October 20 2011 - Association Of Catholic Priests

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20 Oct, Thursday of Week 29

Passionate Heart

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Most Recent Comments

7 comments
Seán Ó Conaill: In 2025 why are we still stuck with an inadequate theology of the cross?
April 19 2025
Joe O'Leary
Reimarus demonstrated the historical impossibility of the story of the guards at the tomb. Not all resurrection stories are equally wonderful -- the tiresome anti-Jewish apologetic here can be set aside in our preaching (along with the lavish apocalyptic report of Matt 27:51-3). Matthew may be taking up earlier traditions and may believe in them uncritically; he is the only one of the evangelists to report them. "Either that account is a very deliberate and conscious fabrication, and therefore deeply dishonest, or those who wrote it were fully and truly convinced that the events recounted had truly happened. There are no other options." But other options are really needed -- I suggested that "literary genre" supplies other options in the case of John (and I would add Luke). I think that when Luke brings in "angels" he is signalling that he is writing in a genre more focused on theological meaning than literal historical fact. He mentions the Ascension at the end of his gospel as if it happened on the day of the Resurrection but has two men in white apparel, "interpreting angels" (a stock feature in biblical narrative), appear at the highly pictorialized version of the Ascension in Acts 1, dated 40 days later. The Thomas story in John 20 bears the marks of Johannine composition, culminating in a confession that is a climax to a series of confessions in previous stories (in John 6, 9, and 11 for example). The story deals with the theme of faith in Johannine style. If one is concerned with historicity there is a basic problem: in Mark and Matthew the first appearance of the risen Christ to the apostles is located in Galilee and in Luke and John it is located in the upper room in Jerusalem (Luke alters Mark 16:7) in which the interpreting angel tells the women "tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him as he told you"; Luke writes instead: "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men..." (24:6-7). For Bart Ehrman (whom Sean Freyne called "an inverted fundamentalist") this would mean that Luke is a forger and liar (just like the authors of the epistles under Paul's name that are not really by Paul). But it looks as if both Mark-Matthew's (mountain in) Galilee and Luke-John's upper room are literary-theological creations, and the latter upstaged the former as more beautiful and profound. The earliest list of appearances of the risen Christ in 1 Cor. 15 refers to neither of these traditions, and I take it as the nearest we can get to literal historicity. John 21 adds a Galilee appearance when John 20 has already closed its story (and is widely regarded as an appendix to the Gospel, by another hand). Lots of questions remain, but you will not find the answer in Raymond Brown or Joseph Ratzinger, both of whom ended their multivolume studies of Jesus by saying that they prefer to defer discussion of the Resurrection until they reach heaven!
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6 comments
Brendan Hoban – Irish Times: Whoever succeeds Francis, the genie is now out of the bottle.
April 22 2025
Paddy Ferry
Peadar@2 could I recommend to you a wonderful book by the great Czech scholar Tomás Halík “The Afternoon of Christianity“ I think you would find it really enlightening given your comment @2.
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6 comments
Brendan Hoban – Irish Times: Whoever succeeds Francis, the genie is now out of the bottle.
April 22 2025
Soline Humbert
Brendan Hoban's quote "the genie is out of the bottle" reminded me of what Pope Francis himself had said a few days before he was elected in March 2013. He told his fellow cardinals, "I have the impression that Jesus is locked inside the church and that he is knocking because he wants to get out!"
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6 comments
Brendan Hoban – Irish Times: Whoever succeeds Francis, the genie is now out of the bottle.
April 22 2025
Paddy Ferry
Wonderful article, Brendan. Well done. Thanks.
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