‘Written with both clarity and insight, this is a rare and enriching book, which integrates the wisdom of many spiritual traditions. Whilst illuminating the need now more than ever before to explore interspirituality, our universal commonality and deeper spiritual nature, it shows the way forward for embracing the Whole.’
~ Eileen Davies
The Powers and Christian Spirituality (extract) by Santoshan (Stephen Wollaston)
Within the Christian tradition, numerous miracles can be traced back to Jesus and the Old Testament. There is a tendency for some to think of Jesus as either a mystic or a medium with great healing abilities. But we must remember that for the majority of Christians, Jesus is neither of these as he is looked upon more through the eyes of John’s Gospel and the resolution made by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE as God (as part of the Christian Trinity). Some Hindus also believe this as they consider Jesus to be an avatar, a divine incarnation. This belief may sit uncomfortably with some. But if we are to live harmoniously in pluralistic societies with people holding different beliefs, there needs to be an acceptance of difference where we agree to disagree and respect others’ paths and seek out common ground where we can share the deeper mysteries and practices of an authentic spirituality.
Much is popularly known about the miracles of Jesus such as curing those who were blind, sick or lame, bringing Lazarus back to life, calming a storm, walking on water and turning water into wine. His miracles were seen by some of his followers to be signs that he was the expected Messiah and that God’s new kingdom was about to come. However, for some Christians his miracles are not looked upon for authenticating his status as according to Matthew’s Gospel Jesus refused to perform them for that purpose (12:38-39). Yet John’s Gospel mentions Jesus performing seven signs that show him to be the one who has come from heaven to provide eternal life. But it is perhaps the way in which he is said to have both entered and left the world that are thought to be the most miraculous events in his life.
Jesus’s virgin birth is told differently in two of the four canonical Gospels. It is also told differently in the Muslim Qur’an, which credits the infant Jesus with the ability to speak. It seems extraordinary that what is seen to be an important event by many Christians is not mentioned in the Mark or John Gospels – the beginning of John’s Gospel associates Jesus with the divine Logos and mentions how the Word was made flesh, and there is only a scant reference to Jesus’s mother in Mark 6:3, of which neither mention anything about a virgin birth – and raises questions as to whether it was something that was added to Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels in an attempt to give more weight to Jesus’s importance. There has also been some research into Jesus’s human birth being deliberately played down as there were some who wanted to see him as solely divine. In Bart D Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted he mentions how the writer of Matthew’s Gospel is drawing on a prophetic saying by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah about a ‘young woman’ conceiving (alma in Hebrew), which Ehrman points out ‘came to be rendered into the Greek word for virgin (parthenos), and that is the form of the [translation of the Hebrew] Bible that [the author of] Matthew read’.
Not all Christians believe in the virgin birth of course – see John Shelby Spong’s book Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Treatment of Women by a Male-Dominated Church – and accept that the retelling of a holy man or woman’s life can become more embellished and elaborated over the years. Many important figures in the past such as Alexander the Great and the Buddha were also credited with virgin births. Interestingly, the Gospel of Thomas and the contents of the speculated lost Q Gospel – the letter Q is an abbreviation of the German word quelle meaning ‘source’ – focus more on Jesus’s teachings rather than on his life and deeds. In recent years, the Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault has also written about Jesus being a great wisdom teacher.
The accounts of Jesus’s resurrection is a different matter and is recorded in all of the four canonical Gospels, but each gives a different account of what actually happened. In Chapter 28 of Matthew’s Gospel it describes how Mary Magdalene and the ‘other Mary’ find Jesus’s tomb empty and how an angel tells them that Jesus has risen, after which they meet Jesus on their way to tell the apostles what had just happened. Though perhaps we should say ‘other apostles’ if we accept the view of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which sees her as one of the main and most important disciples with secret teachings of Jesus and fitting the role of an apostle herself. What the Gospels show us is that Mary Magdalene is in fact ‘an apostle to the apostles’ as she is described as the first (John’s Gospel) or amongst the first to bring them news about Jesus’s resurrection – in the synoptic Gospels she is divinely appointed to tell the male disciples this. In 2016 the Vatican officially recognised this important role of Mary’s.
The oldest of the canonical Gospels is now thought to be Mark’s Gospel, of which the original ended at Chapter 16, Verse 8. Verses 9-20 were added later. Mark describes how Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, find the tomb empty and meet a young man in white who informs them that Jesus has risen.
In Chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, Cleopas, who is someone we know nothing about, and another disciple are the first to be mentioned as seeing Jesus, and there are several women, including Mary Magdalene, who go to the tomb, find it empty and are met there by two men wearing shining clothes who ask them why they are ‘looking for the living amongst the dead’.
In Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel, only Mary Magdalene is said to have gone to the tomb and found it empty. After this she tells Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, who then make their way to the tomb to see for themselves. It is only once they have gone back to where they were staying that Mary Magdalene then sees two angels in white who ask her why she is crying and then sees Jesus, who tells her not to hold onto to him as he has not yet returned to his Father.
The contradictions in the four Gospel accounts obviously make us wonder just how much of them are reliable. But we have to remember they cannot be read in exactly the same way as contemporary historical documents of events although some Christians try to do this. They are testaments of faith and can also be compared to ways in which people remember things differently today about events that have happened. Modern-day police are only too aware of the latter when taking notes from witnesses at crime scenes. But the Bible’s written Gospels are not direct eye-witness accounts as the stories were first shared orally over a period of time before being written down in Greek. In addition to this, the term ‘resurrection’ is symbolic language and can mean different things to different people. The finding of the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene’s involvement as a chief witness are the only consistent elements.
In analysis, the question has to be asked as to whether an empty tomb implies that Jesus’s physical body was actually resurrected or not. (Interestingly there are stories of Tibetan yogis and lamas whose bodies are said to have disappeared on their death.) Some biblical scholars believe the fact that women are featured so heavily in the Gospel accounts adds validity to them, as prejudice towards women in Jesus’s time shows they were not usually looked upon as reliable witnesses in places such as a Jewish court of law. Therefore, if someone was to fabricate a story of this kind during that period and wanted to convince others about its credibility, he or she would not have included women as central eye-witnesses, especially someone with Mary Magdalene’s possibly implied troublesome past. However, Bart D Ehrman points out in How Jesus Became God that we are not talking about a Jewish lawcourt but an oral tradition in which women were well-represented in its early years and played crucial roles ministering as deacons, leading services in their homes and engaging in missionary activities.
Coming back to Mary Magdalene, we are not told exactly what was wrong with her, although Luke’s Gospel tells us that seven demons were cast out of her (8:2), which could simply mean she was suffering from such things as depression or too much pride but then became more spiritually whole and balanced. She is, however, one of Jesus’s closest and most devoted followers. The idea of her being a prostitute is now accepted as a later misinterpretation of the Gospel texts that was done deliberately to underplay the important role of women in the early Jesus movement. Many now consider the historical Jesus to have been an early feminist because of his inclusive attitude towards women. Also, in the original Greek language that Romans was written in, Paul describes Andronicus and Junia as the foremost among the apostles (16:7). Junia is a female name which seems to have been deliberately translated into the male name Junius in many English translations.
Jesus’s famous saying, ‘I and the Father are One’ (John 10:30) is his most fascinating statement. For some Christians it is thought to confirm his special divine status – in Elaine Pagels’ Beyond Belief she mentions that in the Jewish tradition in biblical times the titles ‘Son of God’ and ‘Messiah’ that are connected to Jesus and have come to imply his unique divinity in various Christian circles, would have designated someone who was Israel’s human king. For others, Jesus’s saying is seen as being no different to the insights of various mystics who realised in the deepest depth of their being there is a supreme sacred oneness that connects us with all life. This corresponds more with the teachings of the Gospel of Thomas, which encourage us to realise that the kingdom of God is both within and all around us. Interestingly, some texts such as the Thomas Gospel are sometimes referred to as ‘apocryphal’. Although this word has come to imply an unreliable source of reference, it has its roots in the Greek language and actually means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’. Implying that the teachings are meant to be understood more esoterically.
Jesus’s transfiguration, where it is said his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light (Matt. 17:2) or a flash of lightening (Luke 9:28) has become a popular episode in his life for some Spiritualists to identify with. There are indeed some parts of the event that are comparable to Spiritualistic types of physical phenomena such as the materialisation of the deceased Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:3 and Luke 9:30) and a discarnate voice that spoke to Peter, James and John (Matt. 17:5). The mention of a bright cloud that enveloped them (Matt. 17:2) was speculated by James F Malcolm to possibly be ectoplasm. But as so little information is given about this cloud we cannot really say what it was or why it was there.
Another episode in the life of Jesus shows him having the ability to foretell his own arrest, which can be seen in Matthew’s Gospel where he tells his disciples he will be betrayed by one of them (26:21). Controversially the Gnostic Gospel of Judas has raised some questions about whether Jesus planned his own death or not, even though the idea of martyrdom is not advocated in the text. Ideas held by many Christians about Jesus’s crucifixion and death being an act of atonement or bringing about salvation for humanity, which draws on passages in Corinthians and the Mark and John Gospels, has some similarities with a practice found in Yogic traditions where a guru may voluntarily take on the karma of a disciple or community in order to advance their spiritual evolvement.
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