For Doug: Books Recommended by Claire's Instructor.
Claire E. O'Connor claireoc@softdisk.com
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 19:26:07 -0600 (00880269967, 3477862F.248B@softdisk.com)
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Religious Books Recommended by Claire's Instructor
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> LARSON 11/16 {re: Religious books, Claire's slowness in responding}
> Hi Claire,
> Did you ever wonder why the Holy Spirit said so many different things to so
> many followers of the Lord Jesus Christ? To carefully point out, your
> theology instructor for example, guided by the Holy Spirit, gave you a list
> of books to purchase to set your theology on that straight and narrow road
> to salvation. His interest, as is the interest of all "Spirit indwelled
> Christians," is set towards
> "orthodoxy" (the right and true meaning/teachings of scripture). Claire,
> would you indulge me with the list of books that your instructor provided
> you.
Dear Doug:
Here is the text of an email that my theology instructor, Jim McGill,
wrote
to me when I asked him to recommend some books. I can forward the entire
email if anyone wants me to.
Dear Claire:
*snip*
You are a brave person to wade into a fundamentalist website and do
battle over Scriptural issues. And then to take on the atheists too!
What a woman!
You have discovered first hand that the Catholic approach to Scripture
is much harder to articulate and defend than the all (fundamentalists)
or nothing (atheists) perspectives. Unfortunately the debate about
Scripture in the popular culture tends to be the either/or approach with
a faith filled yet critical study of Scripture acceptable to nobody.
Now to the matters you raised.
I think Luke Timothy Johnson is correct in his analysis of the Jesus
Seminar. I assume the book you have is entitled "The Real Jesus". He
exposes the publicity angle in their methodology. Real scholarship
involves more than a vote among scholars as to what Jesus may have
said. But that's what the general public would think scholarship is.
So that's what they market. Johnson's section on the significance and
universality of faith in the resurrection is also excellent. When I
first got your phone message, this was the book I was going to
recommend, but I can see that you are way ahead of me.
The best book out on the historical Jesus is John P. Meier's massive two
(soon to be three) volume work "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the
Historical Jesus" published by Doubleday. Especially in the first
volume, he does a wonderful job outlining what "historical" means and
how it can apply to Jesus. Some of his ideas might even lend themselves
to the kinds of one liners you probably need to post on the website in
order to be acceptable to the debaters there. As I've said, most
Catholic scholarship does not reduce easily to one liners. But Meier is
very clear, and you can find some gems there, but you'll have to work
for them.
The Gospel of Thomas raises too many issues to resolve here. Whether it
precedes or follows the canonical Gospels is still hotly debated with
responsible scholars coming down on both sides. Sayings Gospels like
Thomas and Q probably represent the earliest examples of the Jesus
tradition committed to writing. There may have been lists of miracles
or other events too, especially the Passion Narrative. The innovation
of Mark's Gospel was to take all this raw data and put it into a
continuous narrative. This was such a step forward that Mark was
followed within 15 to 20 years by Matthew and Luke who use Mark as one
of their sources. If Thomas existed at the same time as these three, it
probably wasn't so much rejected as superseded as Q was too.
The Gnostics did use Thomas and many other documents and beliefs of
early Christianity. There is much in the account of Jesus' "coming down
and going up" that resembles Gnostic thought. The Gospel of John was
always a favorite of Gnostics for that very reason. An excellent book
on early Christian Gnosticism is "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine
Pagels. It came out in the late 70's, but it is still very good. She
virtually takes the Gnostics' point of view and says that with a twist
of
fate or two, Christianity would have developed more along Gnostic
lines. In her Introduction she has a nice summary of the Gospel of
Thomas as well. Elaine Pagels is an interesting author on other topics
too. Anything she writes is worth reading.
You are absolutely right about the role of the resurrection as pivotal
to who Jesus is. There is nothing about him that is so distinctive that
a movement would have developed around him had there not been the
reality of the resurrection. I think that is the weakest part of the
Jesus Seminar's approach. A wandering Cynic philosopher would not be an
item for half or more of the human race 2000 years after his death if
all he did was have some wise gnostic sayings and some miraculous
healings. The heart of Christianity is not based ultimately on what
Jesus did or said. It is based on what God did in and through the
mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection. Apart from his death and
resurrection, the sayings of Jesus would be relatively unremarkable and
similar to what one could find among other rabbinic, prophetic,
apocalyptic, gnostic, and wisdom writers of first century Judaism and
Hellenism. In the mouth of the Lord's Anointed, his sayings have
tremendous power and insight. If the speaker is just another first
century, itinerant Jewish preacher of one persuasion or another, his
words probably will die with his followers. His words endure because of
who he is not so much what he said.
An excellent book on the resurrection that takes into account modern
science is "Exploring the Resurrection of Jesus" by John Michael Perry
published by Sheed and Ward. Among other things the point Perry makes
(LTJ also makes this point) is that the different resurrection accounts
don't weaken but rather strengthen the fact that the followers of Jesus
experienced something real in his resurrection. So many diverse
traditions in many diverse ways all speaking about the same reality has
more the ring of truth than the thud of a lie or a conspiracy or a wish
fulfillment or a mass hysteria or an hallucination or whatever.
*snip*
Take care and see you soon.
Jim McGill
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Other books Jim McGill recommended:
The book he used to teach the class "How Catholics View the Bible"
was John Barton's _People of the Book?: The Authority of the Bible in
Christianity_. For the Gospel of Luke class, we used the _Collegeville
Bible
Commentary_. He also recommended _An Introduction to the New Testament_
by Raymond E. Brown.
~Claire O'Connor