The Pauline Authorship of the Epistle to Hebrews

 

Objections and Answers

 

The arguments against St. Paul’s authorship of the epistle to Hebrews are incredibly weak as is almost inevitably the case for opinions that claim the consensus of Modern scholarship.  Thomas R. Schreiner, the James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the commentary on Hebrews in the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015) provides three such arguments. 

 

The first of these is “in Paul’s 13 letters he identifies himself by name, thus the absence of a name in Hebrews renders it doubtful that Paul wrote the letter.”  This, in my opinion, is the only reason there has ever been any question about the matter. 

 

Here is why it is a weak argument.  While St. Paul mentions his name more than once in several of his epistles (both to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, both to the Thessalonians, II Timothy and Philemon), the place where it occurs consistently in each of these and all his other acknowledged epistles is the first verse where it can be found as the first word in the opening salutation.  This is not unique to St. Paul.  SS James and Jude begin their epistles with such a salutation in which their names come first, followed by a description of themselves, then an identification of to whom the epistle is addressed.  St. Peter begins both of his epistles this way.  St. John includes such an introductory salutation in his second and third epistle, but does not include his name but rather identifies himself only as “the elder.”  St. John’s first epistle, however, does not contain an introductory salutation.  There are only two epistles in the New Testament in which this is omitted.  Hebrews is the other.  Since the entire customary section of the epistle in which St. Paul’s name can be counted on to appear in his other epistles is omitted entirely from this one, the absence of his name is much less of an argument against his authorship than it would have been had the introductory salutation appeared without his name or with a substitute for it as in St. John’s epistles.  

 

Schreiner’s second argument is “stylistic arguments should not be relied on too heavily since the Pauline corpus is so limited. Still, the polished Greek style of Hebrews doesn’t accord with what we find in the Pauline letters.”

 

This is the strongest of his three arguments.  Note however, his own caveat against relying too much upon this kind of argument.  There are other reasons than the size of the Pauline corpus for why this argument should not be given too much weight.  For one thing, this is frequently grossly exaggerated.  There are plenty of similarities as well as differences between the Greek of Hebrews and that of the acknowledged Pauline corpus.  The claim that Hebrews presents a fine-tuned argument of a superior type to that found in St. Paul’s other epistles does not hold up if the comparison is to Romans.  The acknowledged Pauline epistles were written over a period from the early 50’s until close to the Apostle’s death around 65 AD (II Timothy).  They vary in the degree of polish to their Greek style.  The ones in which he himself describes his speech as “rude” (II Corinthians 11:6, in a context that alludes back to the beginning chapters of I Corinthians) are among his earliest.  The more polished ones, such as Philippians, are among he later Prison Epistles.  This needs to be taken into consideration in contrasting style because after a decade of practice in writing epistles, which he had spent planting Churches in Greek cities in the company of some polished Greek speakers, it is to be expected that his style would become more polished. His own earlier reference to his speech as rude, however, should not necessarily be taken as meaning that he could not speak or write polished Greek.  It would be rather odd for this to be the case of someone with his education raised in Tarsus.  In the Corinthian epistles his point seems to be, rather, that he is not relying upon clever rhetoric to persuade but on the power intrinsic to the Gospel, which suggests a deliberate choice to speak plainly rather than the inability to speak otherwise. 

 

Moreover, there is no reason to think that St. Paul, who we know made use of amanuenses for his epistles, might not have made use of St. Luke in an advisory or editorial capacity to polish up his Greek on this occasion.  The evidence that supports Pauline authorship tells us that if St. Paul was the author, the epistle was written after his first imprisonment in Rome.  That St. Luke accompanied St. Paul to Rome we know from the book of Acts, in which the arrival at Rome like the voyage is told in the first person plural (Acts 28:16).  That St. Luke was with him in Rome at the very end we know from II Timothy 4:11.  Therefore, when writing the epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul would have had at hand a companion who was quite capable of polishing up his Greek style as it is similar to the style he used in his own two books.  Indeed, that something very much like this took place appears to be hinted at by Origen, whose teacher St. Clement of Alexandria was the first to comment on the stylistic differences between Hebrews and the other Pauline epistles.  St. Clement thought that St. Paul wrote the epistle in Hebrew and that someone else translated it into the Greek text that has been handed down.

 

Schreiner attempted to argue that this is not what Origen was saying but David Alan Black’s misinterpretation of Origen.  He wrote:

 

David Alan Black, however, argues Origen believed Paul was the author but someone else was the penman. Black’s interpretation of Origen should be rejected. It has been shown that when Origen speaks of who wrote the epistle he was referring to the author, not merely the secretary. Hence, the notion that Origen believed Paul was the author fails to persuade.

 

While he provides a reference to David L. Allen’s commentary on Hebrews to back up his claim that Black is wrong about Origen, here is the entire quotation of Origen from Eusebius in context with bold added for emphasis:

 

In addition he makes the following statements in regard to the Epistle to the Hebrews in his Homilies upon it: That the verbal style of the epistle entitled ‘To the Hebrews,’ is not rude like the language of the apostle, who acknowledged himself ‘rude in speech’ (2 Corinthians 11:6) that is, in expression; but that its diction is purer Greek, any one who has the power to discern differences of phraseology will acknowledge. Moreover, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged apostolic writings, any one who carefully examines the apostolic text will admit.’ Farther on he adds: If I gave my opinion, I should say that the thoughts are those of the apostle, but the diction and phraseology are those of some one who remembered the apostolic teachings, and wrote down at his leisure what had been said by his teacher. Therefore if any church holds that this epistle is by Paul, let it be commended for this. For not without reason have the ancients handed it down as Paul’s. But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows. The statement of some who have gone before us is that Clement, bishop of the Romans, wrote the epistle, and of others that Luke, the author of the Gospel and the Acts, wrote it. But let this suffice on these matters. (Eusebius, Church History, 6.25.11-14).

 

Since Origen lived in the late second to mid third centuries the ancients to whom he refers must go back very far.

 

Origen made reference to Hebrews in numerous other works and consistently identified St. Paul as the author, including in multiple places in his magnus opus, On First Principles.  See, for example, his Letter to Africanus, 9.  David Alan Black was quite right in saying Origen thought St. Paul to be the author of Hebrews.

 

If the objection be made that St. Paul did not do this with his other epistles, including his final epistle, II Timothy, to this the answer can be made that Hebrews was written to a very different audience than that to which St. Paul was accustomed to write, to Jewish Christians outside of his own jurisdiction (Gal. 2:7-8) for whom he could not rely upon his own Apostolic authority in the way that he did with Gentile Christians in Churches under his jurisdiction which he for the most part had planted, which provides ample reason for him to have made use of the resource of St. Luke that we know was available to him.  That he did not do so in writing to St. Timothy is easily enough explained by the fact that he would have felt no such need in writing to a close companion.

 

Schreiner’s third argument is “the writer separates himself from the original eyewitnesses in Heb 2:3.  Paul, by way of contrast, emphasizes repeatedly his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ and refuses to put himself in a subordinate position to the apostles and eyewitnesses. This last reason, in particular, rules out the notion that Paul was the author.”

 

Schreiner seems to think that this is the deathblow to the claim of Pauline authorship.  It is no such thing.  In fact, it is explained by a factor that I already identified in my response to Schreiner’s second argument.  The epistle of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians.  In his epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul writes that he was the Apostle to the uncircumcision – Gentiles -, as St. Peter was the Apostle to the circumcision – Jews.  Therefore, as author of Hebrews St. Paul would have been writing to those whom he acknowledged as belonging to St. Peter’s jurisdiction rather than his.  Therefore, the occasion called for a very different approach than trumpeting his own Apostolic authority as he did especially when it was challenged, as is the case with the epistles to the Corinthians, or when there was a need to establish his equality with the other Apostles as when, in the epistle to the Galatians, the ruling of the Council of Jerusalem in which the other Apostles backed up his position, was still in the process of being circulated throughout the Churches.  That Hebrews 2:3 if written by St. Paul is compatible with Galatians 1:11-12 can be seen in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians.  In the third verse St. Paul speaks of his gospel as “that which I also received” which brings Hebrews 2:3 in, and in the eighth verse he testifies to his own witness to the central Gospel fact of the Resurrection.  Note the “first of all” in verse three and the “last of all” in verse eight.  The thoughts of both Hebrews 2:3 and Galatians 1:11-12 are here united in a single passage.  Look at the wording of St. Paul in Hebrews 2:3 “and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.”  What was delivered unto him by the Twelve confirmed what he had already received directly from Christ.

 

Pauline Thought and Style in Hebrews

 

That these arguments against Pauline authorship are far from being persuasive I trust that I have demonstrated.  I will now move on to making the positive case for the Pauline authorship of the epistle.  Since so much has been made of the difference in Greek style between the text of Hebrews and the text of the acknowledged Pauline corpus I will start by noting textual similarities between these.  This will not be an exhaustive treatment but will focus on the biggest similarities.  For those interested in Greek Paulisms in Hebrews I refer you to David Alan Black’s book listed in For More Reading below.

First I will make what ought to be an obvious observation.  While pointing out that letter X and letter Y both contain word Z does not amount to conclusive proof that letter X and letter Y were written by the same person it is stronger evidence for that conclusion than pointing out that letter A contains word C while letter B does not is for the conclusion that letters A and B were written by different people.  Pointing out that the expression “flesh and blood” appears only five times in the entire Bible, all in the New Testament, once spoken by the Lord Jesus (Matt. 16:17), thrice in acknowledged Pauline epistles (1 Cor. 15:50, Gal. 1:16, and Eph. 6:12) and the final time in Hebrews 2:14 is stronger evidence that St. Paul wrote Hebrews than the argument that the Lord Jesus is repeatedly called a priest in Hebrews but not once in the rest of the Pauline corpus is against the Pauline authorship of Hebrews.  This would be the case even if there was not a glaring explanation of St. Paul’s heavy use of the word in one epistle and non-use of it in the others.  Writing to Jewish Christians, in Hebrews St. Paul is making the case for Jesus as the fulfilment of all to which the Old Covenant pointed, the Priest of the heavenly tabernacle Who offered Himself there as the one sacrifice that could actually accomplish that which the Levitical priests and the sacrifices of bulls and goats could only prefigure.  Writing to Gentile Christians, St. Paul emphasized their full inclusion in the New Covenant alongside Jewish Christians accomplished by Jesus Christ in His death in which the Law was removed as a divider between Jew and Gentile.  Speaking of Jesus as Priest was necessary to the argument in Hebrews but not to that in the other epistles.

 

The similarities between Hebrews and the other Pauline epistles go beyond expressions which appear in both, however.  Take the warning passages in the epistle to Hebrews for example.  There are five of them in total, the first of which being the very verse (2:3) that some think is the definitive evidence against Pauline authorship, the second is the extended quotation and commentary on the Venite in the third and fourth chapters, the third being the favourite passage of those on the Arminian side of a debate I have no intention of getting into here (6:4-8), the fourth occurring at the spot where the main argument has been wrapped up and the shift into practical application is beginning (10:26-31), and the fifth being 12:14-29.  The way these appear, punctuating the flow of the main argument, closely resembles the warning passages in the acknowledged Pauline corpus (1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gal. 5:19-21, Eph. 5:5-7).  Now these last warning passages consist of a list of types of people or the behaviours that characterize them who will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.  The warnings in Hebrews are against apostasy and more specifically the apostasy of falling back from Christianity into a Judaism that does not acknowledge Jesus as the Christ.  This is precisely the sort of difference we would expect given the difference between those addressed and the nature of the case being made to them.  That there are more of these in Hebrews than the other epistles can be explained by the fact that they are far more directly connected to the purpose of the epistle than is the case with the others.  Nevertheless, they share with the other Pauline warnings the feature of being followed by a positive exhortation based upon the Apostle’s confidence that God’s grace in those to whom he is writing is greater than the evils against which he is warning them.  Compare Hebrews 6:9 with 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Galatians 5:22-25.

 

Or consider the ending of the warning passage in Hebrews 10.  Verse 38 begins with a quotation from Habakkuk “the just shall live by faith” that is used by St. Paul in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11 but by no other New Testament writer.  This is followed by the final words of the warning in the remainder of the verse, then by the confident assertion “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul” in the next verse, the final verse of the chapters, which segues into an extended discussion of faith in the next chapter that includes a definition of faith (v. 1), a declaration of the necessity of faith (v. 6), and a catalogue of Old Testament figures that emphasizes all that they were able to accomplish by faith.  Notice what is said about Noah in verse 7 “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”  Could there be any expression more Pauline than this?  While Johannine literature also emphasizes the role of faith in salvation, St. John prefers the verbal form to the noun and the concept of salvation that he stresses in connection with believing is everlasting life.  It is St. Paul who talks about the righteousness that is by faith. Think about how he addresses this in Romans.  After having shown salvation to be unattainable through works, whether one is under the Law like the Jews, or under his own conscience like the Gentiles, because with or without Law all have sinned, he returns to the thought with which he began the discussion in 1:16-17, and declares that “now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (3:21-22, italics mine).  In the following chapter he connects this thought with heirship just as in Hebrews 11:7, albeit speaking about Abraham rather than Noah (Rom. 4:13).  There are other variations on this wording throughout Romans with “righteousness which is of faith” occurring again in verse 10:6.

 

From start to finish, important concepts from the acknowledged Pauline corpus reappear in Hebrews.  In Hebrews 1:2 the Son’s instrumental role in creation is mentioned “by whom also he made the worlds” and then connected in the following verse with the Son’s being the image of the Father “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.”  These thoughts are similarly connected in Colossians 1:15-16 where they are presented in the reverse order, although different words for image are used.  Indeed, the next phrase in Hebrews 1:3 about the Son’s sustaining or preserving all things in being “and upholding all things by the word of his power” has a parallel, albeit a more loose one, in the continuation of the thought in Colossians “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (v. 17) Hebrews then goes on to say “when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” and a similar reference to His atoning work occurs right before the Colossians passage “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” (v. 14) If we look at the larger context of the Hebrews passage we find that just before the mention of Christ’s role in creation, it is said that God has appointed Him “heir of all things” and a few verses later the Son is called the “firstbegotten.” (v. 6) The Colossians passage calls the Son the “firstborn of every creature” (v. 15) and the “firstborn from the dead” (v. 18).  The same word πρωτότοκος that is rendered “firstbegotten” in Hebrews is rendered “firstborn” in the two verses in Colossians.  It needs to be stated that it is not temporal beginning but the position or status, with rights and authority, that is indicated by this word in these verses.  This position/status which is called “preeminence” in Col. 1:18 is the overarching theme of both passages.

 

This is not like the lengthy parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels.  The Evangelists each wrote his own account of events in the same life.  A great degree of overlap is to be expected.  Even the parallels between Jude’s epistle and the second chapter of II Peter are a different case.  Both are denunciations of false teachers and it is likely that SS Jude and Peter were talking about the same specific false teachers.  In Hebrews and Colossians what we find are the same doctrinal concepts about Jesus and the fact that we find them all in association with each other in one place in both epistles is stronger evidence that St. Paul wrote both than if all of the concepts from Hebrews had been found separately and interspersed throughout St. Paul’s other writings. Compare this to the reference to the Son’s sitting down at the right hand of God. This recurs throughout Hebrews (8:1, 10:12, 12:2) and it also recurs throughout St. Paul’s acknowledged corpus (Rom 8:34, Eph. 1:20, Col. 3:1).   On its own this is a much weaker argument for Pauline authorship of Hebrews than the parallels between Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1, especially since it is referred to by many others as well (Jesus in His trial before Caiaphas, St. Peter and the other Apostles in Acts 5:31, St. Luke in reference to St. Stephen’s vision in Acts 7:55, and St. Peter in 1 Pet. 3:22 also mention it).  Taken with the Hebrews/Colossians comparison, however, the multiple references in both Hebrews and St. Paul’s other epistles provide additional corroborating evidence.

 

Also note that while the instrumental role of the Son in creation is also emphasized by St. John in the prologue to his Gospel, St. John speaks of Him there as the Word, as part of his larger allusion to Genesis 1 in which God speaks everything into existence.  In Hebrews as in Colossians, He is spoken of as the Son.

 

In the second chapter of Hebrews we find a passage (vv. 9-18) that has parallels throughout St. Paul’s corpus.  Jesus’ journey to Exaltation through Humiliation unto death (v. 9) is discussed here as in Philippians 2:5-11, His destruction through death of death personified in the devil (v. 14) brings to mind 1 Corinthians 15, note especially verse 26, and when Hebrews 2:16 says “ but he took on him the seed of Abraham” remember that it is St. Paul who identifies the seed of Abraham with Christ in Galatians 3:16.

 

At the end of chapter five of Hebrews we find a lengthy rebuke of the intended readers for being less mature in their faith than they ought to be.  Jesus has just been referred to as a “high priest after the order of Melchisedec” (v. 10) and of Melchisedec the epistle says “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.” (v. 11) Immediately after this the epistle says:

 

For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (vv. 12-14)

 

There is one other passage in the New Testament that is very similar to this.  St. Paul also rebukes the Corinthians for their immaturity, saying that he needs to feed them with milk when they should have moved on to meat.  Here is the passage:

 

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (I Corinthians 3:1-3)

 

No Anonymity

 

Perhaps the most important similarity between Hebrews and the rest of the Pauline corpus, however, is the final verse.  That verse is “Grace be with you all. Amen.” (Heb. 13:25).  A version of this ends every single Pauline epistle in the New Testament, usually in the last verse, sometimes in the penultimate (1 Cor. 16:23 for example).  This is the simple version of it.  The most complex is the familiar Trinitarian Grace from 2 Corinthians 13:14, “
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.”  The significance of this is a) again, all St. Paul’s epistles end with this, b) no epistle attributed to any other author ends with this and the only other book to end with it is Revelation which is not an epistle and was written long after St. Paul’s death, and most importantly c) St. Paul tells us what this means.   The first two epistles St. Paul wrote are I and II Thessalonians.  These were written shortly after the events of Acts 17:1-10 in which St. Paul on his second missionary journey had come to Thessalonica, preached in the synagogue, established a Church in the house of one Jason, then fled to Berea after trouble was stirred up by those in the synagogue who did not believe assisted by “certain lewd fellows of the baser sort” (v. 5) Not having had time to properly instruct the Thessalonian Church, St. Paul wrote the first epistle shortly after his flight, then wrote the second epistle when word came to him that the Thessalonians had received a letter purporting to be from him and claiming that the Second Coming had already occurred (II Thess. 2:1-2).  Therefore, he ended this epistle with instructions as to how they could tell a real epistle of his from a false one.  Every epistle of his would end with a salutation that he would write himself (without an amanuensis) and it would be the Grace. “The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” (II Thess. 3:17-18).

 

This means that St. Paul did identify himself as the author of Hebrews after all.  The grace at the end is his signature.  The verses prior to that strongly indicate his identity as well.  He was writing from Italy (13:24), and would travel to them with St. Timothy who had just been set free if he were to make the journey shortly (v. 23).  The wording reads like a short version of the wrap-up to any Pauline epistle (and the brevity of it is noted v. 22).  Earlier in the epistle he wrote “For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” (10:34). He had been in bonds, clearly had been set at liberty if he was contemplating making a trip to them with St. Timothy, and was in Italy.

 

If that were not sufficient proof, St. Peter also identifies St. Paul as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews.  Here is St. Peter writing at the end of his second epistle (and his life):

 

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (II Pet. 3:15-16).

 

We see from this passage that St. Paul had written to the same people to whom St. Peter was writing.  These were the same people to whom he wrote his first epistle (II Pet. 3:1).  These were “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (I Pet. 1:1), i.e., diaspora Jews in Asia Minor who had become Christians (v. 2).  None of the thirteen epistles that begin with St. Paul’s name were written to these.  This could not be an allusion to a non-scriptural epistle because St. Peter identifies it as scripture.  The epistle he is talking about contains “things hard to be understood.”    While this is not necessarily what St. Peter is alluding to, note that Hebrews says of things concerning Melchisedec that they are “things hard to be uttered” (5:11) but utters them anyway a couple of chapters later (7:1-10).  Presumably something hard to utter is also hard to understand.  Finally “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation” is the minor theme of Hebrews.  The major theme, of course, is that the first and lesser Covenant has been fulfilled – made full or complete – by that of which it was merely the shadow, the greater New Covenant.  The minor theme, however, is there in all the warnings as the reverse complement of the idea that if neglecting or violating the first Covenant had severe consequences, so much worse will be the consequences for neglecting the salvation offered in the New Covenant, which salvation has come at last, after and in despite of all the sin and rebellion, because of the patient, longsuffering, grace of God.

 

At a future date I may follow this up with an examination of the Patristic evidence that was only touched in the Objections Answered section.

 

For Further Reading

 

David Alan Black, The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul (Gonzalez, Fl: Energion Publications, 2013).

 

Christopher Wordsworth, On the Canon of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and on the Apocrypha, Eleven Discourses Preached Before the University of Cambridge, Being the Hulsean Lectures for the Year 1847 (London: Francis & John Rivington, 1848), “Lecture VIII” 200-243.

 

There is a chapter in a seventh century commentary on Hebrews which also presents a very strong case for Pauline authorship that answers many of the arguments “the consensus of Modern scholarship” finds so convincing before there ever was such a consensus but it is against my principles to recommend anything by someone who supported the Puritan revolt against King Charles I which was the mother of all left-wing revolutions.

The Most Powerful and Meaningful Event in all of History

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best attested event of history.   There are numerous examples of individuals who set out to debunk Christianity but ended up as believers when confronted by the overwhelming evidence for the Resurrection.  Arguably St. Paul was the first of these, although the manner in which he set about the debunking as well as that in which he was confronted by the evidence are not exactly typical of all the others who come to mind.   It is attested by the Empty Tomb, the numerous eyewitnesses, and the transformed lives of those who like Saul of Tarsus encountered the Risen Christ and were never the same again.   Jesus, from the beginning of His earthly ministry when He cryptically alluded to it by saying that He would rebuild the Temple in three days in response to those who confronted Him after the first cleansing of the Temple in the second chapter of St. John's Gospel to His referring the Pharisees to the "sign of Jonah" much later in His ministry, pointed to the Resurrection as the only sign that those who demanded one of Him - Who had been performing miracles all around them - would receive.   He knew how well attested it would be and based the credibility of all of His claims upon it.

It is an event that the New Testament attributes to each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.   When He said that He would rebuild the Temple in three days, of course, Jesus claimed it as His Own work, as He did on a later occasion where He said He had the power both to lay down His life and take it up again (Jn. 10:18).    In the sermons recorded in the Book of Acts the Resurrection is usually attributed to God the Father.   In the epistles the Holy Spirit is often said to be the Agent in the Resurrection.    All of these are true and this demonstrates the involvement of all Three Persons in this event.  This was also true of the original Creation of the world.   This is unlikely to be a coincidence.   In numerous passages Jesus is called the first fruits of the General Resurrection.   Since the latter event is connected with the aspect of Redemption in which the whole world is recreated anew the active involvement of the Three Persons in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is parallel to their active involvement in Creation.

This is far from being the only meaning ascribed to the Resurrection in the New Testament.   In addition to being the most attested event in history, it is the most meaning-packed event in the Bible.

In St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, for example, the first reference to the Resurrection is in his summary of the Gospel in his summation.    In this the Resurrection declares Jesus to be "the Son of God with power" (v. 1:4).   This does not mean that the Resurrection made Jesus the Son of God as some versions of the Adoptionist heresy taught.   Jesus has always been the Son of God, eternally the Son of the Father, as is quite clear in the language used about the Father and Son throughout St. John's Gospel.   What St. Paul was saying corresponds to what Jesus was saying in pointing to the Resurrection as the sign confirming His authority and claims.   It declares Him to be the Son of God with power - it is the visible, incontrovertible, evidence.

A few chapters later in the same epistle, in another brief summary of the Gospel, St. Paul tells us of something else the Resurrection declares - our justification.    This comes at the end of the fourth chapter, a chapter begins with St. Paul borrowing the same terminology and same Old Testament examples that St. James the Just employed in the second chapter of his epistle, generally accepted as the first of the New Testament writings, to make the point that faith cannot produce practical righteousness on its own without works.   Asserting that he was in no way contradicting St. James (Rom. 4:2), St. Paul explains that the justification that he has been discussing, that which is by grace - God's favour freely given rather than earned (vv. 4-5) - on the basis of the redemption and propitiation of Christ on the Cross (3:24-25), and which establishes us in a right standing before God, is not like Jacobean practical righteousness - it is something God has accomplished and given to us, that we are to believe and trust in.   The chapter concludes with this summary of the Gospel: 

Now it was not written for his [Abraham's] sake alone, that it [righteousness] was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (4:23-25)

Here, as later in the tenth chapter of the epistle, St. Paul gives the Resurrection the full force of the entire Gospel message.    Faith is believing on Him that raised up Jesus, as in the tenth chapter it is believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.    In the final verse in the passage we see why the Resurrection can encapsulate the entire Gospel in this way.   Jesus was delivered for our offences, that is to say, it was because of our sins that He went to the Cross and died.   For, in this verse, means "because of" and that is true of the second "for" as well.   Jesus was raised for - because of - our Resurrection.   Had the work not been finished as Jesus declared it to be at His death - had our sin not been paid for in its entirety - the Resurrection could not have occurred.  The Resurrection, therefore, is the proof and declaration of our justification having been completely accomplished by Jesus at the Cross, just as it is the proof and declaration that He is the Eternal Son of God.

Shortly after this, St. Paul provides yet another meaning for the Resurrection.    In explaining why being at peace with God because of His freely given grace does not mean that we are permitted to sin, he discusses the meaning of baptism, the rite in which one formally joins the Christian faith community, the Church.   Being baptized into Jesus Christ means being baptized into His Death (6:3).   This  means that Christ's Death is our own death and as it was to take away our sin that He died we are to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin on account of it.   However, St. Paul immediately adds, if we are joined to Jesus in His Death, we are also joined to Him in His Resurrection.   While one implication of this, which St. Paul expounds upon at length in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, is that we shall all be raised bodily like Christ, in the sixth chapter of Romans another implication of our union with Christ in Resurrection is explored, namely that it is  Christ's Resurrection life that we are to live out by faith as our New Life in Christ.

This is merely a sample of what the New Testament says about the Resurrection and is not intended to be exhaustive, not even of the epistle to the Romans.

What other event in all of Scripture is so packed with powerful significance?

Happy Easter!

He is Risen Indeed!

Romans 13 and State-Ordered Church Closures

 The thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans poses a problem for those who profess the Christian faith and also subscribe to either the doctrine of civil disobedience as taught by Henry David Thoreau in the nineteenth century and exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. in the twentieth or to any other version of Whiggism, for that matter, including the founding ideology of the American republic.    This dilemma has inspired a number of very creative attempts at interpreting the passage to  say other than what it says.   Perhaps my favourite of these is the one thing that says St. Paul was being sarcastic.

I do not have this difficulty myself.   I have always thought Thoreau to be an overrated nincompoop, am not part of the idolatrous cult that worships Gandhi and King, do not believe in civil disobedience, and wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Johnson that "the first Whig was the devil."    I therefore accept the New Testament passage at face value, as enjoining civil obedience upon Christians and teaching the "divine right of kings".  As you have probably deduced from the title of this essay it is the first of these two items that is our primary concern here.   Therefore, I shall discuss the second first to get it out of the way.

The divine right of kings is a doctrine that is widely misunderstood.    This is undoubtedly due to the fact that its opponents, the Whigs to whom we have already alluded and their myriad of ideological descendants, have written most of our history books since the late eighteenth century.   Although Herbert Butterfield  exposed the fundamental fallacies of their method of interpreting history , id est to take the progressive liberal values of the present and interpret the past as movement towards those values with people cast in the role of hero or villain according as they are perceived to have advanced or fought to retard the march of progress, in a short volume first published in 1931, with a few notable exceptions such as the dean of Canadian historians Donald G. Creighton and the Hungarian-American Catholic historian John Lukacs, the Whigs have continued to dominate the field.  Most people, therefore, first encounter the divine right of kings in the caricature of its foes.   The doctrine does not mean that God gives kings unlimited, autocratic, power to rule their subjects as they see fit.   It means precisely the opposite of this, that because the king's office is vested with authority the recognized ultimate source of which is God, the exercise of that authority is a sacred duty and vocation for which God holds him strictly accountable and he is therefore by no means free to abuse his authority by tyrannizing his subjects.   Should any of you have been reading my essays since the beginning you may recall that the first posted here, "The Divine Right of Kings versus the Tyranny of the People", made the case that contrary to the Modern belief that freedom and democracy go together, it is democracy and not divine-right kingship, the internal logic of which leads inevitably to tyranny and totalitarianism.   If government exists by the will of the people, whatever that nonsensical phrase which attributes to a collective something that only individuals possess is taken as meaning, and to serve that will, then it need not recognize any limits on what it does to the people it governs, provided that is what the people want.   That this is where the internal logic of democracy ultimately leads was recognized as a problem long ago.   Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous commentary on Democracy in America (1835, 1840), warned about the "tyranny of the majority" and the twentieth century attempt to get around this by redefining the principle of democracy from "whatever the majority wants" to "whatever we all agree upon" was no improvement in this regards for it ultimately means that everybody must be forced to agree and dissent not tolerated, tyranny in its most extreme, totalitarian, form.    The ancient wise men, such as Plato and Aristotle, knew that democracy is the mother of tyranny.   The Whiggish attempt to circumvent the destiny of democratic tyranny by moderating democracy with liberalism, the recognition of individual rights as a limitation on even democratic government , was doomed to failure.   The evidence of that failure now surrounds us.   All it took for elected politicians to shatter completely the fetters placed upon them by constitutional protections of rights and freedoms was for the public to be persuaded that it was "necessary" to "save lives".   Democracy, far from being held back from evolving into its tyrannical, totalitarian form, by liberalism, broke liberalism's bonds like they were made of straw.    Indeed, it broke not only liberalism but the older safeguards of freedom that predated the rise of Modern Whiggery.   Parliamentary control over government spending, a safeguard of freedom the roots of which go back to the Magna Carta, was attacked in both Parliament and our provincial legislatures as both levels of government sought to be released from this oversight in order to deal with the pandemic.   The distinction between public and private, another safeguard of freedom which goes back to the feudal recognition that "every man's home is his castle", was obliterated by the public health mandarins' demands for technology-enhanced total surveillance of everyone to facilitate "contact tracing" in the name of keeping us safe.   These and other examples of pre-Modern safeguards of liberty, belong to the ancient ideal of constitutional government, with which the divine right of kings is consistent and compatible, and which can be summed up as the idea that the civil authority itself is subject to and bound by the law.   Indeed, the divine right of kings properly understood, and not as the Whigs caricatured it, requires the ideal of constitutional government, which is why monarchs are required as part of their sacred coronation oath to vow to uphold and protect the law.   Democracy, as we have seen from the events of this year, is not consistent with this ancient ideal, and indeed, it could be said that democracy in Modern thought has usurped the place of constitutional government in pre-Modern thought (remember that tyranny and usurpation were originally one and the same concept).

When the divine right of kings is stated within the context of moral theology rather than political philosophy it is pretty much what you find in the thirteenth chapter of Romans.   St. Paul says that the civil authority, the "higher powers" in the Authorized Bible, are "ordained by God" and, switching to the singular, are "the minister of God to thee for good".   More specifically "he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."  Some might object that this is a generic "divine right of civil authority" that contains no endorsement with regards to specific constitutional forms.   I will grant that, but point out that the Scriptures as a whole are hardly silent on the latter subject.   If you turn to the passage that "Christian" republicans use as their chief proof-text, the eighth chapter of I Samuel, and read it through, note first that a democratic republic was not what Israel had prior to this chapter and second that every single negative thing Samuel is instructed to tell the Israelites about what the king they have asked for will be like, has historically also been true of republican and democratic governments, and, indeed, democracies and republics have been historically much harder on their people in the way of taxes than kings ever were.   You will find good kings and bad kings in the Bible, and God Himself is identified as the King of kings.   You will not find a good republic or democracy mentioned in the Bible and, indeed, in the numerous examples from Genesis to Revelation of the people getting together to demand something, either of their governors or of God, it far more often than not displeased God, Who not infrequently punished them by giving them exactly what they asked for.

Now, let us turn back to the civil obedience enjoined upon Christians in this passage.    Does this passage require that the Christian Church close its doors and cease meeting together when the state orders it to?   Is there any way I can answer that question with "no" that does not require a clever re-interpretation of the passage like the ones I referred to and rejected at the beginning of the essay?

The answer to the first question is "no" and the answer to the second question is "yes".

The reason the answer to the first question is no is because it involves a situation that is an obvious exception to the general rule.   It is an obvious exception for two reasons.

The first is that if the civil obedience St. Paul enjoined upon Christians involved shutting the Church down and not meeting if so ordered by the state, then Christianity would not have survived the first century.   Christianity began within the Roman Empire and while the Empire was for the most part quite tolerant when it came to religion in various locations the Roman authorities became hostile to the Christian faith, usually when enemies of the faith went to them and accused Christianity of being a subversive political movement.   That Christianity is nothing of the sort is evinced by the passage we are considering, whose author likely had the false accusations against the Church in mind when he penned it.   However, at various times the accusations against Christianity reached to the very highest level and a general persecution of the Christians was ordered by a Caesar.   If St. Paul did not mean meeting together as a Church to be an exception to civil obedience if forbidden, then all a hostile Caesar would have needed to do was forbid the Church to ever meet again and it would have had to have dissolved permanently.   The Roman authorities did, in fact, outlaw Christianity at various times, and the Church had to meet in secret.   This was not "civil disobedience" in the Thoreau/Gandhi/King sense of defiantly breaking the law to challenge injustice.   It was simply not obeying a civil order that would  have required them to disobey a command from the Highest Authority.

This brings us to the second reason, which is that this very type of scenario occurs in the Scriptures and the way the Scriptures deal with these scenarios makes it clear that an exception to civil obedience is to be found here.

These examples can be found in both Testaments.   The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament is set in the period of the Babylonian Captivity.   You might recall from the Book of Jeremiah that when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and carried everyone away captive, the Lord's instructions through the prophet were that they were to go away, be good subjects of the Babylonian king, and they would live and one day He would return them to the Promised Land.   Daniel and his three friends were among the youth of the Hebrew nobility who were taken captive.   Being devout, they set out to obey the Lord's command and be good Babylonian citizens.   At various points in the book, however, they were required to do something that would break the Law of God.   In the third chapter, for example, Nebuchadnezzar ordered a giant gold idol to be erected in the plain of Dura and commanded all of his high officials to fall down and worship it.   Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, Daniel's three friends who had been raised to such positions at the end of the second chapter as part of Daniel's reward for revealing and interpreting the king's dream (of a giant image with a gold head interpreted to be Nebuchadnezzar himself, presumably the inspiration for his misguided actions in this incident, and the reason, although the text doesn't spell it out, why the image is widely thought to have been of the king himself) were among those so commanded but, since this would be the idolatry forbidden by the Second Commandment, they did not worship the image, and were cast into a fiery furnace as punishment, from which they were miraculously delivered.   Later in the book, in the sixth chapter after the Persians have conquered Babylon, and Daniel is promoted to an even higher position, other officials envious of him persuade Darius to make a decree forbidding anyone to make a petition to any other God or man except himself for the period of a month.   When Daniel continues, despite the edict, to pray to the Lord three times a day, he is accused, and thrown into a den of lions.  Like his friends he is miraculously spared.

The second  example, you will note, is closer to the scenario we are contemplating because rather than requiring something wrong, idolatry, as was the case with the first example, it involves the forbidding of a duty owed to God.

In the New Testament, after the Ascension the disciples of Jesus wait in Jerusalem as commanded until the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost comes upon them and empowers them.   St. Peter preaches a bold sermon to the crowd and about three thousand are converted and baptized.  These continue to meet on a daily basis in the Jewish Temple and, for their specifically Christian fellowship, involving the Apostles' teaching, the Eucharist ("breaking of bread") and prayer, from house to house, as there were no buildings assigned to the purpose and consecrated for it as of yet.   Daily their numbers increased.   Evidently they did not believe in the Satanic lies of "social distancing" and "limiting gatherings" but this was because they put their faith in God, living two millennia before George Bernard Shaw could sadly but accurately say "We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession".   In the third chapter of Acts, SS Peter and John heal a man born lame at the gate of the Temple.  This leads to another sermon by St. Peter in Solomon's porch.   Five thousand are converted but the Apostles are arrested.   Brought before the chief priests the next day, they preach to them as well.   The Jewish authorities forbid them to preach and teach in the name of Jesus and their answer is "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.  For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard".  In the fifth chapter, after they have continued their ministry and the Church has continued to grow, the Apostles are imprisoned, miraculously set free, and, after they have resumed their teaching the next day, brought before the Sanhedrin.  Their answer to the council began with the words "We ought rather to obey God rather than men."

It is these words that express the response of the faithful when those in authority forbid the practice of the Christian religion.   

So clearly a command from the state not to meet as the Church is an exception to the civil obedience commanded of Christians by St. Paul in the epistle to the Romans.    This does not mean that when the state orders the Church to close, as it has done this year, that we ought to conduct sit-ins, or behave in any of the other ways that have come to be associated with civil disobedience.   When refusing to obey orders of this nature it must be with the attitude that this is an exception to a general rule that is necessary because to obey such orders would be to disobey the very Higher Authority that enjoined civil obedience upon us through St. Paul's words.

There is no Church if she does not meet.   This is something that those whose ecclesiology begins and ends with "the Church is the people not the building" overlook.   Yes, the Church is the people and not the building in which they meet.   The individualist spin so often put on this phrase has no warrant in Scripture.  The very name given to the Body of Christ in the New Testament, ekklesia, is the Greek word for "assembly".   It is people, but people joined together as an assembly or congregation, not people apart from each other doing their own thing on an individual basis.   When the state orders the  Church not to meet - and remember in the first days of the Church they met daily not once a week - it is commanding the Church not to be the Church.   When it tells the Church we can meet but only "virtually" not "in-person" it is commanding us to live a lie.   For that is what being apart, mutually watching an online video, and calling it "being together" is.   It is pretending that this artificial "virtual space" that exists only as an image on our computer screens is reality.   That is an incredibly dangerous road down which to go.

It has been very disappointing, therefore, that this year, the Churches have with few exceptions, chosen to obey man rather than God on this matter.   Medical doctors, who belong to the profession with the least respect for privacy, rights, and freedoms, and therefore ought never to be trusted with any sort of civil authority, have been handed dictatorial powers because of a virus that they have been allowed to blow completely out of proportion, and they have ordered Churches to close, to offer virtual services only, and, in the brief respite from this over the summer, to limit their numbers, forbid congregations from singing, require them to register in advance, sit in designated places, and muzzle their faces.   It is very sad that most Churches have followed these evil orders, despite their being a clear exception to the rule of civil obedience, while those following the Apostles in saying "we ought rather to obey God than men" have been mostly the separatist sects and outright heretics.

God save the Queen and may He punish the politicians who do evil in her name!

Following Christ in a Time of Plague

The following essay was inspired by a blog post written by a member of the leadership team in my parish.   Since this man has been a friend for about a decade and his post inspired me to write the exact opposite of what he had written, I shall do him the courtesy of leaving out his name.   

 

My parish, like all other Churches, sectarian congregations, and sacred communities of other religions for that matter, are presently forbidden to meet in person here in the province of Manitoba, in violation of three of what the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms identify as “fundamental freedoms” and, indeed, in violation of the entire Common Law tradition of justice and liberty that has been the bedrock upon which the Dominion of Canada was built since Confederation.   This insane government overreach, which evokes memories of the persecution of religious communities in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Red China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba and North Vietnam, is called a “Code Red” lockdown, and has been ordered by the public health mandarin, because he and the premier don’t like the fact that the dishonest media concentration on rising numbers of people who test positive for the Wuhan bat flu, regardless of the facts that the tests used are not diagnostic tools and that the majority of the “cases” are people who are not sick in any conventional sense of the term, make them look bad.   Most people are incapable of distinguishing between what the media says and reality and therefore have been duped into thinking that the tearing apart of the fabric of society, dissolving of communities, eroding of social capital, and brainwashing us all into fearing ordinary human contact and distrusting our friends, relatives, and neighbours outside of an extremely small so-called “bubble” of contacts is somehow “necessary.”   The isolation this causes, is not merely an experience we don’t enjoy, something unpleasant, but is downright harmful to our social, moral, spiritual, psychological, and yes, as everyone who knows the meaning of mens sana in corpore sano is aware, physical wellbeing.   Anybody capable of distinguishing between the bare facts and the slant imposed upon them by alarmist adjectives in the news and drawing rational conclusions from the facts will know, regardless of what “most of us” may or may not agree upon, that these measures are by no means precautions necessitated by the spread of a virus which for the portion of the population under 70 and in good health is less dangerous than the seasonal flu and for the portion of the population that is most at risk, that is to say those over 70 and with two or more serious chronic health conditions, these measures are quite evidently not effective at protecting since that portion of the population has been under lockdown since spring.   Furthermore and more importantly, not only are the lockdown measures not necessary, they are not good.   (1)

 

It is not just disappointing, then, but actually rather disgusting, to see so many people, including professing Christians and even Church leaders, so determined to load the burden of these restrictions upon their family, friends, neighbours, strangers and countrymen in general, as if they were not familiar with our Lord’s warning to His disciples about imitating the Pharisees in loading burdens upon others.  

 

For much of the last nine months, but especially since the new lockdown was gradually introduced over October and November, I have struggled to reconcile how professing Christians could so callously disregard not only the civil rights and basic freedoms of their neighbours, but their needs as social and spiritual beings as well.  Jesus told us that to love our neighbours as ourselves was the Second Greatest Commandment after that which tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.   It is one thing to say that the voluntary sacrificing of our personal rights and freedoms in the name of keeping our neighbours “safe” is a fulfilment of this Commandment, it is quite another thing to say that sacrificing the rights and freedoms of our family, friends and neighbours is such a fulfilment.   Supporting public health orders that impose maximal restrictions on everybody’s freedom of association, assembly, and religion is doing the latter.   To mistake sacrificing the rights and freedoms of others, which is what support for these public health orders amounts to, for the voluntary sacrificing of your own rights and freedoms, and patting yourself on the back about how much you love your neighbour, is to give the text of the Second Greatest Commandment merely the most superficial of readings.

 

There is a popular but very wrong and misguided notion that says that to insist upon and stand up for our rights and freedoms is to act selfishly and that to blindly support and obey every rule and restriction that is enacted in the name of public health is to put the common good ahead of our own.   While it is true that at the experiential level rights and freedoms are things that we primarily enjoy on an individual basis it is entirely wrong to say that insisting upon them and standing up for them is selfish.   Once again, voluntarily agreeing to limit the expression of our rights and freedoms for the sake of others may very well be the loving thing to do, but supporting government action that limits those rights and freedoms, not just for us as individuals but for everyone in society, is the very opposite of a loving act.   Our Lord summarized the message of His Sermon on the Mount in the Golden Rule, which states “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you; do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”   That is the rule worded positively, in terms of what we are supposed to do.   It is a coin with a reverse side, which expresses the same thing negatively, in terms of what we are not supposed to do.   Rabbi Hillel the Elder famously gave the negative form of this as “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a in the Babylonian Talmud).   If supporting government measures that restrict to the point of taking away completely the rights and freedoms of all members of our society does not constitute doing to your fellows what is despicable to you, it is difficult to conceive of what would.

 

When, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the most famous student of the said Rabbi Hillel’s grandson Gamaliel who went on to become an Apostle of our Lord, St. Paul, in his first epistle to the Church in Corinth instructed them to be careful in how they exercised their Christian liberty so as not to be as stumbling block to those of weaker conscience and to put the good of others ahead of their own good, he clearly meant that they should voluntarily limit and restrict their freedom for the sake of others, not that they should write Caesar and ask him to do it for them and everybody else, nor that they should become Caesar’s cheering section if he did so of  his own accord.   When it came to limiting the freedom of others, St. Paul’s thoughts on that can be found in his epistle to the Galatians, in which the very first anathema sit (actually anathema esto since St. Paul wrote in Greek not Latin) was pronounced on those who presumed so to do.    It is worth pointing out that in I Corinthians the recommended voluntarily imposed limits on freedom involved eating meat of dubious origins and in Galatians the limitations on others that were condemned involved forcing people to cut off their foreskins and to stop eating bacon.   Locking people away in their own houses for months, even if they are healthy, without even the pretence of a criminal charge, let alone trial and conviction, forbidding them any sort of healthy social contact, ordering the businesses in which their life’s work, and possibly that of several generations of their family, is all tied up, and upon which they depend for their living to close and this sort of thing goes far beyond what St. Paul condemned in the legalists troubling the Galatians.    What would he have thought if he had foreseen that some would take his plea to the Corinthians to exercise their liberty prudently and wisely and seek the good of others as an argument for supporting imposed limitations of this nature?

 

I suspect the answer would be close to what St. Peter had to say about those who misused St. Paul’s epistles in his own day “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”  (II Peter 3:16)

 

That Jesus demonstrated by His own life what love looks like is most certainly true.   Indeed, His life was a demonstration of what a love that goes beyond the love spoken of in the Greatest and the Second Greatest Commandments looks like.   Remember, those Commandments He said, were the summary of the Law, i.e., that which God rightly requires of us.   A self-sacrificial love, such as Jesus demonstrated by allowing Himself to be unjustly condemned, tortured, and brutally killed for the sake of us all, goes far beyond that, and it is Jesus’ example that Christians are commanded to follow.   To suggest, however, that support and obedience for the lockdown measures is what that kind of love looks like today, is to say something that could only be true in some sort of parallel world where everything is the opposite of our own.

 

Think about it.   In the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry, the disease that everybody feared, for which everybody who contracted it was excluded from the community and forced to announce themselves as “unclean” lest any unwary traveler come too close, was leprosy.   Jesus encountered several lepers at various points in His ministry, each encounter ending with the healing of the leper.   One particular encounter stands out, however, which is related in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.   In St. Matthew’s Gospel it follows immediately after the Sermon on the Mount.   After He comes down from the mountain a great multitude follows Him and a leper comes to Him, worships Him, and says “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.”   He answered, not just in word but in deed:

 

And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

He did not warn the leper to stay a safe distance away.   He did not warn His disciples to stay a safe distance away.   He did not stay a safe distance away Himself.   He “put forth His hand, and touched him.”

 

In 1832, the plague of cholera hit the city that is now called Toronto.   It killed a twelfth of the population.    It was, in other words, a plague that makes the one that has been generating an insane amount of panic this year, look small and pathetic in comparison.   While droves fled the city, John Stachan, the Anglican archdeacon of York who seven years later would become the first Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto, remained, personally attended to the sick, volunteered on the wagons that collected dead bodies, conducted the burials, and arranged for support for those orphaned and widowed by the plague.   He did precisely the same thing when the “second wave” of cholera hit two years later.

 

What does following Jesus’ example of self-sacrificing love for others look like in a time of plague?  Is it what soon-to-be Bishop Strachan did in 1832?   Or is it lecturing other Christians on how abiding by rules that destroy the economy, bankrupt small family businesses and enlarge the market share of big box chains and online corporations like Amazon, tear the fabric of society to pieces, dissolve communities, exhaust social capital, eliminate third places (2), keep families apart, close Churches, encourage distrust of neighbours, and accustom us to accepting severe government limitations on everyone’s basic rights and freedoms, all without accomplishing the stated purpose of saving lives, for the people most at risk and who have been under lockdown much longer are dying anyway and to their number are being added the underreported but rising numbers of suicides, murders, addiction-related deaths and other deaths caused by the lockdowns themselves, somehow serves the “common good”?

 

Go thou and do likewise.

 

(1)   For Christian insights drawn from Plato’s distinction in the Timaeus between “The Good” and “The Necessary” see the Notebooks of Simone Weil.

(2)   Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day, 1989.