Do you think the reference of Roman's gambling for His cloths were fabrications?
No ... like everything in the New Testament, it's contextual, and it's a fulfilment of Scripture:
"They parted my garments amongst them; and upon my vesture they cast lots" (Psalm 22:18)
My belief is founded on the Principle of Incarnation, what happened happened precisely because Christianity turns on 'the Word become flesh', but many seem incapable of comprehending the full ramification of that principle.
Did it actually happen? I accept that it did, because there is a value in contemplating the text as a reality. In contemporary culture, declaring something a myth or metaphor is a means of separating oneself from its most significant implication, of emptying it of its most profound reality. One can savour the
idea, but not connect to the
essence because implicit in the idea is that the essence is absent.
Why people think that God can only 'realise' ideas, and not realities, defeats me, it's an utter anthropological determination and limitation of the Deity.
The whole New Testament is a testimony of spiritual realities realised and manifest in the physical. It's neither myth nor metaphor, it's a movement in the other direction entirely, not from low to high, but from high to low. If you like, it's 'myth realised' or 'metaphor actualised'.
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If we're speculating on His dress, I would suggest the outer robe He wore, a seamless garment, for which the soldiers were gambling (it being pointless to cut the thing up), was most likely a gift from His mother, since it was customary for Jewish mothers to make such a garment for their sons as a last gift before they entered the world on their own.
He knew, and His following had a pretty good idea, that this journey to Jerusalem would be His last, so it seems entirely fitting. And as numbered among His followers were some well-to-do women who accompanied His mother, then I can easily imaging their preparing a robe for Him to mark the event.
John, who's Gospel is in many ways a commentary on the Synoptics, makes sure to tell us that this was in fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. He stresses the seamless garment (19:23-24), alluding to the robe worn by the high priest in the Temple service (Exodus 28:31-32; Exodus 39:27-29). The priest stood as mediator or liaison (the Hebrew word literally means "bridge-builder") between God and humankind. He offered sacrifice for the sins of the people. Jesus is the perfect High Priest who opens the way for all to enter into the presence of God by offering the perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world (cf Hebrews 5).
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Casting lots, as the soldiers did, is not always wrong: "The lot suppresseth contentions, and determineth even between the mighty" (Proverbs 18:18). In casting lots, at least the poor or the weak had an even chance against the rich and the strong. One of the four might have said 'I'll have his robe, you can have the rest between you' but casting lots meant they all had a fair chance.
In his "
Treatise on the Cardinal Virtues", Thomas Aquinas concludes that the casting of lots to decide a matter is not sinful as long as chance and not the power of demons is thought to control the action of the dice. This he terms "sortilege of allotment" and, since there are many examples in the Scriptures of righteous men acting upon the casting of lots, Aquinas reasons that it is not a vice to divide goods or duties by this means (Lev 16:8; Josh 7:14-15; 1 Chr 24:5; Neh 10:34).
Proverbs declares that "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (16:33). Many see this as pre-determination. I happen not to, again, I think it's a failure to understand the nature of God. To me, all it means is that a roll of the dice will fall somewhere between 1 or 6 (one doesn't have to be a god to know that), but that does not mean that I know which number it will be.
God, of course, does know, but that does not mean that God pre-determined the fall of the die. I happen not to believe in God as a micro-manager. I also happen to believe that in this Cosmos, being relative and contingent, must necessarily allow randomness, and therefore that 'shit happens', without God having necessarily willed it.
God bless,
Thomas
