Christianity

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Christianity

I. Matthew

A. Sermon on the Mount I: The Beatitudes: The human sentiments that lead one to follow Jesus

1. The proper approach to God, for Christians, begins with a lack of spirit, that is, with a sense of our own unworthiness.

a) To lack spirit is to confess that we are sinful, rebellious, and without the moral virtues God wants of us.

2. This leads to mourning: we mourn over our sins and estrangement from God.

3. The next step is meekness and humility.

a) This means willingness to submit to the absolute authority of God, so as to repair our estrangement from Him.

4. This leads to a thirst for righteousness, for doing what God requires of us.

5. If our thirst for righteousness is strong enough we become pure in heart. The desire to do what God wants of us becomes our sole desire in that all other desires flow from it.

6. And purity of heart leads us to follow God’s path in our relationships with other men and women.

a) We are merciful, reaching out to those who need our help as God is merciful to us.

b) We seek peace above all

B. Sermon on the Mount II: the rewards of following God

1. Christians should not expect worldly success from acceptance of God.

2. Rather, Matthew tells us that they should expect persecution from a corrupted world.

a) Worldly success, however, is not the aim of Christians.

3. The reward of Christians is everlasting life in the next world

C. Sermon on the Mount II: Jesus’s moral teaching

1. The moral content of Jesus’s teaching tells us to focus not on those goods that are the subject of human competition and struggle, but on those goods that are available to all people.

a) The pursuit of this worldly necessities and luxuries leads to competition over wealth, honor, and power because there are not enough of these goods for everyone.

b) But heaven is available to everyone who follows the commandments of God.

2. The Hebrew Bible cannot go so far, because it is concerned with creating a good political community in this world.

a) Some external goods and goods that satisfy our bodily desires are necessary to political survival. Thus the Hebrew Bible aims to moderate our desires for these goods, not to eliminate them or reduce them to the lowest level.

b) Since Christianity has other aims, it can go farther in the demands it makes on us to turn from the pursuit of this worldly aims.

3. Content: The moral law taught by Jesus is, in most respects, that of the Hebrew Bible. It does, however, have a number of distinctive features.

a) It focuses more on desire or intention than action.

(1) For example:

(a) Lust in the heart is condemned as well as adultery.

(b) Anger against others is condemned as well as violence towards them.

(2) There is precedent in the Hebrew Bible for condemning intention. The Tenth Commandment tells us not to covet the goods of our neighbor.

(a) Here, as in Jesus’ teaching, God condemns desires that are likely to lead us into conflict with others.

(3) The added emphasis on desire or intention in Jesus’s teaching makes sense, given that the primary aim of a Christian is salvation in the next world.

(a) Controlling action is more important than desire or intention if one is concerned with the repercussions of what one does for political and social life.

(b) Controlling desire and intention is most important if one is most concerned with attaining the inner purity that leads to salvation in the next life.

b) It is, in some respects, Jesus’ teaching is more rigorous in the restraints it demands from us.

(1) It demands that we not only do good to others but that we do not resist evil.

(a) Instead we are supposed to turn the other cheek.

(2) It tells us to, in so far as possible, give up any competing aims besides following Jesus.

(a) For those who are able to do so, it is better not to have sex, get married, and have children than to do so.

(b) Jesus recommends that rich people give away all their money.

(3) The central point of these injunctions is not that sexuality, marriage, and children are evil or wrong in themselves, but that they direct our attention away from Jesus and the next world and to this world.

(a) We can’t have children without being concerned about feeding them, and thus about gaining external goods, such as money.

(b) Money, of course, is an external good. We can’t have a great deal of it without being concerned about how to preserve and expand it.

D. Questions about Jesus’ moral teaching:

1. Jesus’ moral teachings have been questioned by some people on the grounds that they would lead to a terrible disaster in this world if everyone followed them

a) Evil people would rule because they would not be resisted by good people.

b) The human race would gradually die out if we did not have sex and children.

c) Everyone would be poor if the rich gave all their money away as this would lead to economic collapse. Modern economies depend upon money being available for investment in new products and productive processes.

2. This criticism can, and has been, answered in a number of different ways since Jesus’ time.

a) Some people argue that followers of Jesus should not care about this world. Any problems that would arise in this world are insignificant compared to the good that we receive in heaven.

b) Some people argue that problems would not arise do to Jesus’ teaching.

(1) Pacifists often argue that it is possible to resist evil without using force by non-violent resistance.

(a) In some cases this might be quite effective. Critics of pacifism argue say that this will not be true in all cases.

(b) Critics of pacifism argue say that good people will often suffer more than they otherwise would when they use passive resistance. But this might be appropriate from a Christian point of view.

(c) Critics of pacifism argue that it is still a form of resistance however.

(2) The world may already have more people than can be s supported without terrible environmental damage.

(3) We would be better off without economic investment and growth as we would all live simple lives.

c) Some people argue that we should not interpret Jesus’ teaching in an extreme manner. On this view, he is teaching us how to deal with these issues in our lives in a way that puts a concern for following God and attaining heaven above a concern for this worldly goods. On this view:

(1) Jesus’ teaching that we should not resist evil is taken to mean that we should only resist evil in a way that respects the distinction between the innocent and the guilty. Jesus’ teaching is thus taken to be the foundation of a theory of just war. According to just war theory:

(a) We may only fight in response to aggressors who have attacked us or others. We should fight without anger but in order to vindicate justice.

(b) We may only fight against soldiers or combatants—those who are actually trying to kill us—not against civilians or non-combatants.

(2) Jesus’ teaching that we should not have sex is interpreted to mean that sex is legitimate only in particular circumstances.

(a) For some interpreters of Jesus, this means only when we are trying to have children.

(b) For others, it means only in the context of married love.

(3) Jesus’ teaching that we should give away our money is interpreted to mean that we accumulate money and use it in a way that serves God’s purposes.

(a) We should not do bad things to earn money.

(b) We should invest in ways that benefit the community

(c) We should give our money to charity

(d) This way of reading Matthew can be found in early church fathers such as in this passage by Clement (2-3 c.) on Matthew: It is not what some hastily take it to be, a command to fling away the substance that belongs to him and to part with his riches, but to banish from the soul its opinions, its attachments to them, its excessive desires….For it is no great or enviable thing to be simply without riches…How could we feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty…if each of us were himself already in want….We must not then fling away the riches that are of benefit to our neighbors as well as ourselves….Wealth is an instrument. You can use it rightly; it ministers to righteousness. But if you use it wrongly, it is found to be a minister of wrong.

d) Some people argue that Jesus’ teaching was not for everyone but for only “those who could accept it.”

(1) Some textual evidence.

(a) He tells the rich young man to give away his money “if he wants to be perfect.” But we don’t all want or need to be perfect.

(b) He tells “all who can accept it” to become eunuchs for the sake of heaven

(2) Why should some people follow these teachings?

(a) Because they have no competing concerns, they can devote themselves to God.

(b) They can provide models to other people of controlling our desires for this-worldly goods. People who accept the more difficult restraints of giving up sex, money, and retaliation help others control their desires for these things. (Thus this fourth argument works together with the third one.)

(3) The Catholic argument for celibacy for priests and nuns rests on this set of ideas.

e) Some people argue that Jesus’ teaching makes sense because of his apocalypticism (see below). If his followers expected the end of the present age relatively soon, then it would make sense for them not to resist evil, not to accumulate wealth and not to marry or have children.

E. Jesus’s apocalypticism

1. The pre-history of apocalypticism: Messianism and the afterlife

a) Messianism

b) The Afterlife

2. Apocalypticism before Jesus

3. What is distinctive about Jesus

a) Jesus as teacher

b) Crucifixion and Resurrection

4. Jesus’ apocalypticism can best be seen as s development of Jewish messianic / apocalyptic thought. This form of thought, which was accepted by only a minority of Jews, developed in stages

a) Afterlife is mostly not found in the Hebrew Bible

(1) In most places rejects any notion of an after life

(a) Sheol is the Hebrew name for the place where the soul goes after death.

(i) Little description is found of it

(ii) There is little sense that soul survives as an individual entity or that we have some individual consciousness after death

(iii) At most, our soul returns to God in some way

(iv) In Sheol, the good and the wicked shared a common fate, much as they had in the Babylonian underworld. The place did not conjure up images of an afterlife, for nothing happened there. It was literally inconceivable, and this is what made it frightening: death was utterly definitive, even if rather ill-defined.

(b) It is not place of reward or punishment

(c) Judaism was oriented towards this world: obeying God’s commands improved life for us and our children

(d) The individual survives only in indirect ways.

(i) In his or her influence on children or other people.

(ii) A person’s good name survives his death

(2) For example:

(a) Both Moses (Deut. 14:1) and Jeremiah (Jer. 16:6) denounced mortuary practices taken to imply such belief in an after life

(b) "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward" (Eccles. 9:5).

(c) "As one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts . . . all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again" (Eccles. 3:19-20).

(d) "A living dog is better than a dead lion" (Eccles. 9:4).

(e) Job "Man dies, and is laid low . . . . As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, So man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake, or be roused out of his sleep" (Job 14:10-12).

(f) Sheol is called "the land of gloom and deep darkness" (Job 10:21).

(3) Some alternative views in the Hebrew Bible.

(a) Necromancy, although officially forbidden, was widely practiced, even in high places. Saul's request to the witch of Endor to "bring up" the dead prophet Samuel for him (I Sam. 28:3-20) implied that the dead, or at least some of them, still existed somewhere or other, probably in

b) The notion of redemption and a Messiah developed about five hundreds years before Jesus. The Messiah is a person who would help God redeem Israel, keeping the promise of God’s covenant with Israel.

(1) The Messiah would

(a) restore political independence of Judea

(b) create a holy nation and kingdom of priests

(2) Messiah is political leader who helps attain that goal: There was a debate about when this leader comes.

(a) Does leader arise after most Jews keep commandments

(i) “if every Jew keeps the Sabbath for two weeks in a row, the Messiah will come”

(ii) If Jews keep the commandments, then they can create or sustain their political indepepdence.

(b) Or does leader come first: example of God’s mercy

(i) On this view, the Messiah rules over Jews and Judea and encourages / requires keeping of commandments.

(ii) The Messiah leads battle for political independence

(3) The notion of a Messiah developed in earliest form, from prophetic call for return to obedience to God in fulfillment of his desire that the Israelites be a holy kingdom and nation of priests

(a) The prophets had the same hope for each King: that he would renew religious belief and practice.

(b) Messianic ideas became more prominent after the destruction of the first temple by Babylonians became more prominent in times when Judea political independence was especially challenged

(i) Judea was never fully independent from Babylonian exile to creation of the second commonwealth under the Maccabees.

(ii) Judea was under the rule, successively, of Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Ptolemies, Seleucids of Syria, Romans

(iii) Jews always had some degree of local autonomy but this waxed and waned

(a) When it waned, messianic thought became more popular

(c) Perhaps the notion of a Messiah also became popular because it gave shape and ending to the story of God’s intervention in our history. It provides an account of our destiny

(i) The notion of God intervening in history is a distinctively Jewish idea.

(ii) It supposes that God has a plan.

(iii) God’s plan must have an end

(4) The idea that the Messiah was expected to restore dynasty of David developed during Hasmonean times when Jews were ruled by men who were not descendants of David.

(a) Messiah means anointed. Kings were anointed.

c) Later the notion of the Messiah brining universal peace and righteousness developed.

(1) This would occur in through the process we called pluralisitic monotheism.

(a) The Jews would provide an example to others. They would be, in this sense, the holy people

(b) There would by universal recognition of the God of Israel

(c) But other peoples would not necessarily becoming Jewis. Rather they would from their covenant with God or form their own laws that met the moral requirements set by God.

(2) Note that for all of the first three notions, the Messiah is not a supernatural being at all, but a accomplished human being

(3) And, on most Jewish views of the Messiah., no other changes in human life

(a) R Samuel, one of the Rabbinic teachers in the first few hundred years after Jesus (one of the Amoria) said “There is nothing that will be different in the Messianic times from the present except freedom from foreign denomination”

(4) Thus our obligations to others (and ourselves) do not change, even with the coming of the Messiah.

(a) Johann b. Zakkai founder of the Jabne Academy, “If you hold a sapling in you hand and someone cries, ‘Lo, the Messiah comes,’ plant the sapling first and then go to meet him”

(i) This is a much quoted line.

d) The notion of an afterlife for our soul developed in the last four centuries before Jesus

(1) It is not an idea accepted by all of the prophets and the rabbis who created Rabbinic Judaism.

(2) Soul: The word nefesh originally meant "neck" or "throat," and later came to imply the "vital spirit," or anima in the Latin sense. The word ruach had at all times meant "wind" but later came to refer to the whole range of a person's emotional, intellectual, and volitional life. It even designated ghosts. Both terms were widely used and conveyed a wide variety of meanings at different times, and both were often translated as "soul."

(3) Why then notion of an after life developed

(a) People were often in despair over the distance to the redemption of Israel. That is, they did not see how or when Jews would be political independent and free.

(b) Reflections on problem of evil.

(i) Why do bad things happen to good people when God is good, just and all powerful?

(a) Why does do even those Jews who keep the commandments suffer when Jews are attacked by other political communities.

(b) Why does even those who are very good people or totally innocent (such as young children) suffer.

(ii) Why do good things happen to bad people, such as to tyrants who rule over the Jews?

(iii) One answer: God rewards and punishes in next life

(a) Heaven is like a restoration of the garden of Eden

(b) Hell

(i) One view in rabbinic Judaism: no one suffers in hell for more than 1 year

(c) Platonic and Orphic ideas influenced Jewish notions of the soul and the afterlife in the centuries before Jesus. These ideas included the notion that the soul is eternal, that it exists prior to the being embodied, and that the body can corrupt the soul.

(i) The Wisdom of Solomon was written during the 1st century BC. "A perishable body weighs down the soul" (Wisd. Sol. 9:15). "Being good" he had "entered an undefiled body" (Wisd. Sol. 8:20)

e) The idea of resurrection arises in Judaism Hellenistic period (4th century BC-2nd century AD).

(1) The idea of resurrection probably came into Jewish thought from the influence of Greek mystery religions and some Platonic dialogues..

(2) It can also be found in the late prophets

(a) Isaiah announced that the "dead shall live, their bodies shall rise," and the "dwellers in the dust" would be enjoined to "awake and sing" (Isa. 26:19). Both the good and the wicked would be resurrected.

(b) According to their deserts, some would be granted "everlasting life," others consigned to an existence of "shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2).

(3) The idea can be found in non-canonical works in the centuries before Jesus.

(a) It is also found among the Hasmoneans. Judas Maccabeus, the 2nd-century-BC Jewish patriot who led a struggle against Seleucid domination and Greek cultural penetration, found that his own supporters had infringed the law. He collected money and sent it to Jerusalem to expiate their sins, acting thereby "very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead" (II Macc. 12:43-45).

(b) First Book of Enoch, a non-canonical work believed to have been written between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD, Sheol was composed of three divisions, to which the dead would be assigned according to their moral deserts.

(i) The real Ge Hinnom ("Valley of Hinnom"), where the early Israelites were said to have sacrificed their children to Moloch (and in which later biblical generations incinerated Jerusalem's municipal rubbish), was transmuted into the notion of Gehenna, a vast camp designed for torturing the wicked by fire. This was a clear precursor of things to come--the Christian and Islamic versions of hell.

(4) The notion of resurrection again seeks to answer the problem of evil. It seems unfair for those who lost out on a good bodily life to be denied a second chance

f) Later in period; closer to time of Jesus the notions of resurrection, an afterlife, and the Messiah are combined.

(1) Messiah would be a supernatural figure

(a) Who establishes political independence of Jews.

(b) Who leads people all to accept God

(c) Who brings justice for all

(d) Who ends disease and other ills of life

(e) Who brings about the resurrection of the dead so that they can enjoy life in the true community that did not exist in their day

(f) Who judges all people who have ever lived who have been resurrected.

(i) The good enter eternal life.

(ii) The bad are extinguished

(2) There were more complicated versions as well.

(a) When the Messiah comes, the righteous dead of Israel would be resurrected to enjoy life in the true community that did not exist in their days.

(b) There would be an end of time.

(i) Day of judgment

(ii) All the wicked throughout history would be recalled to life, judged, and doomed

(iii) All the righteous would be transformed and transported into a new world; i.e., creation would be totally restored.

(3) Again it is not clear when the Messiah would be sent by God. Would it be

(a) some predetermined time

(b) when Jews deserve it by obedience to commands

(c) or despite Jews not deserving it;

(d) when things are very bad in the world as a whole

(i) The Messiah at the moment of maximum danger when the Jews and / or other good people are about to become victims of the unrepentant nations and cosmic foes of God.

(ii) God’s mercy is show in his sending the Messiah at this time.

(4) sources of apocalyptic though

(a) Iranian thought,

(i) in which the cosmic rather than the historic aspect of a future era dominated. Since ancient cosmic myths--in good measure demythologized--had been part of the Israelite intellectual inheritance, evidenced at least in literary usages throughout Scriptures, the impact of such neighboring ideas was to reinvigorate the mythic elements.

g) apocalyptic messianism

(1) accepted previous line of thought that combines resurrection, an afterlife and a cosmic Messiah

(2) To these ideas, apocalyptic though adds

(a) Dualism: this world is under control of evil forces lead by Satan

(i) This set of ideas provides a deeper analysis of the problem of evil

(a) It explains not just why good are punished and evil rewarded

(b) But why God allows this world seems so cruel

(i) Good must suffer so because the world is under the control of evil forces.

(ii) These evil forces prevents people from doing good, for example, The Syrian King Antiochus forbid practice of Judaism

(ii) God for some unknown and mysterious reason had temporarily relinquished his control to the forces of evil that opposed them

(iii) God would reassert himself at some point. God and the God and angels would fight against Satan and demons

(a) cosmic forces in opposition to each other

(b) explanation of evil not just in human beings but in natural world

(b) The new age would bring end to all suffering by replace current age.

(i) The forces of evil would be destroyed as God reasserts his power.

(c) This view is, in the short term, pessimistic.

(i) Those who side with God are going to suffer in this age

(ii) They have no capacity to improve circumstances, but must be ready for what will come

(d) This view is optimistic in for long term. There will eventually come a vindication of God

(i) When suffering is greatest, God will send Messiah

(ii) There will be a last judgment

(a) There will be a general resurrection.

(b) And a final reward and punishment

(iii) Some differences about apocalyptic thinkers about whether there will be one or two Messiahs. Some thought that there would be both

(a) A human messiah

(b) A divine, cosmic judge

(e) Adherents to apocalyptic Messianic thought had an expectation of an imminent

5. Variety of Jewish thought in the times of Jesus.

a) The Sadducees whose ideas dominated the priesthood believed in the teachings of the Exodus as we have studied it.

(1) They accepted only the laws given in the Torah. They did not extend them through interpretation.

(2) They did not believe in an afterlife or resurrection. If they accepted the idea of a Messiah it was a this-worldly Messiah who would bring about a rebirth of political independence for the Jews.

b) The Pharisees were scribes and teachers.

(1) They believed that, in addition to a written Torah, Moses passed down an oral Torah consisting of interpretations of the written Torah.

(a) They developed new interpretations of Biblical laws that added to the requirements of God.

(b) Their aim, in doing so, was:

(i) To make sure that the commandments of God were not violated. They made “fences” for biblical law. By not crossing the fences, people could be sure not to violate Gods’ law.

(ii) To make following God’s commandments part of every day life. Their ideal was to sanctify the lives of Jews, to make them holy, that is separate and dedicated to God.

(a) This was connected with the idea of the Jews as holy nation and a kingdom of priests

(2) Some of them believed in an afterlife, resurrection, and Messiah of some sort.

c) The Essenes held views close to those of the early Christians.

6. What does Jesus add to Jewish apocalypticism?

a) Jesus is the most powerful teacher of apocalypticism.

b) Jesus teaches with authority. He does not just interpret the text but modifies its teachings.

(1) This suggests that he is special, not just another prophet.

c) Jesus does miracles (as do the prophets).

d) Jesus is crucified and is resurrected.

(1) On any of the traditional notion of the Messiah this is not supposed to happen.

(2) But that it does happen dramatically supports Messianic ideas.

(a) Jesus’ death and resurrection shows that resurrection is possible. It is proof that there is another life and that what he has been teaching is true.

(b) Jesus’ death and resurrection stands to his teaching as the exodus from Egypt stands to the teaching of Moses.

II. Romans: The significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection