I mean no disrespect, but Christian Scripture is just weird. I mentioned earlier in this episode that the New Testament opens with four biographies. If you’re a Christian listening you’re so used to this you probably don’t realise the oddness. If you’re not a Christian and you pick up the New Testament, I’m sure you’ll spot the weirdness immediately. Four biographies in a row about one person, that’s the so-called Gospels. But if you keep turning the page it doesn’t get any more normal. After the book of Acts, a brief history of the 30 years after Jesus, you’re confronted with about twenty pieces of ancient mail. The letters from church leaders like Paul to individual congregations like Thessalonica, or to groups of churches like the letter Peter wrote to Pontus, Bithynia, and Galatia.
No other religion has biographies or letters as founding scripture. Other religious books are collections of rules and rituals and philosophies and theologies. There’s lots of God speaking in the first person, as in the Koran from start to finish. But there’s something so human about Christian scripture. The biographies tell you that this faith revolves around a person, Jesus, in a way that just isn’t true of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism or Islam.
And the letters, more than twenty of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are letters, they also stress this personal dimension. The letters come from particular personalities. I mean, you can tell the difference in writing and thinking styles between, say, Paul in his letters and James, the brother of Jesus, who also wrote one of the New Testament letters.
And the recipients are all different too, they’re at different stages in their faith. They’ve got different problems and successes. There are the Philippians, right, a mature church. These guys had been joyfully backing Paul in his mission for more than a decade. The tone of that letter is mostly joyful, encouraging, overflowing with gratitude. But then there are the Corinthians. They’re only five or six years into their Christian faith by the time Paul writes this letter we call First Corinthians. And they are a glorious train wreck. They’re taking each other to court over various petty lawsuits, some are visiting prostitutes, there are bickering cliques in the church, and someone in the church has even shacked up with his mother, or maybe his mother in law. The letter is the most interesting combination of pastoral kindness and ethical hard talk. Perhaps the funnest thing about this particular letter is that for all the mistakes these new Christians were making, and for all of the apostles’ powerful moral exhortation, Paul still addresses these guys as real Christians, loved by God.
That’s the thing about biographies and letters. They keep everything very personal. And from the beginning Christians said that this is the way God has chosen to speak to us in his new covenant. He wants us to fix our eyes on the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in the gospels. And then learn how to live out this conviction in all of the messiness and disappointments of daily life, that’s what we get in the epistles. And this is why, from the beginning, Christians were willing to die for this collection of biographies and letters.
And that’s the last we hear of brave Catullinus and Marcuclius. It was probably the last anyone heard of them.
Throughout history, Christians have been willing to die for a book in significant part, a book made up of biographies of their Lord and personal letters from his ambassadors. If it’s been a while since you’ve opened a New Testament, why not give it a go and see if you find in these ancient biographies and letters that you can hear God Himself speaking to you personally.
By John Dickson
Ancient Letters
Want to hear the rest of the episode?
Check out episode 102: “Ancient Letters”
