When I took a preliminary look at the readings for September 3rd, Pentecost XIII (Proper 17B), I noted at once that the gospel was from Mark ch. 7, and immediately thought: “the purity issue”. When I turned up the actual text provided in the Episcopal Eucharistic Lectionary, I discovered that the P.B. Lectionary did not give the full text of Mark, 7.1-23: in particular it omits what I have long considered one of the most explosive texts in the New Testament: verse 19. It reads, “because it [the food one eats] does not enter into [the] his heart but into the stomach, and thence into the sewer”. [The Greek αφεδρων (afedron) was probably in Koiné, much stronger, perhaps, s--t house]. And then we come to the time bomb, an editorial comment of Mark’s, “(thus he declared all meats clean)”. NRSV.
It occurred to me that the Common Lectionary might have corrected this egregious omission, but once again I was disappointed.
In the earlier part of this chapter the lectionary framers also leave out verses 9-13, a pericope that gives an example of substituting human regulations for the divine law. The law in question is, “honor your father and your mother”, and Mark records that Jesus refers to a later tradition about the use of “Corban”. Altogether this is an obscure passage on which too much ink has been expended, and an argument can be made in favor of editing it out; even so, there is also good reason for leaving in obscure passages, at least to remind us about the gaps in our knowledge of the historical situation of Jesus’ time. But when one comes to verse 19 what justification can be produced for excision?
Two possible reasons
Is it, perhaps, that Jesus could not have mentioned anything so indelicate as an earth closet (which one assumes was the height of luxury in First Century Palestine)? Anyone who has tried in Education classes to get people to consider Jesus having diarrhea, cursing at a septic blister on his foot, or even perhaps, suffering from ED (I haven’t tried this one yet) will know the shocked responses one is likely to get.
If the reason is not some deeply buried Christological heresy which discounts the humanity of Jesus, could it be that the fear of criticizing anything in Judaism in the first century CE is now likely to be read as anti-semitic? This ought not to be the case, because what is at issue here is Jesus’ wholesale criticism of purity systems, which flourish in all religions be they Eastern or Western; and certainly Christianity cannot be exempted from that generalization, except, perhaps for a brief period in its earliest days. Whatever the reason for the truncated reading, it has the effect of blunting Jesus’ trenchant criticism of the human tendency to set up barriers (like social classes or caste systems), to encourage attitudes of superiority (as in racism) and, in general, to enable those in power to control the "lower orders".
Purity Systems
It is widely accepted that one of the major reasons for the opposition to Jesus’ teaching and practice was the way he welcomed people indiscriminately to eat with him and his disciples. Such intercourse with “impure” people was not that of an accredited Rabbi, and our missing verse might suggest that Jesus went even further: Mark’s editorial comment suggests a firm tradition that Jesus rejected the food laws. Acts 10.9 ff and the somewhat confusing “decree” of the Council about admitting Gentiles (ch. 15) indicate that it was not long before the early community broke away from at least this aspect of the purity system, though Paul’s letters, and especially Galatians 2.11 ff., show an on-going struggle between exclusive and inclusive policies.
This dietary liberation, in general, has continued throughout the history of the church. A second breach of the purity system, however, has not. The evidence has mounted during recent decades that women had a very different status in early Christianity than was the case in Judaism, and, unhappily, became the case again as the 2nd century C.E. progressed. Galatians 3.28 – “there is no longer male or female” is little short of incredible, coming from a conservative converted Rabbi, but, sadly, it was a view that did not survive the church’s absorption into the Roman Empire.
In chapter 3 of Meeting Jesus again for the First Time, Marcus Borg has some excellent reflections on the ramifications of the contemporary purity system of Jesus’ time and his trenchant attack on it. (HarperCollins Paperback,1995). He writes, “The same hermeneutical struggle [reading scripture as an holiness code or as a pattern of compassion] goes on in the church today. In parts of the church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity”, and, he continues, “draw sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners…An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of compassion, not purity”. (Borg p. 59).
Let us hope that the Lectionary framers left out Mark 7.19 in a fit of absent-mindedness and not as a contribution to the hermeneutical struggle. (I assume one can discount the presence of crypto-monophysites?)
A Footnote
Careful readers of these verses in Mark chapter 7 will have doubtless noticed that verse 16 is not mentioned: not surprisingly because the best MSS of the N.T. omit it. You will find it in the KJV (“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear”), but not in the NRSV which goes from verse 15 to 17. The verse has a very large number of MS witnesses, all belonging to what is generally known as the Koiné text (later called the Textus Receptus), and this is a shining example that in textual criticism, there is not safety in numbers since a wrongly inserted verse in an early copy may well be copied by hundreds of scribes. Of course, this particular verse is neither here nor there; the ruckus over Westcott and Hort’s Revised text of 1881 and 1885 centered on texts like I John 5.7-8, the comma Joaneum: it was the omission of the only unambiguous reference to the Trinity in the whole N.T. (and, of course, other sensitive texts) that produced a state of near apoplexy in men like Dean Burgeon.
In closing, a footnote to a footnote: in the KJV “if any man” in the Greek is ei tis. This ‘indefinite pronoun’ has the same form for the masculine and feminine. Interestingly, modern versions continue to translate tis as “man” in many instances where “anyone” would be more accurate. Purity system, anyone?
Friday, August 25, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
Reflections on a “State of War”
In an effort to clean up old files, I came upon this piece I had written almost five years ago; I cannot remember now what I intended to do with it, but I apparently did nothing. It seems that I wrote everything but the final few paragraphs on September 18, 2001, and added the ending about three weeks later. My efforts at crystal ball gazing may well raise a laugh, but remember, as our C .in C. frequently reminds us, “we are in this for the long haul".
One week after the fall of the Trade Towers I wrote:
As President Bush’s pronouncements get more militant and abrasive,
it might be worth trying to prepare ourselves psychologically for living in a ‘state of war’ for a prolonged period.
The Munich Crisis
I feel that my experience enables me to suggest some factors that we need to get used to. I was twelve when Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the British people on September 3, 1939 telling us that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. Of course, this did not come out of the blue. For several years, our newspapers had been full of the terrible scenes from Spain, and one year before, at the Munich crisis, I had seen trenches being dug as I made my way to school, only to find that our main assembly hall had been opened as a gas mask distribution centre. Moreover, unlike many, our family had also had early warning. My father was a Commander in the Royal Navy and had been on the retired list since 1922 when massive cuts were made in the armed forces; he had been recalled to active duty as early as April, 1939. By the time Chamberlain spoke, he was in Istanbul wearing civilian clothes, (complete with a cover story about a trade delegation), on his way to Basra (Iraq) to set up a section of the Naval Control Service (RNCS), the convoy control system that was already in place when hostilities began.
The Phony War
Even in the first few months, when the Allies sat behind the Maginot Line and the Germans behind the Siegfried line, the period called the “phony war”, much changed. We all had ration books, but at that stage there were not too many serious shortages; so far as I recall, the butter ration was still a whopping 4 oz. per person for a week (it was to go down to one ounce together with 4 ounces of margarine by 1942). At first, too, the ration book was a relatively simple document, covering meat, eggs, fat, sugar and a few other things. From the start, the meat ration was governed not be weight but by a fixed amount of money you might spend. This meant that if you wanted, you could blow the whole ration on one small Delmonico steak (or whatever the butcher in the UK then called it), or you could buy several pounds of lamb shank for stews. It made shopping a much longer affair since a whole series of little squares had to be clipped out (no perforations) of the appropriate page. Then the little buff colored books, one for each member of the family) had to be put safely away – losing a ration book was at least the equivalent of losing a major credit card today.
As a day boy at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Royal Charter given in 1561, two things were very obvious and extremely irksome. The first was the omnipresence of one’s gas mask, which had to be, carried everywhere. The civilian masks were a rather primitive affair, there being no valve system. When you inhaled, the air came through the filter and the rubber mask pulled close to your cheeks. As you exhaled, the air escaped out of the sides, making the kind of rude noises that reduced pre adolescent boys to uncontrolled laughter. Each gas mask was issued in a flimsy cardboard box about nine inches by seven by seven. Naturally they did not last any time at all, and very quickly, metal boxes with shoulder straps were on sale, khaki in color with GAS MASK stenciled on them. The father of one of my best friends ran a small factory in Mansfield that made decorative containers for biscuits and cakes, and he was turning out the new mask carriers within a week.
The second most obtrusive thing for someone who lived around eight miles from the school was the blackout. As the Michaelmas Term (Fall Term) wore on, it was getting dark by 4.30 p.m., and this meant that any after-school activity involved a walk across a totally darkened town, often feeling for the curb with one’s foot. This was followed by a longish wait and a half hour’s ride on a very dimly lighted and overcrowded bus, though, in retrospect, the buses were just normally overcrowded at that stage: it was not until 1940-41 that a bus designed to carry 35 passengers regularly carried 60. This kind of total overcrowding prevented the cooperative homework sessions with books spread out over several seats which had been a normal pattern of the thirty minute ride home. I suppose we sailed close to the honor code (though, of course, being British, it wasn’t actually in writing) but it provided a bit of extra free time before bed was decreed.
As the war progressed, rationing became stricter and stricter. Many foods, particularly imported fruit disappeared. The last banana I ate must have been around the end of 1939; I did not see another one until 1948. Sweets (candies) and cigarettes became very scarce. The news that the local News Agent’s shop had a consignment of cigarettes would produce a hundred-yard long queue. Clothes were very hard to get and in 1942 a “points” system was added to already bulging Ration Book. I think one had 200 points for the year. A whole line of clothes was produced called “austerity cut”. They used less material, having narrow lapels, no trouser turn ups and so on; they also used up fewer of your valuable “points”. An austerity sports jacket would use up around 120, leaving around 70-80 points for a pair of shoes. A visit to Savile Row for a jacket would use up all your points and require some help from another family member.
Petrol (gasoline) rationing began at once, and, for the first few months was relatively liberal. Even ‘private’ cars were allowed five gallons a month, the idea being that that would provide a ride to church, a shopping trip or other essential ride once a week. Doctors, clergy, social service workers had special petrol allowances. Not far into 1940, however, the only gas available was for “official” cars, a category that included all essential workers, commercial vehicles, lorries, buses , delivery vans (not luxury goods). Our family car sat on blocks in the garage for two years and then was sold to the local doctor for about 30% of its value.
Summer 1940
Of course, all this was a mere backdrop to living in “a state of war”. As France fell, and the Battle of Britain began, immense strain was felt. We were not near the coast, but there was a feeling of certainty that as the Germans landed on the beaches, massive air raids would lay us waste and waves of parachute troops would descend on us. I vividly recall cycling to school in June and coming to a whole series of roadblocks with posted sentries as I took my usual side road for the last three miles. All over the country, sign posts (the old-fashioned kind mostly, some old enough still to have a finger shaped at the end), were taken down, and it became a hazard for a Nun to go out in habit, since a persistent rumor said that that was a favorite disguise for parachutists. We were sure that the (not “an”) invasion was imminent, but were stirred by Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches, fight them in the hills” speech. I can clearly recall wondering whether I would really be able to shoot at a descending paratrooper with the shotgun that was somewhere in the house.
Soon after this, the Blitz began. Night after night sirens sent people to the shelters, and that peculiar and distinctive throb of a whole wing of German bombers going over filled the air, together with the noise of the aircraft guns and the rattle of falling shrapnel.
USA in State of (Virtual) War
Extrapolating from all this, a “state of war” for America now might be envisaged. The food shortage would not be so severe, and might, indeed, be good for America where about 50% of the population are over weight. Paradoxically, in Britain during the war, the overall health of the nation improved because a more balanced diet was possible for many who had been below the poverty line in the thirties, and even the strict rations of war time gave them a balanced, though low calorie diet.
One would suppose that the energy shortage, however, will become acute if we really are in this for “the long haul”. Again, it is unlikely that such draconian measures as I noted above will be instituted, but it would be reasonable to see a ban on all RVs, and the limiting of SUVs to essential services and certain weather conditions. Probably gas rationing, either organized or left to market forces, will emerge: a ration of ten gallons per vehicle might be necessary. If the energy crunch became really bad (a total Arab embargo, for example,) air conditioning might cease to be an option.
Of greater concern than all the material considerations is the necessity to begin to adjust psychologically to military service. If this really is to be the kind of war Bush seems to envisage, this might need to be universal and not selective. (Remember, I wrote this five years ago.) This may seem a pessimistic preview; on the other hand, things could get much worse. In September 1939, we in Britain, had little inkling of an idea of what lay ahead for us.
Of course, it might be possible to do something other than get into a state of war. We might try to do something to redress our foreign policy such as taking more notice of our European allies and of Russia. However, all this posits a foreign policy driven by statesmen, not politicians, for whom, poll results are primary. So, perhaps we had better begin to practice doing without things, and prepare to carry around with us a gas mask which will have to be much more sophisticated and larger than the one I used, carried in its tin box, as a missile in schoolboy scrimmages.
I wrote the above on September 18th, (2001) and it is now the beginning of October. Since September 18, some interesting things have happened. Bush, apparently at the urging of his father among others, has toned down the rhetoric considerably; there has been a rush to surplus stores to buy gas masks, though the experts assure us that they are really no protection, and there have been tectonic shifts in foreign policy. Voices have been raised pointing out that US foreign policy has been seen to be (and probably in fact has been) unfair to the Palestinians. A writer in today’s NYT (p. A6) reports Saif Almaskari, a former under secretary for political affairs at the Gulf Cooperation Council, as saying that people in his native Oman are not happy. “They wait in vain for the U.S. to say to Sharon, ‘Enough is enough’”. (A sense of American unfairness erodes support in Gulf States).
There can be little doubt that among thinking citizens, the issues of our past foreign policy are receiving scrutiny unusual for a decade or more. Jane Perlez, in a review of War in Time of Peace by David Halberstam concludes, “In a way, “War in Time of Peace” will be an interesting test case for Americans. Over the past decade Americans were absorbed in themselves. Now that foreign affairs have come home in the most crushing of ways, are they ready to read an account of foreign policy and its makers by one of the most astute writers in the trade? If they want to learn from the past decade, they should. If they want to think seriously about the future, they must” (NYT Book Review, September, 30, 2001 p.8).
Simon Mein October 2, 2001
And now it is almost the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Towers. There seems to be no end to the conflict in Iraq where the US has successfully deposed a cruel regime, but seems powerless to fill the vacuum thus created: the southern strip of Lebanon lies devasted, the Taliban is still able to inflict significant damage in Afghanistan and any hope of truly bi-partisan action is seen as laughable. I am not sure what I meant by "shift in foreign policy". From today's perspective little seems to have changed since President Bush first took office. Perhaps the elections this Fall will do something to force change; certainly nothing else seems to have done that since September 2001.
Simon Mein
August 14, 2006
One week after the fall of the Trade Towers I wrote:
As President Bush’s pronouncements get more militant and abrasive,
it might be worth trying to prepare ourselves psychologically for living in a ‘state of war’ for a prolonged period.
The Munich Crisis
I feel that my experience enables me to suggest some factors that we need to get used to. I was twelve when Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the British people on September 3, 1939 telling us that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. Of course, this did not come out of the blue. For several years, our newspapers had been full of the terrible scenes from Spain, and one year before, at the Munich crisis, I had seen trenches being dug as I made my way to school, only to find that our main assembly hall had been opened as a gas mask distribution centre. Moreover, unlike many, our family had also had early warning. My father was a Commander in the Royal Navy and had been on the retired list since 1922 when massive cuts were made in the armed forces; he had been recalled to active duty as early as April, 1939. By the time Chamberlain spoke, he was in Istanbul wearing civilian clothes, (complete with a cover story about a trade delegation), on his way to Basra (Iraq) to set up a section of the Naval Control Service (RNCS), the convoy control system that was already in place when hostilities began.
The Phony War
Even in the first few months, when the Allies sat behind the Maginot Line and the Germans behind the Siegfried line, the period called the “phony war”, much changed. We all had ration books, but at that stage there were not too many serious shortages; so far as I recall, the butter ration was still a whopping 4 oz. per person for a week (it was to go down to one ounce together with 4 ounces of margarine by 1942). At first, too, the ration book was a relatively simple document, covering meat, eggs, fat, sugar and a few other things. From the start, the meat ration was governed not be weight but by a fixed amount of money you might spend. This meant that if you wanted, you could blow the whole ration on one small Delmonico steak (or whatever the butcher in the UK then called it), or you could buy several pounds of lamb shank for stews. It made shopping a much longer affair since a whole series of little squares had to be clipped out (no perforations) of the appropriate page. Then the little buff colored books, one for each member of the family) had to be put safely away – losing a ration book was at least the equivalent of losing a major credit card today.
As a day boy at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Royal Charter given in 1561, two things were very obvious and extremely irksome. The first was the omnipresence of one’s gas mask, which had to be, carried everywhere. The civilian masks were a rather primitive affair, there being no valve system. When you inhaled, the air came through the filter and the rubber mask pulled close to your cheeks. As you exhaled, the air escaped out of the sides, making the kind of rude noises that reduced pre adolescent boys to uncontrolled laughter. Each gas mask was issued in a flimsy cardboard box about nine inches by seven by seven. Naturally they did not last any time at all, and very quickly, metal boxes with shoulder straps were on sale, khaki in color with GAS MASK stenciled on them. The father of one of my best friends ran a small factory in Mansfield that made decorative containers for biscuits and cakes, and he was turning out the new mask carriers within a week.
The second most obtrusive thing for someone who lived around eight miles from the school was the blackout. As the Michaelmas Term (Fall Term) wore on, it was getting dark by 4.30 p.m., and this meant that any after-school activity involved a walk across a totally darkened town, often feeling for the curb with one’s foot. This was followed by a longish wait and a half hour’s ride on a very dimly lighted and overcrowded bus, though, in retrospect, the buses were just normally overcrowded at that stage: it was not until 1940-41 that a bus designed to carry 35 passengers regularly carried 60. This kind of total overcrowding prevented the cooperative homework sessions with books spread out over several seats which had been a normal pattern of the thirty minute ride home. I suppose we sailed close to the honor code (though, of course, being British, it wasn’t actually in writing) but it provided a bit of extra free time before bed was decreed.
As the war progressed, rationing became stricter and stricter. Many foods, particularly imported fruit disappeared. The last banana I ate must have been around the end of 1939; I did not see another one until 1948. Sweets (candies) and cigarettes became very scarce. The news that the local News Agent’s shop had a consignment of cigarettes would produce a hundred-yard long queue. Clothes were very hard to get and in 1942 a “points” system was added to already bulging Ration Book. I think one had 200 points for the year. A whole line of clothes was produced called “austerity cut”. They used less material, having narrow lapels, no trouser turn ups and so on; they also used up fewer of your valuable “points”. An austerity sports jacket would use up around 120, leaving around 70-80 points for a pair of shoes. A visit to Savile Row for a jacket would use up all your points and require some help from another family member.
Petrol (gasoline) rationing began at once, and, for the first few months was relatively liberal. Even ‘private’ cars were allowed five gallons a month, the idea being that that would provide a ride to church, a shopping trip or other essential ride once a week. Doctors, clergy, social service workers had special petrol allowances. Not far into 1940, however, the only gas available was for “official” cars, a category that included all essential workers, commercial vehicles, lorries, buses , delivery vans (not luxury goods). Our family car sat on blocks in the garage for two years and then was sold to the local doctor for about 30% of its value.
Summer 1940
Of course, all this was a mere backdrop to living in “a state of war”. As France fell, and the Battle of Britain began, immense strain was felt. We were not near the coast, but there was a feeling of certainty that as the Germans landed on the beaches, massive air raids would lay us waste and waves of parachute troops would descend on us. I vividly recall cycling to school in June and coming to a whole series of roadblocks with posted sentries as I took my usual side road for the last three miles. All over the country, sign posts (the old-fashioned kind mostly, some old enough still to have a finger shaped at the end), were taken down, and it became a hazard for a Nun to go out in habit, since a persistent rumor said that that was a favorite disguise for parachutists. We were sure that the (not “an”) invasion was imminent, but were stirred by Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches, fight them in the hills” speech. I can clearly recall wondering whether I would really be able to shoot at a descending paratrooper with the shotgun that was somewhere in the house.
Soon after this, the Blitz began. Night after night sirens sent people to the shelters, and that peculiar and distinctive throb of a whole wing of German bombers going over filled the air, together with the noise of the aircraft guns and the rattle of falling shrapnel.
USA in State of (Virtual) War
Extrapolating from all this, a “state of war” for America now might be envisaged. The food shortage would not be so severe, and might, indeed, be good for America where about 50% of the population are over weight. Paradoxically, in Britain during the war, the overall health of the nation improved because a more balanced diet was possible for many who had been below the poverty line in the thirties, and even the strict rations of war time gave them a balanced, though low calorie diet.
One would suppose that the energy shortage, however, will become acute if we really are in this for “the long haul”. Again, it is unlikely that such draconian measures as I noted above will be instituted, but it would be reasonable to see a ban on all RVs, and the limiting of SUVs to essential services and certain weather conditions. Probably gas rationing, either organized or left to market forces, will emerge: a ration of ten gallons per vehicle might be necessary. If the energy crunch became really bad (a total Arab embargo, for example,) air conditioning might cease to be an option.
Of greater concern than all the material considerations is the necessity to begin to adjust psychologically to military service. If this really is to be the kind of war Bush seems to envisage, this might need to be universal and not selective. (Remember, I wrote this five years ago.) This may seem a pessimistic preview; on the other hand, things could get much worse. In September 1939, we in Britain, had little inkling of an idea of what lay ahead for us.
Of course, it might be possible to do something other than get into a state of war. We might try to do something to redress our foreign policy such as taking more notice of our European allies and of Russia. However, all this posits a foreign policy driven by statesmen, not politicians, for whom, poll results are primary. So, perhaps we had better begin to practice doing without things, and prepare to carry around with us a gas mask which will have to be much more sophisticated and larger than the one I used, carried in its tin box, as a missile in schoolboy scrimmages.
I wrote the above on September 18th, (2001) and it is now the beginning of October. Since September 18, some interesting things have happened. Bush, apparently at the urging of his father among others, has toned down the rhetoric considerably; there has been a rush to surplus stores to buy gas masks, though the experts assure us that they are really no protection, and there have been tectonic shifts in foreign policy. Voices have been raised pointing out that US foreign policy has been seen to be (and probably in fact has been) unfair to the Palestinians. A writer in today’s NYT (p. A6) reports Saif Almaskari, a former under secretary for political affairs at the Gulf Cooperation Council, as saying that people in his native Oman are not happy. “They wait in vain for the U.S. to say to Sharon, ‘Enough is enough’”. (A sense of American unfairness erodes support in Gulf States).
There can be little doubt that among thinking citizens, the issues of our past foreign policy are receiving scrutiny unusual for a decade or more. Jane Perlez, in a review of War in Time of Peace by David Halberstam concludes, “In a way, “War in Time of Peace” will be an interesting test case for Americans. Over the past decade Americans were absorbed in themselves. Now that foreign affairs have come home in the most crushing of ways, are they ready to read an account of foreign policy and its makers by one of the most astute writers in the trade? If they want to learn from the past decade, they should. If they want to think seriously about the future, they must” (NYT Book Review, September, 30, 2001 p.8).
Simon Mein October 2, 2001
And now it is almost the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Towers. There seems to be no end to the conflict in Iraq where the US has successfully deposed a cruel regime, but seems powerless to fill the vacuum thus created: the southern strip of Lebanon lies devasted, the Taliban is still able to inflict significant damage in Afghanistan and any hope of truly bi-partisan action is seen as laughable. I am not sure what I meant by "shift in foreign policy". From today's perspective little seems to have changed since President Bush first took office. Perhaps the elections this Fall will do something to force change; certainly nothing else seems to have done that since September 2001.
Simon Mein
August 14, 2006
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Anglican Polity and New Knowledge
The Anglican church as it emerged at the Elizabethan Settlement had a distinctive polity, but one very different from continental (and Scottish) Protestantism on the one hand and from the Counter Reformation Roman Catholic church on the other. There was, and is, no powerful central authority, let alone an absolutist one like the Papacy. Furthermore, this polity has enabled Anglicans to recognize that new knowledge has mandatory implications for the doing of theology, the understanding of doctrinal formulations, and for patterns of behavior. It has enabled Anglicans to take account of new knowledge, but also to regard it as one of the ways in which God leads us.
Changing attitudes to Formularies - The Gorham Case
Two examples might illustrate these generalizations. The first is the way in which the emergence of new historical knowledge in the 19th century first caused an immense uproar, but ultimately came to be accepted by a broad spectrum of Anglicans, though, it must be said, not by all. Extreme Evangelicals on one wing and ultramontane Anglo-Catholics on the other, in general, stood aside from the central consensus. Much of contemporary minority dissent (and it is important to recall just what a small minority we are talking about in the face of continual propaganda) has its roots, I believe, in these 19th century "wings" of the Church of England.
A survey of the scene in the C of E in the mid 19th century is instructive. After the upheavals of the Tractarian movement in the thirties and forties, the church was convulsed by controversy quite as bitter as anything we are experiencing today.
First there was the Gorham case, which hinged on the Evangelical reluctance to ascribe certain "regeneration" to Baptism administered to infants. Beginning around 1847 the case dragged on for years, and, as often happens, the original dispute over doctrine was submerged in contentions about the authority of Parliament in church affairs, about the authority of bishops and the status of canon law. At one stage a great exodus of the Evangelicals seemed imminent; at a later date, it was the turn of the High Church party to organize petitions and talk about a mass secession to Rome.
One of the central issues that emerged was whether the XXXIX Articles 'over-rode' the Prayer Book concerning Baptismal regeneration. It is worth noting that the doctrinal issue of baptismal regeneration has been ‘resolved’ in typically Anglican comprehensiveness. That there are significant shades of the doctrine is very clear: that they can be held within a broad spectrum of belief is also clear, (or has been clear for almost a century).
Even more telling is the status of the Articles of Religion: in the mid 19th century they were a continual source of controversy, first by the Tractarians and then by the Evangelicals. In the ECUSA they are discreetly given an honorable retirement and reside in "Historical Documents". (For an excellent account of the details of the Gorham case, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, pp. 250-271.)
Geology, Historical Criticism, Essays & Reviews
Perhaps a clearer example of the way in which Anglicanism has coped with new knowledge is in the areas of (a) scientific discovery and (b) historical criticism.
(a) The scientific revolution of the 19th century left all the churches in disarray, but by the turn of the century, it seems that the Anglican church as a whole was coming to some kind of rapprochement and, indeed, using new insights for a reappraisal of theological dogmas.
In the 1830s "books by Sir Charles Lyell and Dean Buckland established the geological succession of rocks and fossils, and showed the world to be much older than the accepted date for the Garden of Eden." (Alec Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. 114; Penguin).
Looking at fossil evidence, Lyell disturbingly pointed out that whole species had perished, and this was almost 30 years before Darwin's book. Yet Lyell and many other scientists were not all that shaken in their theistic faith. Basil Willey writes, "Lyell himself was quite willing to profess belief in the fact of divine activity, provided that science were left free to investigate and demonstrate the mode of it. This was the formula adopted (quite rightly) by the nineteenth century of reconcilers of science and religion in general". (More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York, 1956, p. 85).
(b) Intellectual developments in Europe in the 18th century had laid the ground work for the seismic shifts of the 19th. The period of the Enlightenment had produced philosophical systems that were not all that friendly to the rigid framework of traditional Christian metaphysics, and work had begun on the biblical text as early as Jean Astruc (1684-1766) who was the first to suggest that the book of Genesis was, in fact, the product of separate traditions with different emphases, though, at this stage he merely suggested that Moses put the two together, the genie was out of the bottle.
Quite early in the 19th century, some scholars, especially some German ones, began to subject the bible to the kind of criticism that had recently been applied to other ancient texts like Homer. Not many English scholars and churchmen read German, but the few who did were either very excited by the German work or thrown into paroxysms of rage. In any case, it was not too long before translations of German works began to appear (led by George Eliot’s translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus), and these, in Chadwick's graphic phase, began to "rock the boat of faith at its moorings".
What were some of the conclusions that critical study was suggesting? It became very clear that the Old Testament was not a unity, that Moses did not write the Law books nor David the Psalms. Moreover, there were clearly errors of fact as well as statements that conflicted entirely with the findings of geology (not biology at this stage). And it is, perhaps, here that the real source of the panic can be found.
More liberal thinkers had come to terms somewhat with these with Old Testament problems, but criticism of the New Testament raised anxiety levels to new heights. That is why Strauss's book was regarded as little short of diabolical by the conservative elements of the church (that is to say, the vast majority).
Within Anglicanism, the major impact of historical criticism was Christological; if, for example, David did not write Psalm 110, what does Jesus' remark in Mark 12 imply about the limitations of his knowledge? The uproar suggests a very lop-sided view of Jesus’ humanity, and, I suspect, that the issue lies (though deeply buried) behind a great deal of contemporary fundamentalism, - a kind of crypto-monophytism. For main-stream theologians, however, the criticism of the bible has enabled a much more open approach to Christology than was the 19th century norm (a norm that, I believe, is still the (usually unacknowledged) position of much contemporary conservative Christianity).
By the mid 19th century, a gloomy assessment of the state of religion was emerging; we find poets, philosophers and novelists bemoaning the "sea of faith" retreating like the tide going out. Then, within a year of each other two publications set the almost boiling pot to run over. The kind of invective, the hurled insults and lengthy magazine articles of the next two decades make the religious controversies of the late 20th century look like a genteel tea party. The two publications were Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species over which he had been laboring for many years, appearing in 1859, and a relatively brief book containing seven essays, six of them written by clergymen and one layman, Essays & Reviews.
In the Press, in everyday social circles and particularly within the churches (which we have to recall embraced a majority of the middle and upper classes), uproar ensued that for a while muted the response to Origins. Basil Willey describes this so well that it is worth quoting at length:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Studies , 137).
The amazing thing is, that everything the essayists said is more or less accepted today, (again, of course, except among conservative Evangelicals including those within the Anglican grouping of autonomous churches). Indeed, in the light of 20th century scholarship, the essays have a decidedly conservative ring.
John Barton (Biblical Interpretation ) points out that within a few years, Frederick Temple, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and that within the C of E a cautious biblical criticism was coming to be accepted as compatible with a doctrine of the Incarnation. It was this, he says that "interested Anglicans. The doctrine of scripture, which seemed so important to Continental Protestants, was not even in the creed. The Bible was used in liturgy, and that was not the context in which to press awkward questions. When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (p. 59)
A practical application
The flexibility exhibited by the C of E in the navigation of the whirlpools and rapids of the 19th century carried over into practical ethics. Perhaps a striking example of this is the issue of contraception.
The debate centers mainly on how the "ends" of marriage are understood. The classic catholic position has been and still is, that procreation is the primary end of marriage, and that, therefore, coitus is to be engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation. A view that gained influence from the late 19th century is that the sexual life of a married couple is also central to the nurturing of the relationship. The Lambeth Conference of 1930, took a first minimal step: in certain tightly circumscribed situations, the use of contraception might be permissible (Resolution 15). [It is reported that during the debate an elderly Bishop leaned his neighbor and whispered “What is contraception?”]
The Conference of 1958 was much more robust, its resolution ending: “Therefore, it is utterly wrong to say that...intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children". This was a significant departure from traditional teaching about practice required of a believer, and it is a departure that the R.C. church has still failed to make. The contrast between the Anglican approach and the Roman Catholic highlights the difference in the polity of the two traditions.
After Vatican II, the Commission that Paul VI set up, with (amazingly) married lay people among its members, advised by a considerable majority that in some instances the practice be allowed. Nothing was heard for two years when, in 1968, Humanae Vitae was promulgated, totally affirming the traditional position. It emerged that a secret committee made up of Curia members and conservative clergy, chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani, had been meeting and strongly advised the Pope to ignore the findings of the Commission.
The bombshell of Humanae Vitae is as clear and startling a contrast to Anglican polity as one could hope to find. In contrast to the "process" leading up to, and the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Anglican approach has been open, not subject to secret committees of a particular bias; it is not centralized but allows for local movement; it allows for God's continuing revealing and guiding; it depends not on a central absolute authority which gives final and binding definitions and rulings, but on shared authority (collegiality of Bishops, participation of clergy and lay people in decision making).
Is it too much to hope that the Anglican tradition of openness to new knowledge can navigate us in the 21st century as it did in the 19th ?
Simon Mein
August 10, 2006
Changing attitudes to Formularies - The Gorham Case
Two examples might illustrate these generalizations. The first is the way in which the emergence of new historical knowledge in the 19th century first caused an immense uproar, but ultimately came to be accepted by a broad spectrum of Anglicans, though, it must be said, not by all. Extreme Evangelicals on one wing and ultramontane Anglo-Catholics on the other, in general, stood aside from the central consensus. Much of contemporary minority dissent (and it is important to recall just what a small minority we are talking about in the face of continual propaganda) has its roots, I believe, in these 19th century "wings" of the Church of England.
A survey of the scene in the C of E in the mid 19th century is instructive. After the upheavals of the Tractarian movement in the thirties and forties, the church was convulsed by controversy quite as bitter as anything we are experiencing today.
First there was the Gorham case, which hinged on the Evangelical reluctance to ascribe certain "regeneration" to Baptism administered to infants. Beginning around 1847 the case dragged on for years, and, as often happens, the original dispute over doctrine was submerged in contentions about the authority of Parliament in church affairs, about the authority of bishops and the status of canon law. At one stage a great exodus of the Evangelicals seemed imminent; at a later date, it was the turn of the High Church party to organize petitions and talk about a mass secession to Rome.
One of the central issues that emerged was whether the XXXIX Articles 'over-rode' the Prayer Book concerning Baptismal regeneration. It is worth noting that the doctrinal issue of baptismal regeneration has been ‘resolved’ in typically Anglican comprehensiveness. That there are significant shades of the doctrine is very clear: that they can be held within a broad spectrum of belief is also clear, (or has been clear for almost a century).
Even more telling is the status of the Articles of Religion: in the mid 19th century they were a continual source of controversy, first by the Tractarians and then by the Evangelicals. In the ECUSA they are discreetly given an honorable retirement and reside in "Historical Documents". (For an excellent account of the details of the Gorham case, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, pp. 250-271.)
Geology, Historical Criticism, Essays & Reviews
Perhaps a clearer example of the way in which Anglicanism has coped with new knowledge is in the areas of (a) scientific discovery and (b) historical criticism.
(a) The scientific revolution of the 19th century left all the churches in disarray, but by the turn of the century, it seems that the Anglican church as a whole was coming to some kind of rapprochement and, indeed, using new insights for a reappraisal of theological dogmas.
In the 1830s "books by Sir Charles Lyell and Dean Buckland established the geological succession of rocks and fossils, and showed the world to be much older than the accepted date for the Garden of Eden." (Alec Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. 114; Penguin).
Looking at fossil evidence, Lyell disturbingly pointed out that whole species had perished, and this was almost 30 years before Darwin's book. Yet Lyell and many other scientists were not all that shaken in their theistic faith. Basil Willey writes, "Lyell himself was quite willing to profess belief in the fact of divine activity, provided that science were left free to investigate and demonstrate the mode of it. This was the formula adopted (quite rightly) by the nineteenth century of reconcilers of science and religion in general". (More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York, 1956, p. 85).
(b) Intellectual developments in Europe in the 18th century had laid the ground work for the seismic shifts of the 19th. The period of the Enlightenment had produced philosophical systems that were not all that friendly to the rigid framework of traditional Christian metaphysics, and work had begun on the biblical text as early as Jean Astruc (1684-1766) who was the first to suggest that the book of Genesis was, in fact, the product of separate traditions with different emphases, though, at this stage he merely suggested that Moses put the two together, the genie was out of the bottle.
Quite early in the 19th century, some scholars, especially some German ones, began to subject the bible to the kind of criticism that had recently been applied to other ancient texts like Homer. Not many English scholars and churchmen read German, but the few who did were either very excited by the German work or thrown into paroxysms of rage. In any case, it was not too long before translations of German works began to appear (led by George Eliot’s translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus), and these, in Chadwick's graphic phase, began to "rock the boat of faith at its moorings".
What were some of the conclusions that critical study was suggesting? It became very clear that the Old Testament was not a unity, that Moses did not write the Law books nor David the Psalms. Moreover, there were clearly errors of fact as well as statements that conflicted entirely with the findings of geology (not biology at this stage). And it is, perhaps, here that the real source of the panic can be found.
More liberal thinkers had come to terms somewhat with these with Old Testament problems, but criticism of the New Testament raised anxiety levels to new heights. That is why Strauss's book was regarded as little short of diabolical by the conservative elements of the church (that is to say, the vast majority).
Within Anglicanism, the major impact of historical criticism was Christological; if, for example, David did not write Psalm 110, what does Jesus' remark in Mark 12 imply about the limitations of his knowledge? The uproar suggests a very lop-sided view of Jesus’ humanity, and, I suspect, that the issue lies (though deeply buried) behind a great deal of contemporary fundamentalism, - a kind of crypto-monophytism. For main-stream theologians, however, the criticism of the bible has enabled a much more open approach to Christology than was the 19th century norm (a norm that, I believe, is still the (usually unacknowledged) position of much contemporary conservative Christianity).
By the mid 19th century, a gloomy assessment of the state of religion was emerging; we find poets, philosophers and novelists bemoaning the "sea of faith" retreating like the tide going out. Then, within a year of each other two publications set the almost boiling pot to run over. The kind of invective, the hurled insults and lengthy magazine articles of the next two decades make the religious controversies of the late 20th century look like a genteel tea party. The two publications were Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species over which he had been laboring for many years, appearing in 1859, and a relatively brief book containing seven essays, six of them written by clergymen and one layman, Essays & Reviews.
In the Press, in everyday social circles and particularly within the churches (which we have to recall embraced a majority of the middle and upper classes), uproar ensued that for a while muted the response to Origins. Basil Willey describes this so well that it is worth quoting at length:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Studies , 137).
The amazing thing is, that everything the essayists said is more or less accepted today, (again, of course, except among conservative Evangelicals including those within the Anglican grouping of autonomous churches). Indeed, in the light of 20th century scholarship, the essays have a decidedly conservative ring.
John Barton (Biblical Interpretation ) points out that within a few years, Frederick Temple, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and that within the C of E a cautious biblical criticism was coming to be accepted as compatible with a doctrine of the Incarnation. It was this, he says that "interested Anglicans. The doctrine of scripture, which seemed so important to Continental Protestants, was not even in the creed. The Bible was used in liturgy, and that was not the context in which to press awkward questions. When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (p. 59)
A practical application
The flexibility exhibited by the C of E in the navigation of the whirlpools and rapids of the 19th century carried over into practical ethics. Perhaps a striking example of this is the issue of contraception.
The debate centers mainly on how the "ends" of marriage are understood. The classic catholic position has been and still is, that procreation is the primary end of marriage, and that, therefore, coitus is to be engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation. A view that gained influence from the late 19th century is that the sexual life of a married couple is also central to the nurturing of the relationship. The Lambeth Conference of 1930, took a first minimal step: in certain tightly circumscribed situations, the use of contraception might be permissible (Resolution 15). [It is reported that during the debate an elderly Bishop leaned his neighbor and whispered “What is contraception?”]
The Conference of 1958 was much more robust, its resolution ending: “Therefore, it is utterly wrong to say that...intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children". This was a significant departure from traditional teaching about practice required of a believer, and it is a departure that the R.C. church has still failed to make. The contrast between the Anglican approach and the Roman Catholic highlights the difference in the polity of the two traditions.
After Vatican II, the Commission that Paul VI set up, with (amazingly) married lay people among its members, advised by a considerable majority that in some instances the practice be allowed. Nothing was heard for two years when, in 1968, Humanae Vitae was promulgated, totally affirming the traditional position. It emerged that a secret committee made up of Curia members and conservative clergy, chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani, had been meeting and strongly advised the Pope to ignore the findings of the Commission.
The bombshell of Humanae Vitae is as clear and startling a contrast to Anglican polity as one could hope to find. In contrast to the "process" leading up to, and the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Anglican approach has been open, not subject to secret committees of a particular bias; it is not centralized but allows for local movement; it allows for God's continuing revealing and guiding; it depends not on a central absolute authority which gives final and binding definitions and rulings, but on shared authority (collegiality of Bishops, participation of clergy and lay people in decision making).
Is it too much to hope that the Anglican tradition of openness to new knowledge can navigate us in the 21st century as it did in the 19th ?
Simon Mein
August 10, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The Context of the Beatitudes
In an excellent discussion of Jesus as teacher in the Wisdom tradition, Marcus Borg remarks:
Jesus used these invitational and provocative forms of speech –aphorisms and parables – to subvert conventional ways of seeing and living, and to invite his hearers to an alternative way of life. As a teacher of wisdom, Jesus was not primarily a teacher of information (what to believe) or morals (how to behave), but a teacher of a way or path of transformation… [f]rom a life in the world of conventional wisdom to a life centered in God. ”. (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 74).
It is crucial to put the short sayings of Jesus known as the Beatitudes into the wider context of the gospel traditions. These sayings of Jesus, known best in Matthew’s version, have all too often been torn from their context and treated as a unit in themselves, seen as the very essence of Jesus’ message, a kind of epitome of all that he taught. This view became particularly prominent in the mid 19th century as critical studies revealed just how much the developing community shaped and added to what was considered the “original” message of Jesus. It was a complex picture of the N.T. documents that emerged; it became clear that they contained much more than the actual words that Jesus spoke, which scholars like to call the ipsissima verba. Also embedded in the narrative framework were attempts of the community to understand the message in the wider context, firstly of Judaism and then Hellenism; almost certainly it was these varying contexts of first century Christianity that account for the multiple versions of the same saying or parable clearly adapted for different locations, cultures, and decades.
Beyond the issue of the spoken word were the attempts of the early communities to understand both the actions of Jesus and the reactions of various groups: the inner circle of followers, the crowd, the authorities both Jewish and Roman and, above all, the many‘outsiders’ who frequently appear in the text. The gospel accounts that had seemed relatively straightforward were revealed in their bewildering complexity.
That, however, does not complete the factors that need to be taken into account as we try to put the beatitudes in context: not only is there the context of these sayings within the gospel traditions, there is the context of a century or more of the new historical approach to the New Testament documents, the context of a critical examination of all aspects of the documents – their dates, their authors, their religious and philosophical sub texts, their transmission in MS form and so on. A second important aspect of this is that critics and historians (and, of course, scientists, sociologists and, perhaps, preeminently, theologians) bring pre-suppositions, often unnoticed, to their task. One very potent influence in the mid 19th century in ‘Liberal Protestant’ circles was the view that Christianity, beginning as early as the writings of Paul, had turned a “simple ethical” message of a Palestinian holy man into a complicated theological structure on which had been erected an even more top-heavy ecclesiastical structure in the form of Western Catholicism. It was very common to talk of stripping away layers of accretions and arriving at the simple ethical teaching of Jesus. By the beginning of the 20th century more radical questioning began; the need relentlessly to uncover pre-conceptions and to recognize prejudices profoundly altered the approach to N.T. studies. Looking back to the heyday of critical writing, someone said that those early liberal protestant scholars had looked down the well of history to find Jesus and had seen their own reflection.
A more dispassionate study suggested that the simple ethical gospel was a myth; that is not to say that ethical issues are not very important in the gospels, and particularly in some of the Letters, but it is to put the centre of gravity elsewhere. A potent factor in the change in focus has been the remarkable archeological finds of the last century. In 1898 a collection of papyrus fragments was found in Oxyrhynchus: among the hundreds of pages and fragments some two dozen are from the N.T. (e.g. a leaf from Mt 1; short sections of Romans, I Cor. and the Johannine letters). The were also three fragments with sayings of Jesus, but it was not until 1945 that their significance was dramatically revealed. In that year the greatest find apart from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was made in a town known in antiquity as Nag Hammadi (120 m. South of Cairo). Among the books found was one titled The Gospel of Thomas. Like all the books in this collection it was written in Coptic, “a form of late Egyptian written in Greek characters” (H.B.D. p.679), but the Oxyrhynchus papyri were clearly from this gospel and pointed to quite an early date for the circulation of Thomas: an emerging consensus dates it around 140 -180 C.E.
It has become clear that both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are in some measure branches of the same tree, but by the middle of the first century C.E. they were diverging widely. Perhaps Paul’s comment in Galatians 3.28 is the most succinct possible summary of the situation: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”. This is a radical rejection of a religion of exclusivity and represents one of the earliest understandings we have of Jesus’ teaching. After all, Galatians was written fifteen to twenty years before our earliest canonical Gospel.
The wider context is established by the opening verses of St. Mark’s book: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Messiah…[was] John the Baptizer.“ (1.1,4). What follows is a brief description of John reviving the long defunct line of Prophets and, like them, speaking of Yahweh, the LORD, who is to come. Jesus is baptized, that is, anointed, in Jesus’ case not only with water but with the touch of the Spirit of Yahweh), sent into the desert to fast and pray and emerges, says Mark, “proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” (1.14). This sounds more like an eschatological prophet than an ethical teacher and gives us the clue for understanding all that follows, not only in Mark but in all the Synoptic Gospels.
Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is the best known, and it may well be that many assume it is the only recording of the sayings and also assume that they are all the precise words of Jesus, spoken in precisely this order. On the contrary, all but die-hard fundamentalists agree that the sermon is a Matthean creation, a view espoused even by Calvin more than four centuries ago. Matthew places the blessings at the start of a carefully crafted section of his book which begins by placing Jesus on a mountain. This section is known as the Sermon on the Mount and is the first of five collections of sayings that Mathew incorporates into the wider narrative. Mathew is the most Judaic of all the gospels, the mountain of the Beatitudes, for example, is clearly parallel to Sinai, but, at the same time, he is very critical of the legalistic, narrowing elements of official Palestinian Judaism. In spite of his Judaic background, Matthew has understood the radical, even subversive nature of Jesus’ teaching. This is important when we come to the interpretation of the Beatitudes which make little sense unless we read them in the context of Rabbinic precedents, while at the same time (and this is crucial) understand that though using Rabbinical argumentation, Matthew is also transmitting a highly radical message that totally undermines some of the main foundations of first-century Palestinian Judaism.
The sayings of Jesus are found throughout the gospel traditions and this includes many gospels that did not make it into the official list: the sayings found in the synoptic gospels have interesting parallels in the Gospel of Thomas. The words of Jesus in the Fourth gospel are another matter. There are a few that have the same aphoristic ring as the earlier material, but much of what Jesus says here has been shaped by John into a series of long discourses, centered on some saying like “I am the bread of life”.
It seems virtually certain that Matthew and Luke both used an early, possibly very early, Sayings Collection of the same genre as Thomas. This has universally come to be called Q from its original German description as a Quelle, a source; that name left quite open the nature of the material and for over a century biblical scholars have debated, mulled and fought over Q. In the middle of the 20th century, it was impossible to open a Biblical Studies Journal (Journal of Theological Studies, Expository Times and many more) without at least a major article and a series of shorter notes on Q: someone would write “On dispensing with Q”. another “Q as Oral Tradition”, and yet another would counter, “The shape of the Document Q”. In recent decades the deluge has abated, and a majority consensus, (though not an overwhelming one), has emerged that Q most probably represents some oral tradition and one or more written collections of sayings; moreover, it is widely accepted that these are the earliest records that we have of the words of Jesus, and that Luke has more often that Mt preserved the sayings in a form close to the original.
In contrast to the many sayings and parables found in Matthew and Luke, Mark seems threadbare: there is the famous parable of the sower and there are several other agriculture-based parables like the seed growing in secret. There are several sayings collections in Mark in 4.21-25. 8.34-38 & 9.37-50. among these are well-known aphorisms like: ‘Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed’ (note the eschatological emphasis); ‘the measure you give with is the measure you receive’. Almost all this material is incorporated by Matthew and Luke in varying contexts, but it is a relatively short list . Why does Mark have so little of the teaching? The most likely answer is that Q was well known as well established oral tradition or in the form of short written collections and Mark provides the first narrative framework for the sayings.
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (6.20-49, 29 verses in all) is much shorter than Mathew’s Sermon on the Mount (5.3 – 7.29, over 100 verses). and only three beatitudes are found in Lk (and perhaps, therefore in Q?) This suggests that the core of Jesus’ teaching pronounces a blessing on the poor, the hungry and those who mourn. Thomas has the first two almost word for word: “Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to you.” (Thom, 54) and, “Jesus says: Blessed are those who suffer from hunger, so that the belly of the one who wishes (it) will be satisfied.” (Thom, 69:2). Matthew’s final Beatitude, Luke’s third blessing on the persecuted is also found in Thomas – Mt. 5.10-11, Lk. 6.22 [Q], Thom. 68. This data, naturally has led to a great deal of debate about the status of the other beatitudes in Matthew; did he compose them? were they from some other sayings collection? and so on. Much of the discussion has raged round the issue of “authenticity”. This is in many ways a hang-over from the 19th century liberal efforts to strip away accretions and get to the authentic Jesus. I hope I have shown that the complexity of the N.T. documents prevents such an enterprise. What we have in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is the meaning of Jesus’ teaching for a specific Christian community towards the end of the first century C.E.. A great deal of evidence suggests that Matthew has, indeed, understood the central core of the radical message of Jesus which turned on its head much conventional wisdom, as Marcus Borg calls it.
Typical expressions of conventional wisdom are, “good people are rewarded by wealth”, “God will accept you if you try hard enough” or “misfortune is a sign of God’s displeasure”. These all represent religious positions, not only of influential strands of Judaism, but universally in all religions, and, perhaps preeminently in the civic religion of the USA. Conventional wisdom, however, covers more than religion, laying down norms for the whole of life: table manners, social address, political issues and much more, all best summed up by saying that conventional wisdom establishes very clear social boundaries which, usually quite unnoticed, rule our lives. Borg writes “[W]hether in religious or secular form, conventional wisdom creates a world in which we live” (op.cit. 77). Conventional wisdom constructs our views of reality and rules us with a rod of iron. It was this conventional wisdom that Jesus overturned both by sayings like the Beatitudes, dealing with religious realities, and his persistent flouting of social convention by the practice of open table fellowship. One might say that the tyrannical rule of conventional wisdom was challenged by Jesus’ core teaching: the Rule of God is upon you. This is the context of the Beatitudes and an essential category in interpreting them.
Jesus used these invitational and provocative forms of speech –aphorisms and parables – to subvert conventional ways of seeing and living, and to invite his hearers to an alternative way of life. As a teacher of wisdom, Jesus was not primarily a teacher of information (what to believe) or morals (how to behave), but a teacher of a way or path of transformation… [f]rom a life in the world of conventional wisdom to a life centered in God. ”. (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 74).
It is crucial to put the short sayings of Jesus known as the Beatitudes into the wider context of the gospel traditions. These sayings of Jesus, known best in Matthew’s version, have all too often been torn from their context and treated as a unit in themselves, seen as the very essence of Jesus’ message, a kind of epitome of all that he taught. This view became particularly prominent in the mid 19th century as critical studies revealed just how much the developing community shaped and added to what was considered the “original” message of Jesus. It was a complex picture of the N.T. documents that emerged; it became clear that they contained much more than the actual words that Jesus spoke, which scholars like to call the ipsissima verba. Also embedded in the narrative framework were attempts of the community to understand the message in the wider context, firstly of Judaism and then Hellenism; almost certainly it was these varying contexts of first century Christianity that account for the multiple versions of the same saying or parable clearly adapted for different locations, cultures, and decades.
Beyond the issue of the spoken word were the attempts of the early communities to understand both the actions of Jesus and the reactions of various groups: the inner circle of followers, the crowd, the authorities both Jewish and Roman and, above all, the many‘outsiders’ who frequently appear in the text. The gospel accounts that had seemed relatively straightforward were revealed in their bewildering complexity.
That, however, does not complete the factors that need to be taken into account as we try to put the beatitudes in context: not only is there the context of these sayings within the gospel traditions, there is the context of a century or more of the new historical approach to the New Testament documents, the context of a critical examination of all aspects of the documents – their dates, their authors, their religious and philosophical sub texts, their transmission in MS form and so on. A second important aspect of this is that critics and historians (and, of course, scientists, sociologists and, perhaps, preeminently, theologians) bring pre-suppositions, often unnoticed, to their task. One very potent influence in the mid 19th century in ‘Liberal Protestant’ circles was the view that Christianity, beginning as early as the writings of Paul, had turned a “simple ethical” message of a Palestinian holy man into a complicated theological structure on which had been erected an even more top-heavy ecclesiastical structure in the form of Western Catholicism. It was very common to talk of stripping away layers of accretions and arriving at the simple ethical teaching of Jesus. By the beginning of the 20th century more radical questioning began; the need relentlessly to uncover pre-conceptions and to recognize prejudices profoundly altered the approach to N.T. studies. Looking back to the heyday of critical writing, someone said that those early liberal protestant scholars had looked down the well of history to find Jesus and had seen their own reflection.
A more dispassionate study suggested that the simple ethical gospel was a myth; that is not to say that ethical issues are not very important in the gospels, and particularly in some of the Letters, but it is to put the centre of gravity elsewhere. A potent factor in the change in focus has been the remarkable archeological finds of the last century. In 1898 a collection of papyrus fragments was found in Oxyrhynchus: among the hundreds of pages and fragments some two dozen are from the N.T. (e.g. a leaf from Mt 1; short sections of Romans, I Cor. and the Johannine letters). The were also three fragments with sayings of Jesus, but it was not until 1945 that their significance was dramatically revealed. In that year the greatest find apart from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was made in a town known in antiquity as Nag Hammadi (120 m. South of Cairo). Among the books found was one titled The Gospel of Thomas. Like all the books in this collection it was written in Coptic, “a form of late Egyptian written in Greek characters” (H.B.D. p.679), but the Oxyrhynchus papyri were clearly from this gospel and pointed to quite an early date for the circulation of Thomas: an emerging consensus dates it around 140 -180 C.E.
It has become clear that both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism are in some measure branches of the same tree, but by the middle of the first century C.E. they were diverging widely. Perhaps Paul’s comment in Galatians 3.28 is the most succinct possible summary of the situation: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”. This is a radical rejection of a religion of exclusivity and represents one of the earliest understandings we have of Jesus’ teaching. After all, Galatians was written fifteen to twenty years before our earliest canonical Gospel.
The wider context is established by the opening verses of St. Mark’s book: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Messiah…[was] John the Baptizer.“ (1.1,4). What follows is a brief description of John reviving the long defunct line of Prophets and, like them, speaking of Yahweh, the LORD, who is to come. Jesus is baptized, that is, anointed, in Jesus’ case not only with water but with the touch of the Spirit of Yahweh), sent into the desert to fast and pray and emerges, says Mark, “proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” (1.14). This sounds more like an eschatological prophet than an ethical teacher and gives us the clue for understanding all that follows, not only in Mark but in all the Synoptic Gospels.
Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is the best known, and it may well be that many assume it is the only recording of the sayings and also assume that they are all the precise words of Jesus, spoken in precisely this order. On the contrary, all but die-hard fundamentalists agree that the sermon is a Matthean creation, a view espoused even by Calvin more than four centuries ago. Matthew places the blessings at the start of a carefully crafted section of his book which begins by placing Jesus on a mountain. This section is known as the Sermon on the Mount and is the first of five collections of sayings that Mathew incorporates into the wider narrative. Mathew is the most Judaic of all the gospels, the mountain of the Beatitudes, for example, is clearly parallel to Sinai, but, at the same time, he is very critical of the legalistic, narrowing elements of official Palestinian Judaism. In spite of his Judaic background, Matthew has understood the radical, even subversive nature of Jesus’ teaching. This is important when we come to the interpretation of the Beatitudes which make little sense unless we read them in the context of Rabbinic precedents, while at the same time (and this is crucial) understand that though using Rabbinical argumentation, Matthew is also transmitting a highly radical message that totally undermines some of the main foundations of first-century Palestinian Judaism.
The sayings of Jesus are found throughout the gospel traditions and this includes many gospels that did not make it into the official list: the sayings found in the synoptic gospels have interesting parallels in the Gospel of Thomas. The words of Jesus in the Fourth gospel are another matter. There are a few that have the same aphoristic ring as the earlier material, but much of what Jesus says here has been shaped by John into a series of long discourses, centered on some saying like “I am the bread of life”.
It seems virtually certain that Matthew and Luke both used an early, possibly very early, Sayings Collection of the same genre as Thomas. This has universally come to be called Q from its original German description as a Quelle, a source; that name left quite open the nature of the material and for over a century biblical scholars have debated, mulled and fought over Q. In the middle of the 20th century, it was impossible to open a Biblical Studies Journal (Journal of Theological Studies, Expository Times and many more) without at least a major article and a series of shorter notes on Q: someone would write “On dispensing with Q”. another “Q as Oral Tradition”, and yet another would counter, “The shape of the Document Q”. In recent decades the deluge has abated, and a majority consensus, (though not an overwhelming one), has emerged that Q most probably represents some oral tradition and one or more written collections of sayings; moreover, it is widely accepted that these are the earliest records that we have of the words of Jesus, and that Luke has more often that Mt preserved the sayings in a form close to the original.
In contrast to the many sayings and parables found in Matthew and Luke, Mark seems threadbare: there is the famous parable of the sower and there are several other agriculture-based parables like the seed growing in secret. There are several sayings collections in Mark in 4.21-25. 8.34-38 & 9.37-50. among these are well-known aphorisms like: ‘Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed’ (note the eschatological emphasis); ‘the measure you give with is the measure you receive’. Almost all this material is incorporated by Matthew and Luke in varying contexts, but it is a relatively short list . Why does Mark have so little of the teaching? The most likely answer is that Q was well known as well established oral tradition or in the form of short written collections and Mark provides the first narrative framework for the sayings.
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (6.20-49, 29 verses in all) is much shorter than Mathew’s Sermon on the Mount (5.3 – 7.29, over 100 verses). and only three beatitudes are found in Lk (and perhaps, therefore in Q?) This suggests that the core of Jesus’ teaching pronounces a blessing on the poor, the hungry and those who mourn. Thomas has the first two almost word for word: “Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to you.” (Thom, 54) and, “Jesus says: Blessed are those who suffer from hunger, so that the belly of the one who wishes (it) will be satisfied.” (Thom, 69:2). Matthew’s final Beatitude, Luke’s third blessing on the persecuted is also found in Thomas – Mt. 5.10-11, Lk. 6.22 [Q], Thom. 68. This data, naturally has led to a great deal of debate about the status of the other beatitudes in Matthew; did he compose them? were they from some other sayings collection? and so on. Much of the discussion has raged round the issue of “authenticity”. This is in many ways a hang-over from the 19th century liberal efforts to strip away accretions and get to the authentic Jesus. I hope I have shown that the complexity of the N.T. documents prevents such an enterprise. What we have in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes is the meaning of Jesus’ teaching for a specific Christian community towards the end of the first century C.E.. A great deal of evidence suggests that Matthew has, indeed, understood the central core of the radical message of Jesus which turned on its head much conventional wisdom, as Marcus Borg calls it.
Typical expressions of conventional wisdom are, “good people are rewarded by wealth”, “God will accept you if you try hard enough” or “misfortune is a sign of God’s displeasure”. These all represent religious positions, not only of influential strands of Judaism, but universally in all religions, and, perhaps preeminently in the civic religion of the USA. Conventional wisdom, however, covers more than religion, laying down norms for the whole of life: table manners, social address, political issues and much more, all best summed up by saying that conventional wisdom establishes very clear social boundaries which, usually quite unnoticed, rule our lives. Borg writes “[W]hether in religious or secular form, conventional wisdom creates a world in which we live” (op.cit. 77). Conventional wisdom constructs our views of reality and rules us with a rod of iron. It was this conventional wisdom that Jesus overturned both by sayings like the Beatitudes, dealing with religious realities, and his persistent flouting of social convention by the practice of open table fellowship. One might say that the tyrannical rule of conventional wisdom was challenged by Jesus’ core teaching: the Rule of God is upon you. This is the context of the Beatitudes and an essential category in interpreting them.
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