{"id":100799,"date":"2023-06-30T23:06:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-01T05:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=100799"},"modified":"2023-06-30T23:06:54","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T05:06:54","slug":"i-will-come-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/06\/i-will-come-to-you.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI Will Come to You\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>
\u201cJesus Christ Appears to the Nephites\u201d
(Arnold Friberg, LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Astoundingly, two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201cI Will Come to You\u201d: An Investigation of Early Christian Beliefs about Post-Ascension Visitations of the Risen Jesus,\u201d<\/a> written by Timothy Gervais<\/a><\/p>\n
Abstract:<\/strong> While later Creedal Christians have come to view \u201cthe Ascension\u201d recorded in the first chapter of Acts as a conclusive corporeal appearance of the Resurrected Lord, earliest Christians do not appear to have conceived of this appearance as \u201cfinal\u201d in any temporal or experiential sense. A careful investigation of canonical resurrection literature displays a widespread Christian belief in continued and varied interaction with the risen Lord relatively late into the movements\u2019 development. Stringent readings of Luke\u2019s account of the Ascension in Acts suggesting that Christ will not return until his second coming fail to consider the theological rhetoric with which Luke conveys the resurrection traditions he relied on in composing his account. Analysis of Luke\u2019s narrative displays that his presentation of these traditions is shaped in a way to stress the primacy of the apostolic Easter experiences in establishing the apostles as authoritative \u201cwitnesses\u201d in the early church over and against possible competing authoritative claims stemming from purported experiences with the risen Lord.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cInterpreting\u00a0Interpreter<\/em>: Post-Ascension Visitations,\u201d<\/a> written by Kyler Rasmussen<\/a><\/p>\n
\n "
This post is a summary of the article \u201c\u201cI Will Come to You\u201d: An Investigation of Early Christian Beliefs about Post-Ascension Visitations of the Risen Jesus<\/a>\u201d by Timothy Gervais in Volume 57 of\u00a0Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>. An introduction to the Interpreting\u00a0Interpreter<\/em>\u00a0series is available at\u00a0https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Takeaway:<\/strong> Gervais argues that biblical accounts of visitations by the resurrected Christ show that early Christians believed that such visits could continue after the Ascension, with these accounts reflecting the rhetorical emphasis of their specific authors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>
Two men working at a metal bin of yellow cheese that is being processed at Welfare Square, a facility owned and operated in Salt Lake City, Utah, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 (LDS Media Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n "
Brooks was a professor of public administration in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York at the time Who Really Cares<\/em> was published. (Later, he became the president of the American Enterprise Institute and, since 2019, he has served as the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School<\/a> and, at Harvard\u2019s Business School,\u00a0as a Professor of Management Practice and a Faculty Fellow.\u00a0 He had been studying patterns in charitable giving and service for many years and he is widely recognized as perhaps the preeminent authority on the subject.\u00a0 Still, he reports that even he has been surprised by what he has found.<\/p>\n
Religious people, it turns out, give more to charity than do non-religious people.\u00a0 They donate more money\u2014and not merely to their churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.\u00a0 \u201cReligious people are more charitable in every measurable nonreligious way\u2014including secular donations, informal giving, and even acts of kindness and honesty\u2014than secularists.\u201d\u00a0 They are more likely to give money to family and friends, and, when they give, to do so in larger amounts.\u00a0 They are more likely to volunteer, and to give blood.\u00a0 Even in the case of non-churchgoers, those who were raised in religious households are more likely to donate to charity than those who were not.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, private charity in ever-more-secular Europe has plummeted\u2014to the point, in some areas, almost of extinction.\u00a0 Brooks, who also argues that charitable giving is essential to a strong economy, points to polling data suggesting that Europeans are, according to their own reports, less happy with their lives than Americans are, and suggests that their unhappiness may be connected with their low rates of charity and volunteerism.\u00a0 Humans feel better when they give.<\/p>\n
As befits a premiere social scientist, Brooks concentrates heavily on multiple streams of contemporary statistical data to form his judgments.\u00a0 However, the historical record also seems to support the general conclusions of his very important book.\u00a0 Rodney Stark, in his insightful study of The Rise of Christianity<\/em> (Princeton, 1996), has shown that the superior charity of the ancient Christians was among the factors in the rapid growth of the early Christian movement.\u00a0 And, as an examination of the surviving sources demonstrates, even the pagans recognized that.\u00a0 \u201cThe impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well,\u201d complained the fourth-century Roman Emperor Julian (known to subsequent history as \u201cthe Apostate\u201d for his efforts to turn back the religious tide even after his uncle Constantine had declared Christianity the official religion of the empire).\u00a0 \u201cEveryone can see that our people lack aid from us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReligion is the opiate of the people,\u201d Karl Marx famously said.\u00a0 Elsewhere, he remarked that, while \u201cphilosophers have said that the purpose of philosophy is to understand the world, the purpose is to change it.\u201d\u00a0 Religion, in his view, was a distraction from the real business of making this world a better place.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Marx\u2019s thesis, though (and, even more so, for those who had to live through the twentieth century), the millennium that just closed was heavily influenced at its end by Marxism and by a related ideology that went under the names of fascism and \u201cNational Socialism\u201d or Nazism.\u00a0 We now have quite graphic evidence of exactly how such theories tend to \u201cchange the world.\u201d\u00a0 Many tens of millions of people died\u2014and many national economies were destroyed.<\/p>\n
Religion doesn\u2019t look too bad by contrast.\u00a0 But even when contrasted with the soft secularism\u2014what one wit has called \u201capatheism\u201d\u2014that has come to dominate Europe, and perhaps Canada, and certain portions of the American elite, and even though religious people can undoubtedly do much more and much better than they are doing now, believers fare pretty well.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Astoundingly, two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u201c\u201cI Will Come to You\u201d: An Investigation of Early Christian Beliefs about Post-Ascension Visitations of the Risen Jesus,\u201d written by Timothy Gervais Abstract: While later Creedal Christians have come to view \u201cthe Ascension\u201d recorded in the first chapter of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":40890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5021,4663,24374,36362,36365,36368],"class_list":["post-100799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arthur-brooks","tag-jesus-christ","tag-kyler-rasmussen","tag-timothy-gervais","tag-visitations","tag-who-really-cares"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cI Will Come to You\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" 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