What Can Love Hope For?

Questions for Faith Seeking Understanding

William Loader

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725270824
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Critique et interprétation bibliques

This book raises thorny questions about the themes of faith, hope, and love. Is God really like Jesus or was Jesus a temporary exception to the way God usually is? Was there forgiveness before the cross? Will God one day stop loving? What do we do with the fact that the hopes they had for change were not fulfilled? What happened to good news for the poor? Why did some replace it with something else? Does Christian freedom mean we no longer need the Law? Were early responses to rejection always healthy? Does the Bible say all we need to know about sexuality?It responds to what the author observes is a widespread hunger and interest for discussions which identify and tackle some of the troubling themes of New Testament interpretation in ways that are not defensive, but yet are also supportive of faith, especially an informed faith. It draws together the fruit of over half a century of scholarly research and teaching.

Section C

Love: What Can Love Do?

7

Do We Still Need the Law?

Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to replace them with a better righteousness. For until I came, not a jot or stroke was to pass from the law; it was all to be done. But now anyone continuing to teach even the least significant of its commandments shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. For unless your righteousness is much better than that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that those of old were told to keep the commandments, but I now say something very different and more profound. (with apologies to Matt 5:17–21)

This radically changes the statement that Matthew has Jesus pronounce at the beginning of his teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, but, strangely, it fits the way many people interpreted his words.

An extreme form of this thinking arose in the latter decades of the twentieth century where movements arose, including in the church that declared, “If it feels right do it!” While this loosened the bonds of people who had lived with a form of Christianity that was full of “oughts” and “don’ts,” it also let loose behaviors where people turned off their brains. The result in many instances was not just self-indulgence but also sexual promiscuity and abuse. I can remember the grounding wisdom that countered: the most important sexual organ is the brain.

It was also in these decades that historical research came to a much more nuanced understanding of the context of New Testament writings, especially their Jewish context, rediscovered not least because of the stimulus of finding the ancient library of Jewish literature in caves by the Dead Sea Seaand because the Holocaust exposed the legacy of prejudice. New Testament writings were not all the same and differed in their approach to the biblical law (in effect the major part of the Jewish Scriptures). It enabled us to see that Matthew needed to be read differently from what had been the common understanding reflected in the reformulation presented above.

Biblical law, sometimes described as the law of Moses, the Torah, refers to the commandments and instructions set out above all in the first five books of the Old Testament, sometimes called the books of Moses. It was and is foundational for Jewish life and is viewed as God’s gift to Israel to enable it to remain faithful to the covenant with God. It includes but is more than the Ten Commandments and includes directions for many aspects of daily life as well for observation of ritual purity, what is clean and unclean, and the basic provisions necessary for the structure and running of the temple and its rituals.

What Jesus Really Said About the Law According to Matthew

The original words in Matthew begin by saying:

Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. (5:17)

Fulfilling the requirements and the conditions for something does not usually mean setting them aside, let alone replacing them. It means something more like upholding them. This is true of its meaning here and makes sense of what follows, which declares:

For until heaven and earth pass away not one jot or stroke will pass from the law, until all is done* (5:18).

That is another way of saying that the law remains permanently in effect. This, in turn, also makes sense of the warning that follows:

Whoever sets aside one of the least of these commandments and teaches people to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; and who keeps them and teaches people to do so will be called great. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.* (5:19–20)

The greater righteousness in the verse that follows is not about keeping a different law but keeping the same law as set out in the Scriptures more faithfully and strictly.

When Matthew then has Jesus comment on six aspects of the law in 5:21–48, he contrasts what people heard in the past with what it really meant. Thus, “Don’t murder” also implied, “Don’t have murderous, hateful thoughts and attitudes” and he applied the same to the command not to commit adultery.

Matthew on the Law

The author of the Gospel according to Matthew was writing some 50 years after the time of Jesus and never gave us his name. All the Gospels are in fact anonymous. His Gospel came to be associated with the disciple, Matthew, possibly because it was written in an area where that disciple had been active. We call the author Matthew for short. It seems he was writing in a setting that was strongly Jewish, with local communal government in the hands of Jewish leaders (23:2–3). He was very careful in the way he used Mark, his main source, and other material, to which Luke independently also had access. When Matthew rewrites Mark, he does so in a way that gives special emphasis to the law in Jesus’ teaching.

One of the ways he does this is by grouping nearly all the sayings of Jesus into five main clusters, which he portrays as speeches of Jesus. He may well have done so deliberately to echo the fact that the law consisted of the five so-called books of Moses, Genesis to Deuteronomy.

He has Jesus give the opening speech up on a mountain. For people listening to Matthew’s story of Jesus, the symbolism would have been obvious. Jesus goes up a mountain to teach about God’s law, just as Moses had gone up Mt. Sinai to receive God’s law.

This follows the opening chapters of his Gospel where he portrays Jesus as the judge to come, announced by John the Baptist. In his opening speech, Jesus as the judge to come announces the basis upon which people will be judged. They will be judged on the basis of how they have kept God’s law and in particular whether they kept it in the way that Jesus taught it should be kept.

If, therefore, we ask Matthew whether we still need the law, the answer is straightforward: it is essential. Elsewhere he has Jesus underline that people will be judged on the basis of their behavior (16:27). Every speech of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel ends with warnings about the judgment. His final speech uses the image of the day of judgment as the act of separating sheep from goats (25:31–46). What would make the difference? Behavior: whether people showed love and care for those in need in their community.

There were, however, different approaches to keeping the law. For some, the emphasis was on strict observance of every detail equally and especially of such requirements as observing food laws, keeping oneself “clean” in a ritual sense by ceremonial washings, and not working on the sabbath. These belong to the jots and strokes that Matthew also assumes all should keep. They are not seen as burdensome. He even insists that people should tithe the herbs they harvest, going further than what the law actually required, but he does so only after first stating what he saw as the priorities of Jesus. Not all commands are of equal weight.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. (23:23)

Matthew depicts Jesus as advocating a very different approach from that of the scribes and Pharisees, as he portrays it. Matthew may well be doing so against the background of conflict in his own day between his community of Jewish believers and those who had come to dominate leadership of the synagogues. Synagogues were re-establishing themselves in the 80s after the debacle of the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Matthew may or may not be accurate about their views. In conflicts it is easy to be misrepresented.

The priorities Matthew highlights are reflected in what he presents as Jesus’ concerns...