Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana Research Sources

OK, I watched the two YouTube clips in which Anne Rice discusses the research material she used for her books... They are:

Jesus the Christ and The God of Jesus Christ by Walter Cardinal Kasper.

In a review of this book I found, it was stated by one reviewer that Kasper seems to be a fairly liberal theologian, assuming that most infancy narratives are unhistorical and that the nature miracles were also legends. The books were also considered to be quite difficult for the uninitiated philosopher to tackle. He has been a leader in ecumenism in the Church.

Next we have three books by Anglican theologian and Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, entitled:
The New Testament and the People of God, The Resurrection of the Son of God, and Jesus and the Victory of God.

According to one reviewer of the Book The Resurrection of the Son of God, "My favorite chapter was the one devoted to what Paul actually said about his encounter with Jesus. You might be surprised to learn that there was no falling from the horse in the road to Damascus, and that the narrative in Acts about a blinding light and a voice is only a biblical model to tell about an encounter with God's sphere. Tom Wright is more interested in what Paul himself said, not Luke. And Paul's words cannot be read in another way: he says that he saw Jesus."

In another review of the book The New Testament and the People of God, another reviewer writes: "I cannot understand his insistence that Jesus didn't really "know" know that he was the Son of God." Perhaps this helps explain why Ms. Rice takes this point of view in her depiction of a possible description of what Jesus' thoughts may have been.

In a review of Jesus and the Victory of God, a reviewer comments on this same point: "After hundreds of pages of argument, Wright rather abruptly asserts that "Jesus did not know he was God," at least not as one knows one "ate an orange an hour ago." He thinks such self-knowledge would be unbecomingly "supernatural." (Though he doesn't quibble with multiplied loaves or the resurrection.) At this point one gets the feeling that Wright's conclusion (or guess) is based less on historical evidence (which, as another reader points out below, ought to include John, Paul, and other Jewish Christians), but on a desire to keep a souvenir from the far country -- perhaps to show other scholars. Or maybe he just doesn't want to sound too conventional -- publish novelties ("discoveries") or off with your academic head. In any case, one wonders if his own dogmatically expressed opinion about Jesus' sub-divine mode of consciousness itself has a supernatural origin. He offers no other sources, in this case. " Another point made by the same reviewer gives a bit of general commentary that leads one to believe that his views may not be entirely orthodox, or at least that his sympathies lie with dissenters: "Wright seems less kind to his conservative Christian "elder brethren" than to younger (separated) brethren still sowing wild oats in the far country of historical speculation. This attitude troubles me."

Next we have a book by a Baptist who is a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL, D. A. Carson entitled The Gospel According to John.

A few comments from a reviewer of this book : "I bought this commentary on John, and this is not a bad one, and Carson gives you several good insights, but he follows one of the routes of the protestant tradition, the worst one, the zwinglian. He tries to hide any sacramental sign of the Gospel of John: He says that the water and Spirit of Jn 3:5 is not about baptism. He says that water and Spirit is a reference only to the Spirit, and that we to understand Jn 3:5 as pointing to Ezekiel and the divine promise of the gift of Spirit and water. But Carson can't avoid the fact that Ez could refer to the giving of the Spirit via the sacrament of Baptism. Carson is a baptist, so he follows the bias of his tradition.

Carson tries to twist Jn 6, to avoid the obvius: that Jesus is the Bread of Life who must be believed, and Who can gives us life by eating His flesh and drinking His blood at Lord's Supper. Carson tries to convince the reader that Jn 6,53-58 isn't about Eucharist, and he fights against the clear meaning of the text and the reading of the first christians as Ignatius, but, Carson finally gives up and says, "well, this text is about the Eucharist as any other text of the Gospels". Even though he is a follower of Ulrich Zwingly, he at least admits that John 6 has an alussion to the Eucharist."

The above comments gave me pause... let's hope for better stuff to come...

Next comes The Gospel According to Matthew, by Leon Morris, another non-Catholic author who is another Anglican theologian. There wasn't much in the reviews I saw to indicate much about his particular perspective, although one reviewer said he leaned toward the conservative. However, I am not sure exactly what that means in the Anglican tradition relative to the Catholic and would hesitate to make any inferences from the statement.

Moving through the list of source material, we next have two books by the evangelical author Craig Keener, who is professor of New Testament at Palmer Seminary (Wynnewood, Pennsylvania), The Gospel of John: A Commentary, and A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. I didn't find any Catholic reviews of his books when I looked. They seemed to appeal primarily to protestant and seemed to be quite positively reviewed by protestant preachers.

A book entitled Birth of the Messiah by Raymond Brown, S.S., gives detailed analysis of the infancy narratives. One comment by a reviewer (who probably made it thinking to be a positive review) made me wonder about this when he said: "The book has the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur declarations that the book is free of doctrinal or moral errors (from the point of view of the Roman Catholic church), but Brown's Catholicism doesn't color the book excessively. For example, he admits that it is unlikely Mary took a vow of virginity, and also that the "brothers of Jesus" were probably his brothers in the usual biological sense. More generally, Brown openly recognizes the historical improbability of certain events (such as the visit of the Magi), and doesn't strain to impose dubious harmonizations on the infancy stories or to concoct interpretations meant to uphold the literal truth of the NT. The one place where he draws a line is on the virgin conception itself; he claims that it is unscientific to reject it as impossible a priori." I am finding it very hard to understand how the book could have a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur if, indeed, Brown supported the views about doubting Mary's perpetual virginity and supporting the idea that Jesus had other natural siblings. That being said, the reviewers were almost unanimous in their praise of his work on the infancy narratives and the completeness of his work.

Another Catholic theologian, Jesuit Karl Rahner was author of another source book entitled Foundations of Christian Faith. Well, this seems to be a very difficult book for a non-philosopher to grasp from what I can gather from the reviews. Apparently, his views were a bit off the main path of orthodox Roman Catholicism in some regards... here is an excerpt from a reviewer: "Rahner, in contrast to the entire catholic approach to theology of the past 2000 years does not start his understanding of Christianity by elaborating upon the tenets of revealed faith, but starts from 'below' ie. from mankind as a species which is open to the supernatural in its very essence and then goes on to show how 'faith' fills this need or 'spiritual vacuum'; the point of conflict here is whether faith is inherent in human nature or is an act of grace (a created spiritual reality which is granted to Man but is not part of his natural constitution). Rahner, amongst other things, even opens out to Eastern religious ideas by stating that 'purgatory' might even be worked out over a series of successive reincarnations - something which clearly has the 'traditionalists' tearing their hair out!! A further difficulty, for the traditionalists, is that he tries to make evolution an integral part of an aspect of his understanding of faith - here I think he's on shakier ground. Placing a/any scientific theory as an integral part of theology exposes it to the risk of collapse should the theory prove (over time) to be false or is replaced by another theory (look at what happened with Galileo!!)."

Her final source listed was a book titled The Priority of John, by John A. T. Robinson, an Anglican. This book is out of print, but I did find three reviews of it. Apparently, Robinson makes the case that the gospel of John was the first one written of the four and that it was written by John bar Zebedee.

Well, it is late and I have to get up early tomorrow morning... but I am looking over the list of source material and find that it is mostly non-Catholic authorship. And, of the Catholic writers, there seem to be a few comments that would make me a bit wary... I'll definitely have to give this list more thought -- but tomorrow!

Reading updates

My four boxes of Great Books arrived yesterday. I will not lack for reading material for quite awhile. I went through the books (1982 ed., it turns out) to see what was added to the later editions (what I was missing, in other words). I found that many of the more modern authors were added, including Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Diderol, Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Balzac, George Eliot, Twain, Austen, and Ibsen.

In other reading topics, I came upon a copy of the August 2007 Imprimis issue with an article by S. Fred singer [ Professor Emeritus of environmental Sciences, University of Virginia]. I found his article on Global Warming (Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?) to be very interesting. Aside from his dispute that any significant Man-Made Warming is occurring, he makes a point about whether this matters or not.

His point is that there are significant policy consequences that emanate from this misinterpretation of naturally-occurring warming/cooling cycles. While encouraging energy conservation to reduce waste, save money and lower energy prices, he makes the point that some of these consequences are:

* Regulation of CO2 emissions is pointless and even counterproductive, in that no matter what kind of mitigation scheme is used, such regulation is hugely expensive.

* The development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, like ethanol and hydrogen, might be counterproductive, given that they have to be manufactured, often with the investment of great amounts of ordinary energy. Nor do they offer much reduction in oil imports.

* Wind power and solar power become less attractive, being uneconomic and requiring huge subsidies.

* Substituting natural gas for coal in electricity generation makes less sense for the same reasons.

Singer characterizes much of the discussion about global warming as "hysteria", rather than science. He had quite a few things to say about the various individuals (Al Gore among them) who are directly benefiting from the global warming scare at the expense of the ordinary consumer.

Summarizing, he mentions that "The nations of the world face many difficult problems. Many have societal problems like poverty, disease, lack of sanitation, and shortage of clean water. There are grave security problems arising from global terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any of these problems are vastly more important than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. It is a great shame that so many of our resources are being diverted from real problems to this non-problem. Perhaps in ten or 20 years this will become apparent to everyone, particularly if the climate should stop warming (as it has for eight years now) or even begin to cool."

Check out the article and the other issues online...

I also just received my March 2008 issue of This Rock. Since I recently finished reading Augustus, a fictional account based upon the life of Augustus Caesar, I found Carl E. Olson's article Are the Gospels Myth? particularly interesting. At the beginning of the article he makes the point of just how few manuscript copies exist that document many of the historical events that are not questioned by many who are quite skeptical of the historical accuracy of the Gospels. I read this new issue from cover to cover yesterday while working with the boys on their schoolwork.

In the stack of mail that came in after the trip was an update from the Monks of Clear Creek. With great joy I read the account of their move to the new monastery after 35 years of working to that end. They generously send out wonderful recordings of chant made at their Fontgombault Monastery in France a few times per year to benefactors. These CD's are also available for sale at their website. Buy a few CD's and support this beautiful monastery.

I've also taken up reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, which has been sitting on the shelf for a very long time. I note that the original printing was in 1989 (where have I been?). My boys have a board game based upon this book that is great fun. We picked it up in Germany last spring when we were there, and have never seen it in the U.S. in a store. It is called Die Säulen der Erde (and is available online, btw). The boys and my husband have had a great time with the game -- all the cards and instructions are in German, of course, which helps us along with teaching the boys a bit of the language while having fun.

Time to get to schoolwork with the boys for the day... They've officially graduated to the next grades. We started the next grades after we returned from our trip. New books and materials somehow make it a bit more exciting (at least at the outset).

More books...

My stack is getting higher... just purchased a set of books I've wanted for a few years and have been sort of watching for... Great Books of the Western World. The set I will be receiving was from a friend and fellow home schooling mom in southern Louisiana. It is the older edition and only includes 54 books, as opposed to the current edition (which has 60 books). I'll pull out my old copy of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and try to read more effectively...

Happily, the collection contains many books I've long wished to read and never got to... among them:

Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica

Cervantes' Don Quixote

Jane Austen's Emma

Dickens' Little Dorrit

Darwin's Origen of the Species and The Descent of Man

Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karazamov

plus many others...

Book list

Original posting (2/15/08)

Well... I hadn't actually ordered any new books for awhile prior to this week, since I have had a foot-high stack on my bedroom dresser waiting for me for quite awhile. Over the past 2 months, I have worked my way through a great many of them. Some were 'junk food' books, silly novels with very little redeeming value other than the momentary enjoyment.

I'm still working on the book Augustus, by Anthony Everitt. I am enjoying it very much, not having spent a great deal of time studying this particular period in history in the past. I highly recommend it.

So, I am getting close to the bottom of the stack, although my in-progress reading of Crime and Punishment is still looming in my future. Today I ordered three new books for future reading:

They are:

Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
Christ the Lord, the Road to Cana, by Anne Rice
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

I must admit, I would never have thought of reading Anne Rice's new book had it not been for the positive review that was given it by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things. I had read a few pages from her previous foray into the world of the non-vampire in her book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt not long after it was initially published. I was a bit dismayed with her (fictional) portrayal of a story of how Jesus (as a boy in Egypt) caused another child to die (in a fit of pique). Now, I must say that her story line included Jesus bringing the boy back to life (and making everything fine), but that bit of artistic license convinced me not to continue reading the book.

So, I am taking Richard John Neuhaus' positive review on faith and hoping it will turn out better this time. The other two have been on my wish list for some time... I know I won't be disappointed.

Also in my book-reading stack are books on herbal remedies for children... bridge-playing techniques on bidding... yes, my taste is somewhat eclectic!

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Postscript and update (2/17/08):

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Firstly, I am honored that you visited my blog, Ms. Rice. I very much appreciate your taking the time to tell me about the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I had done a quick online search of various apocryphal gospels after the posting by Scelata to try to find the account (of Jesus causing a child to die) in order to read the source text and had not had any success.
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Follow-on:
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I found the text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas online very interesting, although apocryphal. I was made a bit uneasy by the actual text, which has several accounts of Jesus’ purported ‘killing off’ of teachers/playmates that annoyed him. The same sort of reaction I had from my initial read of the account in Anne Rice’s first book about Jesus came to me when I read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The immediate reaction I had was that it just couldn’t be true. It does have that feel of a depiction of a pagan ‘child-god’, as referred to by Geoff Trowbridge in the excerpt below.
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Following is an introduction by Geoff Trowbridge from the site I found:

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“The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was probably the first of many attempts by the early Christians to document the first twelve years of Jesus's life, bridging the gap left in the second chapter of Luke. The original language of the text is unknown—Greek or Syriac are probable—but the story was popular enough to survive in numerous translations, redactions, and parallel stories, including several Egyptian infancy gospels, as late as the Protestant Reformation. The text may have influenced the authors of the Koran.
The gospel's portrayal of Jesus, though perhaps alarming to more orthodox sensibilities, would have been quite familiar to early Gentiles, as the young Christ displays all the precociousness, cleverness, and even destructiveness of the child-gods in pagan mythology. In the early passages of the story, Jesus shows a disturbing tendency to kill off his playmates when they displease him. He eventually learns to channel his divine abilities in more constructive ways and realizes his calling, culminating in the trip to the Jerusalem temple closely paralleled in Luke 2:41-52.
Claims of apostolic authorship were most likely a secondary development within the Syriac church, where most of the traditions surrounding Thomas originated. The oldest surviving text is a Syriac text from the sixth century, but the earliest known reference to the gospel was an unnamed citation by Iranæus c.185 C.E. Later references by Hippolytus and Origen may refer to the Infancy Gospel or the Gospel of Thomas, both of which were viewed as heretical due to their use by Gnostic Christians.”

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I certainly understand that a certain amount of license must be taken in order to fill out a possible story of Jesus’ childhood, since there is very little about it in the Bible. After Mel Gibson’s amazing Passion of the Christ, I was very interested in the book he purportedly used as his inspiration for many of the details of his film – The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich. I found this account by a mystic very interesting and, in some ways, inspiring. It led me to continue reading more of her accounts, including The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Light on Light. However, with those accounts I cannot recall reading anything that seemed in contradiction with things we knew from the Bible or Church Tradition.
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That being said, I still find the depiction of the child Jesus in this apocryphal 'gospel' as petulant and as doing violence on several occasions irreconcilable with the Jesus we know from the Gospels. This portrayal of Jesus as a person with this destructiveness and petulant anger would be more understandable if not for the fact that we know he was a child without the effects of original sin with which the rest of us are plagued. This tendency toward quick anger and the lack of humility displayed in these stories (with his teachers) doesn’t seem to coincide with our Divine Lord. The fact that the apocryphal books were condemned by the Church and not considered worthy of reading by Christians makes stories built around them troublesome.
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I am certainly not a scholar in this field, so I acknowledge that I have a great deal yet to learn about the writings of the early Church fathers and the bulk of the Traditional writings of the Church. I would find it very interesting to hear what theological scholars have to say about the possible truth to these legends and how they either agree or are in disagreement with what we do know or can logically infer about Jesus’ life.I look forward with great anticipation to reading this new book! I’ll read it carefully and also pay close attention to any and all notes and bibliography provided.

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Again, thanks very much, Ms. Rice.