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(Matthew 5-7)
by Dale C. Allison, Jr.
The Sermon on the Mount is the first of Jesus’ five long
speeches in the Gospel of Matthew.
It is a three-chapter summary of Jesus’ moral instruction.
One of its chief subjects is the Law of Moses (Matthew 5:17-48).
The speech is controversial because it seems to assert, contrary
to Paul and most later Christian tradition, that followers of Jesus should
still observe the entirety of the Law, which would seemingly include
circumcision and dietary regulations (Matthew 5:17-20).
At the same time, it also appears to dispense with several parts
of the Law (Matthew 5:31-48).
Does the passage contradict itself? Or is it consistent with the
perspective of Matthew’s gospel as a whole?
Does the Sermon on the Mount teach that Christians should still
observe the Law of Moses?
The six paragraphs addressing the law concern
- anger (Matthew 5:21-26),
- lust (Matthew 5:27-30),
- divorce (Matthew 5:31-32),
- oaths (Matthew 5:33-37),
- revenge (Matthew 5:38-42), and
- love ( Matthew 5:43-48).
Many biblical scholars label these paragraphs “antitheses,”
because in their view Jesus and Moses are at odds with each other.
The Law of Moses permits
- divorce (Matthew 24:1-4),
- oaths (Matthew 19:12; Numbers 30:2-3; Deuteronomy 23:22), and
- retaliation (Exodus 21:24-25; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21).
Jesus, with his repeated “but
I say to you,” prohibits all of them.
Yet there are problems with supposing that Jesus contradicts the
Law of Moses.
Matthew 5:17-20 says explicitly that Jesus has not come to
abolish the Law and the Prophets. To the contrary, people should obey and teach
them.
One could scarcely be any clearer.
It looks very
much as though Matthew 5:17-20 is located precisely where it is in
order to prevent readers from imagining that Jesus, in the paragraphs that
follow, intends to undo the teachings of Moses.
But how can this be, if Jesus abolishes divorce and oaths and
forbids retaliation?
The problem may be an illusion, if we think in terms of practice:
those who obey Jesus’ words will not transgress any law in
the Hebrew Bible.
Moses may allow divorce, but he does not command it. He may allow
oaths, but he does not demand them.
And he may allow retaliation, but he does not require it. So
shunning divorce, oaths, and retaliation does not violate what the Law of Moses
commanded.
This way of looking at things is consistent with the way Matthew,
as compared to the other Gospels, treats some matters.
For example, in a discussion of dietary
customs in Mark 7:1-23, the evangelist Mark comments that Jesus
declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19).
Matthew, in his version of the same story, says nothing comparable
(Matthew 15:1-20).
This omission would make sense if the Christian readers of
Matthew’s gospel were still expected to follow dietary and other Jewish laws.
Similarly, in Mark 13:18, Jesus tells his followers to pray
that tribulation not overtake them in winter.
In the parallel account in Matthew 24:2, Jesus tells them to
pray that they not be overtaken “in winter
or on a sabbath.”
This expanded version seems to assume that the Sabbath still
matters for readers of this gospel.
Another striking example is Matthew 23:23, where Jesus
rebukes the scribes and Pharisees with these words: “Hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, 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.”
The closing words, “without
neglecting the others,” appear to assume the continuing validity of the Law
of Moses for followers of Jesus.
So it is natural to think of Matthew’s gospel as representing a
type of Law-observant Christianity, a Jewish Christianity that wanted
to preserve the old traditions along with the new (Matthew 8:17, Matthew 13:52).
Does the Sermon on the Mount intentionally contradict Paul?
Matthew 5:17 appears to rebut a real misunderstanding. That
is, Matthew knows somebody who believes and teaches that Jesus came to annul
the Law and the Prophets.
The text would probably not be so adamant about denouncing a
purely hypothetical position, one held by no one.
But who is the individual or group to which Matthew reacts? Who
taught that the era of the Law and Prophets had come to an end with Jesus?
An answer almost inevitably suggests itself: Paul. He taught that
it was not necessary for Christians to observe the Law of Moses, and he was, as
far as we know, the most famous proponent of that position in the early church.
Is he then the object of Matthew’s polemical text? Matthew
5:17-20 certainly sounds anti-Pauline.
Many Christians have an understanding of Scripture that rejects
the idea that Matthew deliberately opposes Paul. If, however, we think in
historical rather than theological terms, it is hard to dismiss the
possibility, even if it cannot be proven.
This is all the more plausible because Acts, Romans, and Galatians
show that Paul’s view of the law was controversial — certain Jewish
Christians disagreed with him.
Moreover, another New Testament epistle,
James, attacks the view that faith without works can save a person (James 2:14-26).
From the time of Martin Luther on, many have argued
persuasively that James takes aim at Paul and his Law-free gospel.
It may be the same with Matthew’s gospel, which has many other
interesting points of contact with James.
Dale
C. Allison, Jr.
Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
Dale
C. Allison, Jr. is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at
Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of many books, including The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Fortress,
1993), Studies in Matthew (Baker Academic, 2005), and A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James (T&T
Clark, 2013).
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