Back again! Now that our problem has apparently been resolved, we shall go ahead and post that which we had intended when things went awry on March 5. While now a past occurrence, the following, we believe, will contain several thoughts yet meaningful.
+ + + + +
Need little exists for pointing out the firestorm generated by the Discovery Channel's airing of The Lost Tomb of Jesus - the "controversial" documentary" seen by some as lending credence to the implied "historicity" of the recent The Da Vinci Code novel wherein Jesus and Mary Magdalene are presented as having been something more than friends. One might, indeed, more correctly note the firestorm as having been already existent in consequence of the publicity preceding the film's showing.
It is doubtful that few, if any, of those established in the faith will find cause for doubt here in terms of personal persuasion. To deny a possible cululative effect within society at large might well represent an overly optomistic appraisal, however.
From faith's standpoint, the larger threat in it all is not that Jesus might have been married - a state to which Scripture repeatedly ascribes approval. Orthodoxy, of course, is committed to the premise that he did not, and to that we are quite willing to subscribe. (Some heretical gnostic writings sought to cast Christ in a less than savory role here - as have also some contemporary liberal religious organizations. Such, in fact, played a role in our having left a denomination of former affiliation some years ago.)
The greatest problem here is summed up, not only in the spuriousness of present assertion, but in the denial of Christ's physical resurrection and ascension to the Father. "If Christ be not raised," Paul writes, "your faith is in vain; you are yet in your sins; those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished; we are of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor. 15:17-19).
Sadly, one wonders about some perhaps not so well grounded in the faith. Paul implies the vulnerable of some to being "carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming" (Eph. 4:14). He elsewhere speaks of "weak" believers readily inclined to "religious diet" fads (Rom. 17:2); proposals that the resurrection has already taken place (II Tim. 2:18), etc. - in other words, those inclined to whatever comes down the religious pike. Such are not to be demeaned or "beat over the head with the Bible," but rather nurtured and hopefully assisted in attaining a stronger grounding (Rev. ch. 14).
Simply stated, not all within the apostolic era church were spiritual giants. (At this juncture, we shall not get into the subject of those at Corinth to whom Paul attributed a warped need for someone to dominate them, even when it involved their being used and abused, II Cor. 11:19-20 - much in contrast to his own love and care for them (II Cor. 12:14-19).
In detailing the time of the end, Jesus emphasized three attributes of the world with which his followers would be confronted: rejection, persecution and last, but not least, pressures of deceptive cause. We need not be all that surprised.
Burl Ratzsch
