When Christ sent the Holy Spirit to His followers on the Day of Pentecost, He did so promising us “another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever,” (John 14:16), and He “will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26).

The Work of the Holy Spirit

The Spirit, just like the Father and the Son, works in the field of time.  I once heard a scholar, I can’t quite remember who, who defined the History of the Church as “the life of the Spirit in the Church.”  This is true.  The Holy Spirit works in humans moving them to repent, to watch, to pray, to preach Jesus, to serve others whether in hospitals, or orphanages, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, impoverished countries, to become priests serving the flock of Christ, and to teach the faith to those who already believe in order to deepen their faith.

The Writings of the Early Christians: Tracing the Work of the Holy Spirit throughout History

When the Christians of the past wrote, especially the earliest Christians who did so only to preach Jesus and to deepen other Christians’ understanding of their faith and did not receive anything in return, their work was the result of their reflection on the Holy Spirit’s work in their lives and in the Church.  So, their writings are also the result of the work of the Holy Spirit, but not in the sense of the inspiration of the Scriptures because the Scriptures lay out God’s plan for salvation and how it happened.  The writings of the earliest Christians are a reflection on that plan and how it was fulfilled.  This is the distinction.

To give an analogy in order to explain what I mean: The Scriptures are a river, but the writings of the early Church are like trees planted by the river.  The river is one and flows of its own accord, but the trees differ depending on whether they are healthy or not and how far their roots go down, and if we look at the trees from far away, we can determine how and where the river runs by seeing the direction of the trees as they grow along the river.  The Scriptures were directly inspired by God for the communication of His plan to all who would ever believe.  Thus, the Scriptures are one and flow of their own accord.  But the trees, that is the writings of the early Church, can be deep-rooted or not. This is why we cannot look at only one or two of the writers of the early Church, but we have to look at all of them together (that is to look at the trees from afar) because then we can understand the big picture and what the dogmas, the general way of thinking, and the practices of the early Church were, and we see that they are dependent upon the Scriptures (the river).  They grow along the Scriptures.  The writings of the early Church were also closer to the Apostles, so they interpreted the Scriptures in context and delivered Apostolic practices of worship to their readers.  They are the most well-nourished of trees and should be sought before anything else.

Image from Pixabay

We live in a culture (especially in America) that is largely ignorant of the past.  This is the result of the great travesty of American education which, among other things, results in students not learning the skills of historical thinking.  They are taught facts and dates and told why they were important, but they are not taught how to determine whether or not an event or movement was important.  Further, they are not taught about how the past was truly qualitatively different from the present, and the layers of history (theological, spiritual, social, institutional (the church), and governmental) that led to the quality of life we live today.  Simply being told why something is important, and from only one or two points of view (governmental or military) in secondary schools does not lead to an adequate or even appropriate (especially for an informational civilization) understanding of the past and how it directly influences the present.

I recently had the privilege to be on an episode of Thilo’s Theology Service on YouTube.

Here we discuss the process of reading and interpretation and how to approach the Scriptures and early Christian writings in a way that enables us to draw out as much as possible from them all while interpreting them correctly.

If you liked this video, click here to like my Facebook page here OR sign up to my email list to receive my latest blog entries every week in your inboxes, and you will also receive my free eBook The Way of Christ.  Click here to sign up.

Continuing with the reflection on God being the Lord of History, we move on to the Person of the Son.

While in Part I, we explored how people understood history in the past, and how Christianity brought a different understanding of history, this is not where it ends.

History has a central role in Christianity. Christianity cannot remain what it is without history.  If Jesus never entered into the realm of history and became man, then the beliefs of Christianity would collapse.  Christianity is not simply about the message; it is about the Messenger, the Savior.

Prague Astronomical Clock

Image from Pixabay

To contrast with other religions, if Buddha never existed, Buddhism would practically remain the same.  If Zarathustra never existed, Zoroastrianism would practically remain the same.  This is true because these are religions of ideas.  But if Jesus never existed, we wouldn’t have Christianity.  Indeed, it wouldn’t make sense, and that’s a good thing, because there is no Christianity without Christ.  This is why among the New Atheists’ characteristically poor arguments, they try to argue (unsuccessfully) that Jesus did not exist.  While they are unsuccessful, they argue this because they know exactly what Jesus’s Incarnation means for Christianity, which is Christianity itself.

The Incarnation

The Incarnation demands by its very nature to be seen as the center of history.  The Creator entered into His creation and became a part of it. He united the Uncreated and the Timeless with the Created and the Temporal.  What more could happen in that creation?  What event could be more important?  What country or empire could be more significant?  What could be more worthy of our attention?  What could be more worthy of reflection?  What could be more worth studying?  The answers to all these questions is clear: nothing could be more important.

The Incarnation itself is a message.  It tells us something more about ourselves as humans, and it tells us something more about God; it is His final revelation to us about His relationship with us.  It is what was hinted at the Old Testament; it makes perfect sense in the light of all the revelations God provided us through His Prophets and his work throughout history.  He loves us so much that He becomes one of us.

If you want to know how to think about our Lord Jesus’s Incarnation, then I highly recommend you read the book On the Incarnation, which you can get by clicking here.  You can read my review of it here.

The Life of Jesus

Not only was God satisfied with becoming man, but He lived as man with us for 33 years.  He experienced being carried in a womb, being born helpless like all other babies, being fully reliant on parents, growing, learning in His humanity, and seeing the pain and desperation of humanity on a regular basis sharing in that pain as one of them.

Shusaku Endo, in his book A Life of Jesus, explains in the clarity of a novelist (even though the book is a work of history), the experiences Jesus probably had growing up in the city of Nazareth.  This was a town of desperation, of poverty, of weakness, of humanity.  This is the city where the Son of God chose to live as man.  He didn’t choose Rome, the political and material center of the ancient world; he didn’t even choose Jerusalem, which was the city God had chosen in the Old Testament.  He chose Nazareth, a town of no importance, a forgotten city, a forgotten citizenry, in the back of the woods (so to say), to live most of His human life.  This fact of the life of Jesus also sends a message, to the point it would not have to be spoken, and that is God loves humanity, even the humanity that is totally forgotten by most people, even the humanity that lives in total desperation barely clinging onto existence.

When God created the world, He created time.  This may seem like an unnecessary statement, but I bring it forward to highlight the significance of time for the Christian life.

The Nature of Timelessness and Time

God is timeless and so are the angels.  They do not grow, and they do not change, because they are not physical, but they are spirits.  To give an analogy, think about the truths of mathematics: they do not grow, and they do not change based on time.  1 + 1 = 2, and it will never become anything else.  A triangle is a polygon that has three sides and three edges that all add up to 180°; this will never change.  These truths have not changed based on time, and they never will change because the nature of mathematics is timeless.  It is eternal.  Further, the truths of mathematics are not physical.

However, whatever exists under time grows and changes.  We are such creatures.

What does that mean for us in our spiritual lives?

Throughout the Scriptures, God shows us that time is the field in which He works.  The effects of growth and change are not terrifying for Christianity, but they are the field in which we are to live our Christian life in its fullest expression.

Concepts such as repentance, moderation, and patience all assume a world in which time exists.  In eternity, there is no repentance because there is no time; the direction toward which we were oriented in this world whether toward God or away from Him, is the direction toward which we will live in eternity.

The Ancient Understanding of History: Cycles

Christianity also has a unique relationship to time because it sees the development of time as linear, pointed in one direction.  To make this understandable, it is best to compare Christianity to the world it arose in. In the ancient world, for the most part, all cultures saw time as a set of cycles.  The past was more or less the same as the present, and the future was going to be more or less the same as the present.  The only difference was going to be the people and cultures that dominated in the future.  There was not going to be a difference in terms of the overall quality of everyday life, institutions, and social structures.

Humans back then could not conceive of a higher quality of life with every coming generation, whether in terms of comfort such as air conditioning and heating, fast carriages (cars), or travel through space.  They also could not conceive of a world where our understanding of nature would differ based on the type of technology we used to observe the world.  Even further than this, they could not fathom a world where humanity would be different in terms of its quality (such as not having slaves, or people choosing which vocations to pursue regardless of family background).  All these things were beyond their ability to imagine due to their understanding of how history worked; it was all a never-ending set of cycles.

The way humans understand how history works is called philosophy of history.

The Christian Understanding of History: The New Covenant

Christianity, however, had a different philosophy of history, which is also the one that describes what we actually observe in reality, and this philosophy of history developed from all the way back in the Old Testament because believers saw and understood that God worked in every generation, and He had revealed more and more of Himself and His plan to the Prophets.  This plan showed that He had intended to bring about a New Covenant. Now the word “New” in “New Covenant” (Jeremiah 31:31 LXX; Hebrews 8:13) in Greek is kaine, and it does not simply mean new like something that just happened such as when we hear that a band has released a new album, or Nike has released new shoes.  There is nothing new here except a model; the idea is essentially the same.

This word kaine means new in terms of its quality; this is unlike what we have seen before.  It would be analogous to someone first presenting an orchestra to an audience when all people knew were flutes or harps played by themselves.  He has presented a new music.  Or it would be analogous to someone presenting the shoe for the first time when all people knew were sandals.  He has presented a new footwear.  The same is true for the New Covenant.  What God had promised was going to be something of a different quality.

For this reason, Christianity has always understood that history does not simply move in cycles, but there is a development and progress throughout history, both of God’s revelation and in the realm of human learning, especially in the theoretical understanding of the world.  Both are the results of contemplative prayer.

God created us in His Image, and that Image is the rational soul, the soul that has the intellect, that allows us to understand the world around us, to make connections, to reflect on it, to contemplate the occurrences of life, and to reason.

God intended His Image to develop in us, which would in turn, lead to us reflecting the Likeness of God.  This is indeed the goal of Christianity, which in Orthodox Christianity is understood by the term theosis.  The more we reflect on the Image of God within us, and the more we follow God’s plan for our lives through our constant prayer and life with Him, we begin to partake of the divine nature, and we reflect the Likeness of God.  The role that writing plays in this process cannot be overstated.

A Case in Point: The Invention of Writing and the Inspiration of the Scriptures

We know that humans did not always know how to read and write, but that was a development over the course of time beginning in art then moving to scripts, and even in scripts there was a development in stages.  This is an example of something new in the life of humanity.  To give an example of the development, the most ancient forms of writing were all ideographic; symbols expressed ideas, not sounds. Then, this developed to symbols expressing both ideas and sounds, then further development led to symbols expressing just sounds such as we know today in the West with alphabetic writing.  How did God work through this?  Since God is free, and God is reflective and contemplative, knowing Himself, He wanted us to experience something similar since He created us to reflect His Image.  So, He saw us develop writing which is a direct result of His giving us the gift of speech which reflects most the rational soul that lives within us, which is His Image.  And through writing over the ages we have come to know what we are, and we have deepened our understanding of ourselves.  Indeed, Hermann Hesse said it best when he said, “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”

“Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.” –Will Durant

Reading is presupposed when it comes to the Bible. This, however, was not always the case.  The audience for whom the books of the Bible were written was largely illiterate.  This is true for most of the books of the Bible.  However, books like the Gospel of Luke and Acts were written for a well-educated audience.  This should cause us to think about how we read the Bible since the Bible was largely written for those who did not know how to read.

The method of the reading process can help us.  Underlying the reading process are many theories.  There is one significant theory that lines up with how students engage in the process of reading.  That is Reader-Response Theory.

Image from Pixabay

Concerning Reader-Response Theory, one researcher writes, “Every reading act is an event, or a transaction, involving a particular reader and a particular pattern of signs, a text, and occurring at a particular time in a particular context” (Rosenblatt, Creating Literacy, pg. 1063, 1994).  Another author writes, “Comprehension of texts becomes a complex activity because it involves readers negotiating their background knowledge and … elements of a text as they construct an understanding of what they read” (Lenski, Reading and Learning Strategies, 2).  Further a third author writes, “Reading is a transaction in which the reader affects the text and is affected by it” (Gunning, Creating Literacy Instruction for All Students, 9).

What this means is that the meaning of a text is affected by the reader who reads it based on the background knowledge that reader has like language proficiency, reading level, historical background, and background of ideas.  For many struggling readers a simple building of background can help them understand texts that they, without that background, would not otherwise understand.

For all these reasons, Reader-Response Theory applies to the Bible in five ways:

1. Language

There are many languages in the world, and today’s major languages did not exist at the time the Scriptures were written.  And it does not stop here, but how languages worked and what types of meaning a language’s grammar carried do not frequently make their way into translations.  For example, in the original Greek of the New Testament, what is translated as a simple command in English, “Ask and it will be given to you,” (Matthew 7:7) actually carries the idea of continuity in Greek.  The aspect (which is similar to tense) the Greek verb is in is continuous, meaning the idea behind the command is “To continually ask,” or “To keep asking.”  If we read it in simple English, we might think only to ask once.  If we understand the Greek text, then we understand to keep asking God for what we need.  This is just one example of how background affects how we understand the Bible, and in turn how that affects our worship, and this example is not one of the weightier ones either.  If such meaning is unnoticed in translation, what else may be?

2. History

Once, I was at a coffee shop with friends when a person asked us about the church at which we worship.  So, I answered only to find him beginning to preach his theology to me.  It grew into a very entertaining discussion.  Eventually we got to the topic of salvation; this person believed in the idea of “Once saved, always saved, unless you fall away, then you were never really saved” while I firmly do not, in accordance with the Scriptures and their examples of people like Judas and Nicolas the Deacon (Acts 6:5; Revelation 2:6, 15 see Nicolaitans) falling away after knowing the Lord Christ.  So, he went and cited “evidence” from the Scriptures, “They went out from us, but they were not of us” (1 John 2:19).  I replied that this did not refer to the salvation of Christians but to heretical teachers, specifically Gnostics.  He, being somewhat studious, and heading to seminary the following week, remembered this historical context, backed away, and agreed that this was the case.  The result was a change of understanding of that verse.  This is just one small example of how correct historical context for background knowledge leads to a correct understanding of the Scriptures; in the same way, lack of knowledge of historical context leads to an incorrect understanding and eventually misapplication of the Scriptures.

“Only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classical simplicity. Every page I read confirmed this impression.” -C.S. Lewis, “Introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation”

We often think about our Lord Jesus becoming incarnate in order to save us from our sins, and that’s pretty much the whole of our thinking on the subject.  Sadly, that is where most Christians’ thinking on the Incarnation ends.  It is a very simplistic thinking, and this type of thinking does not allow us to fully understand what humanity means to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Please note that for this review, I am reviewing the original popular patristics version published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary press.  The translation originally appeared in the 1950s through a different publisher.  You can click here to purchase a copy.

Background to On the Incarnation

On the Incarnation by Athanasius is actually the second in a series of two apologetic works Athanasius wrote in his early life.  The first book is called Contra Gentes, which is often titled in English as Against the Heathen.  That book set about to demonstrate the incoherence of the Hellenistic worldviews that were widespread and influential in the world of Late Antiquity.  It is much like how today we have the worldviews of relativism, secularism, and atheism, and in order for one to understand and be open to the possibility of faith, Christians must first show how those systems are incoherent and presuppose false ideas.

Image from Pixabay

But showing how those systems are incoherent is not enough because this leads to agnosticism and doubt over whether anything is true.  The next thing is to make observations about the world and show how the Christian worldview is the coherent system which explains the world as a whole.

Let me illustrate.  I was teaching one time and there was a student misbehaving.  Since his misbehavior was apparent to the whole class, I corrected him in front of the whole class.  Then another student, one of his friends, raised her hand and said, “What if that’s just how he is?”  And I answered her, “You don’t believe he can change?”  She replied saying, “That’s not what I said.”  So, I helped her think things through saying something along the lines, “If you are saying that’s just how he is, and you are defending him even with this behavior, then you are telling me that you don’t believe people can change.”  Then she realized that this is what she believed.

I then realized that these children had no conception of change and growth mindset, which are necessary for progress in learning. Now why I am saying this; it is because it is analogy for the Christian faith: growth mindset is really no different than hope (which actually means “expectation” in the Greek of the New Testament) and faith, and change is the repentance required to lead to realize the hope. One must believe (have faith) that if one changes and takes a certain course in life (repents), then they will reach a certain expectation (hope).

I began a discussion with the class about hope and what it means, that things could and would get better if they only changed their characteristic self-defeating tendencies and misbehaviors that were affecting their growth.  Then, one of the students raised his hand respectfully and asked, “Can you give us five examples of students that changed and grew?”  He honestly wanted to know if it had been done before.  This is how far growth was from the minds of these students.  So, I gave him the five examples from my own students to show him that it can happen and did happen on this campus, and three of those examples were students in the class he was sitting in.

That day I realized that many people have no conception of these things, so when we try to bring the faith to people with backgrounds similar to these, it is truly incomprehensible to them.  They don’t believe in hope and that things can get better, and we come telling them we have good news about hope.  They don’t believe in change and growth, and we come telling them that if they repent, then our Lord will help them change and grow.

Athanasius’s two books are very much the same way.  He shuts down the false ideas that were widespread among the Greeks, and then he sets up and presents the Christian faith in a way that is now comprehensible to his readers.

I remember when I started going to church regularly I would frequently become overwhelmed with the sounds of crying, screaming, or mumbling of very young children in the church.  Sometimes, even the priest would stop the Liturgy until the parent had taken control of an especially loud child.

To contrast, I also remember during the week of Pascha, the Paschal Praise is repeated multiple times that week, and at the end of the Good Friday service, one final praise is chanted while the priests enter the sanctuary and the children who are chanters enter in with them.  The older chanters are situated outside in the chancel, and the Paschal Praise begins one final time in antiphony with the children beginning and the congregation and chancel chanters responding.  This happens 12 times in alternating fashion.

This makes us think about where else we hear the voices of young children, which is in reading the Scriptures.

A Problem

It has become a trend in Protestant churches to separate children from adults.  The rationale is manifold.  One may reason that it is good to take the children to their own service.  Maybe send them to babysitting to give the parents some peace while they try to worship or get an emotional high because the service is too long for the children and that can interfere with the parents’ experience.

Christ blessing the children, c. 1600

This trend has also started creeping into Orthodox churches as well.  And sadly, some may see this as a good management tool.  They may argue saying that the Liturgy is too long for children.  But the problem is not that the Liturgy is too long; the problem is that the children (and actually many of the adults including those advocating this) do not understand the Liturgy, and you cannot love nor enjoy what you do not understand.  It is impossible.  You must understand something about it in order to love it.

Some may respond, “Well, people have loved things they have not understood like watching stars for millennia.  They did not understand how stars worked yet they enjoyed watching them.”  Yet, they did understand that they gave off light and appeared at night, and the different constellations appeared during different times of the year.  So when people complain that the Liturgy is too long for children, this is not the problem.  Think about this: children often sit and watch movies that are as long as the Liturgy and enjoy them.  Why?  Because they can follow what is going on.  The problem is we have not taught our children how to follow the Liturgy.  We can’t solve a problem if we can’t even identify it, and if we think the problem is the Liturgy is too long, then we will never solve the true problem.  This is why we often see adults who are totally lost in following the Liturgy even if they have been regular attendees since childhood.

To remove children from the Liturgy because “they do not understand” is to ensure they will continue not understanding.  This is best summed up by a saying of St. Thomas Aquinas who said “A small error in the beginning of something is a great one at the end.”  The best thing to do is to teach children the structure, progression, and meaning of the Liturgy.  Suddenly, you will find a change in our children.

How Should We Think About Children in the Churches?  What Did The Early Church Do?

Children are marginalized today, and they were even more so during the time when Christianity began.  But some may ask how are they marginalized?  Here is an example: I see professionals who get offended when others tell them they should spend time with their families, and I truly often wonder why.  Why are they working if not to take care of a family?  What is more important: family or work?  I actually had this discussion with the high school youth at my church several months ago, and they entered a debate with one holding it was the family and the other arguing that it was the work.  This is one small example of how children are marginalized, and they are so marginalized that some may not even recognize that this example is, in fact, an example of marginalization.

Doubt has always been with those who believe.  The nature of true belief requires that some doubt be there in order for that true belief, or faith, to be genuine.

Thomas the Apostle provides an example of such doubt.

Doubt is not a sin.  Our Lord Jesus shows us that by having chosen an Apostle whom He knew would doubt, and whose story of doubt is recorded for us as well as our Lord Jesus’s response to the doubt.

The Doubt of Thomas

The day our Lord Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to the Apostles.  However, one Apostle was not there to witness it: Thomas.

Try to imagine what was going on through his mind about the events of the past week: The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus’s last preaching, the Last Supper, the Arrest of Jesus, and the Crucifixion and death of Jesus.  His beloved Teacher whom he had followed for 3 ½ years, whom he thought was the Messiah, whom he was ready to die for as he indicated in the Gospel of John 11:16, whom he thought would be King, had died, died being betrayed by one of his fellow disciples, arrested in the dead of night as if he were a dangerous warlord, killed right before the most important feast of the Jewish calendar, and the betrayer committed suicide at the same time from the guilt.

It had been a very bad and emotionally trying week.  He had lost his Teacher and a fellow disciple.  He had lost his hopes.  He had lost any sense of direction for the future.  He was simply wandering now, lonely in the world.

Saint Thomas by Georges de La Tour, 1615-1620

That day, he came back to his friends and fellow disciples, people whom he had walked with for around 3 ½ years, people with whom he was grieving the loss of their Teacher, the Teacher they had followed for 3 ½ years, the Teacher they thought was the Messiah, the teacher they thought would be King.

It was around evening when he came to some shocking news from the other Apostles that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, not a ghost as some thought at first, but truly risen from the dead.

The Apostles were not expecting this at all as it is made clear multiple times in the Gospels that they did not understand what Jesus meant when he indicated that He was going to rise from the dead.  They may have thought he was speaking metaphorically.

The Apostle Thomas, being bombarded by all this news of them having seen the truly risen Lord, said, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

Since they were claiming that He was truly risen and not a ghost, Thomas was more than specific with his demands.  He had three conditions in order for him to believe:

1. To see the prints of the nails
2. To put his finger in the print of the nails
3. To put his hands into His side

He had to have evidence in order to believe.

Yet, he must have doubted his own doubt.  The people he had spent 3 ½ years with were also sharing his grief, think of Peter the Apostle, for example, who had denied Jesus on the night of his arrest.  And they were not crazy, nor were they stupid.  One was a trained tax collector, another was a religious Jew studied in the Scriptures.  They all were sharing the same grief.  No one believed Jesus was going to rise from the dead.  The Scriptures did not indicate anyone would rise except on the last day, and they did not understand what Jesus meant when He said He would rise.  They also were cowardly because during the arrest they all scrambled fast except for John and Peter.

But here was the unique situation, 10 others plus the women that followed Jesus with them could not be playing a game in addition to 2 others who had seen Him at Emmaus.  Women especially, when they grieve never show the slightest bit of a smile, much less prank a fellow griever.  All was out of place.  They could not be joking, but people don’t rise from the dead either, at least in Jewish belief, not until all would rise from the dead on the last day.  What was going on with these people?

Could Jesus have risen from the dead?

The week before the Resurrection was emotionally trying, but the week following must have been so too for Thomas.

His thoughts must have been super loud, full of questions to himself and proposing possible answers.

Why were the others saying that Jesus rose from the dead?  Were they hallucinating?

You do not get 10+ hallucinations of the same event at the same time; it is not possible.

Plus, the women saw him early in the morning by themselves as well.

Also, 2 others said they saw him before he appeared to the 10 Apostles.

There were three separate events where people claimed that Christ appeared to them all within the same day.

If Jesus rose from the dead, was He upset from Thomas?  Is that why He did not appear to Him?  Why?  What did he do wrong?  He was willing to die for Jesus?  He was loyal to Jesus just as much as the others?  Did Jesus not love him like the other Apostles? (The answer to these questions will be answered below).

Day by day came and went that week after the reported appearances, and no more.  In the meantime, he was without guidance for the future, no course set, disillusioned by the events of the past two weeks.

Then, the following Sunday our Lord Jesus appeared again.

He responded to Thomas’s challenge with the three conditions telling him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20:27).  And Jesus was not there when Thomas set the conditions for the Apostles, but here He was fulfilling them for Thomas.

It does not say whether Thomas even bothered to touch Him after seeing Him and His wounds, but he confessed, “My Lord and My God!” (John 20:28).

Then he answered Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:28).

Why Did These Things Happen?

All these things were done for us who have come to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ.  We have not seen Him risen from the dead like the Apostles did, but by their witness, and by their experiences like Thomas, we have come to believe through them.

The reason he told Thomas “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:28) was not to scold Thomas but to teach us who have lived after the Apostles.

Memory.  It is not something we think of often, but whenever we think at all we are using our memories.  We access knowledge we have learned or experiences we have gone through in order to make sense of whatever we are currently dealing with at the moment.  This can even be such simple thinking as looking at a familiar object in front of you or trying to go to sleep.  Your memory is working informing you of what you see in front of you or what you are trying to do such as going to sleep.  What you have experienced literally changes the way you are moving forward through life.

Image from Pixabay

What is Memory?

I was recently reading an educational/psychological synthesis titled Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn by John Hattie and Gregory Yates in order to deepen my knowledge of how students learn and thus improve my teaching in the classroom.  I came across several parts in the book that talk about memory and it actually made me think about how important memory is to our spiritual lives.

The first, which completely took hold of my attention, spoke about long-term memory.  The passage said, “This form of memory determines who you are, what you can do, and how you see your world” (Hattie and Yates, 122).

Its spiritual application can be very easily seen.  Our memory functions every time we pray.  If we are thanking God for something He did, then this prayer is the result of us using our memories to remember His works and to glorify Him and thank Him for them.  If we are asking Him for something, then it is the result of us remembering what we want and remembering to go to Him for all our needs.  If we forget everything readily and happily, then we will not offer much glory and praise that we can give to our Lord.  In a way, if we do not pay attention to developing our memories, then our worship truly suffers and our relationship with God can never achieve its potential.

Our memory functions every time we make decisions through the guidance of the teachings of our Lord Jesus and the Apostles.  When we see the world based on the Scriptures and what we have learned from Church, then we are using our memories to live the life Christ taught us to live.

Hattie and Yates point out that “Metaphorically, the long-term memory is the archival library store where data are filed for retrieval … the passage of time alone does not dim this system” (Hattie and Yates, 122).

Our Memory is a Library of God’s Works in our Lives

To expand on Hattie and Yates’s metaphor, our lives are a library, and that library’s books are written on the paper of our memories.  If we leave those books closed and let them collect dust, then we are being negligent with the records of the works God has done in our lives.  We are even withholding glory and praise that we can offer to God.  But some say that they have bad memories, so how do we open those books?  The answer is by reflection.  Reflection is the key to retaining memories.  Think about it.  Think of some of your oldest or most cherished memories.  Why do you remember them?  It is because you reflected about them after they happened.  This is why they became permanent in your long-term memory.

Some complain that they have bad memories, but the reason is mostly due to a lack of reflection.  The other reason is due to focus (as you will see below in the research of Hattie and Yates).

We live in a world that fears reflection.  We do not want to think of past events where we felt pain or embarrassment or failure, but by doing this we are living in our own reality.  The true reality is that we have been formed by our past experiences both good and bad.  Not thinking of the bad because it is painful is to refuse to see the good that God has done in your lives through those experiences and since then, assuming you were following Him.  If you were truly following Him, then sit and reflect, and you’ll see how the bad was used by God to lead to goodness whether to strength of character and emotional stability due to having gone through painful and embarrassing events.  Or whether these experiences have led to increased wisdom and awareness on your part so that you avoid them in the future or to counsel others.

The Apostle Paul, for all the strife and hardship that he faced, was always reflective.  There are too many verses in his epistles that show this reflectiveness.  In his openings, he always writes how he was thinking of the churches and his experiences with them, and at times he recalled earlier days in his life in detail.  The example that readily comes to my mind is his reflection in his final epistle, the Second Epistle to Timothy where he says,

“You have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra—what persecutions I endured. And out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:10-15).

This hearkens back to what Luke has shown us in the Book of Acts of Paul’s life when he went to Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.  (He was stoned almost to death in Lystra).  Paul reflects in his own epistles about those experiences and what they have led to, and as such, he is able to counsel his disciple Timothy as he shepherds the church to which he has been appointed a bishop.

The other reason why we cannot reflect in order to remember is because we are all over the place, and we don’t have time to sit down and reflect.  “Go buy the groceries” one thought comes to us.  “This is due at work at the end of the week” goes another thought.  Then, on top of that, we go home and due to the expectations we have set at home, there is chaos meeting us there.  Too much time is spent on cleaning up our needs, obligations, and homes that by the time we go to sleep not a minute has been spent on reflection.  We should at least carve out 30 minutes at the end of the day to reflect on each day.  Ideally, write in a journal.  At the end of this article, I offer some suggestions for developing and retaining memories.

Forgetfulness

We as humans can be characterized by forgetfulness.  Even the Arabic word for human, insān, is alleged to come from the word for “forgetfulness” because a human is one who forgets.

But how does forgetfulness come?  It is actually related to attention, value, and reflection.  The things we value are the things we pay close attention to.  And the things we value, we reflect on, and those cannot be easily forgotten.  How many of you remember your high school graduations, wedding days, or births of your children?  You can probably tell me a lot of details.  Now, tell me what happened two days before those events.  If you can’t, why not?  It is because whatever happened those days was not important, it was not valued by you, and you have not reflected upon them, so they have been forgotten.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: You know after traveling so many years into the future, one of the most curious things I see is the modern priesthood in the West.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: My friend, we do not have priests.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: So who was the man giving the sermon during your service; I did not recognize most of your service except for the sermon.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: That was our pastor.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: A pastor is a priest.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: No, he is not.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I am a bit confused, my friend.  How is your pastor not a priest?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Because pastors are not priests.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Is that how you think?  How did you arrive to such a conclusion?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Based on the Bible.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I am a bit dumbfounded?  Can you explain what you mean further?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Absolutely!  I would be happy to!  I know my Bible very well.  There is only one priest in the New Covenant, and that is Jesus.  The old priesthood has been fulfilled in Christ because He is the “priest forever.”  There are no other priests.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: That Scriptural reasoning is not right.  You have many things confused.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Is that so?!  How do you know?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Well, I lived in the early church for one, and we had priests, and all generations before us had priests going back to the Apostles and to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: I am sorry, but I cannot accept that.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Why not?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Because the New Testament would have said something about priests if it were so.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: It does.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: You know what, you’re right!  I do remember now that the New Testament refers to all believers, not some, but all believers in Christ as priests.  For example, in 1 Peter 2:9, it calls us “a royal priesthood.”  This is further echoed three times in the Book of Revelation beginning in 1:6 calling us “priests to His God and Father” and again in 5:10 as “priests to our God,” and finally in 20:6 where it says, “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection.  Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”  So yes, the New Testament said something about priests four times, that is all of us who believe in Christ are priests.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: But what about the man who gave the sermon?  He was clearly of a different rank than the rest of the congregation?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: That was the pastor, not a priest.  We are all priests to God; there are no ranks in Christianity.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Is that pastor the only one who gives sermons or does any member of the congregation give sermons also?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: No.  Sometimes other pastors give sermons; the congregation does not.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: But you said you do not have ranks.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: We don’t.  Otherwise we would not all be priests.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: So how come only the pastors give sermons?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Because that is their ministry.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Perhaps this is where we should start the discussion on what I mean by the Christian Priesthood.  And more importantly, we should define our terms.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: What do you mean?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I mean your interpretation of all the above verses is correct.  All Christians are priests to God, but that is the general priesthood of all believers.  This refers to us as the ones who bear Christ in us in order to preach Him to the world and to “let His light shine through us.  Yet, there is another priesthood which is the one I was referring to, which is the sacramental and pastoral priesthood which is reserved for only those who are called and is not open to anyone.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: I have never heard of such a priesthood in the Bible.  That is something the Roman Church invented in the Middle Ages.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I am not Roman, and I did not live in the Middle Ages.  Yet we had priests.  Also, the Bible does indeed talk about this priesthood.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Show me then.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Let’s begin by defining terms.  It is important that we agree on terms before we begin the discussion.  Do you agree?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Of course.  The last thing we want is confusion.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Good then.  The word we used to refer to priests in the early church was presbyteros.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Oh yes.  That word means “elder.”  We have a council of elders at our church.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Really?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Was your pastor one of them?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Yes.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: So all of them are pastors?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Oh no.  They do things like manage the money of the church, determine which of the poor need the most help, and look over the church properties and things like that.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Well, that is not what presbyteros meant in the early Christian church.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: What did it mean then?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: It meant….

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Tell me.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: If you may, please don’t interrupt me.  Please let me begin and finish what I have to say before asking questions.  Fair enough?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Yes.  Go for it.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: The word presbyteros (which does indeed originally mean elder) was used in the early church to refer to our priests.  The word presbyteros did not simply mean “elder” in the context of early Christians, but it took on a specific technical meaning as can be seen in the New Testament.  It was used to describe a Christian office, which was ordained by the laying on of hands.  That word entered Latin as presbyter, then it shortened in the Germanic languages to presbyt, then prest, from which we get the English word priest.

However, this word is different from the Greek word which was used to describe the priests who served in the Jewish Temple or even pagan priests.  That word is hierus.  This is the word that was used to describe all Christians as priests as you referenced in 1 Peter and Revelation.  Yet never have all Christians been called presbyteroi.  That office was reserved for certain people having met certain qualifications and having been ordained by the laying on of hands.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: That is interesting, especially the etymology of the English word for priest from the Greek presbyteros.  Yet, that is not a complete justification of how this is related to the priesthood of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I will get there, but at first I had to define the terms.  The word priest in English describes those who administer sacred rites, yet the word comes from the Christian technical term for elder, not any word which etymologically means priest.  Why is this?  What this means is the Christian elder had some connection to sacred rites, and ones which were not done by all other Christians, but only the presbyters.  It is for this reason that in English the word to describe priests of any kind comes from the Greek word presbyteros because for the Christian community, they could understand the idea of priest from their presbyters.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: It still remains for you to prove that.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Well, the word which properly means priest in Greek like the priests in the Jewish Temple is hierus.  The Temple is called hieron, which comes from the same root word in Greek.  The priest was the one who worked in the Temple leading worship and prayer, teaching, and offering the sacrifices of the people.  He performed sacred rites.  In addition, the type of sacrificial, liturgical worship which the priests administered was called leitourgeia in Greek, and the priest presiding over that worship was called a leitourgos in Greek.

So the language used to describe priests in the Temple was hierus (priest), leitourgeia (liturgical worship, ministry), and leitourgos (liturgical minister).

We will find the same duties given to presbyters in the New Testament, and this can further be confirmed by the study of early Christian history.  Presbyters were an office in the early church and it was not simply a distinction given to those who were aged.  This word thus takes a technical meaning.  What that meaning is we can begin to figure out by looking at the First Epistle to Timothy.  In 1 Timothy, Timothy, the Apostle Paul’s disciple is described as a youth in 1 Timothy 4:12 and is further told to shun youthful passions in 2 Timothy 2:22.  Yet he is called an elder, and that he received the eldership by the laying on of hands in 1 Timothy 4:14.  How can this word simply refer to an aged person when the person holding this title was a youth and received it by the laying on of hands?  It is because this was an office and was ordained in the same way that the Apostles Paul and Barnabas received their ministry and how the deacons were ordained according to Acts 13:1-3 and Acts 6:1-6 respectively.

Every single time in the New Testament this word is used to describe Christians, the word does not simply mean elder in the context, but it refers to a technical meaning.