Darkened Lamp

Domestication of the Bible

For some time now, I have been thinking about David Bentley Hart’s article Christ’s Rabble, which appeared in the Catholic magazine Commonweal, and, in a slightly different form, also in the New York Times with a provocative title Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists?

For those who don’t know, David B. Hart is an American Orthodox theologian and one of the most important contemporary Christian thinkers. In his work The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, he developed a modern and highly relevant aesthetic argument for the existence of God and for the truth of the Christian message. In his book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, he insightfully and wittily refutes Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion. But besides his theological and philosophical writings, he has also completed a translation of the entire New Testament from the original Greek. It was his intensive study of the New Testament text that prompted him to write the above article.

Provocation aside, the article deals with an issue that is too serious to be briefly dismissed or overlooked because of its propagandistic title. What is it about? It is about a problem I call the domestication of the Bible. Partly because of translations, partly because of traditions (yes, even Protestant ones; yes, even Evangelical ones), and partly because of our personal security (comfort, complacency, laziness?), we have grown accustomed to explaining away, watering down, polishing, smoothing out, taming, and softening many aspects of the New Testament message, so that they no longer pose any threat our ordinary, common-sense (comfortable, soft, petit-bourgeois?) lifestyle and worldview.

Hart gives a first-hand account of what happens when someone spends a long time intensively confronted with the Greek original of the New Testament and studies it in the context of the time in which it was written. One is simply horrified and existentially threatened; one feels as if the ground has been pulled out from under one’s feet. Jesus’ message shines with a sharpness and blinding light that is certainly uncomfortable for my petit-bourgeois ego. But I can also accept it as a magnificent challenge, one I can enter only in faith, taking steps into the unknown and the incomprehensible, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

I write this from my own experience, as I am also involved in translating the New Testament from Greek. That is why I feel sympathy (co-suffering) with Hart.

In fact, I believe that there are even more areas and aspects of the New Testament message where we regularly domesticate the Bible; Hart has only scratched the surface with the question of property. In my opinion, there are at least four areas that have been watered down, in this order:

1. Attitude toward oneself, toward the “ego”
2. Attitude toward property
3. Attitude toward the use of force in confronting evil
4. Attitude toward one’s family, society, nation, and state

The simple fact is that the New Testament message cuts sharply into all these areas; it uncompromisingly demands something from us that is contrary to the “common sense” and to the established social norms. The New Testament explicitly calls on us to renounce all of this. The call (the challenge, prodding, provocatio, paroxismós) of the gospel is so powerful here that most of us simply cannot bear it. We cannot look into the blinding light. So we begin to explain that these are hyperboles, or that we must take these things “spiritually”, etc.

Hart, when confronted with the impact of the entire Greek New Testament, was honest enough to recognize and admit that he was deceiving himself. That the texts simply, obviously, and clearly say something other than what our “common sense” tells us. That they are provocative and perhaps impossibly difficult. This realization was obviously so unbearable for Hart that he ends up in a kind of resigned melancholy.

I can understand this, but I cannot agree with it. I think there is a third way between smugly adapting the Bible to suit ourselves and despairingly concluding that we are not Christians at all, and that there have practically never been any.

I see a way out of this dilemma in a saying found in the Didache: “If you are able to bear the entire yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able to do this, do what you are able.” (Didache 6.2) This seems to be a generalization of the saying found in the Gospels, to which Hart also refers: “If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in the heavens” (Matt. 19.21; Hart’s translation, which I also quote everywhere else in this article).

What emerges from a parallel reading of these two sayings? That there is obviously a path to perfection to which we are invited or called, but not forced. That is why the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles did not require everyone to give up all their possessions (cf. Acts 5.4), but it clearly encouraged this by its example and practice. The same picture seems to emerge from Paul’s letters: Paul does not insist that everyone immediately sell everything they own, but he certainly urges everyone toward a “communal” lifestyle—that is, toward a fellowship which, at least in a certain sense, has all things in common. In short, this is not a rigid command, but a direction; it is not a requirement or coercion, but a guideline and an ideal to strive for, which at least some people fully realize and are therefore held in special esteem in the community of Jesus’ disciples.

Does this mean that not all of us are called to such a radical form of life, but only some? In other words, is this similar to the question of sexuality, where some have a special gift that allows them to renounce it, while others do not?

I do not think so. According to the preserved testimonies, in the first two centuries of Christianity entire communities practiced this, which does not indicate an individual calling, as is the case with celibacy. I would say this: we are all called to renounce the above four areas. This is how Jesus lived, this what he is like, and this is also our ultimate goal—this is the image into which God is transforming us, and into which he will one day fully transform us, if we persevere on his path (whether this happens on this side of death or the other is actually irrelevant for our purposes here). All of us, without exception, are on the way there. “Be perfect” (Matt. 5.48) is not a good advice; it is a commandment. But Jesus, as a good teacher, knows that first graders cannot yet handle everything, and that mathematical powers and roots only come into play in higher grades, and derivatives and integrals only in high school or university. That is why he is patient with us.

This view therefore does not allow us to be complacent and delude ourselves that our comfortable, “common sense” life “in faith” is all that God expects of us. Nor does this view mean that we are not Christians. If we are following Jesus, we are Christians; if we are still clinging to the things above, it means that we are first-graders, immature beginners. And if, for example, there is no one among us who has completely renounced personal property, that simply means that, sadly, there are no mature, “perfect” Christians among us—like those who lived that way in the first centuries (and occasionally later). This is exactly how I must think of myself: if, for instance, I still cling to my possessions, then I am still only an immature beginner in this area, nothing more. Jesus does not condemn us for this, but at the same time he does not let us remain where we are; rather, he encourages and prods us to take the next step, and then the next, and the next.

Let me conclude with a few New Testament passages on each of the four topics mentioned above, which may serve for further meditation.

1. Ego

“If anyone wishes to come along behind me, let him deny himself utterly and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; but whoever will lose his life for the sake of me and of the good tidings will save it.” (Mark 8.34-35)

“Unless the grain of wheat falling to the ground dies, it remains alone; but if it die it bears plenteous fruit. Whoever cherishes his soul destroys it, and whoever hates his soul in this cosmos will preserve it for life in the Age.” (John 12.24-25)

“I have been crucified along with the Anointed. And I live no longer, but the Anointed lives within me” (Gal. 2.20-21).

“You have died and your life has been hidden with the Anointed in God” (Col. 3.3).

“Present your bodies as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God” (Rom. 12.1).

2. Property

“Alas for you who are rich” (Luke 6.24).

“Do not store up treasures for yourself on the earth” (Matt. 6.19).

“Sell your possessions and give alms. Make for yourselves purses that do not wear out, an unfailing treasury in the heavens, near which no thief comes and which no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.” (Luke 12.33-34)

“No one of you who does not bid farewell to all his own possessions can be my disciple” (Luke 14.33).

“And all those who had faith were at the same place and owned all things communally” (Acts 2.44).

“No one said that any of the possessions belonging to him was his own, but everything was owned among them communally” (Acts 4.32).

“And what do you have that you did not receive? And, if in fact you received it, why did you boast like someone not receiving it?” (1 Cor. 4.7)

“Give to the one who begs from you” (Matt. 5.42).

“For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or cosmos or life or death or things past or things imminent—all yours—and you the Anointed’s, and the Anointed God’s.” (1 Cor. 3.21-23).

“To those who are rich in this present age, command them not to be high-spirited … to work the good, having their riches in good deeds, readily giving away, communalists (kononikoús)” (1 Tim. 6.17,18).

“Macedonia and Achaia thought it good to make some communal contribution for the destitute among the holy ones in Jerusalem. For they thought it good, and they are indebted to them; for, if the gentiles have shared in (ekoinónesan) their spiritual things, they are obliged to minister to them in fleshly things.” (Rom. 15.26-27, cf. Epistle of Barnabas 19.8: “Thou shalt share (koinonéseis) all things with thy neighbour and shall not say that they are thy own property; for if you are sharers (koinonoí) in that which is incorruptible, how much more in that which is corruptible?” Cf. also Didache 4.8)

3. Use of Force

“How blissful the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5.5)

“Love your enemies” (Matt. 5.44).

“I tell you not to oppose the wicked man by force; rather, whosoever strikes you upon the right cheek, turn to him the other as well; and to him who wishes to bring a judgment against you, so he may take away your tunic, give him your cloak as well; and whoever presses you into service for one mile, go with him for two.” (Matt. 5.39-41).

“Why not instead suffer injustice? Why not instead be deprived?” (1 Cor. 6.7)

“Return your sword to its place; for all who take up a sword will be destroyed by a sword.” (Matt. 26.52; cf. also the manuscript variant in Rev. 13.10b)

4. Family and Nation

And in reply he says to them, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And looking around at those sitting in a circle about him he says, “Look: my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3.33-35)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own soul as well, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14.26-27)

“There can be neither Judaean nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there cannot be male and female, for you are all one in the Anointed One Jesus.” (Gal. 3.28)

“There is no Greek and Judaean, Circumcision and Foreskin, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman; rather, the Anointed is all things and is in all.” (Col. 3.11)

“… of the race of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, as well as a Hebrew coming from Hebrews … But the things that were to me a gain, on account of the Anointed I have deemed these to be a loss.” (Phil. 3.5,7)

“May I, however, boast in nothing except the cross of our Lord Jesus the Anointed, through whom the cosmos has been crucified to me and I to the cosmos.” (Gal. 6.14)