and creedal about it. The Holy Spirit leads into the Truth and convinces with the same truth. Dogma and creed are only a problem when misapplied or when based on falsehood.