Romans study #3

Romans #3                                                                          08/10/12

Campbell gives us a starting point at Romans 1:17 in which Paul quotes scripture for the first time in the letter. “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written “the one who is righteous will live by faith”. This is from Habakkuk 2:1-4: 

“I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the Lord answered me and said: write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith”.

In the Greek version of the Old Testament the word for faith is “pistis”. It can mean either faith or faithfulness.  In the context of the passage in Habakkuk the translation of faithfulness seems to fit much better. The passage is about waiting, hanging on for the appointed time.

Campbell argues that pistis in Romans 1:17 should be translated as “faithfulness”. This changes its meaning. It no longer has a contractual sense but instead refers to deliverance through Jesus’ faithfulness. Faith needs an object, something we choose to believe in. Faithfulness is a condition, a way of being. Looking at the whole of v. 17 we see "in (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith...” Faith alone, our response or acceptance of something, cannot reveal anything. Only Jesus, his gospel and faithfulness, can reveal something. Even semantically, therefore the translation of pistis as faithfulness makes more sense. It is only faithfulness, and specifically Jesus’ faithfulness as the righteous one, that can reveal God’s action in the world.

Chapter 5, the beginning of Paul’s gospel, is divided into two sections. The first part is vv 1-11. It is written in the Rabbinic style which can make it somewhat hard for modern readers. It begins “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” (V1-2).  If understood in legal justification terms this reads as though even though we are guilty we got off on a technicality! All we have to do is accept the deal God has worked out for us in Jesus. Campbell argues for a different interpretation. Campbell replaces the words “justified” with “delivered” or “rescued,” and pistis as “faithfulness”. In chapter 4:3 Paul quotes the scriptures: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”. Righteousness here means deliverance by God. It is not a legal thing, rather it is relational. The context is asserting the unilateral, gift-character of what God does. Abraham is brought to a completely different place with God through an unconditional relationship of trust. Ultimately this grace is for all, the circumcised and uncircumcised alike, as was promised to Abraham.

By understanding pistis as “faithfulness” the meaning of the Romans text changes from humanity being saved through our personal faith or belief in Jesus into our deliverance through Christ’s faithfulness. This seems to make more sense. Justification through faith would make it dependent on our act – our decision to accept or reject belief. Deliverance through Christ’s faithfulness is an act solely of divine grace for the whole of humanity.

In 5:1 Paul says “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” and later in verse 9 Paul says “Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God”.

According to Campbell these are literary doublets – different ways of saying the same thing. How can we be justified both by the blood of Jesus and our own faith? It does not seem to make sense. Rather Paul refers here to the faithfulness and blood of Jesus. Both terms are in fact metonyms for Christ's cross and passion. For Paul, Jesus was everything and the translation of pistis as Jesus’ “faithfulness” rather than our human faith seems to fit much better. 

The Greek word for wrath (orge) can be translated as “violence” giving it a more contemporary sense. The word appears in a particular way in the first three chapters of Romans much of which Campbell ascribes to the “Teacher”. In these chapters he talks of the wrath of God. From Chapter 4 onwards (in the part of Romans that Campbell ascribes as Paul’s response to the “Teacher”) it is just “the wrath”. Most translations of the New Testament continue to add “of God” even though it is not present in the Greek. (There is no “of God” in 1 Thesalonians 2:16 either – yet most translations add it in.) Paul divorces wrath from God. “The wrath” when disassociated from God becomes the violence of the world, the human systems in which we live. Wrath is understood as a human, historical phenomenon. Chapters 5 -8 are Paul’s Gospel. In them Paul describes God’s unilateral eruptive love in the world that changes how it is to be human. His deliverance is unconditional. This is no wrathful God. Paul is arguing against the Teacher’s message.

Romans Study #2

Here is the next summary in our series on the book of Romans.

We have been using The Deliverance of God. An Apocalyptic Re-reading of Justification in Paul by Douglas Campbell (2009) as a background text in this study.

Romans #2                                                                                          8/3/12

Paul was the first to formulate a systematic Christian theology. It may not be systematically presented but it's clear he is connecting a global set of topics, attempting to articulate the radicalism of the gospel. He was confronting powerful obstacles – the greatest of which was the attempt to keep Christianity as a Jewish sect under Jewish Law. Within 15 years Christianity had become established in the non-Jewish world, all the way to Rome. It had broken from the temple but many Christians were still living under the Jewish Law. The new movement needed to stay connected to the person of Jesus and the community of original disciples in Judea to maintain its authority – however, Paul recognized the need to break free from the constraints of the Law. At times he was a lone voice facing the opposition of the most powerful figures in the movement. 

Romans, Paul’s key text, has inspired numerous commentaries and is used by theologians to underpin their understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death and to develop their theology of justification. One of these is Douglas Campbell, whose recent book interpreting Paul’s theology around the topic of justification, we are using in this study. Another example of note is Ernst Kasemann who was a disciple of Rudolph Bultmann. Bultmann had a huge impact on the 20th century, and was himself a disciple of Heidegger. Bultmann demythologized the New Testament. He removed what he identified as the mythological or miraculous elements of the Gospels. Following in his footsteps the Jesus Seminar  determined that about over 80% of the Gospel words attributed to Jesus were generated by the early Church. They were stories written to help address Church needs.

Kasemann was a German theologian in the 1960s who took a differnet approach to that of his teacher. He was trying to make sense of the failure of the Church (with a few exceptions) to stand up to Hitler. Kasemann believed that the evangelical theology of his day, Luther’s contractual,  individualist understanding of justification by faith, was inadequate. Something  more incisive was needed. Kasemann turned to an apocalyptic theology of God's power – that God is taking a hand in things, making a move to change history. In a world of conflict, in which evil powers and principalities dominate, God chooses not to leave the world untouched. Other theologians have carried the argument about Romans in other areas. For example, Krister Stendahl argued against the strict contractual, substitutionary interpretation of Romans and the rampant individualism on which it was based .

Campbell says that there is something deeply implausible about justification theory. That is, because it depends upon a decision that I make, a contract I accept, it becomes something that I do – another form of works. It is contingent, i.e. continuous with the world in which we already exist and think. Campbell does not think that this was Paul’s meaning. That in fact Romans has been misread and misunderstood. Paul had an apocalyptic not a contractual understanding of Christ’s death. Something radically new is in the world.

Campbell  argues that chapters 1-4 of Romans – the chapters that focus on the judgment/wrath of God – are not really presenting Paul’s theology. Instead Paul is quoting somebody else. This person is an anonymous figure, a leader in the Roman Church,  whom Campbell names "The Teacher”. This Teacher says that God is coming to judge us all punitively, a God of wrath. He advocates the need for Christians to live under the Jewish Law. Campbell says that these chapters of Romans  are written in a technical form common at that time called a “diatribe”. In this style of writing one argument is presented and then the counter-argument follows. It is a method by which a particular individual’s thought is first presented--often by speech-in-person--then crushed.  Chapters 1-4 are the diatribe. Chapters 5-8 are Paul’s authentic theology, without this kind of back-and-forth. These chapters describe a breaking in, a revelation of God’s loving move in history. This is Paul’s apocalyptic, redemptive gospel. The person carrying the letter from Paul would have been expected to read it aloud, probably with "stage directions" in mind. People at that time would have been familiar with this style of writing. Over time the text has been misinterpreted – understood as a single voice.

Campbell  renders the word “justification” as “deliverance”. The word “flesh” (sarx)  can be understood as the human worldly systems of generative violence rather than the way it has often been understood in the past as “body” (and often sexuality). For Paul the human body is important and will be transformed. In fact, Galatians 5:16-21 lists the works of the flesh, and these are mostly forms of violence. This generative violence is revealed to us by Christ – that we are enslaved and unable to free ourselves from our state. We think that this is normal but only by becoming free of it can we see it. Any knowledge of the problem is grounded in the revelation of the solution. The crucifixion is a revelation of love and the means of our deliverance. The old Adam, the old way of being human, is terminated – Jesus is the template of a new humanity. Incredible divine love from outside our human system, breaks in, terminates the old order, and we are reconstituted through love. This is fundamentally a transformational not a legal action. An apocalyptic intervention that shakes the foundation. Baptism is a sign of this new thing. Contractual justification does not work – we need deliverance or rescue. And this deliverance is pure grace.

Romans #1

This is the first summary of a new study on the Letter of Paul to the Romans - Linda

Romans #1                                                                                      07/27/12

Romans is a key book of the New Testament and considered Paul’s most important letter. Luther’s re-reading of Romans led to the Protestant reformation. Luther was an Augustinian friar, who had a crisis of faith. He was particularly sensitive to the dominant belief in Christendom of a wrathful God, and then the associated trade in indulgences put him over the edge. Indulgences arose out of the violence of the crusades – a way for knights to get out of their vow to go to Jerusalem and fight. Their vow with its associated indulgence (remission of sins) was exchanged for a monetary payment. Quickly the practice spread to all levels of the church and even to the dead. It became a system in which a wrathful God was paid off and the Church made money. Luther ran in horror from the altar at his first mass. He turned to the Greek translation of the New Testament that had just been made available by Erasmus. He was able to read for the first time the New Testament in its original language. Different words stood out with a resonance not found in the Latin text.

In Romans he read about “justification by faith”. For Luther justification meant not going to hell when you die and not having to fear a God who would send you there because now, in this life, God already counted you righteous. Justification came directly from God and was received by the individual. It offered liberation from the oppressive series of exchanges, the spiritual currency, mediated by the Catholic Church to protect you from damnation. Luther’s theology doesn’t do away with retribution or a violent, wrathful God, because Jesus pays the penalty in our stead. God’s justice has not been abandoned – but it is all loaded on Jesus. He takes the whole hellish rap for all of us. Justification by faith remains contractual thinking. The Protestant reformation replaces a contract between God and the spiritual banks of the Catholic Church with a contract between God and the individual. Any sin, however small, remains an infinite offense. The punishment that should have fallen on us is unleashed upon Christ, so that we are now in the clear. God wants this end – but the means is terrifying!

Backing up, we can understand Romans as the letter Paul wrote to address the biggest crisis of his time. It remains a paradigm of how to respond to the theological crisis of any time – the meaning of Christ in our world. Romans will always be at the center of the argument. It shows someone grappling with a problem and finding expression to work through it. Today a new major work on the theology of justification and faith found on Romans has emerged, Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God, An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul.

In general terms Paul’s problem was his struggle to lift emerging Christianity out of the realm of the Jewish law, and in Romans, according to Campbell, to combat the influence of a dominant teacher in the Christian community in Rome. Christianity had emerged as a splinter group of Judaism. The Jews had had the Law for a thousand years and many influential Christians at that time seemed to want to hang on to it. When the Christian message reached the Gentile world these Jewish Christians wanted the Gentile believers to be circumcised. The Law was a guarantee of God’s faithfulness. Paul, in Galatians, says that Christians have no need to keep circumcision and, by implication, the kosher dietary laws. At times he was a lonely voice. It was only because he held out for his belief that Christianity emerged as it did.

The basic premise of Campbell’s reinterpretation of Paul is that in the book of Romans Paul is not talking about a contract – not even a choice made within our heart. It is not a decision or an entity to be bargained for. Rather it is a single apocalyptic event that breaks into human history. Something dramatically new. It is a God given event that has taken place and that we are invited to enter into and which transforms you. Christ changes all the terms – everything. Romans is all about an apocalyptic redemption. You relate to it through faith. Not “I’m saved” but instead “I’m radically different”. It is an event of grace, God’s unilateral, exclusively loving movement into the world. The teacher in Rome had not seen this radically new thing; instead he insisted on God's wrath coming upon sin. Christ's action was an additional atonement for sin but it did not change the basic equation of law, sin and punishment. In other words, nothing has fundamentally changed. Justification theory has labored under this misreading of Paul, and in consequence the later argument of Romans chapters 5 to 8 makes no sense.

There was a large Jewish community in Rome and Christianity had been established there within at least 15 years of Jesus’ death. This is backed up by external evidence. Around 49 AD Aquila and Priscilla were among Jews expelled from Rome by Claudius and met Paul in Corinth (Acts 18:2). A contemporary Roman historian, Suetonius, speaks of riots among the Jews inspired by a character called “Chrestos” and this being the reason for the expulsion. The Romans had very little previous experience of the word “Christos” which means “the anointed/oiled one,” and it is thought the controversial factor could be Christianity, which provoked the disturbance. And that would imply a sizeable community presence. Later, in 63-64 AD, the Christians had become a significant minority – large enough to catch the attention of Nero - who blamed then persecuted them.

It seems very likely that the Roman Church had links with the Jerusalem Church. They were a traditional community with Jewish roots. Paul wanted to go there. He was afraid that they were on the wrong track and he wanted to make sure his version prevailed. His opening remarks in the letter to Romans are polite. This contrasts with his earlier letter to the Galatians which is often seen as the prelude to Romans. Galatians seeks to address the same problem of the Law – but his approach there is more direct and forceful. In Gal 2:11-14 Paul describes meeting with Peter in Antioch. Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned” (v. 11). He says that until representatives from James (the brother of Jesus and the leader of the Jerusalem Church) intervened, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. After pressure from the James group he withdrew and kept himself separate. Peter follows the crowd and Paul calls him a hypocrite. If Peter has lived like a Gentile then how can he insist that Gentiles live like Jews (that is, having to be circumcised and obey the dietary laws)?

Galatians 2: 15-21 is almost the argument of Romans in a nutshell. It is Christ, living within us, that justifies us. It is the faith of Christ that makes me faithful. For Paul, the Law is too hard for anyone to keep. If you fail in one instance, you fail completely. The very prohibition of desire in the Law (10th commandment) makes it as Law impossible – you cannot prohibit desire you can only transform it. In Chapter 3 Paul uses the example of Abraham. Abraham is a model of faithfulness. Abraham’s faithfulness heralded God’s solution to the human problem, for all the tribes of the earth.. Jesus fulfills the promise given to Abraham – blessing all of his descendants – both Jew and Gentile.

Paul stood up to the chief of the apostles and to the brother of the Lord. He had established the Church in Galatia, and therefore he had some measure of authority there. The Church in Rome was different. He had much less power – advancing his argument from a huge distance to a community unknown to him and one with an established “teacher”. This “teacher”, a leader of the Roman church, was promoting adherence to the Jewish Law.

Conversations with God #2

Conversations with God #2                 07/20/12

This is a summary of the study that took place last Friday

Jesus' Conversation with God

Theresa of Avila said that the only way to discover Jesus’ divinity is through his humanity. Jesus was fully a man. He had to learn the same way as us - went through everything we do. In Mt 11:25-30 we get a glimpse of how Jesus understood himself and his role. This passage has been described as “a thunderbolt from the Johannine heavens” because it seems to fit in more with the Gospel of John than with the Synoptics.

Jesus begins by thanking his Father “Because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Jesus, in addressing God as Father, already signals the trustful and intimate relationship he feels between himself and God. God’s Wisdom has been hidden from those who have been trained – from the scribes and those who have received the standard teaching. Instead it has been revealed to the illiterate and unlearned. Those like little children – the unformed. Those with already formed ideas and established ideas are not going to get it.

Jesus continues by saying “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”.

When we have a conversation with God – how do we come in to the presence of God? In our study the following responses to this question were given:

• Humble petitioner, a peanut, aware of my own smallness.
• Hopeful
• Trusting in Jesus’ love – that I will not feel put down
• Aware that I am a work in progress

Some of these responses are already conditioned by the positive relationship from Jesus, but we can still see gaps and lack in our communication with God. Jesus feels that everything has been handed over to him by God! None of us thinks anything like this.

The verses in Matthew echo key passages in the Old Testament. In Daniel 7 there is the figure of “One like a son of man” to whom all dominion is given. Jesus often refers to himself as “Son of Man”. Also in this discourse Jesus appears to identify with the person of Wisdom. (c.f Mt 11:18-19). Wisdom was with God in the beginning, before the beginning of creation (Proverbs 8:22-23). Again there is an implied intimate confidence between Jesus and the Father, signaled by the figure of Wisdom. Job 28:12-23 asks where wisdom can be found. “Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air….God understands the way to it, and he knows its place”. Wisdom extends beyond human competence and knowledge. Only God knows it intimately and completely.

At the baptism of Jesus the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus like a dove and a voice from heaven proclaims “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17). This brings to mind the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah 42:1, “My servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations”. The Greek word pais used in the Greek translation of Isaiah can mean both "servant" and "son. The words of love and pleasure recall the Servant verse and suggest Jesus' baptism experience was one associated with the Nonviolent Servant. (Matthew associates Jesus directly with this Servant passage at 12:18-19.)

Jesus studied the Scriptures which enabled him to appropriate for himself these motifs of Wisdom, Servant and Son of Man and gave him the language to express his relationship with God. The intimate relationship must have already have been present. This relationship represents a categorical human breakthrough. In his spirit and in his mind there is no separation or hostility from the Father. He has a consciousness free from the darkness of God that remains in the rest of us. He is the first person free of violence in his relationship with the father. A relationship totally transformed. It is into this relationship that he invites us in the Spirit.

*Note in the previous weeks to this study we contrasted the conversations with God of Jeremiah and the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah. It is evident that Jesus' conversations lay much closer in character to the latter's. "Morning by morning he wakens--wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward" (50:4-5).

Conversations with God #1

Here is the first Bible Study summary of a short series on the theme Conversations with God.
- Linda


Conversation with God #1                        6/22/12
Abraham

Genesis 12 is where the story of Abraham begins. It follows the first eleven chapters of Genesis which include the chapter-one creation story, and the five primeval histories (Eden, Cain & Abel, Giants, Flood, Babel). These primeval stories set out to diagnose the human problem. The first pure note of hope about a solution to the problem comes in Chapter 12.

In Genesis 11:27 – the end of a two chapter genealogy – we first hear of Abram, son of Terah, immigrants from Ur in Chaldea (modern day Iraq) who has settled in Haran (modern day Syria).

In Chapter 12:1-3 the Lord calls Abram “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”.

This promise of blessing is a pivotal contrast to the chaos of the prehistories. The idea of blessing appears first in chapter one of Genesis in the creation story. It implies fruitfulness, non-violence, life and peace. The curse in contrast is an absence of these things. The blessing is for all the people of the earth intended right from the beginning and realized in Abraham. Through Abraham all the tribes of the earth (listed already in the genealogies) will be blessed. Abraham’s name is indeed considered great today (part of the promise) in that he is held to be the father of the three main monotheistic religions of the world - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

While the blessing is universal, the story starts with a single individual. This is a very human way of relating. It is not a call to adopt a program or manifesto - it is a call to relationship and to love. It is the blessing given to an individual that will bring love into the whole world. The United States has championed the ideal of individual freedom and self-determination. This often leads to selfishness and hedonism. The most difficult act of individual freedom is to love.

In Genesis 15 we have the continuing narrative of God’s covenant with Abram. God promises him a child after many barren years and through this child, countless descendants and the Promised Land. God tells Abram to bring him several sacrificial animals which he cuts in two and lays upon the ground. As night falls, Abraham falls into a sacred sleep – dark, deep and terrifying. A smoking pot and a flaming torch (symbols of the presence of the divine) pass between the pieces. God is symbolically saying that if his covenant with Abraham is broken he will call down the same violence visited upon the animals upon himself. This is an unbreakable covenant in which Abraham does not have to do anything but believe. But God puts himself at risk of the terrible human practice of violence.

The narrative continues in Chapter 18 with the story of the three angels (artistically represented in the Rublyev icon, The Trinity). It is this story that expresses most powerfully the heart and depth of the theology of the covenant. It begins with Abraham meeting three strangers by the oaks of Mamre. He offers them hospitality – water and food. Then they promise the birth of a son within the year, a conversation Sarah overhears. She laughs in disbelief at such an unexpected, implausible and ridiculous promise. The three men then turn towards Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah were places of brutality and oppression to the stranger. The theme is a common one in the Old Testament – the outcry of the oppressed toward God and the Lord’s response. The Lord hears Abel’s blood crying from the ground and the cry of his people in the land of Egypt. The Lord has heard the cry of the victims in Sodom and Gomorrah and is seeking to bring about a violent, righteous vengeance.

The text gives us the imagined psychological process within God. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” he decides that he cannot hide his plan from Abraham because of the covenant he has just made. “No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (v.19). He tells Abraham because Abraham is the key to the universal blessing. The covenant makes God vulnerable to humanity – it opens the space that allows humans to be part of the decision making process. The Yahwist (the story’s author) presents this as indecision in God – but the reality is that it is our own understanding of God that changes. The story shows God now vulnerable to the compassion of Abraham, but God chose him precisely for this task--to plead for humanity. Thus the overall story is a subtle meditation on a deeper sense of God. God is entirely vulnerable and committed to human history. The story tells us God can only be God when we ourselves change how we are and how we see him. Full revelation comes in Jesus who says that no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom he reveals him. It is when we see Jesus who died non-violently on the cross that we begin to see the Father’s true self.

Abraham bargains with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah. His compassion undermines God’s vengeance so that God is willing to consider changing his actions for the sake of even ten righteous people (V.32). Abraham becomes a model to God of compassion and forgiveness. This is the reason that Abraham is our father in faith – not because he is our physical ancestor but because of what he did and believed. Meanwhile, at the end of the story, God does destroy Sodom violently because that was the dominant version of events and the writer could only subtly undermine or deconstruct it.

At its heart Abraham’s story gives us the first glimpse of a God open to compassion. It gives a window into the heart of God. Too often our understanding of God mirrors our own violence. Abraham shows us that the only way to change the way we see God is through forgiveness – anything else returns us to the old, violent vengeful God. It is this compassion that will bring about the universal blessing promised to Abraham. It is Abraham's compassion, along with his faith, that constitutes his righteousness.

The Lord's Prayer #4

In this study we re-wrote the Lord's prayer after reflecting on the previous three week's of study. Here is what we came up with...

The Lord's Prayer #4 - a Wood Hath Hope re-writing of the Lord's Prayer

Our Abba in the heavens

May everyone know you by that tender name

May your love transform this earth and the whole universe

Give us today the bread that will bring about your new tomorrow

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and

Forgive our violence to others as we forgive the violence done to us.

Protect us from being brought to our breaking point

By the trials and temptations of the world.

And set us free from the power of the accuser and the evil it brings.

The Lord's Prayer #3

This is the final part of our study of the Lord's prayer

The Lord's Prayer #3                                                                                              06/1/12

The last two petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from evil”. The first part is common to both Luke and Matthew, the final clause is found only in Matthew.

The word for trial is peirasmos which can be translated as either “temptation” or “trial”. Temptation has an element of desire, whereas trial implies suffering and struggle not necessarily connected to virtue. Temptation can be understood as a trial of your virtue, an attack on your moral self – so in this sense they are connected.

Mt uses the word peirasmos elsewhere. In Mt 26:36-41, Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane brings to mind the Lord’s prayer. “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial” (v.41) and in v.43 “Your will be done”. Jesus is praying in a situation of extreme trial. Early in his ministry Jesus was conscious enough of the trial coming upon him that he prays in the Lord’s Prayer that his disciples not be led there.

So does God really want to lead us into trial or temptation? In the Old Testament God tests both Abraham and Job – perhaps the Lord’s Prayer reflects this. A better understanding is that God does not desire to lead us into trial or temptation, rather that we are being led by God to witness or live in ways that may lead us into times of trial or temptation. James 1:13 states “No one, when tempted, should say ‘I am being tempted by God’, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one”.

The word peirasmos recalls the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In Mt 4: 1-11 the verb form of the same Greek word is used twice. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted/tried by the devil” (v.1). Here it is not God but the devil who tries/tempts Jesus – but the leading is done by the Spirit who leads him into the wilderness – the situation where temptation takes place.

In reply to Satan’s second temptation Jesus answers “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”. He is quoting Deut 6:16. The Exodus story tells of the people testing God with complaints and demands.

The phrase “deliver us from evil” or “deliver us from the evil one” is traditionally understood as relating to Satan – as in be careful because the devil is waiting to get you. In the Greek, however, the phrase is actually “deliver us from the evil” – with an article but no pronoun. The word evil changes from a descriptive adjective to a noun. Many translations add the word “one” after “evil” because of the existence of the article “the”. They do this because it seems to make better sense – as though Matthew forgot to finish his sentence. However, Matthew does exactly the same thing elsewhere in his Gospel. In Mt 5:33-37 “let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil”. Again the translators often add on the word “one”.

An evil one implies another enemy, adversary or rival. “The evil” is less personalized. It can be understood in terms of violence, rivalry, hostility and desire. Jesus' teaching about swearing and oaths is one in which he recognizes the mouth as a potent tool for constructing and inflicting violence. It is from this that Jesus is praying for deliverance.

Again in Mt 5:38-39 the word translated as “evil doer” is actually again “the evil”. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I say to you, do not resist the evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile”.

So why would Jesus teach us not to resist the evil? It is because we understand resistance in worldly terms. As soon as we try to resist we begin to act mimetically. Instead we need to break the cycle of violence. Our focus should be completely on the Kingdom. Deliverance from the evil has an apocalyptic tone which fits with the rest of the prayer – a waiting for and working towards the in-breaking of the Kingdom.

Lord's Prayer #2

Here is the next in our series on the Lord's Prayer             

The Lord's Prayer #2                                                                                        05/25/12

“Give us today our daily bread

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mt 6:11-12)

This middle part of the Lord’s Prayer meets us where we are. Bread is one of the most basic of human needs – a staple food. The translation “give us today our daily bread” is problematic. It seems to employ a redundant use of the word “daily” – if it is today’s bread then it must be daily! The actual word in Greek that is translated as “daily” is epiousion which is made up of epi which means “more than” and ousion which means “substance”. If the word is understood as “more than substantial” it could be a prayer for all of our possible needs, our complete needs, today.  But this is at variance with other gospel teachings.

Another translation of the word epiousion is “that which follows on”. Using this translation an alternate way of understanding “daily bread” would be “bread of tomorrow” or “bread to come”. This echoes the coming of the kingdom and seems to fit in better with the earlier part of the Lord’s Prayer in which Jesus asks us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom and God’s will on earth. Isaiah 25:6-10 describes a future time when “on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; and he will swallow up death forever…” The Lord’s prayer is a prayer for the coming Kingdom, the promised Kingdom for which we hope and wait. The Kingdom in which death is finally overcome and every tear is wiped away.

The prayer is also placing the emphasis on the word “today” – that we should only pray for what we need today and not be anxious about tomorrow.  In the kingdom there is no need to store up possessions. Instead, we should trust God for all our needs.   In this it echoes the prayer for manna in the desert – when enough food was given for each day’s need. Note also that the prayer is communal – the bread is “ours” and not “my” – something to be shared. So even when prayed alone the prayer invokes community and connects us with each other.

There is a possible connection to the theme of bread in John’s Gospel. There Jesus says that “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (Jn 6:33). His disciples reply “give us this bread always”. Jesus proclaims that “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (v.35). Jesus is the new manna that does not leave you hungry for more. In v51 the words become Eucharistic “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”. For John “flesh” refers to Jesus’ humanity. Jesus transforms his human life, his flesh, into bread. You are what you eat – by taking in Jesus we become Jesus in the world.

The fourth petition, to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” is the only part of the prayer in which we are asked to do anything. This requirement is the key that unlocks the rest of the prayer, the praxis on my part that makes the prayer authentic and true. Jesus collapses our relationship with others into one practice - forgiveness. The prophets spoke of justice and external action rather than the more internal, personal practice of forgiveness.  Forgiveness figures in many of Jesus’ parables and teachings  (the parable of the unforgiving steward; Mt 5:21–24 & 43-48 for example). The prayer that begins with Abba proclaims a non-violent God who is all about forgiveness. Abba is not concerned with purity laws, Sabbath or temple. Instead if you want God to be O.K. with you, to forgive you, then forgive others. Jesus wants to tune us into a different frequency without which we cannot experience God’s forgiveness. If you don’t do it you don’t recognize it. Without this inner transformation we continue to experience and understand God in terms of wrath and violence.

In Mt 18:21-22 Peter asks Jesus “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus replies “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy times seven times”.  In other words forgiveness for Jesus is without limit.

Hanging on to violence and anger can become a poison. Forgiveness has recognized benefits in terms of mental health. Forgiveness has proven a healing force in communities with a history of structural violence – for example the truth and reconciliation initiatives in Rwanda, South Africa and Greensboro. While this is true, Jesus is more radical still. Forgiveness is an integral part of the coming of the Kingdom. We are all connected. The Kingdom will come only when all violence, hatred and anger are done away with. Only then will life and love overcome death. Forgiveness is the way to the Kingdom. The Lord’s Prayer for forgiveness is not a moral edict – it is an anthropological one.

The Lord's Prayer #1

Hi, Linda here - back in the saddle as WHH Bible Study Summary writer! Here is the first summary of a short new Bible study on The Lord's Prayer that we started last week...

The Lord’s Prayer #1                       05/18/12

The Lord’s prayer is the Christian prayer, adopted by the Christian community and common to all denominations. It had already become embedded in the first century – referenced in the early Christian writing the Didache (in which Christians are exhorted to repeat it three times a day). It is one of two extended prayers by Jesus found in the gospels (the other is in John 17). The Lord’s Prayer appears in two Gospels, Luke and Matthew.

Luke 11: 1-4, is generally considered the earlier version because it is less elaborate. In Luke the context of the prayer is that his disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus' answer  is a rabbi’s directive to his followers in line with his personal mission – “when you pray, say…”. Here is its content.

1.                   Father, Hallowed be your name

2.                   Your kingdom come

3.                   Give us each day our daily bread

4.                   And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us

5.                   And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Matthew’s version (Mt 6:5-15) is more of a guideline rather than a directive - “pray then in this way…”. It includes two extra petitions that bring the number of petitions to seven – a holy number representing completeness –e.g. the seven days of creation. The additional petitions are 3 and 7.

1.                   Our Father in  heaven, hallowed be your name

2.                   Your kingdom come

3.                   Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

4.                   Give us this day our daily bread

5.                   And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors

6.                   And do not bring us to the time of trial

7.                   But rescue us from the evil one.

In Mt the prayer is incorporated into a more extensive teaching on prayer as part of the  Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the teaching he contrasts meaningful prayer with empty phrases. He exhorts his audience not to pray ostentatiously like the hypocrites, nor to pray like the gentiles who talk too much. People tend to “blather” (battologein of verse 6:7) when they pray for different human reasons – because they don’t know what to say; because it is easier to keep talking than to listen; because they like to hear the sound of their own voice; to impose their will on God…

Jesus uses a word that underscores our relationship to the Father. Jesus’ unique use of the word abba (the Aramaic word for “daddy) as the form of address to God in the prayer embodies a simple direct relationship of trust. In Mark 14:36 Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane addresses God as abba. In the Lord’s prayer he invites his disciples into this same relationship. The fact that the original Aramaic word was incorporated into the Greek Gospels and Epistles indicates the desire of the writers to preserve this deeply evocative piece of Jesus’ practice and teaching. In Romans 8:14-16. (the heart of the letter) Paul says that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” and that “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God”.  This was written around 56-57 AD and shows that Jesus’ privileged use of the word “abba” had become characteristic of the early Christian movement.

This address transforms the tone of the prayer. It stresses the tenderness and trust implied in the relationship of parent to child. In the Lord’s prayer Jesus revolutionizes our relationship to God – he is shooting us a hot line! The prayer is also a “we” prayer. God is “our” Father. Even if a person prays alone, the prayer itself implies community with Jesus and with each other.

The first half of the Lord’s Prayer has remarkable similarities with the Kaddish used in synagogue worship. The Kaddish is taken from a conclusion found at the end of the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This version and its ancient conclusion would have been familiar to Jesus’ followers and to Jesus himself:

“Magnified and sanctified be his great name. Amen. In the world which he has created according to his will. And may he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days and during the life of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a near time. Amen”.

This then was a standard prayer for the Jews. It was a prayer for God’s Kingdom, understood in terms of the liberation and restoration of Israel from all of its oppressors. The first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer echo it. What distinguishes the Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ prefacing the prayer with the word “abba”.

By adding abba to the prayer Jesus alters its meaning in terms of relationship.

The first three petitions in the prayer are to do with God; the final four relate to our needs. This division brings to mind the ten commandments that are also divided in a similar fashion (the first four to do with our relationship to God, the last six on our own behavior).

The word “hallowed” is an old English word. It is a word that means “holy” and is often associated with the Latin word sacred.  According to Girard, the sacred is imbued with violence and violence becomes the sacred. Hallowing God’s name could make God dangerous – but Jesus undermines this by calling him Abba. He removes the violence from God. Another meaning of holy is being advanced by Jesus. The original meaning of holiness is to “set apart”. By placing Abba at the beginning of the prayer, Jesus reorients our frame of meaning, the "generative construct" of our lives. The thing that is to be set apart from all else so coloring all else is a nonviolent Father God..

Matthew's third petition is that the Father’s will be done  “on earth as it is I heaven”. The Hebrew understanding was that there were at least three heavens - the lower heavens where the birds fly; the highest heavens where God resides; and the third heaven where the angels are. The heavens were not perceived to be the perfect, eternal place that grew out of Greek philosophy.  Rather they were anything that was in any way transcendent. It has been the immovably perfect Greek image of heaven that has been dominant in our culture. Rather the Hebrew heavens included the rulers of darkness, the powers and principalities. Jesus saw Satan fall from heaven. There was bad stuff up there. The heavens in fact mirrored the earth. What happens in the heavens reflects what happens on earth.

There are two manuscript variations of the Matthean text. One says “on earth as it is in heaven” the second “on earth and in the heavens”. In the second version both the heavens and the earth are awaiting transformation. The prayer perhaps says that the violence has to be removed from our understanding of God and the heavens in the same way that the earth needs to be transformed.

Paul's Ground-Zero Witness to Resurrection

Here is the first study in the series, Christian Origins, Earliest Christianity in Paul & Acts.  Enjoy! 

The study followed a simple but intriguing trail of evidence in the New Testament about the date of Paul's conversion. It was very early, very close to the time of Jesus. Early enough in fact to make Paul a primary witness to the ground-zero tradition of resurrection appearances!

And here's what's critical about that. Paul was far too steeped in the Old Testament world view--and specifically the hope for national Israel's vindication from her enemies--to think in terms of any purely spiritual or mental resurrection. If the early Christian movement had intended anything ethereal like that, its claims would not have been in the same world as Paul inhabited. Resurrection for him was a divinely orchestrated physical vindication over Israel's earthly enemies, including the dead killed in earlier persecution. (See the book of Daniel.) The fact that primitive Christianity claimed the resurrection had occurred to a crucified Messianic pretender (viz. a failure), and only to him, was certainly a good reason for him to be outraged.

Paul had to have recognized in the primitive Christian movement a real claim to real resurrection to be upset. So, if we trace his conversion back to the earliest years we must hear this claim made at that primitive level.

At Acts 18:1-4 we read that Paul was in Corinth shortly after the Jews had been expelled from Rome under the Emperor Claudius. The expulsion is placed at about the year 49CE by historians, so that places Paul in Corinth in the year 50 to 51. This date is solidly confirmed by information at verses 12-15 of the same chapter. We find out there that Paul was in Corinth while Gallio was governor. From an inscription found at Delphi we know the latter was proconsul in this region from 51-52. Paul stayed in the city for an extended period so it is highly likely he was there in 51, and perhaps 50. It would have taken Paul a good year and a half to walk from Antioch to Corinth (three thousand miles), with stops along the way to evangelize (the "the second missionary journey"). Which gets us back to 50, 49 or even 48.

The second missionary journey begins at Acts 15:36 after the big meeting in Jerusalem described from the beginning of chapter 15 and known as the Council of Jerusalem. There is an indeterminate period for Paul in Antioch subsequent to the meeting ("after some days" at v. 36 probably means at least weeks if not months; see v. 35) so we can be pretty confident of a generally accepted date for this meeting as 48-49, i.e. before the journey. The meeting is absolutely crucial for the early church and Luke places it right at the center of Acts. It's possible Luke idealized the formality of the debate but he shows us James (the brother of the Lord) playing the decisive role, above Peter! And given Luke's clear acknowledgment elsewhere of Peter as leader of the apostles the contradiction has to be historical. In other words James of Jerusalem made a crucial ruling allowing the Gentile mission. And at this point Paul really needed the ruling, to make sure his interpretation of the Christian movement would not be negated from its spiritual base in Jerusalem.

According to Luke Paul was actually present for the ruling, but we don't have to rely just on him. At Galatians 2:1-10 Paul gives us his first hand description of a meeting with James, Cephas (Peter) and John which differs in some details with the description in Acts 15 but in other details is remarkably consistent (especially the core theological motivation; c.f. Acts 15:1, and Galatians 2:4). For our purposes what really grabs the attention is Paul's own note on chronology. At 2:1 he specifies "fourteen years" as the time that passed before this key visit. Passed since when? There is confusion as to whether the fourteen years is after Paul's conversion (1:13-17), or after the Paul's initial visit to Cephas and James three years following his conversion (1:18-19). In any case with these intervening years we have to say at the most conservative Paul was converted fourteen years before 48-49, i.e. 34-35 CE. If we add in the other three years it's also possible he was converted in 31-32

In conclusion therefore we are obliged to say that, depending on when Jesus was crucified (generally agreed to be either 30 or 33CE), Paul was converted between five years or one year after Jesus' death. My own instinct is to add the fourteen and three years together so Paul is converted approximately one to two years after Jesus' death in 30. The NRSV Study Bible in fact adds those two amounts together (p. 2082), probably because the Greek text leans in that direction (it can be read "through fourteen years more").

Which is all a way of placing Paul's narrative at 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 of the resurrection tradition at this extremely early period. What Paul, therefore, is talking about when he says "I passed on to you...what I in turn had received" is a tradition he received some time around 32CE. Some of it would have come from Ananias at Damascus, and the rest from Peter three years later.

The core tradition of a bodily resurrection, therefore, is captured for us by the witness of Paul within a space of one to two years after the date of Jesus' death.

Beatitudes III

The eighth beatitude seems to conclude the list, as it is a doublet of the first in both the use of the present tense and the promise of the kingdom. The present handing over of God's kingdom book-ends the whole sequence, providing a ringing sense of a complete and finished unit. But it is followed directly by another "Blessed", i.e. by exactly the same beatitude formula. And this ninth beatitude is itself doubled with a repetition in verse twelve: its same content and  meaning given in a further statement, but in the imperative rather than indicative. (This is much the same thing as we noted about the sixth and last antithesis in relation to the seventh beatitude.)

It appears that the promise of the eighth beatitude was so crucial that it merited repeating two more times!

The experience of persecution is a startling new element to be added to the list of biblical characteristics of the anawim, to their poverty and nonviolence, to their longing for justice and peace. Biblical figures had certainly been persecuted before. The examples of Job and the Nonviolent Servant spring to mind. There are numerous examples in the psalms, and in the book of Daniel there are hints of a whole group of deeply observant, nonviolent Jews, calling themselves the "wise", who suffered violent persecution. But the eighth beatitude makes it a fixed sociological value in its own right. By raising the experience to the level of a kingdom event, making it not simply an unfortunate side-effect and something to be reversed later on, the eighth beatitude turns persecution into a positive good . People are actually blessed when the world goes after them! In the present tense and authentic fact!

According to Rene Girard the gospels introduce the category and truth of persecution to human history. Because of the gospels the victims of persecution have gained significance and truth in their own right. But the new category depends entirely on nonviolence. To be persecuted you have to be nonresistant to violence; if you retaliate you may be in a state of oppression and pain but you are not persecuted. The root of the word is "to hunt down", "to pursue." In other words you are a creature in the condition of flight, not fight.

Behind the blessing is the living relationship with God-active-in-the-world which Jesus declared and made available. If this were not there, if Jesus had not provided the context for his own words, we could only repeat the violence of the world in response to its violence. That could happen in a variety of ways, from resistance, to despair, to bitterness and resentment. But now the "blessing" of persecution intrudes an entirely different note, one of actual joy which knows the violence inflicted as direct evidence of God's saving action. It is highly paradoxical, but conforms to Jesus' method of speaking a truth into reality and making it stick through his own powerful example. Because of him the world has changed and if his disciples are persecuted when they commit to that change it is further proof the change is real and effective!

The centrality of Jesus is underlined in the ninth beatitude. Now, for the first time the formula changes from the third person to the second, indicating that the statement is addressed to Matthew's actual community. It means that the group of Christians for whom Matthew wrote was experiencing the concrete forms of persecution mentioned: they were being reviled, hunted, and slandered. The final expression is, "Uttering all evil against you." In other words, people were talking trash about them to the extent they had become the sum of all evil in the world, or indeed pure evil itself! In these circumstances it would not be exaggerated to fear for your life.

According to many commentators Matthew (or others) added to the statement the words "falsely, on my account". They believe these qualifications should not need pointing out (they state the obvious, and in fact some of the manuscripts lack the expression "falsely"). But because the qualifications are included they suggest that already people were using the "persecution" motif to excuse bad behavior and its repercussions. It seems the I-am-the-victim excuse was already being abused in the first century! Which, in an upside-down kind of way proves again the reality of the promise. If people had not witnessed the power of the experience of persecution and the way its victims were validated in the community there would have been nothing there to abuse. At the same time the evangelist (or copyist!) understood clearly the difference between the "victim mentality" and the genuine blessing of persecution for righteousness' sake.

And key to that is obviously "on my account." Jesus is absolutely the principle and source of all the beatitudes, and especially this one. It is only by identification with him that persecution is blessed. Here it is of considerable interest that no reference is made to Jesus' own experience of persecution, his passion and death. What we have, therefore, is an echo of his original authority as a teacher and prophet communicating his personal vigor of nonviolence to the audience. Verse twelve with its invocation of the prophets puts the teaching squarely in this frame. The qualifications "falsely, on my account" establish, therefore, the criterion of sincere identification with the nonviolent historical Jesus as condition of the blessing.

Finally the imperatives "Rejoice and be glad" in verse twelve put us in "liturgical" contact with the experience of Jesus' teaching and Matthew's community which remembered it. We are invited to enter in the present moment into the enormous upwelling joy of Jesus reaching through history announcing God's life-giving nonviolence into the world.

Beatitudes II

Beatitudes 4 through 7

In the fourth beatitude we encounter a word of almost fabled status in the Christian lexicon, "righteousness"! Paul's use of it, especially in Romans, provides a bottomless well for interpretation and is at the heart of all Reform theology. The beatitude on righteousness is the last in the first set of four, and because the theme of righteousness is repeated in the eighth it suggests a division into two halves, each concluded with the same theme. In which case "righteousness" appears crucial to the whole scheme.

The Hebrew Old Testament term behind the Greek is sedekah. This is frequently paired with another word mishpatim meaning justice. In other words righteousness and justice overlap and belong to the same range of covenant virtue and behavior required by God. At this level there is no rigid formal distinction between the two. At Isaiah 1:21-27 we can see how the two are intimately intertwined. But in late biblical Judaism there was a move away from the "moral" sense of the practice of justice to a feeling that this had become virtually impossible for God's people. There had been so many failures experienced in the practice of covenant righteousness it was now something only God could provide. This is the beginning of the apocalyptic attitude, the idea that God must take direct action in order to break through the impasse of human wickedness. See Daniel 9:1-19, for example v. 7: "Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame...falls on us..."

So "hungering and thirsting for righteousness" is again an attitude of poverty, of lack, and therefore a longing for the in-breaking of the kingdom. Jesus in his preaching claims this breakthrough has now taken place (cf. 6:33). At the same time this new righteousness is no "imputed" justification (if indeed Paul ever thought that). For Matthew it remains a practical and concrete "ethic". See 5:13-20, where Christians are to be as visible and public as the Pharisees!

"Blessed are the merciful" is the first beatitude in the second quartet, where there is a shift from more passive or receptive states to more active responses or relationships engaged with the world. This first one is also perhaps the best example of the Wisdom thinking that runs throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Deed-consequence reasoning in Proverbs, for example, is perfectly instanced here: you reap what you sow, if you put in mercy you will get it back!

The O.T. word behind mercy is hesed. It has a much wider range of meaning than "mercy" as we would understand it, and as such is impossible to translate consistently. (In the LXX Greek it is normally rendered with the root eleos, i.e. mercy.) At Genesis 40:14 the NRSV has it as "kindness," at 2 Sam. 3: 8 it is "loyalty". When it is applied to God it is often represented in modern English translation as "steadfast love." It is also twinned with a word more regularly associated with mercy, from the word rehem meaning a woman's womb, and accurately translated in English as "compassion." At Exodus 34:6 you can see both terms used in the classic confession of Israel's God. At Psalm 103:4 hesed and r'hamim are together and rendered in the NRSV as "steadfast love and mercy." At Zechariah 7:9 these twinned terms are proposed to Israelites as the attitude they should have for one another.

In other words the "merciful"of the fifth beatitude has a range of inflections behind it, suggesting a rich relationship of commitment and favorable action. John McKenzie defines it as "a broad and embracing benevolence, a will to do good to another rather than evil." A contemporary word for it perhaps is "human solidarity." So...blessed are those who show solidarity, for they will receive solidarity!

The sixth beatitude seems to break from the scheme of active response or relationship in the world. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God..." But the only thing that takes this out of the world is the Greek tradition. In a Greek mindset it is impossible "to see God" except via the immortal intellectual soul transported to the heavenly otherworld. At every point this is not the sense of Jesus' beatitude.

The "heart" in Hebrew anthropology is not the same thing as "mind." The heart is the seat of the will and thus action in the world. At Jeremiah 31:33 God famously promises "I will write my law on their heart..." In other words, the fount of choice and action will be inscribed with God's law of justice.

"Pure" of course refers to readiness or fitness to come before God or in relation to holy things. Psalm 24:3-6 gives us a clear pattern and uses the term found in the beatitude. " Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully..." Purity here is truth and honesty in relationships, including avoiding relationship with idols. Approaching God "in his holy place," therefore, is a result of concrete relationships in this world, not intellectual sight.

One of the great texts on seeing God is in the Book of Job, the place where he cries out for a redeemer. It tells us the place where his prayer will be answered is on earth: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth...then in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19: 25-26). This is the kind of seeing envisaged by the beatitude, one that flows directly from concrete relationships on this earth. The goal is fulfilled in the Book of Revelation in the New Jerusalem come down to earth. Then it will be relationship with God and with the Lamb which gives sight to the city, not sight itself (Rev. 21:22-23). We could say, therefore, that the heart has its own way of seeing, that it is the only organ than can see God, and that the whole range of the beatitudes and the relationships they offer result in this seeing.

The seventh beatitude has two notable effects. On the one hand it is the statement which most forcefully ties the beatitudes, and the whole Sermon on the Mount, to the world. On the other it is the statement which most forcefully ties the character of God to the beatitudes' overall program of nonviolence. Being a "peacemaker" is something associated with rulers and emperors after their successful use of force has brought order and tranquility to the earth. In the year 13BC the Roman Senate commissioned an altar to be erected and named "Ara Pacis Augustae" (Altar of Augustan Peace) to celebrate the peace and prosperity created by the emperor Augustus who had taken power in Rome in 27BC. It survives today and is considered a masterpiece, testifying to the military, political, ideological and religious triumph of Augustus Caesar, a man who ruled for forty one years and initiated a period of 200 years of generally unbroken peace throughout the Roman Empire. When Augustus first proclaimed himself emperor before the Senate he named himself "Son of the divine Caesar" (Julius Caesar). Jesus lived all his early life under Augustus' supreme authority (he was about twenty when Augustus died), and when he names "peacemakers" as "children of God" he is saying that it is his disciples who are the true authors and children of divine peace on earth, not Roman Emperors.

In Israel peace came from the Lord and resulted in fruitfulness and life (see Micah 4:1-4, Psalms 122 & 128). Its crucial character as the righteousness that comes with God's kingdom is illustrated in the "six antitheses" that follow very soon after the beatitudes. Here Jesus explicitly contrasts his teaching with the torah that came before, and in each instance the difference turns on peacemaking as opposed to violence. Particularly the first ("do not be angry") and the fifth and sixth ("do not resist the evil" and "love your enemy") show the absolute centrality of peacemaking to Jesus' preaching of kingdom justice. The last antithesis repeats the beatitude itself, in imperative rather than indicative form: "I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (5:44-45).

The consequence in the nature of God cannot be exaggerated. You cannot be a peacemaking child of a violent God. And the God of Israel would not have the right to claim any difference from the gods of the Romans if s/he were in fact violent. In this teaching of the beatitudes God has been shown conclusively as nonviolent. And that nonviolence in fact underpins the whole of Jesus' abolition of purity distinctions, and then, after his death, the outreach of the Christian movement to the Gentile world. A nonviolent God has no enemies, draws no distinction between Jew and Gentile. By the same token Paul's description of righteousness communicated by faith (not race) cannot have a hidden remainder of violence in it, whereby God simply decides not to inflict violence on those who are saved all the while maintaining the attitude of divine violence toward the world. The sixth beatitude radically critiques all attempts to make Paul's theology a legal change in the mind of God and a nonchange in the (supposed) violence of God's relationship to the world. The kingdom of the heavens is a radical breakthrough of divine nonviolence into a human history of violence.