Worrying over good and evil wasn’t a new concern when Jesus began teaching. Men through the ages have worried about questions of good and evil. The pagan gods, notwithstanding revisionist Christian propaganda, were arbiters of right and wrong in the pagan world. They set and enforced standards. What was a virtue and what was a sin were largely a matter of consensus in the Hellenic (Greek) world. Their gods were active in detecting and punishing lapses.
Greek and related Roman civic religion, however, wasn’t mostly about morality, but about group cohesion. The religion manifested itself not through preaching and teaching but through public festivals of comity and affirmation. These rituals were directed toward the gods, who all represented aspects of human life. Priests were head celebrants, not moral preachers.
Moral enforcement in the Hellenic world was handled by the local government through secular institutions. The pagan sacrifice, which was orthodox for at least a thousand years throughout the civilized ancient world, was a public ritual to acknowledge the gods and to share scarce and valuable protein. (Jewish sacrifice was different at that time in that their sacrifices were performed centrally inside a tent and only one god was honored.)
Gods were ubiquitous. A river god’s job was to protect his or her Greek river from pollution. Polluters were divinely sanctioned. Zeus dealt with larger matters. The gods’ own transgressions, which were such an affront to the early Christians, were a facet of the gods’ shared human nature, and not a license for human misbehavior. Even Zeus had to look over his should for his wife Hera. Hephaestos ensnared Mars and Aphrodite naked and adulterating each other, and shamed them before the other Olympians. Much of Greek drama was precisely about right, wrong, and the divine oversight of man.
In his history “The Closing of the Western Mind,” Charles Freeman remarked on gods: “if the gods can intervene to change the course of the stars or the boiling point of water at random...then nothing is predictable.” [Freeman 2005, p. 16] Such an unpredictable state of affairs wasn’t agreeable to some of the ancient Greeks, who were nothing if not active. They made numerous attempts to find the predictable regularities that give us power over the world and that today we call science.
They achieved successes that we wonder at, including Euclidean geometry, Galen’s medicine, and Aristotle’s encyclopedias. Much of their thinking was of course speculative and unfruitful, but inquiry, speculation, and discussion were tolerated and circulated among the literate classes. There was dogma within particular devotional traditions, but suppression of speech or inquiry was rare except in political contexts, that is, disputes over political power. Socrates was killed by Athens in the context of such a struggle. As today, the pretext for his killing matched poorly with the facts.
The Greek world was culturally and historically organized into a large number of local city-states. This form of organization encouraged the development of political skills and political insight. Politico-economic competition and local independence within the Greek world fostered independent inquiry and a lack of centralized political or religious dogma. “The harmonious city, said Heraclitus [ca. 500 BCE], is not one in which everyone lives in peace but one among whose citizens there is constant activity and debate. ‘Justice,’ said Heraclitus, ‘is strife.’”[Freeman 2005, p. 12] At the time of the American revolution, Greek and Roman histories were a major source of intellectual inspiration. The city-states gradually and irregularly coalesced into larger-scale associations, culminating with the rise of the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander.
Greek philosophies (by the time of Jesus, many of them were already ancient) provided the concepts of human will and human judgment which formed the environment in which early Christianity developed. There were numerous Greek philosophers and philosophies. An educated Greek's view of human will and often his self-identity were typically based upon one of these philosophies.
The discovery of order in the world reduces the role of divinity, so there was a movement in the Greek world toward skepticism about divine explanations in general and about the divine dramatis personae in particular.
The philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was particularly influential in early Christian thought. Plato’s idea that the moral contingencies of life really ought to resolve in the afterlife was very like the concept adopted by the early Christian church. He believed that the world ought to be just, and proposed that this might be effected in the afterlife. (See the story of Er in Plato's Republic.)
Plato taught that truth was embodied in metaphysical forms or ideas which were inaccessible to most men. Aristotle taught virtue as a combination of love of virtue with knowledge of the mechanics of the world, considered in a non-emotional context. Plato believed and taught that reason, the logical faculty, was the most divine element of psyche or soul.
When the gospel of John was written after the coming and going of Jesus, it began: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This ideation is very Platonic. The Word, or logos, is a reified concept or thought that was primordial and prepotent. [Freedman 2005, p. 144] The Christian church later adopted Plato's concept of forms, but took a very different position from Plato on the divine nature of our logical faculty.
Although Jesus spoke no Greek and preached in Jewish Palestine, Christianity developed in a Greek world.
Alexander destroyed the principal Persian dynasty around 330 BC, and replaced it with three Greek-ruled empires, based in Egypt, Persia (today’s Turkey, Iran, and Syria), and the old country (mainland Greece, Macedon, and the Aegean and Ionian regions). The governments that he left in place and the culture that developed in the major cities of Western Asia, the Levant, and Egypt are now referred to as Hellenistic, “Hellene” being Greek for “Greek.” The regions where Jesus lived, and the areas within which the early Christian religion developed, were dominated by Greek-speaking, Greek-cultured governmental and commercial classes. The characterization “Greek-cultured” largely applies as well to the Roman officials who ruled over them under the authority of the Romans, although the Roman character included strong strains of bureaucratic authoritarianism uncharacteristic of the Greek tradition.
Following Alexander, Greek city autonomy and democracy ended and was replaced by military dictatorships throughout Greece and Asia Minor. At the same time major rulers began to claim divinity for themselves. As the power of ruling families stabilized, whether Roman or Hellene, wealth became highly concentrated, bureaucracy became ubiquitous, and the combination of wealth, civil and military power, and bureaucracy became the norm. [Freeman 2005, p. 40]
Jesus himself, most of his disciples, and the ordinary people of Galilee and Judea whom he taught knew no Greek. They were linguistically, culturally, and socially isolated from Hellenism and from their Roman and Hellenic rulers. “Gentiles” were outsiders and not welcome at table. Jesus spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language.
Jesus was something of an international celebrity certainly as early as 100 CE. He was known of in cities from Libya to Athens. Reports of his life traveled verbally and in writing. Many writings about him are known or known about, and represent a number of genres. Some emphasized miracle stories, others his teachings, others were biographical. One of these writings pictures him as a youthful Trickster, using his divine connections to get away with things as a kid. Such sources were variously available to the gospel writers, to Paul, and to other contributors to the development of the early church.
The four gospels included in our Bible were written by different authors at different times. Three of them, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were written about the same time and seem to have been based on a single source which is lost. They’re referred to as the synoptic gospels. They contain many of the same stories, often in nearly the same words. John's gospel was written separately from the others.
The gospel of Mark is the oldest of the synoptic gospels. [Koester 1990, p. 128] The first physical evidence for the existence of Mark dates to the third century CE [Koester 1990, p. 273], but Mark was probably written before CE 100, since it was used in the writing of Matthew and Luke, which were written about CE 100. There is reason to believe that the text of Mark that has been passed to us differs from the text seen by Matthew and Luke. [Koester 1990, p. 275] Mark was probably a Gentile (non-Jewish) Christian. His adaptation of other known sources indicates that he was not familiar with the geography of Palestine. His narrative indicates that he interprets the death of Jesus as a sacrifice in anticipation of His imminent return, and interprets the eucharist (communion ritual) as a pledge of faith in Jesus’ return. It is likely that his gospel was written after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70 CE. [Koester 1990, p. 289]
Of topical interest perhaps, one of the hypothesized but unfound sources for gospel material is called “Q” by researchers, just like a certain Star Trek character and a current conspiracy theory are. Some of the material that was incorporated into Mark's gospel was also known to Paul, although Mark's gospel itself wasn't. [Koester 1990, p. 54]
The first written evidence for Matthew's gospel comes from the mid-second century CE. [Koester 1990, p. 315] Matthew was written in Greek (as were the others), although it was believed in the early Christian church that Matthew the gospel author was also Matthew the disciple, and that this gospel was originally written in Aramaic. Evidence that it was originally Greek includes its correspondences with other Greek sources, the lack of textual clues that it was translated from Aramaic, and lack of any evidence for an original Aramaic version. Nothing is known about Matthew or the circumstances in which he wrote. Matthew’s gospel emphasizes the teachings of Jesus. [Koester 1990, p. 318]
The gospel of Luke may have been written as early as the first decades of the second century CE. Manuscript fragments of Luke’s gospel have been found dating to the third century. Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written together by the same author, but were separated early on. Like Matthew, nothing is known about Luke the gospel author. Early church tradition was that he was an un-married Syrian physician and a disciple of Paul. This would tie the authorship of Luke's gospel and Acts to references to a certain Luke who appears in the New Testament letters. [Koester 1990, p. 332-5]
The gospel of John was probably written in Syria or Palestine. There are physical fragments attesting its existence from the second century CE. Evidence of this place of origin includes its familiarity with Palestinian geography and its connection to syncretistic Judaism and Gnosticism, which were associated with these regions. The gospel of John doesn’t seem to have been known outside of Syria and Egypt until the middle of the second century CE. There is evidence that this gospel was amended after its first production, and that it is really the evolutionary product of a religious community across a span of perhaps fifty years. [Koester 1990, p. 244 et cf.]
There is evidence that these four gospels were considered canonical (authoritative) as early as the end of the second century. [Koester 1990, p. 243]
Much about the origin of the gospels is still disputed, but what I present was mainstream thinking in 1990.
Back to my quest. I was taught as a boy that a Christian follows the teachings of Jesus and I still find that a sensible definition of Christianity. Based on that principle the gospels, which are reports of the lives and teachings of Jesus, should reveal Christian moral principles.
When you read the gospels, though, you get neither moral philosophy nor Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard." Most of Jesus' verbal teaching was targeted to an audience of non-clerics in Galilee and Judea. When he was in Jerusalem he also taught the professional priests and religious enthusiasts of that time and place, the priests and scribes, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. His preaching is less “How To Be Good” than an exhortation to be better, intermixed with topical politico-religious exhortations.
Judaism at the time of Jesus was in something of a turmoil in both Judea (which includes the Jewish religious capital Jerusalem and its shrine, the Temple) and in Galilee.
Around 170 BCE, Antiochus IV, the Hellenic ruler of what had been Persia, attempted to Hellenize the Jews. He outlawed circumcision and observance of the sabbath, and he put a statue of Zeus in the Jerusalem temple. All of these were clear and important violations of Jewish law. This provoked the Maccabees to revolt and temporarily to win independence. The Romans took over both of the Jewish kingdoms, and in 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey violated the temple by entering the inner temple, the Holy of Holies. These things all happened in Judea, where Jerusalem and the Temple were located.
The Temple was both the symbolic center and the physical center for the practice of Judaism. It was also the seat of civil administration for Judea. Jews tithed to the Temple and were expected to go to Jerusalem to pay their tithes, to present any sacrifices that were called for by religious rules, and to attend the annual Passover commemoration.
Judaism was a strictly hierarchical institution so long as the Temple continued to stand. Membership in the priestly order was reputedly hereditary back to the time of Moses. A head priest and council sat at the top of the hierarchy, between God and the nation. The Sadducees were members of the hereditary priestly “tribe,” lawyers/priests/government officials who relied upon written textual authority. The Sadducees controlled the scrolls that contained the religious/legal texts, and held at least a de jure monopoly on religious instruction and interpretation. The Romans ruled Judea through the Temple and the priests.
Alongside the Sadducees were the Pharisees. The Pharisees found the will or power of God in oral tradition, while not denying textual authority. (William M. Scneidewind, “How the Bible Became a Book,” Cambridge University Press, 2004. See pp. 201-2, 207 et cf. about textual vs oral authority in the New Testament.) The conflict between the Sadducees and scribes, with access to the written text and official status, and Pharisees, with oral tradition, was a conflict between two elite groups. The Pharisees seem to have had both the respect and the resentment of the general illiterate populace.
The conflict between Sadducees and Pharisees was not just over power and status. The Sadducees believed that there is no afterlife, and were economically dependent upon priestly temple ritual. (Temple sacrifices were functionally tribute to support them.) The Pharisees believed in spirits and angels, an afterlife, and a final resurrection of bodies. The Pharisees insisted on strict observance of the law as they interpreted it. In the beliefs of the Pharisees, “…everything is preordained by God except for human obedience to the Torah. That is up to individual choice, and God will reward or punish accordingly.” [Wylen 1996, p. 142] “The Pharisees saw the common folk as ignoramuses, while the common folk resented the haughtiness of some Pharisees.” [Wylen 1996, p. 141] Pharisaic sectarian rules emphasized ritual purity, agricultural tithing, kosher food, their Sabbath traditions, and rules of descent, particularly as it regards women. Rabbinic Judaism largely derives from the Pharisees.
Since the Pharisaic tradition was oral, it was subject to change over time and to variation among teachers. [Freeman 2005, p. 94] Although Jesus often preached against the Pharisees, the fact itself of his preaching and many of his specific beliefs that are revealed in the gospels are in the Pharisaic tradition.
Back once again to my search. What are the teachings of the gospels, and what might an American studying them learn? When you read the gospels you encounter things that are hard to understand either within or outside of their politico-religious context. The following synopsis is based on a tabulation of all of Jesus’ remarks from Matthew and selected remarks from the other gospels.
(I make no effort here to argue the truth or falsity, wisdom or folly, of anything said, or to give a comprehensive summary. I’m just looking for the picture of morality painted by Jesus’ reported utterances.)
There are a number of statements by Jesus about knowledge and understanding that take a very different view from the mainstream Greek philosophers.
“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes;” (Matthew 11:25)
“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes....” (Luke 10:21)
“You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed....” (Matthew 13:11) This follows the parable of the sown grain. The quotation is from a prophecy of Isaiah.
“To you [his disciples] it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” (Luke 8:10)
The first two (identical) quotations express scorn or derision or disregard toward wisdom and understanding. At face value they derogate intellectualism in general and thereby any logical argumentation. In an historical/political frame, they can be interpreted as discrediting the scribes and Sadducees, the official priestly caste.
His comments in the latter two quotes are repeated numerous times as codas to parables and other enigmatic statements. Literally taken, they indicate almost a schadenfreude toward anyone who doesn’t accept his narrative. In Mark 4:11-12 and Matthew 13:11 Jesus explains that he teaches with parables for a specific purpose: “For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” He castigates the educated caste of Jews for their malpractice: “Woe to you lawyers! [Sadducees] for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11:52)
Besides the above, he states in Matthew 11:25 that “no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus says that knowledge of God’s plans is through himself; and knowledge of right behavior is available through the Jewish law, with some additions from himself.
The Jewish law at the time of Jesus was based on scripture, but with a different meaning than we usually have for that word. When the Jews were returned from Babylon to their ancient home, they took with them a Torah, a scroll which contained the first five books of the Bible’s old testament and the books of the Prophets, a subset of the Old Testament of the Bible. The Torah was shared among the Jews through public readings and commentary. By Jesus’ time, the “scripture” included the text plus about five hundred years’ interpretation and commentary. The existence of scripture caused the end of prophecy, since the two were liable to conflict. Jesus’ role as a new prophet (or, he says, something greater) required justification. [Wylen 1996, pp. 21-2]
Jesus insists that his mission is not to change the law but to fulfill it. Nevertheless he intends to change it. He tightens certain strictures. He also preaches to loosen some of the strictures, both some accepted as divine in the Jewish scripture, and others advocated by the Pharisees. He objects to these on the bases both that they are not supported by the text and/or they aren’t consistent with other accepted strictures. Just a few examples:
The implication of his teachings is that there is a written code of the behaviors ordered and forbidden by God. This was an accepted fact of life in Galilee and Judea, where civil/religious law had been codified well before the exile to Babylon, which happened some five hundred years before Jesus.
The applicability of Jewish law to seekers of the kingdom of heaven became a major practical and theological issue during the early development of the Christian church.
Jesus devoted a lot of time and energy to explaining his identity and his mission. Roughly 15-20% of his spoken words are about this. He identifies himself as “the son of man,” which may refer back to Jewish scripture. It is ambiguous as to whether he is calling himself just a human, or a special emissary of God.
He makes clear that he is recruiting for the kingdom and that those who are not admitted will be cast aside, either into eternal fire or into the cold and dark to weep and gnash their teeth. Some of his comments are quite clear that the kingdom is imminent (that is, the kingdom will arrive while some hearing his words will still be alive).
His mission is to recruit sinners to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom belongs to the child-like. The kingdom will grow. It will be sufficient to replace every other value.
In Luke 7:29-30 he suggests that those baptized by John the Baptist have responded to God, but those not baptized “rejected the purpose of God for themselves.”
“For nothing is hid that will not be made manifest, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take heed then how you hear....” (Luke 8:17-18)
“But you do not know him [God]; I know him. If I said, I do not know him, I should be a liar like you; but I do know him and I keep his word.” (John 8:55)
Some marks of a holy man in the ancient world were his ability to control the demons that caused physical and mental ailments, and his ability to perform other miracles. This was true in Palestine and it was true throughout the Hellenic world and beyond. Jesus was a prolific demon wrangler and miracle worker.
Much like today, invisible and immaterial causes were assigned to infirmities for which no physical cause was observable. These infirmities were cured by casting out the responsible demon. Matthew’s gospel downplays demons in comparison to some of the gospels, but I count at least four demon expulsions and more than that many miracles.
Demons sometimes spoke, and would respond to the holy man’s commands.
Jesus empowered his disciples to cure illnesses and perform miracles when he instructed them for their mission. When John the Baptist inquired whether Jesus was the messiah, Jesus answered by citing the cures he had performed. When Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees, who accused Jesus of casting out demons with the help of Be-el’zubel, he didn't respond by denying the reality of Be-el’zubel.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he [the unclean spirit] passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be with this evil generation.” (Matthew 12:43)
The Holy Spirit also appears in Jesus’ words within the book of Matthew. When Simon Peter referred to Jesus as “Christ,” Jesus was excited: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17) The Spirit will speak through the disciples on their mission (Matthew 10:16). The Holy Spirit has special status:
“Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:25)
“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things....” (John 14:26)
Faith is another concept that became important during the development of the Christian church. Jesus confirmed that he himself, the Holy Spirit, and the Jewish law are sources of knowledge of God’s will. He also asserted that we can distinguish false from true profits.
He used the term “faith” several times in the book of Matthew after curing people. In each of those cases faith meant the belief that Jesus could accomplish the cure.
He also used “faith” when his disciples asked him why they had failed to drive out a particular demon:
“Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” (Matthew 17:20)
Jesus makes two apparently straightforward statements about God’s expectations about judging and forgiving among mortals:
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14)
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, [and] with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you." (Matthew 7:1)
These rules are complicated enormously by Matthew 18:15:
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
When one is sinned against, 18:15 describes a procedure for resolving a moral dispute. First, you must decide that your brother has sinned against you without judging him. If your brother agrees that he sinned, all is apparently forgiven. If he doesn’t agree, he is ultimately shunned, again without judging him. To further complicate the situation, if any two agree about anything, God will make it so.
It seems to me that the process described by Matthew 18:15 assumes that there is both consensus and clarity about the definition of sins. The process calls on the synagogue to resolve conflicts. If there were not a high degree of consensus and a strong desire to maintain affiliations, this process would lead to social splintering. This is a far cry from simply, “Don’t judge, do forgive.”
It also seems that for this process to result in the sinning brother acceding, he would need to admit guilt. If so, forgiveness is conditioned on admission of guilt.
I’m sure books have been written to reconcile the tensions among the three passages. To me these passages taken together look like the “groupiness” that Dr. Stenner wrote about, a desire to belong to the group and to adhere to the group's norms.
“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.” (John 15:20)
It is clear that the kingdom of heaven that Jesus preaches is a hierarchical kingdom. This is not just because someone’s in charge. There are actually levels of governance, with each of the twelve disciples to govern one of the tribes of Israel.
There are also rank orderings within the denizens of the kingdom: “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:1) is used as a tag line to several of his descriptions of the kingdom. The hierarchy which was universal in the ancient world is maintained in the kingdom. Only the standard by which inhabitants are ranked is changed. “[W]hoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.” (Matthew 20:25)
Those who fail to meet the standards are to be treated in a way that makes “dehumanizing” blanch: “[F]ear him who can kill both body and soul in hell.” (Matthew 10:26) Not only may God do this, he intends to. It is difficult to gain entry. It requires not just good behavior, but perfection: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43)
Jesus’ appeal for obedience is for the most part not an appeal to altruism, but to self-interest, reward and punishment, tit for tat.
“And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last first.” (Matthew 19:28)
Jesus’ plan is not for peace on earth. He intends to provoke religious violence. The religious ideology takes precedence over fundamental human values:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34)
The in-group is favored:
“And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:40)
Roughly twenty percent of Jesus’ words in Matthew are concerned with moral guidance. This is the largest of the categories that I used in analyzing his words, but a small portion if, like me, you imagined that his primary aim was to teach us to live together.
Some of his guidance comes in the form of endorsement of certain general attitudes, such as the “beatitudes” from his sermon on the mount:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)
It’s somewhat unclear what his precise meaning is in the beatitudes. The Greek word behind “blessed” is makarios, which is also applied to the Olympic deities, where it means “fortunate.” Some of the following bullet points are paraphrased.
These endorsements, cautions, and instructions are hard to generalize into moral principles that extend beyond the individual's day-to-day affairs. Jesus did, however, make other statements that might be extended from.
“What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” (12:11)
This suggests that human logic might be used to solve moral problems. It isn't clear whether he intends to encourage us to apply our sensed values ourselves.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (18:10)
Again he refers to our human sense of value as an explanation for a moral principle. He refrains from saying, "So it is not the will of my Father that you refrain from making the choice that to you seems best."
He says, “woe to the man by whom temptation comes.” (18:7) This could be expanded to the modern principle that systems should be designed so that they encourage good behavior, but that is reading much between the lines, and it takes a very different perspective than any of his parables do.
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:15)
This passage provides a general method for resolving a whole class of disputes. No principles are provided for making the required judgments, except that Jesus will be there when several members make a decision. It also seems to exchange divine providence for ecclesiastical providence, and sets up an in-group/out-group dynamic through shunning.
"So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:7)
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (22:37)
In the passage from Matthew 7:7 Jesus provides what could be a general moral principle. He makes the golden rule ("Do onto others as you would have others do onto you") equivalent to the law and the prophets. If so, any problem unspecified in the scriptures can be resolved by applying the golden rule.
The passage from Matthew 22:37 is slightly different. Much depends upon how the first and second commandments are “like” one another. On their faces, they are alike in that both specify to whom we should direct our love. If they are alike on a deeper level, love for your neighbor might be equivalent to love for god. In this interpretation, all the law and the prophets could again boil down to the golden rule. This interpretation, however, is speculative, and further is inconsistent with much else that he said.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.” (Matthew 23:23)
He identifies law, justice, mercy, and faith as more important than tithing rules.
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’” (25:31)
Here he articulates that your behavior toward a stranger is behavior toward God. This supports the strong reading of Matthew 22:37.
These few statements suggest a general principle by which we might make moral decisions consistently with Jesus' teaching, on questions unanswered by the law or his teaching. Although I've magnified them by inviting your attention to them, these passages make up only three percent of Jesus' words in this gospel. With the exception of Matthew 22:37 and 25:31, these statements aren't rhetorically emphasized. Based on this analysis I think it's safe to say that he did not intend to encourage that type of thinking.
Divine providence is the intervention of God in earthly matters to reward good or to punish evil. It was widely accepted in the world of Jesus, just as it is in today’s America. Divine providence is a mechanism that would fulfill Belief in a Just World.
Jesus seems to have expanded and reconfigured divine providence in his preaching, granting providential powers to his followers. In his sermon on the mount, he said to his listeners:
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (7:7)
When Simon Peter identified Jesus as the messiah, Jesus seemed to grant providential powers to him:
Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (16:17-20)
At another time he seems to extend these powers to all of his followers, provided at least two of them act in concert:
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (18:15)
Next: Paul nee Saul
© 2021, Ross A. Hangartner