1 John: In Reply to Guy

Longtime reader Guy has this habit of asking questions that force me to dig deeper. He did it again. Regarding my views on Rom 13:8-10, Guy wrote,

(1) Various laws being “summed up” by “love your neighbor” means that the individual laws are expositional of “love your neighbor,” that is, loving your neighbor means (at least) behaving in the ways specified by the various laws.  Thus, to break any of the specific laws amounts to a failure to love one’s neighbor.

(2) Various laws being “summed up” by “love your neighbor” means that “love your neighbor” can at times require behavior contrary to the specific laws, but the specific laws are mere generalities that often cache out what loving your neighbor means but not always.  Thus whether a person is or isn’t keeping the more specific laws is simply unimportant in comparison with whether or not they are conforming to the more primary command to “love your neighbor.” (This is closer to Fletcher’s position [in Situation Ethics].)

Here you seem to be saying something like (1).  i think people get itchy because they take you to be saying something like (2).

Guy,

I have to start with something of a rant. Beginning of rant:

For many decades, many in the Churches of Christ have routinely argued for their case by arguing against certain ideas: the social gospel, liberalism, premillenialism, Pentecostalism, Situation Ethics, ecumenism, Ketcherside-ism, Shelly-ism, secular humanism, the emerging church, Postmodernism, the new hermeneutic, etc. I think of these as “bogeyman teachings.” Disfavored teachings were refuted by showing their similarity to the supposedly known evil of one of the bogeyman teaching. (And we’ve often demonstrated incredible ignorance of what is really taught by the various -isms.)

Now, of course, there’s quite a bit of error in that list (and it’s not all error), but not all teaching by a social gospel advocate is error — and nothing is error solely because it’s taught by a secular humanist.

You see, the danger of this kind of thought is that you build your theology on opposition to what someone has told you is error rather than the truth of the scriptures. I care not a whit if what I teach is like or unlike Situation Ethics. I only care whether it’s built firmly on the scriptures.

I’ve not read the book and will not be reading the book. I think the book would be entirely forgotten by society but for the constant preaching against the book found in Church of Christ pulpits. I imagine our preachers are responsible for 50% of its sales!

End of rant.

Sorry for the rant.

I’m not sure that I buy either your (1) or your (2). Rather, my thinking is better shown by example. Jesus says,

(Mat 5:33-37 ESV)  33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’  34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,  35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Now, this seems a peculiar corollary to draw from “love your neighbor.” It’s certainly true that love compels us to tell the truth and, more to the point, keep our promises. But it’s not obvious why love would mean we shouldn’t take an oath under any circumstance whatsoever.

Indeed, D. A. Carson (a favorite of mine and a very conservative commentator) points out in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary that God swears! Indeed, God’s oath Ps 95:11 is a major theme of Hebrews. And he says that Paul swore — Rom 1:9; 2 Cor 1:23; 1 Thess 2:5, 10. And Jesus swore in Matt 26:63-64.

Does that mean the Bible contradicts itself? No, it means we’re not reading Jesus correctly. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus often says things that are exaggerated, for example —

(Mat 5:29-30 ESV) 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Jesus uses not only irony but hyperbole. These figures of speech would be very poor choices for a legislator, but excellent for a master teacher.

We would be very upset if someone took this passage literally (especially if someone insisted that we do so!), but we readily apply other hyperbolic passages with great literalness (assuming Jesus to be a legislator) to equally bad results. Our decision making is very subjective, but quite unconscious to ourselves. And so we tend to mimic what our parents and Sunday school teachers or early Bible instructors told us or what our culture tells us, thinking we’re reading very objectively.

Take a few minutes to re-read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is a master of hyperbole. Public prayer is not forbidden, Matthew  6:6 notwithstanding. (It helps to imagine Jesus preaching with a smile and an occasional wink.) It’s really okay to pray somewhere other than our own room, and we let can let our right hand know what our left hand is doing — and yet we consider any oath a deadly sin.

There are principles the Bible gives us for sorting these things out, and one of them is to know who it is that is teaching us and what his purposes are. Another is to remember Jesus’ attitudes toward Pharisaism and Paul’s attitude toward seeking justification by obedience to law. Jesus doesn’t make up laws just to burden us!

One key is understanding what it means to love your neighbor. And if you are truly someone who loves your neighbor, you’ll never need to take an oath because it won’t be needed to be believed — unless you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know you. Then you might have to swear to be believed. Or a judge might require you to take an oath. (And this explains Paul’s and Jesus’ swearing.)

Love, therefore, is (among many other things) a way to dig more deeply into the text and better understand what we’re being told and how to truly obey.

Of course, we must obey. But we obey better if we better understand what we’re being taught.