Belief, especially as it is viewed realistically in its tenuous nature, is entwined necessarily with fear. We hold beliefs as against those things we are afraid of, and we are afraid of losing our beliefs.
The Gospels, also as viewed realistically, begin and end with fear. Mark starts with the dread--no matter how infused with joyful expectation--that attended the approach of an ancient oriental monarch. Mark ends with the so-called "short ending," as they "fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid." To say that this gospel is therefore necessarily "incomplete," is to decree that a gospel that begins with an expectation of the awesome advent of the monarch ought somehow to be discounted for ending with an expectation of the awesome advent of the monarch.
Matthew begins with apologetic maneuverings so fantastic as to draw up in their wake a slaughtering of infants apparently for no other purpose than to fulfill a prophecy about "Rachel" and "Bethlehem." Matthew proper jolts to a start with the unsettling appearance of John the Baptist--as in Mark--and also, much as in Mark, the ending of Matthew has its "sepulchre" and "fear and great joy." Matthew adds the promised appearance of Jesus to the Eleven in Galilee (with the sobering proviso that, even then, "some doubted"), but it should be noted that Jesus' recorded speech there--while of fundamental importance--is a natural extension of the basic Gospel message. (What is not so natural, unfortunately, is the clumsy apologetic just previously, wherein the guards are bribed so as to accomplish something that could be arrived at just as easily by rolling the stone again over the tomb--especially considering that the local graveyards were pocked with empty tombs from the earthquake, and the streets of Jerusalem suddenly traversed by the resurrected "many bodies of the saints.")
The Gospel of John begins with the enigmatic poetry of its prologue, but as opposed to some sort of Infancy Narrative, what is presented is a challenging declaration of the cosmic nature of Jesus Christ--a presentation against the greatest of imaginable backdrops that is a presentation of the logic of the greatest of imaginable reigns. After this, the narrative descends to the particulars of John from the desert, proclaiming the expectation of the monarch. Finally we read the harrowing commission given to Peter by the "sea of Tiberius." For all of its cosmic qualities, the idiosyncratic Gospel of John begins and ends like all the others--with awesome fear.
Then there is Luke/Acts. Actually, the very necessity of the phrase "Luke/Acts" attests to the questionable quality of the apologetic that bookends the gospel. The frantic pastings-together of a belief system in Acts are aptly presaged by the contrivances of Luke's gospel. The very description in Luke Chapter One of John's parents ("they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless") would, were it part of an apocryphal gospel, be taken as thumping evidence of the writing's falsity. And the final business in Luke's gospel--at such variance with the others--of the disciples remaining in Jerusalem? One need merely survey the politicking of the Book of Acts to see how important it was to the Jerusalem church to assert primacy.
Of course, the real substance of Luke begins with the unsettling words of John the Baptist and ends with the awestruck incomprehension of the disciples. That is something Gospels do. Fear is both the language and the logic of the Gospels. Unfortunately, what theologians do typically is ordain themselves the dispellers of fear--after, of course, the faithful or prospectively-faithful have been prepped with a large dose of fear. The chief appeal of Christian belief systems, as curated by the clergy, is the appeal--not of comfort--but of brands of fear-antidotes.
The comfort that Jesus promises can be understood as acting both benignly and in perfect organic harmony with the particulars of a situation. The comfort that the denominations provide must be formulated and formalized. This distinction exerts itself in particular as regards the element of risk in real life--and I will contend that the entire subject of "risk-fear" is shunned by the denominations. This goes all the way back to the centuries of persecution endured by the early Church (before, of course, the early Church set itself to persecuting.) Great theological controversy attended the question of admittance to communion of those who forswore Christianity under persecution--but at every turn there lurked the undeniable question: Might not simple chance or inexplicable circumstances occasion a setting in which one Christian was subject to persecution, and another not? Could not the Almighty look into the heart of a person and know whether that person would withstand the temptation to recant, regardless of whether that situation arose in outward circumstances?
Indeed, when the element of risk is included in moral questionings, do not the contrivances of many theological assertions become apparent? John the Baptist courted disaster when he decried the marriage of Herod and Herodias, and yet John must have known--as Jesus asserted continually--how "adulterous" was their entire generation. Could John have considered seriously that Herod was viewed as a moral exemplar, and was leading anybody astray? And if John did well to criticize Herod, why did Jesus not do the same? Was Jesus weighing the element of risk? Or was John perhaps just a cantankerous busybody?
And the question of risk involves the element of fear--or does it? When Jesus walked through a crowd that saw fit to stone him, was Jesus beset at that moment with fear, or was he just going through an ugly pageant? Might Jesus have merely prevented the crowd from dragging him to the precipice to begin with? And when Jesus at Cana told his mother that his time had not yet come, was there an element in his assertion to the effect that his doom might be thereby hastened? When Jesus in that same Gospel of John is described as "cleansing" the Temple much earlier in his ministry than in the other gospels, is there perhaps a hint that he was in the habit of going to Jerusalem to cause trouble, not knowing which venture would be his last?
The question of risk attends all examinations of fear, yet any examination of the human person by God can operate independently of the happenings of limited lifetimes of finite situations, or of opportunities for situations. Any human indulgence, when seen in light of some selfless service that it might supplant, could be thought to involve risk. The ancient (or at least as-old-as-the-Reformation) question of whether a person can lose his or her salvation can arise here, but it can also be revealed here to be essentially quirky. Can an unreformed glutton be nonetheless a redeemed soul? If yes, then cannot any other "sin" (and gluttony, quaintly, was once thought a great sin) be essentially overlooked as long as "saving faith" is active? If no, then would not any other sin--regardless of the moral theologians' endless rankings and categorizations--suffice to damn a soul, all other considerations aside?
Here is where the antidotes come in, whether in the form of sacraments, or contentions that salvation once gained can never be lost, or that remorse in times of abstinence (perhaps occasioned by mere satiation) can suffice. None of this, however, answers the question of whether a person's moral state is not merely a question of simple circumstances. Some of the surviving Eleven doubted they saw Jesus in Galilee, even when he stood in his flesh before him. We might claim that we would have been among the un-doubters, but that is easily enough said. Easy enough, would it be also to say, that Jesus would have not been betrayed if not for Judas. Do we know this? If Judas had fallen away before the Transfiguration, would that have left enough time for a new purse-bearer to be corrupted?
Of course, it might be said that Judas' acts were foreseen by the divine (though the tantalizing notion of what the incarnate Jesus knew at any given point can arise), but that scarcely answers the question of what any of the other disciples (or we) would have done under the same influences as Judas. Indeed, as I have written in "Roused, Readied, Reaped," it might well be said that all of the Eleven betrayed Jesus. Moreover, for some time the apostles were of as little use to Jesus and to the truth, after the crucifixion, as were the guards who became like dead men. For all we know, in every moral import the judgment might be that all of the Twelve rendered themselves effectively as dead men. Judas just used a rope.
This leads to the sort of place to which the Gospels should be seen to be going. Jesus, at the end of John, does not provide Peter with some formalized absolution, or indeed with any comfort except that he expects Peter to render further service. Peter is told three times that he must be of service to the flock--with the "service" and the "flock" being excruciatingly undefined (as Peter's expected unfortunate end is excruciatingly undefined.) In short, Peter is expected to bear the burdens of all humanity, to the extent to which he is capable. That burden is indistinguishable from penance, and Peter embarks upon it in anguish.
Essentially, for Peter (as for us all) the extent and manner and depth of his sinfulness is such as to encompass every foul act in every foul circumstance to which humanity might be subject. Certainly, no conception of deserved damnation would be utterable in very different terms. That is the very business that we as humans must be about, avoiding every risk of evil when we can, and reckoning that the very final reckoning to which we must be subject is one in which God knows not only all we do in every situation we face, but in every situation that such beings as we might face.
This is as close as Peter gets to a pronouncement of absolution, and the fact that he still has duties to perform for God is as close as Peter gets to comfort. Of course, none of this changes the fact that finite, particular situations will face Peter (and us), but here--as ever--it is the duty of the believer to assume the mantle of the least deserving, and to accord the higher place (or at least the benefit of every assumption) to others. Peter is reminded of his duties. Peter is made mindful of his duties to all, regardless of circumstances. It is entirely fitting that the gospel ends with Peter being admonished that the fate of "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is none of Peter's business (just as Jesus refrains from promising that disciple anything definite. Indeed, if the fancy of the early Church about the beloved John is entertained, the fate of Peter, "when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not," would apply with almost equal salience to the fate of John on Patmos.")
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