Think You Know what Really Happened at the Cross? Think Again (w/ Dr. Eugenia Constantinou)

this sort of transactional idea or this very legalistic idea is foreign to the new testament people read it into the new testament because that's the mentality that they're starting with but i would challenge people to realize that that's not the mentality of the early church [Music] well hey everyone what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin and this is gospel simplicity a place where we seek to bring simplicity out of theological and historical complexity today we're getting to dive into a topic that i think we mistakenly think as simple or maybe even simplistic it's something that we've become so familiar with that we've lost the nuance of it we've lost the depth of it and really being able to see it in its true sense and that's the cross that is the the death of jesus for so many of us it's a bible story that we grew up with and well that's it jesus died because well he died for our sins and that's it and that's what had to happen i read it in the bible and there's that i know this story let's get on to the next thing but in this conversation with dr constantino we're taking a second look at the cross and she's challenging us to look at the historical context to really understand all of what was going on there the trials that the old testament context the jewish context the roman law all of these things and how that fed into the crucifixion of jesus ultimately ending up with a place of well then what does the cross mean i really enjoyed this conversation and i think you are going to as well and if you enjoy this show and these conversations and you want to allow this show to keep going and growing and you want to support it you can go to patreon.comsimplicity to become a supporter of the show you'll get all types of fun perks like discounts on merch or maybe free merch depends on the tier you sign up for but in all of that you also have my deepest gratitude for allowing this to continue happening so thank you all who do that that's patreon.com gospel simplicity well today i am joined by dr eugenia constantino dr eugenia constantino holds up well before i get into it i'll say she holds more and more diverse degrees than anyone else i think i've ever interviewed so buckle up she holds a bachelor's degree in religious studies and a master of arts degree in practical theology from the university of san diego she received a master of theology degree from holy cross greek orthodox school of theology in 1996 where she specialized in orthodox theology and patriotistics she also received a master of theology from a small school you might have heard of called harvard divinity school in 1998 where she specialized in the new testament she had also previously earned a juris doctorate degree from pepperdine university school of law in 1985 and has been a member of the california bar since that same year dr constantino received her phd at universite laval in quebec city canada in 2007 writing her doctoral dissertation on andrew of caesarea and the apocalypse and the ancient church of the east today we're going to be talking about her newest book the crucifixion of the king of glory looking at the passion of christ and really digging into it and using that diverse background to kind of shed some light on it so dr constantino thank you so much for being here again thank you austin it's a pleasure to be back with you again well the pleasure is certainly mine as well i really enjoyed our last conversation and i'm excited to have you back on the channel it's always a joy having guests on for a second time getting to kind of continue the conversation and explore other things as well and when you sent your book i was really excited to get to dive into it a bit and to have this conversation and so you start your book on this very kind of just like realistic level of the fact is there have been a lot of books written on the crucifixion and i think it's smart to kind of answer that question that people might have of why another book right there's lots of them out there what is this one offering and i think you answer that question really well showing your diverse background and how that offers something for this but i'd love for you to share that with people who might be watching this video and thinking okay i've got a lot of books to read you know why this one and what uh what does this one specifically bring what specific angle or light can you shed on this topic well um you're right there are many books on the crucifixion but what i have found as i was doing my research because i've been talking about this for for many actually decades i've been giving lectures about the crucifixion of christ but um i realized that i have a unique set of uh of talents and background in terms of my education that i haven't seen anywhere else to tell you the truth when i would read biblical commentaries let's say commentaries written by bible scholars so they have knowledge real good knowledge about the bible let's say first century judaism and maybe even roman history they don't know roman law okay or they don't really understand medicine so you read books on the crucifixion written by medical doctors but they don't really know anything about roman law or they're not bible scholars or you read books by theologians or pastors and they're more kind of spiritual they're about the meaning of the cross they're pastoral and i haven't seen any book that really tries to cover everything and also i read a very nice book not too long ago about by a by historian who has made some very interesting observations about the crucifixion of jesus not a a classical historian but he's not a bible scholar so there were many things that i found that were wrong with his analysis and his conclusions and so um i have a unique set of talents that intersect at this i have a strong background in biblical studies i've been a professor i have a phd i have a background in roman empire because that was very much part of my doctoral dissertation having to do with the book of revelation i was an attorney i worked as an attorney and i spent a lot of time reading medical records and having to explain them to someone so that's the only actual education i'm lacking but i have experience in that so i got my i wrote my master's thesis for harvard divinity on roman trial procedures um in the provinces in the first century and according to roman law and in order to do that i had to really study um the mentality and the structure of roman law and this is something that most bible scholars don't have so and then of course i have my knowledge of first century judaism the from being a bible scholar so i haven't run across anybody else or any anybody else who writes they might write about those things but they don't have actual knowledge and expertise in those areas and so i'm trying to bring all of this together from a christian perspective to also talk about the meaning of some of these things and also what i really want is not just facts because i can tell people facts but i want people to be able to dive into the story and really see what happened to jesus from sort of an inside perspective it reminds me of they used to have these series of movies a long time ago even when they were old even when i was a kid that was said you are there so they tried to give you insight into historical events as though you were a witness to them and so i hope that i'm not just giving facts but also giving people a sense of what it was really like to live at that time and to experience the things that jesus did that's fascinating and i think you really pull that together well in this book i remember one thing i was really struck by that we'll talk about in a second is all the chapters on the trial of jesus which is just not something that often gets highlighted it's kind of like this little side note like yeah this happened but let's kind of rush to the cross or rush to the resurrection or whatnot and like you said you've got books from you know maybe one of these perspectives but being able to pull multiple perspectives in i think makes for a really interesting read and i think it will make for a fun conversation today as well but one thing that you start with in your book after kind of giving the apologetic if you will for you know why this book exists is talking about some of the uh the what what led up to the crucifixion and you mentioned uh three main things that kind of led to that and i'd like to start kind of by probing these questions what led to the crucifixion of jesus and perhaps we could start with what you talk about as one of the the first causes and this was the raising of lazarus because again i think we tend to kind of get tunnel vision if we're going to talk about the passion like well that's not in the passion week so that gets left for another book that's in a miracle book or something like this but talk to me about how that led up to this crucifixion right um well that is that is actually the raising of lazarus is how orthodox orthodox christian holy week begins because we very much focus on the connection between the raising of lazarus and the entrance into the um into the city of jerusalem because john the evangelist tells us specifically that it was because of the raising of lazarus that these huge crowds met jesus and escorted him into the city in jerusalem on what we celebrate as palm sunday so that's a very biblical thing so it's very important that we remember the historical setting and and are sort of honest and true about that so the orthodox church has always emphasized the raising of lazarus and so that was a very natural thing for me but it also of course is consistent with the biblical witness so how did the raising of lazarus affect the decision to put jesus to death because actually we see a lot of plots against jesus like in mark's gospel it's chapter one you know with a with the exorcism that is at the beginning of mark's gospel immediately they want to destroy him we see this a lot we see this in luke's chapter of four when he talks about jesus's first appearance at the synagogue in nazareth and they try to put him to death right then right so there were lots of places and times in which people really wanted to destroy jesus put him to death or whatever but it is really the raising of lazarus that seems to be a very important catalyst because if we look at the gospel of john raising of lazarus is in chapter 11 right after that happens there are people who rejoice and they go home with mary and martha and lazarus to celebrate his raising but other people run immediately to jerusalem where they inform the sanhedrin about what happened and they call an emergency meeting right and they say what are we going to do about jesus of nazareth he does too many signs if we let him go on this way everybody's going to follow him so they are very concerned about their position about their authority about the money that they make because they're in charge of the temple so the racing of lazarus is a major impetus for them to make a decision and that's when they resolve that's what john says they make a decision they pass a resolution we could say in other words as a body that he's going to be put to death and this is of course the high priest is the one who says you don't seem to understand he has to die it's better for one man to die for than for the whole nation to be destroyed so as a formal body that actually has the power to get someone executed this is an important um factor that leads directly and very quickly to the crucifixion yeah i think that's really interesting and i think so often we've become so saturated and just so familiar with these stories at least a lot of people in this audience that we don't even really ask the question like why was jesus killed well of course he had he had to die because you know we needed him to die for our sins or whatever answer we give there and it kind of takes all the human elements out of it of like but but why did this happen and how and i think when we can enter into that story we can maybe get fresh lenses for this which i hope is what people experience in this book and one thing i think that might be helpful we don't have to go too far on this but even that comment there that i think a lot of people be like oh yeah i remember that you know the sanhedrin they say like well better for one man to die than the whole nation but i think we don't step back and say wait like why was raising someone going to put the nation in trouble like why was that the answer they were giving and so if you don't mind maybe just dive into that a little bit because i think we're so accustomed to just like ah right that was the connection but i think it's good to go back and see oh this is kind of the way they were seeing it they're not just the people that are contained you know between the leather bindings but but they were thinking through things there yes yes i'm glad you brought that up because one of the main reasons why i wrote the book is because these stories are so familiar to us as christians we actually think we know it already and the fact is we really don't understand what happened because the gospels only give us a bare outline remember that most of these stories were told orally so the gospels are just a sort of a brief explanation of what happened in written form but the story about what happened all the backstory is something that was very well known in the early church and conveyed orally so early christians understood this they didn't and they also lived in that time and culture so they didn't need the explanation we need the explanation today for why jesus was considered a threat to the jewish leadership well there are many reasons and i talk about those in the book and also i like the fact that you mentioned these are real people caiaphas the chief priests pilot these are real people they have real concerns i think that once we explain it we begin to understand that from their perspective it's very logical that jesus deserves to die and this is why he needs to die so it also removes it also prevents them from becoming caricatures you know of course they're just these evil people who for for so absolutely no real reason decide that jesus has to die there's an actual reason you know and i sometimes think that if i was one of them i would probably have agreed with them you know because of they have their own unique way of understanding the world and it's very important that we understand these events from their eyes because they live in a different culture so many of the objections that we receive for the gospels against objections that the gospels are not truthful the gospels are not accurate are because people are analyzing them according to the presumptions of our culture and that did not operate those presumptions did not were not part of the world view of these people so i'm sorry for the long kind of introduction so why was jesus a threat he was a threat to the chief priests and the high priest because of the because of the cleansing of the temple and this is a major factor that we don't recognize the cleansing of the temple is one of the few stories that is found in all four gospels so that alone should tell us that that was a very important event and it's not just that jesus kind of lost his temper and decided to trash the temple you know what i mean well christians don't understand that they kind of think oh well jesus lost his temper you know i when i get angry uh i i lose my temper okay well jesus lost his temper too it's not that he lost his temper it was a statement and it was a prophetic act but he was also criticizing the corruption of the chief priests and the high priest the chief priests ran the temple this was the seat of their authority this was how they got their money this was where they had their power and how they had their power the chief priests were not like the ordinary priests like zachariah the father of john the baptist the chief priests were the elite of the jewish aristocracy and they cooperated with rome 100 percent so we have this assumption that because the romans are occupiers the chief priests or the high priest would be at odds with them but the reason why these people are in power is because rome allows them to be in power and so they have to cooperate with rome and if they didn't they would be removed by the romans so they cooperated very closely with the romans and because of this they were extremely corrupt and i'm not saying this as a christian the information that is in the book shows that this corruption was known and it is discussed in jewish sources it was known among jews at the time and we find lots of evidence of this in the jewish sources from the first century bc the first century of the common era a.d and in later jewish sources they talk about how corrupt the chief priests and high priests were and this is something that christians aren't aware of so jesus threatens the temple establishment now the cleansing of the temple is the charge that opens his trial this fellow said i will destroy the temple right and in three days build it up again he never threatened to destroy the temple he never said that he said to them destroy this temple and the three days i will raise it up again but this idea that there would be a new temple that would be brought by the messiah was also part of the jewish mentality at the time it was part of the prophecies that the messiah would bring a new temple so this is very much part of the trial so you see that that's a prime reason why he's put on trial but not just his threat against the temple but be beyond that the fact that he he creates a threat to stability because jesus was very popular so this idea that jesus only had 12 disciples that's ridiculous jesus had thousands and thousands of followers and they were concerned that he might start a rebellion against rome and they would lose their power and their authority so this is the the real danger that he posed in their eyes it's no secret that today perhaps more than ever people are struggling with their mental health i think if i asked you all to virtually raise your hand and said hey are you currently struggling have you ever do you consistently struggle with mental health be it anxiety depression or whatever i think many of us myself included would raise our hand and say yeah like things get hard sometimes and sometimes it feels like more than we can handle the problem is despite facing these difficult circumstances and dealing with these mental health crises at times so few of us end up actually getting the help that we need it might be because it can take so long to get into a counselor or therapist or you think it's going to be too much or maybe there's this thought in the back of your head that christians aren't allowed to have mental health problems or does that mean there's something wrong with me well from the beginning of my channel far before it had any type of reach or influence i have wanted to help do my part to help end that stigma that's why one of my first videos i ever made was titled you can have jesus and a therapist too hoping that that would give people the permission to go out and get the help they need without being worried about these shameful stigmas that people have attached to it well now i am so excited to be partnering with faithful counseling who is who are leading the charge and helping people get the help they need rather than having to wait months to get into a counselor if you sign up for faithful counseling you can be paired with a counselor in 24 hours or less i don't know if you've ever attempted to do something like this through traditional avenues but if you have you know just how crazy it is to be able to pair up with someone that quickly all of their counselors are licensed and have over 3 000 hours of experience you can connect with them in flexible ways you can do uh video sessions phone calls uh private messaging it is really fantastic they even have a live chat it is such an amazing service i'm so excited to be partnering with them and i'd really encourage you to check them out by going to faithfulcounseling.com gospel simplicity if you do so you'll get 10 off your first month and i think it will be really really helpful for you now i do want to say that this isn't a crisis line and if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or ideation i would encourage you so so much to not go through this alone but to reach out to a crisis line i'll put one on the screen here but if you are looking for mental health help i think faithful counseling can be great for you they will connect you with a christian counselor and i know people come to my channel from a variety of backgrounds so if you want one specifically from your christian denomination they will work with you to try to make that happen so that you can get christian mental health help i think it's going to be fantastic for you i can't wait for you to check it out again that's faithfulcounseling.com gospel simplicity you get 10 off your first month after that will be 260 per month but there is financial aid available for those who qualify once again guys don't hesitate to get the hell help you need faithfulcounseling.com gospel simplicity yeah i think that's so important to be able to enter into that because being so far removed and yet feeling so familiar with these stories we often forget just how much time and space and cultural difference exists between us and these stories and we don't see the machinations of empire and how kind of corruption are all playing into this we just take it as a bible story and it has this nice moral message about what to do but but we miss and not to say that it's you know doesn't have things to teach us of course it does but there's so much texture and layers there and i think you know i i didn't initially put this on the outline but i think it might be a worthwhile time to just address this as you do in your book because i noticed you being careful with your language there or at least it seemed of talking about the chief priest the high priest the corruption there and then yes not just the kind of painting with this huge broad brush and i think there's two things i want to say there one is i appreciate how you note that it's not just like a christian view this is in the jewish sources i remember when i sat down one time with a jewish rabbi i was shocked to find and probably you know badly on my part to be naive but he's like i hope you realize when we read this story i don't see like these chief priests as these heroes like we think these were corrupt guys these aren't these wonderful exemplars and you talk in your book about the fact that we want to be careful to not kind of swing to different extremes but that there is this christian it's in the christian traditioner in uh christian history to talk about these things and these like easy dichotomies of like the jews bad and the christians good and like that was the conflict but it's a little more nuanced than that do you mind just touching on that just for a second as people digest this yes thanks for bringing that up because um i am very careful about this because we have to remember that all of the followers of jesus were jews he didn't have a ministry to gentiles he had a ministry to jews and all of the first believers for a long time we don't know exactly how long but for at least for a year or two or three all of the first believers were jews so um it's a fallacy to think that that that no jews believed in jesus this is ridiculous so all of the apostles of course other disciples mary the brothers of jesus all became part of the early church and so he had many many thousands of followers and people who believed him to be the messiah that's what made the chief priest and high priest nervous so it's very important that we not speak about the jews as a category and historically if we look at the gospels even though jesus had opponents and we understand why we should at least we should understand why he was opposed by the pharisees what ideas did they have about themselves about judaism that led them to condemn jesus as a law breaker as a bad rabbi as a bad example we should understand enough about first century judaism to understand what was their gripe with jesus otherwise we're not understanding the gospels okay but then when we look at actually who is involved in orchestrating his death that seems to be almost entirely the chief priests so it is the chief priests and the sanhedrin that make that resolution after the destruction after the raising of lazarus to put him to death it is the chief priests who confront him after the cleansing of the temple by whose authority do you do this it is the chief priest who to whom judas goes they're the ones who give him the money to betray jesus is the chief priest that creates the arresting party that go and arrest jesus in the garden it's the chief priests who take him to pilate it's the chief priest who makes sure that barabbas is the one who's released if you read carefully you will see that it's not all the jews it's actually a very small group and there were the ones who had everything to lose they lost they were the ones who stood to lose their power their authority and their money because they got their wealth because they were in charge of the temple and they were very corrupt and this is why we need to distinguish between that and as you said not paint all jews with a broad brush all jews were not responsible for the death of jesus even then and they certainly aren't responsible today so we should be very careful about that and very sensitive to the fact that the jews are very sensitive to this yeah right i think understandably so given the the mistreatment that has occurred and i think as christians we we can't hide from that that we have to recognize that and do better now and be more honest with the sources and be more nuanced in our thinking which is what we should always be doing that's right and not but we so i wanted to be very honest with the book that first of all not not all jews were responsible for the death of jesus but at the same time we can't say that no jews were responsible because i've had people say oh that's anti-semitism well it's not simply to recognize that some jews were involved in the crucifixion of jesus is not anti-semitic it's just a historical fact so there are some jews who are so sensitive to this they try to distance themselves completely and say jews had nothing to do with it it was entirely the romans that's not true either so rather than as i said i prefer to avoid extremes and sort of charter middle course because that usually that's where the truth lies and it does here yeah and thanks for circling back to that i had said that to extremes and and never clarified what i was getting at there but i'm glad you picked up on that and so i i think with that idea in mind um it segues well to the trial of jesus because in that you split it out between the jewish trial and the roman trial and note that both of these are of significance and they come together i think in an interesting way in the death of jesus and again i think at least in my experience i can't speak for everyone these things are often like just little formalities on the way to the main event right like like yeah the trial and but we know he's going to the cross so you know why do we care about the trial we know how it ends and even in some of the cases it's like well let's not dwell on the cross i mean we've got the resurrection and it's good and so i think it's so good to kind of slow down here and look at what's happening because again this isn't just for like the academic fulfillment even though it is intellectually and academically fulfilling to learn these things but it allows us to be better more faithful readers of the text and to really enter into that and to appreciate all of what's going on more so as we look at the trials here maybe we could start with the jewish trial what's going on there and why is it important that we understand it okay so the jewish trial of course there's there's a lot that we could say about it and i just spent a lot of pages it's one of the longer chapters because in this trial is of course he's condemned officially by by the jews so in the jewish trial jesus is put on trial in the middle of the night i talked about the legality of that according to jewish law and um they bring a lot of witnesses which is very interesting why do they and why does matthew say um they many false witnesses they were looking for false witnesses many false witnesses but there were no witnesses well there you had to have two witnesses that agreed on exactly the same thing but they had trouble finding that because jesus really didn't do anything that was deserving of death he didn't even you know but even the the what they considered to be a threat of the temple they knew he wasn't threatening the temple because at the time that he cleanses the temple they said it's taken 46 years to build the temple and you're going to build it in three days so they knew he wasn't really threatening the temple but they bring in a string of witnesses and finally two of them say that he threatened to destroy the temple okay first of all even that is not a capital offense although jeremiah there's a certain jeremiah overtowns in the gospel of matthew jeremiah was also sentenced to death for predicting the destruction of the temple so that starts this trial and of course jesus is silent and um then the the high priest puts him under oath with a with a formula that's found in the old testament and in the mishnah i adjure you tell us if you are the christ so i explained in the book the connection between the threat to the temple and the idea of jesus possibly being the messiah there were prophecies about this okay so this is why in their minds they connect is it's not until people testify that he threatened to destroy the temple and rebuild it that the high priest actually asks a question of jesus and it's a question about the messiah first he says you have anything to say for yourself and jesus doesn't answer then jesus is compelled to answer by the form of the question so i explained that also but let's talk about the question and the reply first of all it's a very important question because it is exactly who jesus is tell us if you are the messiah the son of the living god so the reason why that's important is that that is the ex that is a confession of the church that was the confession of saint peter who do people say that i am who do you say that i am you are the messiah the son of god so the high priest out of the high priest's mouth comes the very confession of the church and it is the reason why jesus is condemned so jesus is condemned to death for who he is not for doing anything wrong right but for who he actually is of course they don't accept that but what matters also is how jesus affirms it so he says tell us if you're the messiah and jesus says you say so or you have said so see e bus so i explain how this is a characteristic response of jesus because even christians don't understand what is jesus saying is he saying you said so i didn't say so is he saying you said so you got it is it an affirmative is it a negative is it ambivalent is he being evasive so you believe me i have read commentaries that have said all of those things commentaries by bible scholars some say it's negative some say it's affirmative some say it's neither it's definitely an affirmative answer and i explained in the book why he's that is a yes you said so is a yes but it's jesus's way of saying yes and there's a reason why he says he doesn't just say yes he says you said so there's a reason for that but then he goes on and he by what he says after that jesus virtually guarantees his crucifixion prior to that they don't have a reason to put him to death and even with that statement alone it's not enough to put him to death first of all jesus is not sentenced to death for claiming to be the messiah that is not a crime under jewish law there were plenty of people who claimed to be the messiah in jewish history and most recently a rabbi in the 1990s claimed to be the messiah his followers some of them still believe he's the messiah a rabbi in new york in this in this ultra orthodox group so being the messiah is not a problem it's the son of god part that is the problem but even then that alone can be understood in different ways because son of god you are all sons of the most high that's in the psalms so you we we even we also along with the jews have this idea that all of us are children of god in a kind of adoptive sense all right so that alone was not enough even his affirmation that he is son of god was not enough to uh render the death penalty or to proclaim that he deserves the death penalty so it's what happened what he says after that and this is when we see the reaction of the high priest he says jesus said you have said so and furthermore or from now on you will see the son of man he's referring to himself seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven all right that is a direct allusion to the prophecy of daniel in which the son of man is given authority and power from the ancient of days in daniel chapter 7. so this is a clear statement of divinity but to a person who doesn't know the daniel prophecy who doesn't know you know jewish thought it just sounds like jesus is kind of describing i was going to be floating on the clouds or something it sounds like a poetic embellishment rather than a clear statement of divinity this person whom daniel saw seated at the right hand of god to whom god gave all of his authority is this is divinity because nobody co-rules with god except god so they understood exactly what he was saying and this is when the high priest stands up and tears his robe and says he has uttered blasphemy can you see how that's a clear statement of divinity in the way that you have said so wasn't but they understand exactly what he's saying now all through his ministry jesus referred to himself as the son of man and christians often don't understand what that means that was an illusion to that but a son of man referring to yourself a son of man was also a way of just referring to yourself indirectly in the third person so all through his ministry i'm sure many of the pharisees and the scribes and the sadducees and other jewish leaders like the chief priests were thinking he might be claiming divinity but we're not sure he might be claiming to be that person that daniel saw in his vision but we're not sure because son of man was another way to just refer to yourself you see son of man is a way that is a term that jesus used when he was claiming authority that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins the son of man is the lord of the sabbath the son of man will separate the sheep from the goats that kind of a thing so whenever he refers to his authority as god he uses son of man language you see and also when he refers to his impending suffering he refuses son of uses son of man language so it's never jesus referring to his human nature it's never that okay it never is that's not what it means but it's not so the the the importance of what jesus said is lost on most christians because they don't understand how that fits in with um the prophecy of daniel and the vision of daniel yeah and i think there's uh as clear of a reason well maybe not you know i'm sure there's many good reasons but there's a good reason for people to read their old testament you know like that that first two-thirds of the bible that we tend to ignore you know um i i just but only partially because i've heard so many people say like oh isn't it so cool that and and they're trying to express a good thing and i don't want to make light of that but like yeah that jesus could identify as son of god like he he is fully god any son of man like he's fully man and that is true like we affirm calcidon like this is good but we're not making sense of those titles well and when we actually see son of man wasn't a casual thing like you said when he clearly connects it there with the prophecy in daniel like that is the tearing of the robes this is the high water point and if he was just saying like yeah a human i don't think you know you're right he's not it's not incorrect to say that he's a human being because he was but that really cheapens and weakens and misrepresents what jesus is saying again and again again when he identifies himself as son of man and claims authority because he has the authority as god to change the sabbath rules to forgive sins not because of his humanity but because of his divinity so if you think that he's saying i as a human being can forgive sins that is not what he's saying so thanks for making that clear yet what people say because they don't know it's not an expression we use in the church which is very interesting have you ever thought about that we call jesus lord and savior you know um and messiah christ but we never the church never used the term son of man we don't have hymns and you know at least the early church never did i don't know what if any protestants are using that calling him son of man but that was a title that he used nobody else called him son of man that was his self-identification and the church didn't adopt that because he always used it when referring to himself and so yes but we don't say he's the son of gods that a man was human and divine so it's better to stick with that and make sure that we understand each other and that we don't misuse the title son of man yeah that is really interesting how it didn't get picked up there and that seems to uh be being interesting perhaps the reason why the early church knew what it meant yeah and and that jesus used it to refer to himself so we don't use it to refer to him because it's it's it's referring specifically to again to his divinity through the vision of daniel yeah that's fascinating all right i want to pivot just a little bit staying within this kind of motif of trial but the roman trial because we don't just have the jewish trial we have the roman trial as well and if people aren't familiar with their old testaments they're probably even less familiar with the roman law i i might be going out on a whim uh like there but you know i think i feel safe doing so so speak a bit about what what's going on there that many of us are probably missing oh there's a lot that's going on that that people are missing uh i'll i'll just sort of give you a little bit of a highlight and and i'll i'll i'll connect this to pilate because this is one of the things that people uh criticize most about the gospels they will say and you know having read the introduction to the book i explain why the gospels are reliable as historical documents it's tragic it is tragic that bible scholars tend to dismiss details in the gospels as unhistorical whereas classical historians romanists and others consider the bible here i'm thinking about the new testament the gospels as reliable sources of historical information and i explain why that is and there's a lot of it's an unfortunate trend in biblical studies that bible scholars think that in order to be sort of open-minded and intelligent and unbiased we have to say that the gospels are not historically trustworthy there are too many who say this it's ridiculous but this is where pilate comes in many people including bible scholars will say that the gospel depiction of pilate is not accurate because in the gospels in terms of his trial the trial of christ because we know from other sources that pilate was a very tough cookie he was a you know roman governor in judea which was not an easy place and he had to deal with criminals and he sent us a lot of people to death and because we know that he dealt very harshly with people that the gospel portrayal of jesus and his trial with pilate is inaccurate and it was usually it's explained as it was the goth the evangelist trying to sort of make points with rome so that the romans wouldn't persecute the christians to blame the jews for the death of jesus rather than a roman governor so i explained why that's completely wrong but i want to say why pilate would have been reelected to put jesus to death okay this is how the gospel is portrayed first of all it's in all four gospels that pilate is reluctant to put jesus to death and after i explain it hopefully that will make sense because when people give their reasons why the gospels are inaccurate it makes sense to us in our logical 21st century minds but i'm going to explain to you why it made sense that pilate was reluctant to put jesus to death and in order to understand that you have to have a first century mind you see this is the problem if we don't understand the historical context we're analyzing the the bible the first century writings the new testament with the mind of a 21st century person rather than with the mind with the thronima to refer back to my earlier book of the early church okay so that's why we have to have the mind of the early church in order to understand the writings of the early church in the gospels or writings of the early church so let me explain to you what happened now all four gospels all they're consistent they were written by four different people in four different places at four different times to four different audiences by the way and they are consistent in what they say about pilate he was reluctant to execute jesus that in itself should be very strong evidence of the truth of that okay by the way the romans did not persecute the christians because the christians blamed the romans for the death of jesus so they would not have stopped persecuting christians if they if the blame was shifted to the jews so that argument is totally bogus all right so we have four portrayals and when you have four different authors for ford at writing in four different places unconnected to each other saying the same thing that alone should stand as very strong evidence of the truth but i'm going to explain to you from a logical perspective why pilate was reluctant to to execute jesus so the the most information about the the conversation between jesus and pilate comes from john's gospel so jesus is condemned to death by the jewish leaders on the charge of blasphemy so they bring him to pilate the next morning bright and early maybe as early as six o'clock in the morning seven o'clock in the morning they bring him to pilot and they expect pilot to rubber stamp their decision now what do they say when they bring him to pilate first of all pilate says uh what do you want why have you brought this man to me they brought him for trial he knows that why have you brought this man first of all that tells us that pilate has never heard of jesus before again there are many people who say pilate must have heard of jesus before but he didn't why do they ass well he must have heard why because jesus is famous today doesn't mean that the romans knew about him oh people if jesus really did all these miracles the romans would have sent somebody to investigate really no they wouldn't first of all jesus was preaching to jews he was preaching and healing in places where jews gathered the romans had nothing to do with that and the one roman that we hear about the centurion that's up in galilee this is not pilot's area why would pilate have why would jesus have been brought to the attention of violet just because there were large crowds that alone would not have brought him to the attention of pilate so the jesus was a miracle worker the romans also had stories of gods doing miracles so they wouldn't have been impressed with that okay so why would pilate have heard of jesus we know that pilate never heard about jesus the reason why the pharisees this the disciples of the pharisees asked jesus the question about whether it's lawful to give to pay tribute to caesar the tax the you know the tribute tax the coin is because they want to have a reason to report jesus to pilate just because there's a rabbi is going around preaching and attracting crowds pilate wouldn't have cared about that if somebody said well pilate there's something you should know well there's this rabbi who's going around attracting a large crowd and so what is he saying oh love your enemies turn the other cheek okay be merciful pilate would have been annoyed with that don't don't waste my time okay so pilate has never heard about jesus that is clear and the reason why they wanted to trap him with the tax question was so that they would have a reason to report him to pilate all right so that's the first thing so pilate says who is this man and why have you brought him to me and what is the response of the jewish leaders in the gospel of john if he were not an evil doer we would not have brought him to you and what's pilate's reaction take him away and judge him according to your own law that's what he says exactly why because they had the right to judge their own people for especially for their religious offenses so pilate immediately recognizes that this is a religious dispute you see evil doer is not a roman crime okay and pilate as governor of judea is obligated only to try people who have been brought before him charged with a crime against the roman state you can't just willy-nilly charge somebody with well he's an evil doer so we want you to put him on trial and put him to death that's not a crime for which pilate has authority and he's a busy man so he says basically he's saying don't bother me go take care handle it yourselves you see so right away he knows that they don't have a crime so now they have to backpedal and they have to figure out okay what can we say to um get him to put jesus to death so this part of the conversation we don't hear jesus is inside the praetorium where the romans governor was and then the he is pilate is standing outside talking to the jewish leaders the chief priests and we realize when pilate returns to start questioning jesus that they have told pilate about the entry to jerusalem that jesus was hailed as the messiah by big crowds who said hosanna to the king of israel hosanna to the son of david this kind of a thing so now they've come up with a roman charge that is also a death penalty charge and that's treason so we're not privy to that conversation but we can infer it because when pilate comes back inside the praetorium where jesus is standing he says to him are you the king of the jews you see so that is what they said jesus claimed to be king of the jews of course jesus never claimed to be the king of the jews and what does he answer to pilate my kingdom is not of this world if my kingdom were of this world my followers would be fighting to release me but my kingdom is not of this world so this also alerts pilate to the fact that that he's right jesus is not a threat to roman order because pilate has not heard of jesus and believe me pilate has a lot of informants out there who would be happy to inform him about jesus if jesus was fomenting rebellion if he had a lot of followers then it would have come to pilate's ears and pilate knows jesus is right just he's not fomenting rebellion he doesn't have a lot of followers or who are fighting against rome who would be seeking to release him so he talks starts talking about the truth and pilate realizes this man is not a threat to roman order so he goes back outside and he says what i find no crime in him and and so he realizes that this is an embarrassment for the jewish leaders if he simply releases jesus outright it's an embarrassment for them because they want something done about jesus they don't like jesus they think he's a problem they want rome to take care of it and he does he can't just release jesus because that would make them look bad so pilate looks for a way to help them save face okay and he also looks for a way to sort of placate pacify the jewish leaders so he has jesus scourge the way he tries to help them to save faces the barabbas thing the way he tries to placate them is to have jesus scourge so i'm giving a very long answer here to a very short question but this is just the beginning of why he has jesus discouraged why it comes up with barabbas how that doesn't work and eventually they basically blackmail pilot who does it really does not want to crucify jesus and i explain why from his perspective he really comes to believe that jesus might be a god and then why he eventually and why that makes perfectly perfect sense in the roman mind of the first century and then why he eventually does crucify jesus yeah so it's kind of an answer but i have to cut it at some point so there's a lot there and you know if people want more there's a great book that they can buy with the link in the description uh now in all seriousness though they really should because there's a a lot to dig into there that we simply can't cover in you know an hour-long conversation but i really appreciate what you did cover there and it leads to the crucifixion which i think is a really important thing to talk about obviously in the fashion week but but specifically like the crucifixion itself we just take for granted well yeah why was jesus crucified i don't know like that's just how they did and i've got the cross necklace to prove it and you know i guess that's what it is but i think we've failed to recognize in our kind of cross necklace saturated world and our cross tattoos and all of that which i'm not bashing by any means but we failed to recognize what crucifixion really was and we almost romanticize it a bit yes i think but but talk to me a bit about just crucifixion in general and and the roman use of it yes what was the significance of this way of killing someone well yeah i'm glad you brought that up and you're absolutely right we just take it for granted as christians but i want us to really comprehend what the cross meant in that culture both jewish and roman why saint paul says i am not ashamed of the gospel the cross was an image of shame and disgrace and dishonor and this is exactly why the jewish leaders did not secretly put jesus to death they wanted him publicly crucified they pressed and insisted that pilate crucify him because of what the cross represented not just to the romans but to the jews also it represented the curse of god for the jews because deuteronomy 21 says cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree and they considered crucifixion a form of hanging we wouldn't think of it we always think of hanging like this by the neck but that was a form of hanging as far as jews were concerned and that would have been proof positive that jesus was a false prophet a bad rabbi that god had cursed him this is the motivation for the jewish leaders because of the shame of the cross the disgrace of the cross and so this is why we have to understand why they wanted him crucified and this is still and it was so effective because to this very day the primary reason why jews don't believe jesus is a messiah is because he died on the cross and this was a major hurdle for all believers in jesus for jewish believers that's why paul says in first corinthians chapter 1 that the cross is a stumbling block a scandal to jews and foolishness to gentiles people literally thought that people thought that christians were literally insane for worshiping a crucified criminal because of the shame of the cross the illogic of the cross so the cross was the most painful and most shameful manner of death it was ranked because the romans would rank they would list you know forms of punishment it is always number one it's the top okay in the greek they often called it anoth for the romans suma suplissia and also servile ciplicia sumus simplicity is the highest punishment so sometimes they don't use the word crucifixion because it was so horrific they didn't even want to refer to the cross directly or they didn't want to refer to crucifixion directly so they would say he got the highest punishment okay and that was crucifixion always it was considered the worst it was the most painful way to die and the most humiliating way to die and this was a culture that prized glory and honor above everything else it was better to die with honor than to live with shame i don't think we we don't live in that kind of society today people share the most intimate details of their lives the most shameful things are public knowledge this is not a culture that can relate to the roman culture in which the most important thing was your dignity your honor your glory that's why when saint paul writes to the romans he uses words like that glory and honor to the jew first and also to the greek glory and honor these were buzzwords in roman society so crucifixion began originally as a punishment for slaves the people who were the lowest on the ladder of roman society the roman society was very stratified according to class so slave punishment was the cross and also there was this was also originally a punishment only for soldiers who deserted and it had to be a punishment so horrific that slaves would be afraid to revolt and roman soldiers would be afraid not to follow orders or they would be afraid to desert so it is it was something that was feared however by everybody because originally even though it was only for soldiers or for slaves it came to be applied to anyone who belonged to the lower classes it was only citizens were exempt and occasionally even they were crucified although they weren't supposed to be so this was a very a shameful way to die for many many reasons and it was by far the most painful way to die and um so i'll stop there but again we don't really appreciate the magnitude of it so when we read in the in the new testament for example saint paul saying that we should be humble like jesus christ in philippians 2. jesus christ who though he was in the form of god did not consider equality with god something to be clung to but emptied himself taking the form of a person a good form of a servant becoming a human being and he humbled himself to accept even to die and even a death on the cross that means he went to the lowest possible extreme so the cross represents the humility of christ and the love of god the cross for the early church was not payment of a debt but it was the ultimate expression of the love of god and the humility of christ that he was willing to die in that way for us so that we could never say about anything i'm too good for that you know because christ did everything for our salvation even died on the cross and it's not just that he was willing to suffer that pain but he suffered the shame of the cross the humility of the cross so we should be willing to suffer for him to that extent also any shame any degradation any punishment for his sake or for each other out of love because of his example yeah that that gets into the meaning of the cross which i i'm very keen to be able to talk about a little bit and i i really appreciate you bringing up the point of honor shame uh status and class and roman society because i think in no small part because of the story of jesus and the way that shaped the west we have this kind of trope of you know this emptying yourself as kind of this form uh this this virtuous thing to do and it's it's admirable but not so at this time at least not in the same way that that this was shameful and they didn't have brene brown to talk them through shame like this was this was not something um nothing was worse than the same yeah it was better to die than to be shamed and this was part of roman culture it's so deeply embedded in roman culture that we cannot understand that and partly because we um and to die not only to die but to die a slave's death and to die stripped of any form of dignity to die naked except in judea where they were the loincloth but still jesus was crucified basically in his underwear so that's embarrassing it's it's a shameful manner of death so this is something we cannot appreciate because especially in america especially in modern times where we tend to think of everybody as equals we have no conception of what it was like to live in the roman empire to look at a person and just by their clothing know immediately their status and to know your place in society that you did not deviate from your place this is your role and you're condemned to stay in that place and it it's something that's an entirely foreign mentality to us but you can't understand the new testament if you don't understand that yes and speaking of not understanding the new testament if you don't understand other things we've talked a bit about the old testament already but there was something that you brought up in your book that i found just really fascinating because it wasn't something that i had it wasn't a connection i uh had seen made a lot or much less you know a whole chapter devoted to in a book like this and that's on the akkada or the binding of isaac as we talk about kind of what what is the meaning of the cross in its um in its original context there and so i would love for you to just illuminate that a bit as we kind of begin to land the plane and pivot towards the meaning of the cross which you've started to highlight i i think this is a fascinating tidbit for people who again are familiar with the story but maybe haven't made this connection yeah which is it's very amazing it's it's an amazing connection you guys call it the akida did you take hebrew i took greek instead well that's good i mean especially for new testament for theology greek is better but a keta is how i've been taught to pronounce it i don't know i can't say that that your pronunciation is wrong but um the akedah is the binding of isaac so christians call that event the sacrifice of isaac even though we know he wasn't sacrificed in the um but in the jewish mind the jews call it the binding of isaac and that's called a keto or akida if you want to pronounce it that way that's i'm not saying this wrong um because there are different ways to pronounce things you know um some even just like torah torah torah torah there's a different ways did you hear it so the binding of isaac is very important in the jewish mind and this is something that most christians don't know and the reason why the binding of isaac is so important is because isaac was willing to be sacrificed so we tend to focus so much on abraham and how he was willing to sacrifice his son out of obedience to god but we don't think very much about isaac because his willingness to be sacrificed isn't discussed in genesis but in the jewish tradition in the jewish writings among the jewish sages and in the talmud and other jewish writings they talk a lot about isaac's willingness to be sacrificed and this was considered to give merit to give a sort of um a blessing to the jewish people because they're all descended from abraham through isaac and there is also very strong connection to passover so there are a lot of important connections there um i'm not sure which one you want me to talk about in terms of the binding of isaac but what is very very important for the jews is that is isaac's willingness to be sacrificed and they even speak about the merit the the merits that come to them from isaac's willingness and also that that um there was there were even traditions in first century judaism that some of isaac's blood was shed there is even one early jewish rabbi and we're talking about before the time of christ who talked about the death of isaac and the resurrection of isaac this was no means widespread but nonetheless with among jews they talked a lot about the meaning of the story and the benefits that came from the willingness of isaac to be sacrificed so that's very important for christians so it's not that we get our ideas about christ from that but we see the willingness of christ to be sacrificed to die on the cross he doesn't defend himself he he knew that judas was coming with the arresting party to arrest him he could have left but he doesn't he allows himself to be sacrificed and because of that we benefit but the death of the binding of isaac was also believed to take place on the 14th day of nissan which is the exact date on which jesus himself was crucified so there's a very strong connection there between the sacrifice of isaac or the binding of isaac and the sacrifice of jesus on the cross and i'll say i'll say one last thing about that to this day jews do not understand that story and um and i don't mean to be disrespectful to them but they don't and what did saint paul say that is it is as though there's a veil over their eyes they don't understand the old testament the way we understand it the jewish scriptures they don't understand it in the way that we do so i because i was reading jewish authors who were talking about the akketa and they're arguing about why that story is even in the bible okay why is that story it's a horrific story that god asked abraham to to sacrifice his own son because they don't accept who jesus christ is they don't understand the meaning of the story we understand it as a foreshadowing of something that god would do for the salvation of the world they understood it on some level that there was some benefit to the fact that isaac willingly accepted himself to be sacrificed and that gave up a spiritual benefit to the jewish people but what they saw only in shadows what we call type typology we received in its fullness so that's the meaning for christians and the jews still cannot really understand that because they don't accept who jesus says so this is what paul meant when he said there's a veil and until they are willing to accept who christ is they don't understand the full meaning of those stories but that's why it's there yeah and i think there's a whole conversation to be had there around hermeneutics and how the old and new testaments relate together which would be a fascinating conversation to have and to explore and i hope it's something that my viewers uh take time to think about because i think it's a very fruitful thing to think about but as as we close here i want to uh kind of key in on that that willingness and the meaning of the cross as the place to end because i think in a distorted picture or distorted understanding of what happened at the cross is maybe this like penal substitutionary atomic gone completely awry like not even what i think calvin or anyone had in mind of where god becomes this like divine child murderer which completely kind of i think violates what what you're trying to get at here and i wanted to close with this quote that you have um and then a lot well i'll let you talk about it um but i found this to be a really intriguing idea so in the final chapter of your book you say this the bloody painful death of the son of god was not required for any reason the death of christ was a voluntary sacrifice made out of pure love the ultimate example of humility to regard the crucifixion as an element in a transaction robs the cross of its power the crucifixion is an example to be imitated not a payment of a debt it is the paradigm par excellence of profound humility and unspeakable love such as the world had never before experienced and could never imagine i would love for you to share a little bit of what you're getting at there and why that's significant because i as someone who not that i'm you know any expert but is aware of other ways of approaching this you're choosing a distinctive path here and i imagine it's um with with intentionality and what you're choosing to highlight here as the true meaning of the cross yes because when we say sacrifice there is an automatic turn especially among western christians to think of penal substitutionary atonement that idea that somebody that a sin is a is a debt that's owed to god that somebody has to pay or that god demands the death of the son this is a thing that an idea that was foreign to the early church not the death of jesus as sacrifice in itself but the idea of that it was required because we had it it stems from the idea of what is sin if you think of sin as a debt then this is of course something that was is required okay somebody has to pay it but if sin is not a debt because we don't really see that kind of transactional idea anywhere in the new testament sin is not a debt sin is us an illness sin is departure from god sin is when we turn our back against god and we uh choose to do something else so it's not that this sort of transactional idea or this very legalistic idea is foreign to the new testament people read it into the new testament because that's the mentality that they're starting with but i would challenge people to realize that that's not the mentality of the early church so what did the early church understand of course it's a sacrifice but that doesn't mean it's payment for debt so the term the word atonement is also often used in english for the greek word elias and that that's really covering and that does not have a legalistic sense to it when you say atonement or you say justification that has a legal kind of sound like justice justification but the word in greek is the que osini it's righteousness so when we translate these concepts with english words that have a strong sort of legalistic feeling to them this only supports our idea that the crucifixion was this kind of legal transaction somebody had to pay so jesus paid the price for our sins but this really does rob the cross of its power because saint paul never talks about it like that he never does he says the cross is the power of god and the wisdom of god he talks about the cross as the humility of god as i mentioned that he did not consider equality with god something to be grasped but he emptied himself so this is the humility of god of course john talks about it as the glory of god he's the king of glory so the cross to simply make it a transaction somebody had to pay and it's the worst thing that you could say about god the father somebody had to pay he demands payment where is that in the christian mind that's a construct a theological construct that has its roots in the theology of the middle ages which protestants got from catholics the catholic church had this theology this was developed in the middle ages and since the reformation the protestant movement came out of the catholic church they also adopted this and it's a given it's an assumption but it's not the way the early church understood the cross so i'll just give one more example so that you will understand it god loved the world right nowhere in the gospel of john does it talk about paying the price of a son god for god so loved the world that he gave his son there's nothing in there that talks about a debt or suggests hence the debt god loves the world the world had departed from god so he gave his son okay so what service what does a cross serve is a serb it's an expression of the love of god and so this is how we need to understand it and that he died voluntarily and so he gave himself to us and this is what saint paul also says god did not even spare his own son that's a that's a um that's a kind of a reference and um sort of an in he's implying the acada there god did not even spare his own son god loved the world so much he did not even spare his own son so on me as a mother i have one son i would do anything for him of course i would give my life instantly for my son and i would do that not because it's demanded of me i would sacrifice myself of course but because it's demanded but because i love him and and i think we're impoverishing the christian witness when we reduce the cross to a transaction and unfortunately this is an easy way that people explain the cross you you're a sinner you've committed sins jesus paid for your sins now why don't you accept him and thank him for that and now you're right with god it's just a it's just to me such an a a horrible way to depict god it makes many people into atheists by the way okay and it's it's not the reality of what the new testament is presenting us it's better for us to talk about the love of god that he gave his son that's the biblical witness and that's the witness of the early church nobody became a christian because they were told they're a terrible sinner jesus paid you the price for your sins we never see that in the new testament or in any of the early christian writings yeah i think in the name of uh simple apologetics that can fit in a pamphlet we've often um done innumerable damage to theology and in fairness i i i often think it's it's done with the best of intentions of trying to reach people and i you know i i applaud that um but i think we always do want to be reflective about especially how we're communicating something as central as the cross but dr constantino thank you so much for this today this has been it is people thank you thank you for inviting me yes of course people are well intentioned but let's realize that there's much more to it than simply that and um and i'm not i'm not trying to knock anybody's faith or that i know that this is how people perceive the cross because this is how they have been church this is how they have been taught but maybe there's another way a deeper way to understand the cross and this is one of the things that i'm trying to bring out in the book and thank you for bringing that up and thank you for inviting me very much to have this conversation austin it's always a pleasure oh well it was my pleasure as well and i want to thank all of you who watch this video sometime in the future i don't take your time lightly and i really appreciate you sticking around to this point i'll close as i always do by saying until next time be on the lookout for more videos but far more importantly than that go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

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Length: 77min 51sec (4671 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022