Traditions run deep. The truth of the matter is that most of those who claim the name of Christ have tradition and experience, not the Bible, as their primary authority in determining the truth of a matter. I find it most difficult to convince anyone with a biblical argument if they are in love with the particular traditions the Bible critiques.
One of the most notable is the idea that Christians should give kingdom resources to unbelievers because “everyone is our neighbor.” I’ve argued against this idea before, but wanted again to put this major principle of Western religion into biblical perspective by pointing out a glaring discrepancy.
If “neighbor” refers to everyone, believer or unbeliever, covenant member or pagan alike, then how does the phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus jive with the commandment to destroy every unbeliever in the area?
As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. Instead you must utterly annihilate them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites – just as the Lord your God has commanded you (Deut 20:16-17)
Liberals can only support their unrevealed, speculative religion by viewing the Bible as a human expression about God, but not an accurate revelation from God. Of course, this makes the Bible a lie, since these texts are portraying God as saying this. So it cannot be merely a human opinion that is off, but a complete lie. One can, therefore, turn around and say that the one text contradicts the other because one is a correct expression of what God thinks and the other is not (how one knows it’s a correct expression without the confirmation of divine revelation is beyond me).
Instead of taking the liberal, apostate route, however, the other way to see these two as complementary rather than contradictory is to read the Leviticus command in context, and understand that “neighbor” refers to fellow covenant members, not pagans. The whole verse makes that clear.
“‘You must not deal unjustly in judgment: you must neither show partiality to the poor nor honor the rich. You must judge your people fairly. You must not go about as a slanderer among your people. You must not stand idly by when your neighbor’s life is at stake. I am the Lord . You must not hate your brother in your heart. You must surely reprove your people so that you do not incur sin on account of him. You must not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the members of your people, but you must love your neighbor as yourself. (19:15-18)
Notice here that “neighbor,” in the second great commandment, is in the context of fellow covenant members described by multiple terms throughout the context. The clause in which it appears is in a contrastive parallelism with the previous clause that also makes this clear. The phrase, “sons of your people,” which functions as a gentilic in ancient Near Eastern and biblical literature, meaning “members of your people group,” identifies the phrase, “your neighbor.”
Hence, whether inclusive, unrevealed, Western religion likes it or not, the Bible is not contradictory on the matter. God commands the Israelites to love one another as themselves and He also commands the Israelites to obliterate their enemies, the Canaanite groups that makeup unbelievers among them. It is not inclusive, but extremely exclusive.
When Jesus quotes it, He is quoting the actual law, not twisting it to mean something else. We know this because, in the text, He is being asked what is the greatest of the commandments. He quotes this, then, as one of the greatest commandments as it is stated in Leviticus. He is not giving a new teaching, and He does not add to the teaching. He simply clarifies in the parable of the Good Samaritan that one should be concerned about being a neighbor, i.e., that he is acting like a covenant member to other professed covenant members.
Hence, Christians are identified by those who “love one another,” who “love his brother,” “to do good to all people, specifically speaking, to believers,” and they do to Christ whatever they have done “to the least of these brothers of Mine.” Neither the New Testament or the Old ever place a love for the pagan as an identity marker that shows the Christian’s love for God as evidence of salvation.
The reason why this is the case because those who are the image of God in terms of their role work toward filling up the earth with God’s covenant people, and not for the creation and preservation of the wicked. What has changed is the means through which God deals with the pagan in our midst. We offer love to them by inviting them into the kingdom. However, we do not give them the kingdom, even a small piece of it, apart from their being united to Christ through faith.
Hence, love for the brother always involves giving kingdom resources to him when he is in need. Love for the pagan is inviting him into the kingdom so that he can partake of those kingdom resources; but without faith, nothing of the kingdom should be given to him other than that invitation, and if he rejects, he should be warned that even what he has will be taken away from him, as only those in Christ will inherit the world.
If everyone is our neighbor, however, you would just give them those kingdom resources apart from Christ because apparently they get the kingdom without Christ anyway (a Christless Christianity that binds humans together as "neighbors" without any need for Christ).
So which of these statements is not the biblical one?
A. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
B. “Do not allow a single living thing to survive among the cities you are going”
C. “Everyone is my neighbor.”
I think the Bible makes the answer to that question very clear.
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ReplyDeleteI think there are theological implications that we communicate to others by letting them know our resources belong to Christ, and therefore, others who belong to Christ. Of course, there are governmental obligations when it comes to those who may be in our houses, or national obligations that are taken care of via taxes. So when we become government to others we would give resources as government, but not as kingdom people. I think that is an important distinction to make.
ReplyDeleteThe Sermon on the Mount actually refers to Gentiles as pagans. The enemy there is talking about people who are at odds with us within the covenant community. The entirety of the Sermon deals with those within the community and internal conflicts, and the whole book is about how we treat Christ through the "least of these brothers" of His. The "do good to all men" is what I quoted above, but if you notice, I actually translate malista as "specifically speaking," as many modern scholars do, not as "especially" as older translations do. Malista is likely specification as clarification (the general = the more specific) rather than specification as a partitive (including the greater but even more the more specific). So it's like saying, "The government, malista the IRS, taxes our money.
"But maybe the idea is that we seek to pledge or intend our larger excess finances for our family and other Christians, so if asked for such help by a non-believer, we only have spare change or nothing anyway."
I think largely that's true, although I save my spare change for Christians as well. I think there is a real problem in the world when we dilute the resources to the point where we can no longer truly help Christ in the way that love demands that we do; and of course, what we implicitly communicate to them about their access to what belongs to Christ is very important to stay consistent with our explicit gospel.
BTW, congrats on the baby!
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ReplyDeleteThe Samaritans actually are covenant members. They're really not equivalent to Mormons or JWs. Their Pentateuch only really differed over the location of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. They believed the prophetic tradition and were looking forward for the Messiah, as is evidenced in John 4. In many ways, they are more covenant members than the Sadducees who rejected most of that. Yet, no one argues that they would not have been seen as covenant members. When Jesus heals them, He tells them to go to their priests, and of course, they are the only ones who go back to thank Him. It would be odd for Him to tell them to go show themselves to their priest.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with the Samaritans is that they are viewed as the lowest rung of those who worship YHWH. The Jews have nothing to do with them. They are the outcasts of outcasts when it comes to the covenant community.
It's important to put whatever Luke says in the context of what he is arguing in the book. His Gospel argues that the outcast who repents and acts like a covenant member is a true covenant member and the prominent person who does not act like a covenant member is a false one. Hence, we read "blessed are the poor" in Luke, not as a general statement about the poor, but as a statement about the poor who are within the covenant community. The parable needs to be understood in this light. We are talking about the outcast (i.e., the Samaritan) who takes care of another covenant member (i.e., a Jew) in contrast to prominent people in the visible covenant community who do not act like covenant members by taking care of him. Hence, Jesus' charge to the Pharisee is to be like the Samaritan, i.e., the outcast, who acts like a true covenant member.
If you look at the way you have your characters in your scenario, you seem to putting the Jew, i.e., the covenant member in the place of the Samaritan, i.e., the one you think is not a covenant member and therefore of another religion. But it is the Samaritan, not the Jew, who is taking care of the covenant member. So the message, in your scenario, is that Jesus is telling people of other religions that they should take care of Christians. But, of course, that is not the point in the context of Luke either.
Either way, there is no way to get the idea that Christians should take care of non-Christians unless the characters are moved around and the parable can then be misinterpreted and misapplied.
The question is whether the Pharisee is a true covenant member by taking care of other covenant members, and hence, he is told to be like the Samaritan who does just that.
I've talked about all of this before, including the alien among you. That refers also to covenant members who are non-Israelite in terms of their ethnicity. If you look at who they are they are covenant members who are under the law and must practice everything in the law, including the passover and Sabbath. They bring sacrifices to God and observe the whole of the religion. The foreigner among them who worships other gods is to be put to death and removed from the land.
ReplyDeleteI would call an ambulance, but not for the same reasons. 1. That is me acting as government in a situation where my citizenship requires me to act. 2. I don't know who the elect are, and so any time I can act as government to save a life I will. 3. It is a giving of time and not material resources. Time is a resource, but one that we are commanded to use toward the world to call people into the kingdom, so I wouldn't quite see time as the same type of resource as money. We see the apostles giving their time but not their money to the outside world.
As for Matthew, it is simply impossible for me to see the statements as referring to pagans when the entirety of Matthew's argument is about how people within the visible church treat one another. The whole thing is arguing for this and to make the "one with whom a Christian is at odds," i.e., the enemy, about unbelievers is simply to insert a command that is completely irrelevant to the larger argument being made. It also flies in the face of Jesus' direct command to not give what is holy to pigs and dogs, which are terms that refer to pagans. Again, I've argued for all of this here, but I can always elaborate on anything further if needed.
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DeleteMatthew is addressing Jewish Christians in his Gospel who are separating from Gentile Christians and pressuring other Jewish Christians to do the same. He situated in the Pentateuch in the sermon, which uses "brother" to refer to fellow Israelites as opposed to the Gentile believers or resident aliens who believe. It's ethnic rather than religious. What he does later in the book is attempt to transition the thought of these Christians to think of their brothers in terms of those connected to Christ, i.e., brother in the religious sense, regardless of ethnicity, but he starts out with their understanding first. They think of their brothers and neighbors as fellow Jews who practice the rituals of Judaism, not as the Gentiles who do not.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding it in this way not only illuminates what is said but it contributes to the overall message instead of inserting something that has nothing to do with the main point. This is why context of a book's argument is so important. As I've said many times, if something is interpreted that has nothing to do with the book's point, it has likely been misinterpreted.
So Jesus is really saying, "If you greet only your fellow Jews what good is that? Do not the Gentiles do the same?"
Of course, there is nothing in this text that talks about giving money to unbelievers either way, but interpreting it according to what Matthew is arguing overall, i.e., addressing issues within the covenant community, is a safer exegetical move I think.
This, then, also creates an inclusio between the first command that addresses how they treat fellow Jews in the covenant and the last dealing with how they treat non-Jews in the covenant, binding all of it within the covenant context, eventually applying all of it to "even the least of these brothers of Mine" who are in Christ by the end of the book.
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DeleteAs far as giving to an unbeliever, it depends upon whether I have governmental/familial/work related responsibilities, etc. Someone in my house is under my care, as I am the governing authority of the household. Secular nations have governmental responsibilities over their people. This money belongs to Caesar/government and thus is to be given to, or used for the purposes of, Caesar/government; but what belongs to me, as mine, is Christ's, and therefore, only belongs to Christ and those who are a part of His body. It may be impossible to always see the clear line, and I think that's fine. My point is simply that a line is there and where it can be defined, it should be.
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