What does the Bible tell us about God’s relationship to time? I often hear people say that God is outside of time but am unsure of the grounding for such a claim.

One of the problems with Biblical translators using the word ‘eternal’ is that it implies a sense of timelessness. However, a better translation would be ‘endless duration’. The Biblical depiction of God is of a being who is not temporary, but in a sense is temporal, in that God acts within time and those actions and plans are time-bound.

Within the realms of religious philosophy there have been numerous attempts to resolve the paradox of a being that is unaffected by time, and yet interacts with a creation that is governed by time.

Some of the attempts to resolve the paradox can be summed up as:

• a) God experiences all time simultaneously, which means he therefore knows all causes and all effects – this renders the universe as totally deterministic with every action predetermined and unalterable.
• b) God exists completely outside time (and therefore outside our physical universe), but occasionally interacts with it.
• c) God created the time-bound universe and has subsequently ‘stepped back’ to let the universe run its course, whereupon it will be restored to perfection through re-union with God (a form of Deism).
• d)God experiences ‘time’ as a set of dimensions similar to the way humans experience space, and therefore is not bound to a set point in time (or space). The populist Christian writer Rob bell explores this point in his DVD ‘Everything is Spiritual’.
• e) Time itself is part of creation and only ‘began’ when God created the universe – although for this to make complete logical sense it would mean God only ‘began’ to exist when the universe began as there was no ‘time’ before the universe.
• f) God is subject to time, in that God has willingly submitted to time, or is in some kind of ‘process of becoming’. The idea of a ‘developing God’ (to put it crudely) was popular in ‘Process theology’ in the 20th Century.

Interestingly, modern cosmological physics, with its idea of a multiverse and multiple dimensions hidden from our universe offers an intriguing alternative to the paradox. Although asking whether universes functioning in parallel to one another can influence each other leads into the same kind of theoretical issues that dog the religious philosophers.

Returning to the Biblical statements about God (for example, as ‘everlasting’, ‘steadfast’, ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’), it may be more satisfactory perhaps to see these terms as aspects of God’s character rather than God’s nature. God is revealed as reliable and consistent within the context of this universe, which is where humans are located and where those characteristics matter.

What is the difference between Israel and Judah, not just in a historical sense, but in the way they are referred to and referenced in the Bible?

The terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’ refer to several different things in the Old Testament. ‘Israel’ is the new name given to the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham, after his night spent wrestling with God (the story is in Genesis chapter 32). As the ‘children of Jacob/Israel’, the Hebrews were eventually referred to corporately as ‘Israel’.

Judah is one of Jacob’s sons, and a brother to Joseph and thus becomes a founding father of one of the Hebrew tribes. Initially an unimportant people group within Southern Israel, Judah rose in importance when David became King. From the tribe of Judah himself, David’s capital initially was Hebron, the central city of Judah, until he led the invasion and capture of Jerusalem which he established as a new capital in order to unite the tribes of Israel.
Towards the end of David’s reign there were several coup attempts. Often these rebellions started in the North of the country, where David’s predecessor Saul had always had a strong following. David’s chosen successor, Solomon, faced similar problems and after Solomon’s death the Northern and Southern kingdoms separated into Israel and Judah.

Although Israel was geographically larger, the Southern kingdom of Judah (now incorporating the territory of the tribe of Benjamin) lasted longer as an independent nation. The two were quite clearly interdependent for much of their history, although there was a sense that Judah remained more loyal to both the Davidic kingly line and the worship of Yahweh that was centred on the Temple that Solomon had built in Jerusalem.

Israel was destroyed as a nation by the Assyrian empire in the eighth century BCE and its people were scattered. Judah meanwhile continued as a vassal state of the Assyrians and the Egyptians until they were eventually conquered by the Babylonians / Chaldeans in the sixth century BCE. These were the Hebrews taken into ‘Exile’, who returned to the land seventy years later.

Because much of the Old Testament was written after the fall of Israel, the words Judah and Israel became virtually synonymous to later writers. The word ‘Israel’ began to be used more frequently to refer to the ‘remnant’ of Judeans who returned to their homeland from exile in Babylon (see Ezra chapter 2), and not the original Northern nation.

After the exile Judah was increasingly regarded as the ‘true Israel’, once the progenitor of Israel’s greatest king, David, and, according to prophecy, the source of the great king to come, God’s ‘anointed one’; the ‘messiah’. The ‘messianic’ title ‘Lion of Judah’ underlines the way ‘Judah’ was considered the ‘true Israel’.

The talk began by reading out 1 John chpater 2 in the New International Version of the Bible.

There’s always a danger when we read Scripture that we only see the bits that we want to see. I’m sure like me you’ve heard plenty of sermons when it seems the point the preacher is making bears little relation to the text.

So, what is John trying to tell us in the second chapter of this letter to his friends? It’s not always clear to see, so out of a sense of curiosity I ran the text through a website called Wordle to see what the key themes were – creating this image.

Wordle counts the number of times certain words appear and gives them a certain weight in how they are visualised. You can see three of the words that appear the most often have been grouped together quite neatly there: Know, Father and Children.

The word ‘know’ is interesting. To know something is more difficult than you’d imagine. There’s a whole branch of philosophy related to knowing about knowing – it’s called epistemology.

I recently did a study course that included a module on W Edwards Deming’s ‘Theory of Profound Knowledge’ which at its most basic level says there are four things that enable us to know things. It was a bit too profound really, because I felt quite confused by the end.

So ‘knowing’ can be a bit difficult to pin down.

John had a real fondness for the word ‘to know’ and he often linked knowing to the word ‘love’. In the gospel of John, Jesus says this to his disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” [John chapter 13, verses 34-35]

So, according to John, our knowledge stems from love and specifically being in a loving relationship with the person who John mentions most frequently in this chapter: our Father; God. As God’s children our knowledge of our Father comes out of knowing we are loved and loving our Father in return, and this affects the way we live.

The American writer Frederick Buechner says:
“Knowing somebody isn’t the same as knowing about them. More than just information is involved… To know is to participate in. to become imbued with, for better or worse to be affected by. When you really know a person, the knowledge becomes part of who you are.”

John links what we know to what we do, and what we do to our love for God.

About Jesus, John says: “We know that we have come to know him [Jesus] if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him.”

John continues: “I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning… Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”

Incidentally, there’s something going on here in the language that John is using. You may have already picked up the juxtaposition of certain key words – there’s light and darkness, truth and lying, love and hate, obedience and not obeying. In the field of Biblical studies this is called Johannine parallelism and is all very interesting and scholarly, but the important point is this:

John is saying that if you want to know whether a person really knows the Father then you look at what they do and how they live and see if they obey the command to love their Christian brothers and sisters. And if they don’t do that, then they don’t love the Father and are not the Father’s children.

In life, I do take after my dad in some respects. Most of us do – we might not want to; we may kid ourselves that we don’t. Not all of us know our human dads that well. But if you’ve had the good fortune to grow up with your father around, and your father loved you, then you naturally take on their characteristics.

I personally find what John is saying here very challenging.

Do I take after my heavenly dad enough? Would it be evident that I love him? The evidence is in whether I follow his command to love other people.

Now at this point some people may feel a bit uncomfortable. It may sound like I’m saying that our salvation is based on what we do and how we act. Is it enough just to love people? What about ‘praying the prayer’ and stuff? Surely getting right with God is a matter of believing the right things. This whole idea that we have to love people makes it sound like we can earn our way into heaven.

Well, that’s the objection. I’ve had an interesting experience in my life in the past year that has kind of thrown that issue into perspective for me.
After six and a half years working in a Christian organisation I went to work somewhere else – it’s the public sector, actually it’s the healthcare service.

Now a lot of people have asked me about that transition. ‘How are you finding it working in a non-Christian organisation?’ My answer surprises most people. I mean no disrespect to that that organisation, but truthfully, I’ve actually found it great. I love the work I do and it’s meaningful.

And something really surprising – I have met people who are passionate about things that my reading of the Bible tells me God is passionate about. People who want to alleviate suffering, who care about the more vulnerable members of society, who want to restore dignity to people who’ve had it stripped away, who care about equality and justice and the fact that the poorer you are the more likely you are to die young and from a horrible disease.

The majority of these people aren’t Christians – or at least they wouldn’t say they were. And yet… and yet they seem to have God’s agenda front and centre. I wish I could always say that I always did the same.

Earlier this year the writer and preacher Rob Bell published a book. In the book, ‘Love Wins’, he questions the traditional understanding of hell.

The reaction among Christians that spilled onto Twitter and Facebook and blogs and all over the internet really was crazy in the levels of condemnation for him.

This is just the latest in a series of similar reactions that seem to bring out the worst in Christians – name-calling, accusations of heresy, personal attacks. Regardless of whether Rob Bell was right or wrong to publish the book, and whether what was in it was doctrinally correct or not, what are we to make of the reaction?

These verses from 1 John 2 are suddenly very pertinent. “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light.” It felt like there was a lot of hate in the debate about Rob Bell. How we disagree as Christians is very important. How we react, respond, retaliate – it all matters much more than we seem to think.

And John also says: “If you know that God is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” Apparently you can spot the people who are truly children of God. They’re the ones out there loving people.

Recently a friend of mine tweeted this: “You are what you say you are.” You know what? I think that’s wrong. More and more I have this growing sense that you are what you do. I’m beginning to think that what you say is immaterial; what you do is evidence of who you are.

There’s nothing wrong in emphasising right belief, or having a statement of faith, or trying to get everything cast-iron correct in our doctrine and our worship style and the way we make decisions as a church and the way we do baptism or communion or prayer or anything. It’s all important, but it reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13:

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

The point Paul makes is that we can do everything “right” and yet still, somehow, manage to get it wrong. If we lack love, the rest of it doesn’t matter much.

And John goes a step further that Paul – you can have all the knowledge in the world, he says, but if you aren’t loving people then your knowledge is deficient because you don’t truly know the father.

Now let’s be real. Some of our fellow Christians are difficult to love. It’s hard to love people who run you down, or wind you up, or grind on your nerves, or are just plain boring.

That’s why we need the command to love our brothers and sisters, I suppose. If it was easy to do, then we wouldn’t need to be told to do it. I don’t need someone to command me to eat doughnuts, or watch Match of the Day. I can do those things off my own bat. They aren’t hard things to do.

But loving people isn’t easy, which is why Jesus commanded his disciples to do it, and why John says that obeying that difficult command is the true test of whether we are Jesus’ disciples.

I’d like to conclude this talk with a final verse from the chapter we’ve been looking at today – the conclusion of the chapter in fact:

“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”

This command to love isn’t a one-off. It’s an on-going thing. Let us this week, as we seek to live as disciples, continually try to love each other so that we become more like our Father in heaven.

What is your perspective about the Holy Spirit and Divine healing?

There are several perspectives on healing in contemporary Christian thought. A stereotypical protestant liberal view would be that healing, like any miracle, will have a scientific explanation behind it (or be a ‘myth’ with a secondary meaning to reveal a theological truth). In more conservative traditions, such as Roman Catholicism and many Protestant churches, the possibility of Divine healing is held, although such events are regarded as rare.

Evangelicals in a ‘dispensationalist’ tradition would hold a view that healings and other supernatural signs and wonders belong to a previous ‘dispensation’ (period of time / revelation), and would be sceptical of any contemporary accounts of Divine healing. Pentecostal Christians and those in the charismatic traditions that arose in the late 20th century (such as the Vineyard movement) would hold a view that expects miracles to occur as proof of their beliefs.

The Scriptural precedents for a belief in healing generally associate them with a call to repent and believe the gospel. Miracles validate the teaching of Jesus, and his followers, including the apostle Paul (see e.g. Romans chapter 15, verse 19).

There are also occasions where Jesus enacts a miracle and the gospel-writers describe his motivation as compassion, and there are some occasions where Jesus enacts miracles to broker a discussion. For example, in Luke chapter 13 he heals on the Sabbath to start a theological discussion about religious rituals.
Healing then when it occurs in the New Testament is used as a means of verifying the gospel, reveals God’s compassion for people, and challenges people’s preconceptions and prejudice. Those are three useful starting points to use when assessing contemporary accounts of miracles.

There are some theological issues with a contemporary belief in Divine healing. The primary one being that often healing does not occur. Explanations for this include a lack of faith, or other unsatisfactory reason why the healing has not happened. Anecdotally, the claim that a ‘lack of faith’ prevents healing occurring has caused considerable hurt to many people.

Scripturally there are plenty of arguments against this view. Some of Jesus’ healings are done at a distance, following the pleading of a representative, for example the servant of a Roman centurion (Matthew chapter 8). It is also hard to make the case for healing being reliant on the faith of the recipient in the accounts of resurrections. In Acts chapter 3 a crippled beggar requests alms from Peter and John; Peter responds by healing him unexpectedly. It would appear the man did not know the disciples or express a request to be healed.

Christians with a view that miracles no longer occur, or never did, do not have a theological issue with miracles not occurring. This viewpoint was quite prevalent early on in Christian History. St John Chrysostom (c. 349–407CE), Archbishop of Constantinople, explained to his congregation that miracles no longer happened because the words of Jesus no longer needed to be validated – the real miracles were the transformed lives of Christians.

Later evangelical and dispensationalist thought connected the passing of the age in miracles with the compilation of the canon of Scripture. The replacement of revelations of God’s person through miracles with the revelation found in the Bible has long been a position in evangelical theology, and may explain much of its biblio-centric theology.

Perhaps ironically, the resurgence in a belief in miracles was also fuelled by the growth in literalist interpretation of the Bible. The assumption in this segment of the Christian church is that miracles, along with other ‘signs and wonders’ like speaking in tongues, are Biblical fact and should be expected to happen now. This divergence of opinion is the main cause of disagreements within the evangelical stream between charismatic and non-charismatic churches that often have identical theology except on this point.

It also seems likely that many stories of miracles could be explained in another way. There is little hard and fast evidence for some of the wilder stories that have emerged in popular Christianity in recent years.

Genuine ‘healing’ is difficult to define. If pain is eased but not eradicated, then has healing fully occurred?

Sometimes ‘miracles’ occur outside the Christian faith – unexpectedly people recover form terrible illnesses. These are very rare events and cannot always be explained by current medical knowledge.

In addition, the positive psychological benefits of being prayed for and cared for may stimulate physical improvement. Medical studies of the effect of placebo pills show patients taking them do improve – belief in healing, receiving prayer and so on may have a similar psychological effect.

There is also the ‘regression to the mean’ to take into consideration – basically a person will become ill then improve naturally over time, eventually returning to a state of normal health. However, if they have received an intervention, like a prescription drug, or prayer at a healing service, their natural ‘regression to the mean’ may be attributed to that ‘cause’.

Of course it may be difficult to request medical or scientific validation of a miracle. Such a request may be regarded as doubt or unbelief. However, the Christian faith has a long history of individuals committing fraud and chicanery and it is not unreasonable to ask somebody to offer proof of their claims. It is discernment.

While many Christians are wary of overblown claims of miracles, there may still be a reluctance to dismiss the possibility of Divine intervention if illness strikes. Caution must be exercised – it is cruel to promise healing that may never occur. But equally, the God who is revealed in the New Testament is the god who intervenes, to save the soul and heal the body, and therefore there is a place in the Christian faith for belief In Divine healing.

There have been many attempts to identify this ‘beloved disciple’ over the years, although their true identity will probably never be known. Here, though, is a short run-down of the main possible contenders for the title that have been suggested.

Before the run-down starts, it’s worth noting that the Fourth Gospel was not always traditionally ascribed to the apostle John, the brother of James and one of the three disciples in Jesus’ inner circle. Irenaeus (140-210CE) is one of the first to identify the author of the gospel as John the Disciple, and supplies the personal data that John lived in Ephesus until the time of the Emperor Trajan, who ruled between 98-117CE.

Doubts have been cast on this, as it would have meant the disciple would have lived an inordinately long life even if he had only been in his early twenties during Jesus’ ministry. It’s not impossible, but it seems unlikely.

The general scholarly consensus is that there may be personal recollections of the apostle/disciple John in the gospel, but that these have been edited by a group of Christians who knew him (the ‘Johannine Community’). This could have happened in Ephesus, the first Christians having fled Judea because of the Jewish War of 64-74CE.

The ‘beloved disciple’ is mentioned as the ‘author’ of the gospel in John chapter 21, verse 24, although this section does read like an epilogue attached to the gospel by someone else. Whether ‘author’ really means ‘author’ here, or should mean ‘source of material’, is open to discussion.

What can be said about the beloved disciple is that they were a person known to the other disciples, they interacted with Jesus, and they were accredited in some way with the creation of the Fourth Gospel. But who were they?

Contender 1: John the disciple
Pros: Tradition casts him as the author. Humility may have made him seek anonymity. There is a reference to the ‘Sons of Zebedee’, but no reference in the gospel to John by name. There is the link between the ‘beloved disciple’ and the author of the gospel, as mentioned above. The gospel uses ‘semitic’ language, which supports the idea that the writer was Jewish. The gospel writer displays knowledge of Galileean and Judean geography. The gospel ‘corrects’ some details found in Matthew, Mark and Luke (the Synoptic gospels) – a fairly bold thing to do if the author was not an apostle.

Cons: The age issue calls Irenaeus’ testimony into question. Another early extra-Biblical tradition says that John was martyred alongside his brother James (see Acts chapter 12, verse 2). The ‘corrections’ to the Synoptic gospels show notable differences – if the Synoptics are based on other Apostolic traditions, could they differ so much, for example, over the timing of the ‘Cleansing of the Temple, which John places at the start of Jesus’ ministry rather than in Holy Week. The language used has semitic traces, but much of it sounds more Hellenistic, and even Gnostic – would John the disciple be so au fait with this language, he would be willing to use it? Finally, rather than sounding humble, it seems rather grandiose to refer to yourself in the third person as ‘the one Jesus loved’ (although if the gospel was ‘written up’ or edited later, this may have been a title bestowed upon John the disciple by one of his circle).

Contender 2: Clopas (or Cleopas)
Pros: Cleopas appears as a witness to the resurrection in Luke’s Gospel (see Luke chapter 24, verse 18). His wife, Mary, was present at the cross (John, chapter 19, verse 25) where she is described as Jesus’ mother’s sister, making Cleopas Jesus’ uncle. Very little is known about him, so Cleopas could have been versed enough in Hellenistic thought to begin shaping the prototype of John’s Gospel. He was in Jerusalem during Holy Week, so may have been an observer of what went on, which explains why so much of John’s Gospel narrative is unique.

Cons: Very little is known about him. John’s Gospel came to prominence after the Synoptics, but Cleopas is presumably of the generation of Jesus’ mother. Where was his gospel material hidden all that time?

Contender 3: Lazarus
Pros: The only person described as a person Jesus loved in the gospel (John chapter 11, verse 3). If he was raised from the dead, as recounted in John, then a rumour that he was not going to die would make sense (see John chapter 21, verse 23).

Cons: The beloved disciple was present at the Last Supper. None of the other gospels have Lazarus present there, or mention him at all. He does not appear in Acts either. If he was so close to Jesus as to write a gospel anonymously, then why is he anonymous in the gospels he did not write?

Contender 4: Mary Magdalene
Pros: Mary Magdalene seemed to have a close relationship with Jesus, although, unfortunately she has been consistently confused with a prostitute that washed Jesus’ feet. There is no inter-textual evidence that Mary was a prostitute. In fact, she was listed as one of the financial supporters of Jesus and the disciples, so she was presumably a woman of substance, and possibly well-educated. John’s gospel places her as the first person ‘sent’ by the risen Christ, making her technically the first ‘apostle’ – a position of high honour.

Cons: The beloved disciple is referred to as ‘him’. The recent interest in Mary Magdalene owes more to feminist Biblical scholarship (and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown), than anything else.

Contender 5 – John Mark
Pros: He has the right name – John. He lived in Jerusalem, was of a priestly family, and would have possessed a good knowledge of the Temple. It may be that the Last Supper was held in his family home, a venue for early Christian meetings (Acts chapter 12, verse 12). He may be the ‘young man’ referred to in the gospel of Mark who was present at Jesus’ arrest (Mark chapter 14, verses 51-52) – if he was 13 (when Jewish boys became young men) at that point, he could have lived until the time of Trajan. Later he worked with Paul and Luke, and was aware of the controversy with the Jewish religious leaders, which may be why there are so many references in the Fourth Gospel. He was well-travelled and would have been acquainted with Hellenistic and Gnostic thought. If he was a young teenager, he may well have sleepily curled up next to Jesus at the Last Supper while Jesus talked to his disciples (John chapter 13, verse 23-25).

Cons: Like many of the above contenders, not enough is really known about John-Mark to say for certain that he was even present at many of the events described in the gospel. Tradition has associated John-Mark with the authorship of the Gospel of Mark – a very different account of Jesus’ life.

Contender 6 – the literary construct
Pros: If the Fourth Gospel was produced by a relatively small Christian group working together, then the ‘beloved disciple’ could have been a literary construct designed to illustrate the way disciples should behave. Similar ‘perfect pupils’ appear in other contemporary literature.

Cons: The ‘beloved disciple’ in the Fourth Gospel is too human a character – interacting with Jesus and the other disciples – so it does not feel like an artificial construct. There has been a long history of allegorical and metaphorical Biblical interpretation, stretching back to Augustine and earlier and yet non one before the twentieth century interpreted the ‘beloved disciple’ as a fictional character.

Contender 7: A. N. Other Disciple (possibly even a female author)
Pros: There are several possibilities. A woman would have hid her identity in those patriarchal times. Alternatively, Nicodemus plays a part in John’s Gospel and was present in the Sanhedrin that sat in judgement on Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea is another Gospel character who has had several different legends associated with him.

Cons: It could be anyone, but there are no real strong possibilities. Again, the ‘beloved disciple’ is referred to using masculine pronouns, so it probably was not a woman. Other persons featured in the Gospel do not seem to have the closeness of relationship that the ‘beloved disciple’ is said to have.

Although there is general agreement between the Gospels that Jesus began his ministry by selecting people to become ‘disciples’, there are differences between the accounts. The version of events usually thought of as the call of the first disciples is found in Mark chapter 1 and Matthew chapter 4, where Jesus tells fishermen on the shores of Lake Galilee to leave their nets and follow him.

In John’s gospel, however, one of those fishermen, Andrew, is already John the Baptist’s disciples, and is one of two disciples who latch onto Jesus by the Jordan River after Jesus’ encounter with John and baptism (John chapter 1, verses 35-39). The author does not reveal the identity of the other disciple of John the Baptist who follows Jesus, but it has been proposed that it is John, who is traditionally ascribed authorship of the fourth gospel.

This divergence between Mark and Matthew, and John, is interesting, although attempts have been made to harmonise the different texts, for example, by suggesting Andrew following Jesus at the Jordan was later ‘made official’ in Galilee, when Jesus called him along with his brother Peter, and his business colleagues (or, perhaps rivals) James and John.

A key difference in the ‘call’ of the first disciples is in the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ natures of those who are ‘called’. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus takes the initiative, calling the disciples away from their regular lives and into following him. In John, the disciples take the initiative. Jesus asks Andrew and his unnamed comrade why they are following him. Andrew seeks out Simon Peter to tell him that he thinks he has found “the Christ” (chapter 1, verse 41). A similar action then happens with Philip, who meets Jesus and then searches out Nathanael (John chapter 1, verses 43-46).

The contrast between those for whom the call is sudden and unexpected, and those who were looking for the messiah is quite marked. John is a seeker’s gospel, which uses Gnostic and other mystical terminology. It seems quite fitting then, that in John, the disciples are looking for the messiah, that is, salvation. John is written in a way that is accessible to those looking for salvation in the various mystery cults of the time.

Mark and Matthew, however, seem to be written out of a more Jewish context, where divine revelation was a feature of belief and theology. In the Jewish tradition, God chose people, such as Abraham or Moses, so it would be only natural for God’s Son to do the choosing, rather than to be ‘discovered’ by a seeker. Like the heroes of the Jewish faith, the disciples hear the voice of God and respond.

Luke’s gospel has a different story. The event does take place in Galilee, but is accompanied by a miracle (chapter 5, verses 4-11). Additionally, Jesus had already been to Simon Peter’s house and performed a miracle of healing (chapter 4, verse 38-39). In Luke’s version, Jesus already had a relationship with the disciples and it was only later that he specifically ‘called’ them.

One aspect of Luke’s account that is different to the others is Simon Peter’s declaration that he is a sinful man and therefore unworthy of following Jesus (Luke chapter 5, verse 8). Luke possibly includes this to illustrate the need for self-awareness of one’s own sinfulness in the journey of discipleship. Jesus ignores Peter’s protestations and accepts him anyway. This is an example of Luke’s over-riding message of universal salvation that is available to any, and every, one.

There are many similarities under the surface of these stories. The main likeness is that those called followed Jesus, leaving their livelihoods and regular lives behind to become disciples. All four gospels want to make this point – and they all allude to the reason the disciples were prepared to do this: because they recognised Jesus as the Messiah.

Please ask your question using the comment form on this post – your comment will not be published, but it’s the easiest way for you to submit a question.

New answers to questions will appear below this section (scroll down the page).

How would Christians respond to Stephen Hawking’s comments about creation being “Godless”.

Professor Stephen Hawking is well-known as a cosmologist and author, and his most recent book, The Grand Design, has been widely quoted following serialisation in The Times newspaper. In excerpts repeated across the media, Professor Hawking has been quoted as stating:

“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

“[The discovery of planets orbiting a star other than our Sun] makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.”1

Such comments from an eminent scientist such as Professor Hawking do seem to have the potential to re-ignite debates that pit science against religion. However, the compatibility of belief in God and scientific understanding of the world is still possible.

In Christian terms, the doctrine of creation is primarily a statement about God, rather than about the universe. Although there have been many, often persuasive, attempts to prove the literal truth of the creation stories in Genesis, or to harmonise scientific theories with doctrinal belief, the actual point of the doctrine of creation is that it says something about the nature of God rather than about the universe.

Since the early centuries of Christianity, the concept of ‘creatio ex nihilo’ (creation from nothing) has been the classical doctrine of the Church, which is remarkably similar to the idea of ‘spontaneous creation’.

God’s pre-existence to creation is essentially a meaningless concept within a universe governed by time. St Augustine first put forward the idea that time came into being alongside creation – which seems to tie in with our present cosmological understanding of the universe.

The metaphor that Professor Hawking utilises of God ‘lighting the touch paper’ and then standing back seems to imply a deist notion of God. Deism posits God as an Aristotelian ‘prime mover’ that causes creation to occur and then lets it continue through natural laws that have been set in place as part of creation.

Although this view has been found in many branches of Christian doctrine through the centuries, it has always existed in conflict with the assertion that God is actually involved in the created universe, sustaining it, interacting with it and existing in relationship with created beings.

It is the definition of God as a relational being that enables Christians to accept Professor Hawking’s views without rejecting their beliefs in a divine ‘creator’. God could only be defined as God if there was something to define God against – a universe. Without a universe as a backdrop to deity there would be no God, because the Christian way of defining God is that which transcends the universe, and yet seeks to relate to it.

Process theology, which became a serious branch of liberal theology in the twentieth century could take this a step further. As a form of theology it acknowledged the idea that God could ‘develop’ in tandem with the universe.

This viewpoint would not be affected by the idea that creation arose spontaneously, because God’s nature is directly affected by creation and vice versa. Because everything (even God) is in a state of flux and change, creation is not defined as one single event at the beginning of time.

This leads back into the idea that God is defined through relationships that develop over time. The experienced reality of that relationship is essentially what Christians claim to ‘know’, and it is as a statement of faith through revelation of, and relationship with, God that Christians call God the creator and sustainer of the universe. Again, to call God ‘creator’ is a faith statement about what Christians claim to have experienced about God’s nature, rather than a statement about the universe.

Professor Hawking’s comments are of course shaded by nuance. To say that God was ‘not necessary’ to the process is not the same as a definitive statement that God was not involved, although it does seem from the rest of his statements, that Professor Hawking believes creation happened without any divine impetus.

This is not the first time that Professor Hawking has created some ambiguity. In 1988 his best-selling book, A Brief History of Time, included an enigmatic statement that “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”

Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, was scathing of this phrase because using the word ‘God’ in this way opened the door to claims that Stephen Hawking believed in God. It would seem from his new book that Professor Hawking has at least made it clear that he does not.

Notes and References
1: All quotes as reported on BBC News.

Liked this? Try these articles about creation:
Rocks of Ages (from Brazil)
Babylonian Influences in Genesis (from UK)

The veneration of the remains of ‘saints’, or other holy objects, is said to have been part of Christian tradition since the martyrdom of Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, in 156AD, when members of Polycarp’s church reportedly gathered up his remains. Since that time officially sanctioned relics have been regarded in some churches as having healing or mystical properties, as they provide a connection between the worshipper and the saint who is in the presence of God.

Critics of the veneration of Relics cite possible pagan origins for the practice. For example, the Holy Grail legends are believed to be linked to the ancient Celtic myth of the magical cauldron of Bran that could restore dead warriors to life. Another criticism stems from the Enlightenment emphasis on rationality, with Relics regarded as wayward superstition with little verifiable basis.

It does appear that the earliest forms of Christianity venerated the memories of the Apostles, and preserved certain burial sites associated with them. However the ‘Relic industry’ really developed through the influence of the Emperor Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helen (or Helena).

After Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Empress Helen toured Palestine, founding churches on holy sites identified by local Christians. Churches she reputedly founded include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem that claims to be built over the empty tomb that Jesus was laid in, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is built over a small cave, said to be Jesus’ birth-place.

Helen allegedly also believed she had found the remains of the ‘True Cross’, fragments of which have been displayed in numerous different churches, which was perhaps the first internationally known ‘relic’ of its kind. Apparently all three crosses from Golgotha were recovered, with Jesus’ cross standing out because it still had the placard attached the proclaimed him the king of the Jews.

An interesting, although probably apocryphal, detail in the story, has the cross was buried beneath a Roman temple to Venus, which was demolished in the search for it. This illustrates the occasionally violent transition of the Roman Empire to Christianity, and may also imply pagan links to relic worship.

The practice of moving relics became popular in medieval times, when notable saints had their remains transferred from church to church, often to increase the status of a particular church or cathedral. Although the Protestant reformers, particularly in the Calvinist Reformed and Puritan traditions, firmly rejected the use of Relics in worship, the practice remains strong in Catholic and Orthodox churches, and some of the other very old traditions.

Biblical authority for this practice is scant, but there is one story that perhaps illustrates the latent power of the remains of prophets and holy men. In 2 Kings chapter 13, verse 21, a story is told of a young man who was hastily buried in the prophet Elisha’s tomb, and promptly returned to life after coming into contact with the prophets bones.

That is an interesting story, given that touching human bones or a grave made an Israelite ritually unclean under the Law of Moses (See Numbers chapter 19, verse 16). This injunction against touching a tomb was still in force in the first century AD, giving added bite to Jesus’ insults to the Pharisees, when he compared them to “whitewashed tombs… full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” (Matthew chapter 23, verse 27)

The Jewish religious aversion to dead bodies is an indicator that the veneration of relics was introduced into Christianity from other cultural sources, building on myths that were long-established among the people who would later adopt Christianity.

We’re going to talk tonight about the Trinity, specifically: how can one God be three persons, or three persons be one God?

Imagine a person you know. What could you say about them?
They are a boy/girl/man/woman. They have various attributes – tall/short/thin/not so thin/dark-haired/blonde and so on.

These are the things we can say about him/her, but they don’t really tell us much.

One of the reasons we often find the Trinity such a hard concept to grasp is because we get confused about the terms we use.

The big stumbling block for many people is the word ‘God’, because most of us use the word God as a proper noun – as a name for the being we worship.

But ‘God’ is not the name of God.

What is the name of God?
It was revealed to Moses in the Old Testament. When Moses asked ‘who shall I tell Pharaoh has sent me’, the voice from the burning bush said ‘Tell him, I AM’.

Now that’s a bit strange, but that’s the name that God chose to reveal to Moses. It is a self-revealed name. In Hebrew it is composed of four letters that we would write as J or Y, H, W or V, H.

The word Jehovah is one way that some people say that name. (It’s not completely accurate, but that’s a different story.) Scholars tend to refer to it as Yahweh (which U2 used as a song title).

So what we have here are two words: ‘Yahweh’ and ‘God’. And the clue is how we use those words – Yahweh is God; our God is called Yahweh.

“Hey man…”
I’m sure we’ve all done this at some point, started praying and said ‘Dear God…’ You see that sort of thing in books of letters children have written to God. ‘Dear God, please bless mummy and daddy and my hamster. Amen.’

But actually, that’s not particularly correct. If I spoke to a friend and said ‘Hey, woman’/ ‘Hey, man’ that would be a bit of an odd way to address someone. ‘Hey woman’ sounds a bit harsh, and ‘Hey man’ makes me sound like a hippie.

Like the words ‘man’ or ‘woman’, ‘God’ is a ‘category of being’. We have Human Beings, we have angelic beings, we have animals, plants, plankton. These are categories or classes of being. ‘God’, if you like, is a type of being. To call anything ‘God’ is to class it as a particular kind of thing.

So when we say there is one God, we are saying there is one identifiable ‘thing’ that is God.

But the word God is not necessarily a singular word. Just because there is ‘one God’ does not mean there is only one unit involved.

Corporate nouns
There are plenty of other words in our language that suggest a ‘corporate unity’. Take the word family. Let’s take two brothers. There are two of them, but together they are part of one family.

We already use plural nouns without even thinking about it. Words like family, or company, or battalion, or school, or class, or platoon, or church. One word to describe a number of individuals.

If we use the word ‘God’ like that then there can be any number of units within that category. Theoretically, we don’t even need to stop at three.

I have to be very clear here – when we talk about ‘persons’ in the Trinity, we are not talking about three separate gods. Christian theology is not tritheism. We don’t have three gods. Sometimes critics of Christianity will try and say that because we believe God is Trinity, that we have three Gods.

That’s just not true. What we are saying is there is one God – think of it as the plural noun – but three persons make up that one God. Often in Christian terms, those three persons together are called the ‘Godhead’.

God in human experience
So, why Trinity? Well, like I said at the beginning, God was in the burning bush and when Moses asked who was speaking to him, God told him the name ‘I AM’/Yahweh.

But that’s not the only way that human beings have met God. Central to what we believe as Christians is the idea that Jesus Christ was both a human man and also God. We call it the Incarnation, which literally means ‘in flesh’ (carne in Latin – if you go to an Italian restaurant the meat section is called ‘carne’).

The people who first followed Jesus – his disciples – started to talk about him being the ‘messiah’, God’s chosen one. In Greek ‘Messiah’ is translated ‘Christos’, which is where we get the word Christ from. Jesus Christ should really by said Jesus the Christ. Christ was not his surname. His parents weren’t Joseph and Mary Christ.

As Christians we call Jesus ‘the Christ’, which like I said means Messiah, or ‘Anointed one’. It does not necessarily mean that he was divine. But after his resurrection, there is the story about how he appeared to Thomas, the one we call ‘doubting Thomas’. When Thomas saw Jesus raised from the dead, he fell to his knees and called him ‘my Lord and my God’.

Later the Apostle Paul described the Incarnation using a phrase that we’ve talked about many times in Wave. Jesus “being in very nature God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness”1 – the bit I want to emphasise there is “being in very nature God”.

Paul met the risen Jesus on the Damascus Road, you may remember the story – he set out to persecute Christians in Damascus and was stopped by a blinding light and heard Jesus speaking to him from out of the light. Note the parallel with Yahweh speaking to Moses from out of the Burning Bush. And later when Paul writes about Jesus he describes Jesus as “being in very nature God”.

The third person
Jesus, of course, refers to his ‘Father’. This is how we come to realise that there are two distinguishable persons here. A Father and a Son. But we don’t just talk about Father and Son, we talk about Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the ‘third’ person in the Trinity

How do we know the Holy Spirit is divine? Well, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of the LORD, that is, the Spirit of Yahweh. How could the Spirit of Yahweh not be divine?

Equally, when Jesus talks to his disciples in John’s Gospel, he says that a replacement is coming. He uses the phrase “another comforter”, so classes the Holy Spirit as the same level as himself.2 He also tells his disciples that the Holy Spirit will guide them “in all things”. Who knows everything? God does.

Distinguishable not distinct
So, this is the Christian definition of God then – we have three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We know they are distinguishable: The Father says ‘This is my son, with whom I am well pleased’ at Jesus’ baptism. Jesus says the Father will send the Holy Spirit to the disciples. So, they are distinguishable.

But at the same time, it’s wrong to think of them as distinct. The three persons act in unity – they work in and through each other. So, for example, Jesus says the Father will send the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son. Jesus says that he is one with the Father and if you have seen him (Jesus) then you have seen the Father.3 There is a unity of action and motive and purpose in the way that God acts, although the three persons may each do different things.

This comes back to the idea of not thinking of ‘God’ as a proper name. If we think of ‘God’ as a category of existence, then we need to define that category of existence. So what do we know? What have people experienced?

Human beings have experienced God as Yahweh, as a man in Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit. This is what we know.

‘God’ then is defined as three persons.

But unlike in other categories of existence those three persons are distinguishable and yet are not distinct. God does not have three bodies – Jesus tells us that God is Spirit (and should be worshipped in spirit and in truth).4 This is a different kind of being than we are.

We can be one family of three distinguishable human persons, but we will also be three different persons. But that’s not how it works with God. ‘God’ by very definition is three persons who act in unity. Three act as one.

God revealed in relationships
What this tells us about God is very important. The Christian God is unlike any other God in any other religion. The Christian definition of God defines God essentially as relationships between three persons, working together in unity, harmony and love.

One of the reasons we can be so sure that God wants to have relationships with us is because our understanding of God is of three distinguishable persons in so close a relationship they are almost indistinguishable. The Trinity is essentially a description of utter relationships.

And we see this in the way we are as human beings because we are made in the image of God. Why do we long for relationships? Why do we try to seek out deep and meaningful friendships? Because we have built into us a desire to relate to other people. That is the image of God in us.

And so we try all kinds of things to relate. We are limited because we are located in physical bodies, so we get naked and have sex to try and get close to one another. In sexual relationships we are trying to commune with someone else, and relate to them on a deep level. That is why sex is a big deal, because it’s one of the ways we express the God image inside us as we try to relate to other people.

Our hunger for deep and meaningful friendships – to know and love someone else and to be totally known and loved by them in return isn’t going to be satisfied in this life. Even if we have repented of our sins we still bear the scars of the sins we’ve committed until we are resurrected in new bodies and become like Jesus.

When we are restored to the true image of God and are persons who are able to fully relate to the persons of the Trinity, that desire for relationship will be met.

So there you have it, a reasonably brief explanation of the Trinity. Just to recap:

• ‘God’ is not a name, it’s a description of how something exists
• The Christian experience is of three distinguishable persons making up one God
• The three persons act in total unity, so the essence of God is relationships
• Our desire to be in relationships ourselves is a mark of God’s image in us

Notes and references
1: Philippians chapter 2, verses 6-7, paraphrased
2: See, e.g. John chapter 14, verse 16
3: John chapter 14, verses 9-10 and John chapter 10, verses 30 and 38
4: John chapter 4, verse 24

Questions on this topic:
Is God the father the boss of the trinity or are they all equal? Does God have a personality disorder, as there are different bits with varying characteristics?

What does the Bible say about the Trinity?