The Movable Jerusalem

The Descent of New Jerusalem, Vancouver Project No. 11

Hearing the Prophetic Voice of the Apostles in the New Testament

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

The Hour of Spirit and Truth

The story of the Good Samaritan is remarkable for the many ways that Jesus used it to overturn assumptions about goodness, piety, religiosity and cleanliness. In Luke 10:30-37, Jesus says, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” 

This was not the first time that Jesus had come into contact with Samaritans, or had incorporated them into his ministry. The famous sequence with the woman at the well in John 4 also touched on these themes, and Jesus yet again turned over Jewish expectations by saying in verses 23 and 24, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” This implied that the time of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was over because He had come. Christ compared Himself to the temple, talked of the overthrow of the Temple and Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, and predicted His own Death, Burial and Resurrection using the same imagery. With the Samaritan background and the depth of hatred that the Jews felt for the “false religion” of the Samaritans, all of this sinks in with shocking weight. Christ was actually showing that, although he was called first to the “Lost Sheep of the House of Israel”, He not only would extend His hand of compassion to the gentile “dogs” who “ate the crumbs under the Master’s table” (Matthew 15:27), but that the Samaritans, the mixed-blooded, unclean, self-propitiating, false-temple-building worshippers of God, were included in His ministry. With this story, Christ singlehandedly overthrew the old order of religion and showed a higher, more powerful truth of His transformative Gospel.

A Theology of the Transfiguration 

In Paul’s earliest writing, the writing that seems to show a thesis that is both a radical departure from Judaism and forms the crux of his disagreement with the Jerusalem Apostles, is the Book of Galatians. Galatians insist in salvation as a process that takes place despite or outside of the Law established in the Old Testament – That Christ’s work is available to us through Faith, and that in this experience, we are empowered to live Christ’s life by Christ’s spirit, His Presence, His Grace.

Paul’s damning summation of the contradictions are stated in Galatians 2:15-21 (NKJV) “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. “But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”

The young John Mark, the disciple of Paul that replaced Barnabas after he abandoned him for Peter’s pharisaic betrayal and the writer of the First Gospel, presents the story of the Transfiguration in a parallel to Paul’s own situation, and we can discern from the rest of the book, that it was written to persuade the leaders in Jerusalem to accept both the Gentile Church and the Paul’s prophetic vision of a Church established in the gathering up and calling out of the whole world, thus realizing the highest aspirations of the Old Testament and proving Christ to be the fulfillment of the Jewish Law. It was therefore necessary to show those in a powerful community center, who obviously controlled the “brand” of Christianity through right of succession and by controlling the source of the memories of Jesus, that they had misunderstood the core message of Christ! This could not be done without challenging the supremacy of the Tradition of Moses. Thus, the necessity of the scene as it appears in Mark becomes apparent. 

“Mark 9:2-8 (NKJV) Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’— because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!’ Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves.”

Christ the teacher, waited upon by the two fundamentally formative teachers of the Jewish Tradition, Moses and Elijah, with a voice declaring him an authoritative teacher. Paul’s Gospel is figured here, the message that he presented at the Jerusalem meeting in Galatians 1:1-2 between Peter, James and Paul is the unstated subtext. Christ’s suffering is the key to unlocking the meaning of the passage, especially if the older John Mark is the writer of the Gospel of John, in which the Transfiguration is absent, meaning that this passage was referring to Christ being lifted up in “glory” through his suffering, and that it was within this experience that the Gospel was declared and the Jewish prophets shown insufficient, incomplete, and in need of a “Rabbi!" In the message that Paul Prophetically put forward, James and Peter were shown to reject the Gospel of Christ crucified, making Christ into a ruler, rather than into the servant and self-sacrificial Messenger that he really was. Therefore, Paul is reflected, if not directly written into, the context of this pericope. (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Paul and Mark”, 1999, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary Press, p. 190-192)

Jerusalemite Apse Mosaic in the Ancient Roman Church of the Transfiguration

Luke, another disciple of Paul, writes from a slightly different angle, mainly to provide an explanation of Paul’s Gospel to the Gentile converts within their many new churches. He is writing to “Theophilus”, the “Righteous Among the Nations”, those Gentiles who love God and keep God’s Commandments and who are accepted by Him (Acts 10:34-35). In Luke 9:28-36 (NKJV) the Transfiguration is pictured in this way.. “Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him.  Then it happened, as they were parting from Him, that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, Hear Him!” When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet, and told no one in those days any of the things they had seen.”

In Luke we find a very different set of prerogatives and motivations for the construction of this passage. He was trying to create a grand, biblical chronicle, an account that would both give authority to the new Gentile Christian Community, and that would also challenge the role of the Jewish people to claim peoplehood through the divine intervention and sovereign will of the Almighty. We find that Luke is concerned with creating a new narrative of the Chosen People of God, the Church, that follows the direction and mirrors the significance of the Exodus account. This is also why he must dethrone Jerusalem as the dwelling place of God, which we will deal with later. He, therefore, places the Transfiguration at the point of the narrative in which Moses ascends the Mountain to receive the Covenant, tying it to the Mount of Olives, the dwelling place of God in Christ, and both effectively hollows the Jerusalem and the Temple of its traditional meaning and discredits the Jerusalemite Leadership of their claim to stewardship of God’s Presence. Christ must, then, surpass the importance of Moses. To do this, Luke must show that Christ was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, and also must show that his position surpassed even Moses and the primary Prophet, Elijah. This goal is accomplished by God himself telling the disciples to “Hear Him” after both of the Old Testament heroes were gone! (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Luke and Acts”, 2001, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 75-80)

Matthew narrates in his conciliatory tone a very close narrative to Luke, but with a greater attention paid to Hebrew sensibilities in the wake of the destruction Jerusalem and its Temple, probably referenced in Peter’s desire to build tabernacles. “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, ‘Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.’” (Matthew 17:1-9 NKJV)

While similar to the other accounts, there are a few minor changes that refocus the narrative slightly. The fear experienced by the apostles is no longer due to the presence of the Old Testament saints, but is now due to the Voice from Heaven, which declares Christ to be the ultimate teacher. Matthew shows the crisis of faith that the apostles faced, coming to the surface in Matthew 6:30, 14:23-24, 16:8 and 17:1-13. Matthew shows that the Apostles were not, at least originally, champions of faith, but tended to doubt and be rebuked by Christ for “little faith.” “Matthew’s interest in Jesus’ ultimate authority in matter of teaching makes explicit what Mark had left implicit: that the Baptist was the eschatological Elijah: ‘Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.’ (Mat 17:13)” (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Matthew and the Canon”, 2009, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 207-209)

The theme of Christ’s Transfiguration and its transformative effect on the human person echoes throughout all of Paul’s writings, as can be seen in the poetic description of salvation as metamorphosis that we see in II Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This is what happened on the Road to Damascus, when Paul saw the Lord, his eyes were blinded by the glory of the Risen Messiah, and he was converted from a “Pharisee of the Pharisees” to a “Servant of Christ”. It is within this experience that we find the primary paradigm that influenced his “Gospel” and confirmed his vision for a Gentile Church. It is also at the root of the controversies surrounding the Law and its uses, and the underlying reasons for the writing and canonization of the Pauline Epistles, the Gospels, and the fundamental struggle laid into the very foundations of Christianity - the Contradiction between God’s Love expressed through the Word and Man’s Brokenness, which turns God’s Presence, His Grace, into a commodity and His Word, the expression of His creative, sustaining and unbounded Love into Law enforced by human agency for the purpose of social stability and declarative authority. 

It is ironic that the Eastern Orthodox Church, primarily built upon a theology of Transfiguration, would see in this narrative the locus of its historical centralization of authority within the “Holy City” and “Temple” (Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia) - based upon its  guardianship of the Creed without the Filioque, Palamite teachings on “Uncreated Energy”, and an understanding of Christ’s Transfiguration as the soteriological paradigm for Theosis. Time has yet to tell how a close reading of Scripture and history deal with these issues within the Orthodox Church.  

2 Peter, widely believed by biblical scholars to be a letter written in Peter’s name from the Pauline School because of its handling of Paul’s epistles as Scripture on par with the Old Testament, sums up the role of the Transfiguration in the believer’s life in many of the same ways that the later Greek Fathers would see the process of Theosis. The “Glory” experienced by the receivers of the Word of God is the certification of the Word’s truth, “Our hearts burn within us” (Luke 24:32), and that it is through this mythos that the transformative Presence of the Holy Spirit is felt within life. “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18 NKJV) This sums up the only experience that ties both the “Keeper of the Law” and the “Free” together in Christ, the Pharisee and the Gentile, for both have seen Christ in His Glory, and feel that glory in the Words of the Gospel Books, and through them are changed from “Glory to Glory”. 

What was Luke’s Treatment of the Temple of Jerusalem in His Two-Volume Work?

In the Old Testament, God Himself is pictured as triumphing over His enemies, not from within the Holy City of Jerusalem, but from the Mount to the East, the first “Hagios Oros” of Christian Tradition, the Mount of Olives! “And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” (Zechariah 14:4 NKJV) Luke, Paul's loyal disciple and apologist, sees Christ establishing the Mount of Olives as a "House of Prayer" up and against the temple. Luke’s use of Christ “in prayer to the Father” here in Luke 6:12, “εν τη προσευχη του θεου”, literally means "God's place of prayer” and shows it to be the place that God has sanctified to Himself. The same term is used in Acts to signify a “house of prayer”, tying the Mount of Olives to this central and important role. (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Volume 2, Luke and Acts”, 2001, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 56) Just as the Khabur River in Ezekiel’s Vision, God’s House is WHEREVER GOD APPEARS! This against the background of Christ driving out the merchants from the temple, declaring with the ancient prophets, “My Father’s house Shall be Called a House of Prayer for ALL Peoples!”  (Isaiah 56:7)

In the Lukan account of New Testament Scripture, the storyline is set along a very clear course of a motion “up to” and “away from” Jerusalem in Christ’s exposition of His message. This motion is contextualized by the unusual use of an imperfect tense in Greek   for Christ’s travel, “επορευετο” (Luke 4:30, 7:6 and 19:28), translated as “was going”, which ultimately point through Jerusalem to Christ’s ultimate destination, the Mount of Olives. (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Volume 2, Luke and Acts”, 2001, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 7) “…The New Law is promulgated by Jesus, who is appearing at the Mount of Olives just as it was predicted God would do…” (Ibid, p. 7) There is also a noticeable undercutting of the status of Jerusalem as the “Dwelling place of God”, not only by Christ’s decision to take up residence in the Mount of Olives “as was his custom” (Luke 22:39), but the revelation of His Glory upon this Mountain at the Transfiguration, and the Johannine indications that this “Glory” in the Transfiguration was actually the lifting up of the Messiah in Sacrifice upon the Tree, the “Cursedness” or “Anathema” of the act of Redemption shown from God’s perspective. (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Volume 2, Johnannine Writings”, 2004, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 211, and The New Testament Introduction: Volume 4, Matthew and the Canon”, 2009, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 54-55)

In Luke, the story of demon possession reminds us that cleanest places can easily be inhabited by evil - if they are not actively kept out! (Luke 11:24-26) Thus, the Temple is not innately holy, just as it was false that it was innately eternal and indestructible in the Old Testament. Luke also shows how Jerusalem, rather than being the focus of God's grace, can be an inhibitor to following His Word. One must be willing to “let the dead bury the dead” (Luke 9:60), must be willing to leave the holy city a "Sabbath's Day's journey” (Acts 1:12), and must be "going out" (as the Word goes out from God, the Apostles were sent out by Christ, and the Word is continuously sent into the world) in order to do what God has commanded. Luke shows how Christ fulfills the prophetic "דָּבָר", the Declared Word against the presumptions of men, and how Paul's ministry is to the service of this word as the Old Testament prophets served the Word in their time. In this way, St. Paul is the supreme example of biblical continuity, for he realizes the point of the Old Testament, the gathering of all people's out of the world to God, and applies this view of the prophetic message to Christ, who cannot (if He is the fulfillment of the Prophets’ expectation) be the property of Jews or confined by the temple or by Jerusalem! 

Al-Aqsa Mosque, Standing at the top of the Temple Mount

How does Matthew Restructure the Gospel of His Predecessor Mark and Why Does He Do So? 

“Mark is not the story of Jesus, nor is it even about him. It is rather the story-like exposition of his authoritative teaching. It fabric is of the same fabric as the Old Testament, which is neither about God nor His story - Let alone the story of Israel or of the (ancient) Jews - but a story-like exposition of God’s teaching.” (The New Testament Introduction: Volume 4, Matthew and the Canon”, 2009, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 39) Such a shocking negation can be made when one realizes that Mark not only did NOT address the origins of Christ or sew together a cohesive narrative based on later questions about Christ’s authority or its divergence with the Jerusalem Leaders, but that the message is the substantial part of the presentation. Mark not only does not offer details, but is concerned with creating a response in the hearer, as his constant use of the word “εὐθέως” conveys! It was written in the long tradition of the “תּוֹלְדוֹת”, the generational exposition, to communicate Christ’s teachings, His Word, which is the “Seed” (זָרַע) that is the Gospel. 

Mark’s priority through the use of the word “εὐαγγέλιον”, which is the word chosen by Mark to represent the sum of the message, but upon which Matthew expands, calling it the “Gospel of the Kingdom” (“το ευαγγελιον της βασιλειας” in Matthew 24:14). (Ibid, 30) Mark was a repentant convert from the Jerusalem Camp and followed the Gospel preached by Paul to its logical conclusions. Mark’s role within the community is similar to his description of John the Baptist, preaching a message of repentance, preparing the way for the Message of Christ, the Pauline Gospel, one whose message is only complete with the coming of another. In such a way, the Baptist is clearly functioning as an archetype for the whole of the Old Testament. (Ibid, 93-94)

John the Baptist/Mark’s role transformed in the Gospel of Matthew, from the one who prepares the way to the one who preaches the same message as Christ. “John’s [the Baptist] message is none other than Jesus’, meaning that Matthew consecrates the full equivalence between the words of the former and those of the latter: to hear John the Baptist is to hear Jesus. That is to say, the Gospel of Mark is itself the gospel and there is none other.” (Ibid, 105) This shows how John Mark, for the writer of the Gospel of Matthew had become “Scripture”, an irreducible part of the witness of the Pauline Gospel to the Early Gentile Church, and the seal of authenticity for anything else that would follow in the same “lineage”. “Matthew proved to be the consummate “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven”, a “householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52), the “old” in this case being the Old Testament scripture, and the “new” the Markan material.” (Ibid, 106)

How does the Gospel of Matthew close the New Testament Canon? 

Mathew is believed by many biblical scholars to be the final book of the Gospels, contrary to Augustine and Eusebius's view that it was the  original scripture, and contrary to the Papias Fragment's insistence that Mathew first wrote in Hebrew and then it was translated into Greek (Michael W. Holmes, “The Apostolic Fathers”, Papias Fragments 3:16, 2007, Baker Academic, p. 741). This text is seen by many as referring to the lost "Gospel of the Hebrews”, an Ebionite, Nazarene or the Alexandrian text studied by Clement, Origen and Cyril that makes use of heavily Gnostic language that fuses the person of Mary with Sophia/Holy Spirit, and not to the Gospel of Matthew itself. Inner textual emphasis can lend support to this, and well as comparison to the Pauline Epistles, which are the earliest texts in the Christian Tradition. This helps to set the context of the message Luke declares, show how it differs from Mark as the original proto-Gospel, and how these are summarized and made more final from Luke in Matthew's account. 

One of the primary observations in our understanding of how Matthew sums up the Gospel Canon is shown in how Matthew discards Jerusalem altogether, while trying to reinforce the fact that Christ's message was in continuity and solidarity to Old Testament's vision. Rather than appeal to the Jewish Authority, as Mark does, or to the Greeks in Antioch, as Luke does, Matthew makes a point of appealing to the Jews in Diaspora - those who were trying to make sense of their world, post-Jerusalem. This can be seen throughout his Gospel by the way in which he apologetically defends Christ as the fulfillment of the Jewish Tradition, and in the way he completely rejects the priests and leaders of the Jewish community without appealing to them. It is clear that they are already living in a world that is sharply polemical, and Matthew’s witness of Christ’s curse on Jerusalem shows, spoken in the context of Luke’s identification of this mountain as the dwelling place of God, from the Mount of Olives. 

Matthew’s connection with the Pauline School is clear in his insistence on Christ’s table fellowship, His Communion, with those that Peter and James would later reject and whom Paul would champion. In this way, Matthew not only provides a way to continue being a true Jew by following Paul’s Gospel, he actually follows the earlier prophets, specifically Ezekiel and Jeremiah, who tried to explain and allow the Jews to accept that the Babylonian Captivity as a result of their own unrighteousness. Just as in the earlier destruction of Jerusalem, continuity of the Jewish identity could be found in loyalty to God's Word, not a place of worship or in sacrificial rites. 

If this reading is correct, this would place Matthew as the latest of the books written to testify of Christ's life according to the Jewish legal principle, "out of the mouth of two or three witnesses let a matter be confirmed” (Deuteronomy 19:15). It's authorship would squarely center in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction, but before the Christians were permanently excommunicated by anathema by the Synagogue at the hypothetical Council of Jamnia or some other Post-Jerusalem authority. In this way, Mathew’s expansion on Mark’s  Gospel would function as its final canonization and the certification of its own textual veracity! 

The Movable Jerusalem - Paul’s Gospel Discerned through Textual Comparison and Its Solution to the Problem of Missiology 

If this historical reconstruction of the Old and New Testaments is correct, the motivating factor behind both the prophetic utterance and edition of the Post-Babylonian Captivity Torah, and of the formation of its shadowing and equally world-changing Gospel, was the fall of Jerusalem. In both of these Witnesses, we see the same problem, with centralization, custom, identity, authority, prophecy and testimony. The cycle of self-justification and universalization, along with a call to repentance, martyrdom and missionary effort, all hinge upon the Holy City's desecration and the loss of an authoritative center of gravity. For a system to survive, its center must turn from the nucleus of the cell, to that of the cell wall, from the definition of personal experience to the expectation of the prophetic word within a community. In other words, it must successfully navigate from the particular to the general, from individual people and places to the God of the Universe and the expectation of a Heavenly Jerusalem, and back again. We could even go so far as to say that Scripture is the record of an observable pattern, a pendulum swing, or of a wave-like process of human consciousness, culture and history of working from inside out and then outside in, the building up of holy cities and the tearing down of the freshly constructed centers as apostate and idolatrous.

New Jerusalem Descending from Heaven

In both the biblical narrative and in the following historical record, the scene is set similarly - a center has grown up for the worship of the One God, built as a testimony to the mythos of a revelation of God upon a mountain, and it was this locus, this center, this City on a Hill, this Eden between the Rivers, this City of God, which stood as a witness to the world of God's greatness. This city had a king, who was God's representative on earth, a temple, where God was correctly worshipped and appeased, and a class of workers, priests and officials, who carried out the will of God through service to their king. These patterns appear in every culture, language, and locale – it is what makes up the basic fiber of human civilization. 

Into this ideal, stable, happy polis, a bedraggled prophet wanders - declaring that God has slated the beautiful city for destruction. He is mocked, hated, beaten, rejected. He represents everything that the people in the city fear, and his mere presence is an affront to the values on which the society has established its authority. Such was the mournful voice of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and such were the voices of John the Baptist and Paul. Both proclaimed that one system had ended and another had begun. They all focused on the universality of God’s call, they all preached repentance, they all rejected the “Holy City” and its “Temple” as corrupted and inhibiting the Word of God, rather than complementing it for what it thought it was doing - preserving, regulating, and proclaiming the truth through its temple life and its righteous laws.  

Then, it all falls apart. God's city is destroyed, its treasures plunder, its people enslaved, and the world was plunged into darkness without its "Candle on a Candle Stand", its City on a Hill. God, who had been associated with a place, with a people, and with rite, was no longer triumphant, and was lost to the world of politics as a forgotten symbol of a subjugated race. The people who were once so proud of their beautiful city and all of its accomplishments are faced with a decision - hold on to an obviously false view of grandiosity and glory, or embrace the "real world" of the conquering people. The prophets who declared God’s House indestructible are proven to be false. 

12th Century Manuscript Illustration of the "Heavenly Jerusalem"

The community is split in two, with one part of the community awaiting a restoration, and the other part explaining its history as a false construct, but with historical lessons that allow for continued ethnic and cultural survival. For both aspects of the same community, the realities eventually play out into self-fulfilling prophecies. Those that waited for a resurrection will eventually see their culture and system transformed by an adoption of extrapolation into a new context, while those who have embraced the culture of their conquerors will see how their history lesson plays out again, but this time to their conquerors - eventually leading to a perspective like the secular Jew or the Greeks in America, those who have learned to surf the raise and fall of cultures, and to see in all of them the similar tendency to self-aggrandize and a fall into ruin. 

Then, something amazing happens - a prophet's voice arises and tells the people that this is not the end of the story. Eden, Canaan, Jerusalem, Rome, or Constantinople are not the only places where God can be met, where His Presence Dwells, or where the Justice, Judgment and Equity of an Ideal King can be established into a Godly Polity. This voice takes the categories and ways of thinking that were particular to the system and expands them into a universal narrative, a pan-historical call, and a way to understand the greater world that came crashing down upon the now disproven and defeated culture in terms that are ultimately not only able to bring order to the collapse and destruction, but that can ultimately overcome these negations. Such was the voice of Ezekiel, such was the voice of Matthew. 

This good news is packaged in the terms of the particular, in the rites of the now fallen but still memorable past. But, contrary to the certainty and self-centeredness of those who came before, now the message is one of universal application. God has commanded His People, the Jews, to be a light unto the Gentiles, to invite all the world into the heavenly Jerusalem of right worship through proper faith and the hearing of God's Law; or, as in the second fall of Jerusalem, God's Law has become our King, the Messiah, and the Temple, Sacrifice, and the King are all one, unified in the person of Jesus. Now it is the gift of the Jews to the world, and the fulfillment of Ezekiel and Isaiah, to take the news of this reality, this Heavenly Kingdom, to the Gentiles. It is within their acceptance of this message that it is proven true and that God's Kingdom is established on earth. 

This was the call of Ezekiel and Isaiah, forming the context of a restoration and renewal of Israel on the foundation of its defeat and slavery. This is also the context for the New Testament canon and its reflection of Paul's extrapolation of Judaism in Galatians to its universal limit. With each of these prophetic works, the motivating and empowering energy is failure, and the resulting order that it brings to a fallen, holy, centralized system is a rapid reorientation and re-contextualization, which then allows for the universalized and authoritative system to find a new cultural basis and locational position from whence to establish a new Holy Land. 

Thus, the arch of Scriptural revelation encapsulates not only kings and cities, but whole races and countries, changing them with each fall into icons of abstractions and idealized patterns. Jerusalem falls and Constantinople is built. Rome falls and London is built. Constantinople falls and Moscow is built. London falls and New York is built. With each turn, a system collapses, a center is abstracted into a spiritual principle and influence, and center is made to represent the whole, exactly as the whole has been made to represent the center. 

Within Eastern Orthodoxy, this trend is clearly seen, as well as within Roman Catholicism and the Oriental Churches. The ensuing generations attached what was beyond Jerusalem, Heavenly Truths, to physical people, places and things, and thus re-contextualized the Gospel amongst new "People of God" and among those whose "promise of the kingdom" was a birthright into a peoplehood. As this happened, the Fathers of these faiths began to closely associate what was physical reality for them, their surroundings and customs, with that which had come before. The Greek Fathers saw the Temple of Jerusalem in their Basilicas, and increasingly, made them to reflect it. The Reformers saw the Apostles in tall leather boots and in gabled houses, and painted scenes of the last supper in High Renaissance style. Increasingly, as this trend develops, one physical thing stands for another physical thing, with the initial heavenly reality, the leap that made the original de-contextualization possible, invisible. And so, as this continues, remarkable changes take place, meanings and definitions morph, and cultures look to themselves with increasing self-assurance of their rightness and continuity, all without and understanding of what went into the process or what made the transmission and transferal possible. The true cycle of raise and fall, of the prophetic function, becomes obscured, even as it is doing its work. It is the Indian scout who tracks a moose and drags a pine-branch behind him. 

New Jerusalem on Earth

Finding Living Faith Through Paul’s Gospel

One thing that the consensus of Biblical Criticism on Paul’s Gospel reminds us of, in the process of understanding and applying Scripture, is that the process of faith is not a process of culture or of protecting an established authority. Faith is, biblically, by nature disruptive to the closed human systems that assume control as people live their quiet, day-to-day "real lives". Faith is knowledge of an experience, which is, by definition, beyond this life, beyond the perception of culture. Culture may witness to it, but culture cannot substitute for it. By nature, faith is opposed to the idea that there is an "in group", that there are those who can, by right of human ordination, initiation or agency, experience God, control God, represent God and present God as a packaged product. The prophetic experience and the witness of Apostle Paul shows that the cultural approach to religion, the establishment of boundaries, the establishment of mutual recognition and agreement as a law, and the human pride in the power of a group and the self-confidence to assume authority to stand for God, that all of these cannot spread the Gospel, and that all of these, to a point, obscure and mistreat the very thing that they try to accomplish and protect. 

Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist and Paul show us a universal vision of man's need and the saving love of God, but from an outsider's perspective.  The prophetic voice that expresses God's love in unequivocal terms is that of a "Voice Crying in the Wilderness"! Not of a system that sends its members out to gain authority by a wilderness experience, but of those who are truly and fully "cast away"; those who really suffer and bring meaning into the world by their suffering. This is the ultimate meaning of the Gospel, as Christ, the God-Man, chooses to suffer with mankind, suffer for mankind, and provide the reason for mankind’s continued suffering. It is this Gospel that brings meaning, peace, hope and salvation into the world, and it is this Gospel that all human systems of “Orthodoxy” cannot fully comprehend – being based on the goals of establishing stable society and the rule of law. 

Rediscovering the Prophetic Voice of Scripture

The process of deciphering the history of the Canon and Scriptures leads us to another place, the meaning of “inspiration” and the process of the “prophetic identity”. What it is it that the prophetic, and later on, the ascetic, was supposed to accomplish? It was the abandonment of the world of men, the thoughts of men, the constructs of men, the lies of men, and the apprehension of the truth of God, which man’s lives and derivative authority deeds upon, but cannot stand or conscience in its real presence. The prophet has always been able to see past this false face, this substitute for God, which is at best an icon and at worst an obscuring idol, and understand what is beyond, calling people to repentance, to wonder, and to interaction with the unknown. Prophets call to the edge, to the forest, to the wilderness, to the brink of human experience - into silence, darkness, and insecurity. It is when these scary, unstable, uncomfortable realities are embraced, and when the humanly constructed substitutes for the Presence of God are kicked away, that mankind can finally interact with the unknown without a complete breakdown. 

In this project, the prophet has always relied upon figures and symbols, stories, myths, that use the imagination and move the hearer/reader closer to the edges of their own experience through interaction with the unexpected, the indefinable, and the viscerally intimidating. At the edges of culture and civilization, in the “deserts” of mankind’s experience, the flame of the burning bush and the whispering of the spirit can be seen in the darkness.   

Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfeld, 1851, Christ Presenting the New Jerusalem to His Mother