Interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount Flashcards
Traditional Catholic
Medieval Catholicism solved the problem of the difficulty of Jesus’ teachings by postulating two tiers of Christians. They argued that these more strenuous commands for righteousness need be implemented literally only by those in certain clerical or monastic orders. But the Sermon is addressed to all of Christ’s disciples and to larger crowds, without any hint of such a division in its original setting.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 285). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Lutheran
Martin Luther read the Sermon much like he understood Paul’s view of the Law. The Sermon was Law, not Gospel, meant to drive us to our knees in repentance for our inability to keep God’s moral standards. By pointing out our need of grace and a Savior, it brings us back to Christ in contrition. But, again, the Sermon is not addressed first of all to those wanting to learn how to enter the kingdom but to those who had already expressed allegiance to Christ in some form.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 285). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Anabaptist
Many of the radical Reformers applied the Sermon’s ethics in an extremely literal fashion to promote full-fledged pacifism in both personal and civil arenas. The later Russian Christian writer Leo Tolstoy promoted a similar perspective. But we will see that the historical background for Jesus’ teaching is the environment of village life in Palestine under Roman occupation. Varying circumstances may require different practices. Further, Jesus is addressing his followers with standards for how they should live in community. It is not obvious that all his principles are directly transferrable to the state or government.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 285). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Old Liberal and Postmillennial
In the nineteenth century, there was great optimism about the possibility of Christianizing the earth—by both missionary work and the application of Christian principles to the laws of countries. Many believed that the fullness of the kingdom would be ushered in prior to Christ’s return through the efforts of Christians empowered by the Spirit. Then the ethics of the Sermon could be widely implemented. The numerous wars and genocides of the twentieth century have largely dispelled this optimism, though postmillennialism has made a comeback in certain pockets of Christianity today, especially as a response to the widespread success of the gospel in parts of the majority world. A secular equivalent whose heyday has now passed is Marxism.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, pp. 285–286). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Interim Ethic
At the turn of the century, Albert Schweitzer promoted his view that Christ thought the end would come within his lifetime (recall above, p. 89). This gave his ethic a greater urgency than it now has, since we realize that world history may continue for centuries. The texts that Schweitzer took as implying Christ mistakenly thought that the end was immediate (Mark 9:1 pars.; Mark 13:30 pars.; Matt 10:23), however, probably do not imply that at all.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 286). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Existentialist
Particularly through the writings of Rudolf Bultmann (recall above, 90), a major twentieth-century movement reinterpreted Jesus’ kingdom ethics in terms of personal transformation that occurs when one embraces “authentic existence.” This approach usually rejects finding any absolute ethics in the Sermon, but views them instead as a profound challenge to personal decision making in light of the consciousness of human finitude and divine encounter. Contemporary postmodern interpretations bear a striking resemblance to mid-twentieth-century existentialist ones, even if in slightly different garb. We will see that there are places in the Sermon that dare not be absolutized, but existentialists did not develop a sufficiently convincing hermeneutic by which the entire Sermon could be “demythologized,” nor has postmodernism any more successfully deconstructed it. More often than not, their thoroughgoing relativistic presuppositions are incompatible with historic Christianity (recall above, pp. 118–19).
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 286). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Classic Dispensationalist
An older dispensationalist view often taught that the Sermon was part of Jesus’ kingdom offer to the Jews. Had they accepted it, people would have lived by the ethics Jesus taught. Because they rejected it, the kingdom has been entirely postponed until the millennium, at which point the seemingly impossible ideals of the Sermon will be realized. But it is hard to maintain that these commands are only for a “golden age” of human morality, since they include provisions for responding to evil, persecution, hatred, and rejection. Not surprisingly, this view has been largely abandoned by “progressive dispensationalists” in the current theological scene.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, p. 286). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
Kingdom Theology
A widespread consensus of scholarship today thus opts for an eighth view, given particular currency by the numerous writings of George Ladd. If the kingdom has been inaugurated (partially present now but only fully to be realized after Christ’s return—see above, p. 271), then it seems best to assume that Jesus’ ethics are also meant for believers now. We must admit that they are only partially realizable in the present age, even though they remain the ideal for which we all should strive, as we yield ourselves to the Spirit. This is not a “works-righteousness” by which we become Christ’s disciples, but a “fruit befitting repentance” whereby we demonstrate our continuing allegiance to him.
Blomberg, C. L. (2009). Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (2nd Edition, pp. 286–287). Nashville, TN: B&H Academic.
