Asbury’s Seedbed has posted a roughly 10-minute video with Craig addressing the question of remarriage in Jesus’s teachings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=837o4On3g24
Category Archives: New Testament
The devil in the details–Satan in the Gospels
Christianity Today recently invited Craig to write an article addressing the deletion of the devil from the new Son of God movie, but also explaining Satan’s role in the Gospels. With the help of a CT editor, Craig contributed the article at the link below.
Satan does play a key role in the Gospels, where he is mentioned more than 30 times and is described performing various activities. These passages help us to better understand Christ’s mission, the challenges we face, and the reality in which we live.
The full article is now online at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/casting-out-devil.html
When would Jesus permit divorce?
In the previous post, I emphasized Jesus’s teaching on preserving and, where possible, restoring marriage. Jesus used graphic language to challenge some of his religious hearers’ insufficient commitment to marriage. In doing so, however, he was not seeking to make matters worse for those whose marriages were being broken against their will. Indeed, as noted briefly in that post, these were the very people that Jesus was defending.
Here I will first raise a problem—a way of reading a verse that some have used to prohibit and even break up remarriages. I will then show from the context of Jesus’s larger teaching on divorce, and other New Testament interpretations of his teaching, that this first way of reading the passage takes Jesus’s point out of context.
When Jesus speaks of remarriage after divorce as “adultery” in Mark 10:11, what does he mean? When used literally, adultery means sleeping with someone who is married to another person, and/or sleeping with someone other than one’s own spouse. (Most of the ancient world gave more license to the husband so long as his paramour was single, but the New Testament does not allow this double standard.) Thus, if Dedrick is married to Shamika and sleeps with Shonda, that is adultery.
But Jesus here seems to be saying that if Dedrick divorces Shamika and marries Shonda, that is still adultery despite the official divorce; that is, he treats Dedrick as still married to Shamika. In other words, he speaks as if human, legal divorce does not actually end a marriage in God’s sight.
The question is: Does Jesus mean this literally, or is he simply using a graphic way of warning against divorce? I argue here that he is using a graphic way of warning against divorce—that he is using hyperbole, that is, a rhetorical overstatement to drive home a point. Keep in mind that the point of hyperbole is not so we can dismiss its message, saying, “That’s just hyperbole.” Rather the rhetorical and literary device of hyperbole is a way to challenge us to examine whether we are living up to its message. How we take this matters: strongly warning against divorce is not the same as denying that God recognizes the legitimacy of new marriages.
Like (but even more than) many of his contemporaries, Jesus used graphic hyperbole to communicate many of his points. Anyone who is not willing to recognize that a given teaching at least might be hyperbole, before examining it, needs to reimmerse himself or herself in Jesus’s teachings. A camel does not normally literally fit through the eye of a needle; scrupulous Pharisees did not normally literally gulp down camels whole; and we have no record of Jesus’s first followers moving any literal mountains. These were graphic ways of communicating a point.
Moreover, the literary context of at least one of Jesus’s divorce sayings involves hyperbole. Just before his teaching about remarriage and adultery in Matthew 5:32, Jesus warns that whoever looks on a woman to covet her sexually has committed adultery with her in his heart (5:28). I often tell my students that I am proud to see that none of them has committed this sin. How do I discern their innocence? The solution to this sin, which appears in the next verse, is for the transgressor to tear out his eye. In fact, nearly all of us recognize that command as hyperbole—a graphic way of underlining the point that we must put away sin. No sane reader will follow this command literally.
Further, it may be relevant that Jesus does not tell a woman married five times that she was married once and that all the rest of her relationships were adulterous. Rather, he says that she has had five husbands but the man with whom she lives now is not her husband (John 4:18). One could argue that Jesus is speaking literally in John 4:18 but figuratively in Mark 10:11, or one could argue the reverse; but one who affirms the authority of both texts cannot easily have it both ways. Further evidence shows which reading is likelier.
Matthew and Paul recognize exceptions to Jesus’s graphic statement. In Matthew, Jesus says that a man cannot divorce his wife and remarry unless the wife is unfaithful (Matt 5:32; 19:9). (Some try to make the exception here something narrower than adultery, but the Greek term is actually broader than, rather than narrower than, adultery. It is only the context that limits it even to adultery.) The basis for remarriage being adulterous would be that God did not accept the reality of the divorce (all monogamists recognized that a valid divorce was necessary for remarriage). Here, however, God accepts the reality of the divorce if the spouse was unfaithful.
Yet if Shamika is not still married to Dedrick, how can Dedrick still be married to Shamika? If even an explicitly guilty party is not married to their first spouse in God’s sight, we cannot say that God literally regards the first partners as still married, or that remarriage is therefore literally adulterous. That a true follower of Jesus should work to preserve their marriage is clear, but that anyone should break up remarriages as adulterous unions, as some suggest, is not.
Paul explicitly allows the believer abandoned by an unbeliever (someone who is not following Jesus’s teachings) to remarry. (Laws in Corinth treated marriage as a matter of mutual consent; the departure of either party legally dissolved the marriage.) When Paul says that the believer is “not under bondage,” or “not bound” (1 Cor 7:15), he uses the exact language of ancient Jewish divorce contracts for freedom to remarry. This is precisely what the language meant when people in antiquity discussed divorce, the issue that Paul addresses here.
We should note what the two clear exceptions have in common: in neither case does Jesus’s follower break the marriage covenant; it is broken by the other person. One person working hard can often lead to the restoration of a marriage, but it is not guaranteed; the partner has their own will and can still choose to do the wrong thing (1 Cor 7:16). Paul had to address a local situation that Jesus did not explicitly address. Today we might think of physical abuse as an analogous kind of situation where the abuser is the one breaking the marriage covenant. Beyond such extreme circumstances, however, we need to be very careful, recognizing that some people will take any excuse to opt out of responsibility for a marriage (such as burning the toast, as mentioned in the earlier post). Paul makes clear that we are expected to do our best.
Not only do the biblical exceptions suggest that Mark 10:11 includes hyperbole, but so does that very verse’s context. Jesus demands, “Therefore what God has joined together, LET no one separate” (Mark 10:9). The point remains that we must not break up marriages. Yet the wording shows that marriage is not indissoluble in God’s eyes; Jesus warns against breaking marriage, rather than arguing that it is impossible to break. That is, the context of Mark 10:11, like Jesus’s and Paul’s other teachings on the subject, shows that Mark 10:11 uses hyperbole.
Jesus graphically summons us to commitment to marriage. Yet to break up remarriages (the solution that some readers have argued) actually undermines his point. Moreover, Jesus is certainly not seeking to make matters more difficult for those divorced against their will, as some churches have done. Treating someone divorced against his or her will to “stand against divorce” can be like treating someone raped or murdered against his or her will to stand against those actions.
I recognize that short posts cannot address all situations; these two posts have explored principles, but pastoral counselors must apply those principles in a wide range of concrete situations. What I hope is clear is that the biblical issue is less about whether someone eventually remarries than about the need to be faithful to marriage to begin with. (From a counseling perspective, it is unwise to enter a new relationship immediately after a divorce even if one was completely faithful to one’s previous marriage; the wounded heart is too vulnerable and needs time to heal. But at this point the expertise belongs not to me but to pastoral counselors and related professions.)
The narrowness of the explicit exceptions reminds us, however, that Jesus wants us to value and be committed to marriage. The point of exceptions is that they must be a last resort (though of course someone in physical danger is probably already at that point). Counseling or therapy can often save marriages. But we need to recognize that just as prayers for healing are not always answered (everyone acknowledges, for example, that godly people are not immortal), neither are prayerful attempts to save marriages when they involve only one party.
Believers must do their best to preserve marriage, but we must not abuse those whose marriages have broken, especially if it was not their choice. Jesus warned some religious people: “If you had understood the meaning of these words—‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’—you would not have condemned the innocent” (Matt 12:7).
Why did Jesus warn about divorce?—Mark 10:1-12
Jesus’s followers knew that he condemned divorce; his warning appears in Paul, in Mark, and in another form shared by Matthew and Luke. Disagreement involves the extent to which and the circumstances under which he condemned it.
The next post will address exceptions that Jesus would have allowed to his teaching, but this one will explore some reasons why Jesus opposed divorce in stronger words than did his contemporaries. I only ask readers to keep in mind that I am speaking here in generalities, not every kind of situation.
We do not always know the why for some biblical teachings, especially at the beginning. Sometimes we as believers just have to trust that God loves us and is wise in what he asks of us. In other cases Scripture does give us reasons for what God asks of us. Here I will emphasize two reasons that seem to matter in Mark 10:2-12.
The first is God’s original design for marriage, to which Jesus appeals in Mark 10:6-9. Jesus cites a passage that presents marriage as a union established by God and not meant to be broken. Jesus appeals to the first biblical narrative about marriage in Genesis. (Genesis was considered part of the law of Moses.) The narrative from which Jesus quotes appears in the context of God’s benevolent gifts to humanity. Yet, as Jesus points out, Genesis not only recounts the story of this union; it also offers an explanation that it applies to all marriages: the man clings to his wife, and they become “one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Being one flesh was the language of family (e.g., Gen 29:14) or other blood relations that demanded loyalty (2 Sam 5:1). Marriage united a couple as deeply as blood ties, forming a new family unit.
Although modern Western readers might miss the point, breaking blood ties was normally unthinkable. Of course, it did happen, perhaps even often, but except when higher loyalties prevailed, ancient writers view betrayal of family ties as wicked. Moses did allow divorce (Deut 24:1-4), Jesus concedes, but this “was because of the hardness of your hearts” (Mark 10:5). Jewish teachers recognized that some laws were concessions to human weakness, less than God’s ideal, and Jesus places divorce in this category. Jesus said that God revealed his ideal in the beginning: a tie as permanent as blood ties ideally were. Because God ordained the marriage union, Jesus concludes, people have no right to sever it (10:9).
Modern studies reinforce some insights that many premodern societies recognized from long experience. Any of us who have experienced betrayal in a relationship recognize that it is painful; the deeper the relationship, the more painful the betrayal. This was not a burden God designed our hearts to bear. Intimacy flourishes in the context of trust, and trust flourishes in the context of commitment. Where love is highly conditional it is more difficult to trust; one’s guard must always be up.
Thus many children who grow up in broken homes, or even in a society where marriage appears very impermanent, find it more difficult to trust that marriage will work. Romance invites commitment, but when romantic feelings fade for one or both parties, it is commitment that keeps the parties together through that test. Enduring that test builds a love that is more unconditional, durable, and, for many couples, ultimately more satisfying. (Again, I am speaking in general.)
The passage also suggests a second reason for Jesus supporting persevering in marriage. Note Jesus’s warning that whoever divorces his wife commits adultery against her (10:11). I will address the nature of Jesus’s strong language in the next post, but here I want to draw attention to the words “against her.” Jesus’s warning against divorce is not an arbitrary rule, but is an expression of his compassion for those who can be betrayed by a spouse’s unfaithfulness.
In this context, Jesus is answering a question posed by the Pharisees (10:2); one of the two schools of Pharisees in Jesus’s day allowed a husband to divorce his wife only if she was unfaithful. The other, by contrast, in principle allowed him to divorce her even if she burned the toast—i.e., for basically any reason. (Apart from extenuating circumstances, Judean wives apparently could divorce husbands, as in 10:12, only if the wives had much money. Pharisees did not approve of wives divorcing their husbands, although under a wife’s extreme circumstances elders would compel the husband to grant her a divorce.)
Given the limited access to income available to average women in Judea and Galilee, a wife so divorced could become destitute unless she had some sort of family support. In ancient marriages, children nearly always went to the husband. Jesus was well aware that breaking the marriage covenant had economic implications, implications for the children, and implications for wounded hearts.
Most of our cultures today differ from the one that Jesus directly addressed, but the most central principles remain the same. God’s ideal remains the same; God’s love for us and concern for the wounding of betrayed hearts remains the same. God knows that the uniting of two different people can involve difficulties up front, but he also knew that attachments can become deep and enduring. He also knew that marriage was meant to offer a safe place for nurturing the next generation for their relationships and those that would follow.
What happens, however, in cases where betrayal does occur? Or in cases of abuse? Such circumstances offer the focus of the next post. Although we must always work for the ideal, we also must deal with real people facing situations not always of their own choosing.
The Sabbath, the Spirit and the servant—Matthew 12
God invites us to a genuine relationship with him, empowered by his Spirit. This is not the same as mere religious rules, a contrast evident in some conflicts between Jesus and some Pharisees in his day.
True rest
In Matthew 12:1-14, a series of conflicts about the Sabbath, Jesus articulates a rest different from that of the Pharisees. The preceding context shows how this is the case. Jesus invites all the weary to come to him, promising that he will provide rest for their souls (Matt 11:28-29). In saying this he echoes a biblical promise from God, who also offered rest for his people’s souls (Jer 6:16). Likewise, both the Bible (Prov 9:5) and Jewish tradition (Sirach 24:19) depicted divine Wisdom as inviting others to come. Jesus is here the one divinely authorized to provide rest to those who come to him.
In 12:1-14, however, members of the religious elite debate Jesus over the interpretation of rest. They observe Sabbath law so strictly and literally that they risk inhibiting the rest that the Sabbath was meant to bring. Jesus prioritizes his followers’ hunger and people’s need for healing above Sabbath rules—after all, eating, health, meeting of needs contributed to rest. The Pharisees understood this for some issues as well, so Jesus challenges their inconsistency.
From what we can gather about the Pharisees from later sources, they should not have been so angry with Jesus. First of all, Jesus defends his practice based on some biblical analogies similar to the sort used by Pharisees themselves. Second, Pharisees themselves debated whether medicine could be used on the Sabbath; more lenient Pharisees allowed it. Moreover, Jesus is not even using medicine. When he heals a man with a withered hand here, he simply commands the man to stretch out his hand, which no one could consider a Sabbath violation. Pharisees debated Sabbath questions among themselves all the time, without seeking to “destroy” those who disagreed (12:14).
Yet as we recognize from our own experience today, religious people do not always live up to the best ethical ideals espoused by their teachers. Sabbath conflicts between Jesus and his critics may have simply reflected a larger array of concerns. Pharisees were respected, a sort of religious elite, and tended to be better educated and of higher status than most people. Jesus cared for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and even sinners; he did not cultivate the favor of the elites. Jesus had not been trained in Pharisees’ traditions; in fact, at times he challenged them. Jesus was a threat to their own sense of security in their beliefs and practices—as he would be to those of many people today. Some Pharisees here therefore desire to silence him, although they lacked political power to harm him. That task would fall to the political elite—Sadducees in Jerusalem and ultimately a reluctant but corrupt governor.
Blaspheming the Spirit
In the following narrative, Matthew warns that Jesus’s Pharisaic critics come close to blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Sometimes readers today fear that they have committed the offense; no one concerned about it, however, may have committed it. No one able to repent has committed an unforgiveable sin (12:31-32).
So what does this passage mean by blaspheming against the Spirit? In this context in Matthew, Jesus has been driving out demons by the Spirit of God, showing that God’s kingdom was upon them (12:28). His critics shrug off this evidence that God is with him, attributing this defeat of Satan’s kingdom to Satan himself (12:24). They thus treat God’s Spirit as a demonic spirit! These critics are rejecting not just Jesus’s own testimony, but the Spirit’s conspicuous testimony that God’s reign is drawing near in Jesus. That is, they are determined not to believe no matter what the evidence! Jesus shows why this charge cannot be correct and shows how biased they are in explaining away his exorcisms.
Matthew’s context shows us something further. Because Jesus is empowered by God’s Spirit to cast out demons (12:28), he fulfills a prophesied mission. Matthew has just quoted a passage in Isaiah about God’s servant endued with the Spirit (12:18). This servant would initially be gentle rather than like a warrior (12:19-20; cf. 11:29; 21:5). In Isaiah’s context God originally gave this servant mission to Israel, but because Israel was disobedient (Isa 42:18-20), God would raise up one within Israel to bring the nation back to him (49:5; 53:4-6, 11). The context in Isaiah further shows that the servant would bless not only his own people, but also the Gentiles (42:6; 49:6; 52:15), announcing good news of God’s reign (52:7).
How did Jesus’s critics risk blaspheming against the Spirit? They were rejecting God’s own verification of Jesus’s identity and mission. After falsely accusing Jesus, his critics have the audacity to request a “sign” (Matt 12:38)—after explaining away the signs he has already offered! The ultimate sign would be their ultimate test: “the sign of Jonah”—Jesus’s resurrection (12:39-40).
An unforgiveable sin is one in which one’s heart becomes so hard that one rejects even obvious evidence of the truth, to the extent that one cannot ever become convinced. Only God knows whose hearts become irreparably unrepentant, but when that state occurs, it can occur from persistently refusing to believe even in the face of what is obvious. Obviously no one who afterward accepts Christ has gone that far.
Inviting demons back
In the ancient Mediterranean world, people often returned charges against false accusers, and Jesus does so here. Instead of recognizing that Jesus drives out demons by God’s Spirit, his critics attribute his works to demons. So Jesus tells about a man delivered from a demon who ends up with eight demons instead of the one, and concludes, “That is how it will be with this evil generation” (12:45). Jesus has been casting demons out, but his critics are welcoming them all back in. It is thus they, and not he, who are doing Satan’s work.
The Spirit confirms that Jesus fulfills what the prophets before him promised. Those who refuse to believe him in the face of divine attestation have no excuse.
Religion by itself may not please God. What pleases God is carrying out his will, and we can do that only by his Spirit.
Gospel truth—Luke 1:1-4
When I have shared the gospel with people, some of them have asked how we can really know much about Jesus. Because I was an atheist before my conversion to Christianity, these are questions I once struggled with myself. Yet the most traditional answers are sometimes the best ones.
Some voices today have come up with more novel answers, such as the DaVinci Code—which is just a novel. Others appeal to the Gospel of Judas, but it comes from the late second-century, perhaps a century and a half after Jesus lived, and few scholars find much authentic historical memory of Jesus in it. Perhaps most shocking is the alleged “Secret Gospel of Mark,” a work supposedly discovered in the twentieth century, alleged to be based on an original from the late second century. Many recent scholars have argued that this work is a twentieth-century forgery. Those who depend on later “Gospels,” from the second century to the twentieth century, often neglect the most obvious and substantial sources about Jesus: the Gospels in our Bible.
Granted, these Gospels were written by Christians—but we learn the most about ancient sages from the circles most likely to preserve information about them, namely their followers. That is true about Socrates, Jesus, and most ancient rabbis (or in other parts of the world and eras, about Buddha or Muhammad).
These Gospels also should be taken at least as seriously as other biographies from antiquity (which often treated philosophers, politicians and generals). Biographers claimed to write mostly accurate works, especially when writing about characters of the recent past, as the Gospels were. In fact, very few ancient biographies were written as close to the time of their subjects as the Gospels were; historians often depend, for example, on Arrian’s centuries-later biography of Alexander, but the Gospels range from just one to two generations after Jesus’s public ministry. (Both used earlier sources, but the Gospels were written within living memory of some eyewitnesses. The Gospels differ from modern biographies, but most scholars today recognize that they fit ancient biographies.)
When Luke wrote his Gospel, probably shortly over a generation after Jesus’ ministry, written accounts about Jesus were proliferating. Luke tells us that “many” had written about Jesus (Luke 1:1). Most of these sources have been unfortunately lost (the surviving, so-called “lost gospels”—both gnostic and apocryphal—are significantly later). Nevertheless, one of Luke’s main sources, the Gospel of Mark, remains, and many scholars reconstruct much of another source based on where Matthew and Luke overlap. We can often compare these sources and see how Luke used them.
Moreover, Luke had oral traditions going back to eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2). Because ancient education at all levels and throughout the Mediterranean involved considerable memorization, we would expect eyewitnesses to have preserved much information about Jesus, more than enough to fill a gospel. In fact, a primary role of disciples in this period was to learn and propagate their teachers’ messages; even disciples who came to disagree with their teachers were expected to accurately report their views. This was true whether the schools emphasized written instruction (for the highly educated) or merely oral memorization. (Completely illiterate bards, in fact, wandered around repeating from memory such works as all of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.) To act as if Jesus’ disciples would have forgotten and replaced his teachings is to make them completely unlike other disciples in antiquity.
It is thus not those who privilege the Gospels as sources of information about Jesus who treat them differently than other comparable ancient works, but those who neglect the Gospels as such sources. We should keep in mind that some written sources were already emerging during a generation when Jesus’ closest eyewitness followers remained in positions of leadership in the church (cf. Gal 1:18-19; 2:9). These sources are much closer in time to the events they narrate than were most ancient biographies.
Moreover, Luke assures Theophilus that he has “thorough knowledge” of the events that he narrates (Luke 1:3). How would he have acquired this? Although the matter is disputed, many scholars interpret the “we” in some passages in Luke’s second volume, Acts, in the most obvious sense: that Luke traveled with Paul. (This was the normal sense in ancient historical works; I argue for this at greater length in my Acts commentary.) If this is correct, Luke stayed in Judea for up to two years, and would have had plenty of opportunity to talk with eyewitnesses and those who knew them (Acts 21:15; 24:27; 27:1). The next best thing to us going and consulting the eyewitnesses today is depending on a writer from that era who did just that.
Luke also writes to confirm accounts that Theophilus had already heard (Luke 1:4). Normally one does not fabricate a lie and then appeal to one’s audience’s knowledge that it is true. Rather, Luke is confirming accounts that already, some time in the church’s second generation, were widely known.
That is partly why so many narratives in the Gospels overlap, rather than telling completely different stories. It is also why these accounts do not directly address some pressing issues of later generations, such as whether Gentiles should be circumcised. The Gospel writers were preaching, using Jesus as their text, but they did not depart far from their text.
They were not simply writing sermons or epistles, but biographies; ancient biographers freely communicated lessons through their biographies, but they chose to draw lessons based on the information they had, rather than making up their illustrations. (Even speeches often drew their illustrations from historical events, the sort recorded in histories and biographies.) Novels (which flourished more in the later period of the apocryphal gospels) were usually romances and were usually interested only in entertainment, not in historical information or (usually) even moral lessons.
Luke’s historical preface invites us to confidence in what the Gospels teach us about Jesus.
Craig S. Keener is author of The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009).
Christmas vs. the emperor–Matthew 2 and Luke 2
In many circles, editorials and sermons on the true meaning of Christmas have become a routine, perhaps almost obligatory, protest against the materialism and rush of the season. Christmas, of course, has taken on various expressions in a range of cultures through history, along the way picking up fir trees, wrapped gifts, and developing permutations of figures such as St. Nicholas of Myra (a fourth-century bishop).
Most customs we associate with Christmas did not exist in the first century, but two books that are now in the New Testament describe the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth. The circumstances in the first, Matthew’s Gospel, portend Jesus’s future conflicts with hostile members of the elite. Although welcomed by outsiders, Joseph, Mary and Jesus have to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the wrath of the jealous tyrant Herod the Great. My wife, who was a refugee, readily identifies with their plight as refugees (although gifts from the Magi and the large Jewish community in Alexandria should have provided Jesus’s family a measure of comfort).
Back in Bethlehem, however, Matthew’s scene immediately develops into one of terror. Herod, king of Judea, massacres the male infants remaining in Bethlehem. Three times the narrative lists the objects that have threatened the mad king’s rage: “the baby and his mother.” Whatever Matthew’s sources for this account, his portrayal fits the recorded character of a king who murdered three of his sons, his favorite wife, and anyone he saw as a potential threat to his throne. His young brother-in-law, for example, a high priest who was becoming too popular, had a drowning “accident” in a pool that archaeologists suggest was only three feet deep.
See the rest of this story at the following link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/christmas-vs-the-empire_b_4404833.html; also available at http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/christmas-vs-the-empire/
Finding common ground—Acts 17
Paul’s letters never compromise God’s message, but he uses the language of his culture to articulate that message whenever possible. Sometimes God’s message is compatible with our culture; often it challenges our culture. But we hear both its affirmations and its challenges most clearly when we understand it in the language of our day.
By Paul’s time, Athens was no longer the greatest academic center of philosophy, but it retained that reputation from its earlier days. It also had a market and citadel full of idols, which revolted a worshiper of the true God like Paul (Acts 17:16). This drove Paul to preach there. But Athenians did not license just anyone to teach “philosophies” in their city, so they brought Paul before the Areopagus, the leading court of the city (17:19), demanding to know about his “strange deities” (17:18). Ancient readers who knew how Athens got its philosophic reputation would remember that Socrates was earlier brought before this same court—and that he was condemned to death on the charge of sacrilegiously denying Athens’ deities.
But Paul had seen altars of unknown gods around Athens. Centuries earlier, the Athenians had sacrificed to all their deities to stop a plague, yet the plague had continued. Finally they sacrificed to whatever unknown deity may have sent judgment against them, and the plague stopped. God had prepared Athens for his gospel, and Paul preached to them about the God unknown to them.
He began with a respectful address (Acts 17:22), as was standard, and quoted their own poets (Acts 17:28). He identified with their culture as much as possible so that the only stumbling block, if there was one, would be the stumbling block of the cross. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers comprised some of his audience (Acts 17:18), but the Christian worldview had very limited agreement with Epicureans (except that the divine was transcendent). Stoics were different; at many points, Paul could teach biblical ideas that the Stoics also related to. Stoics agreed that God is not limited to temples (17:24), needs nothing (17:25), created people (17:26-29), and so forth. When we share Christ with others, it is helpful to build on what insights they already have correct.
But Paul did not stop there. He was not simply “dialoguing” to let the Stoics know that he was a good philosopher whom they should welcome. At some points the gospel may agree with values in our culture, but at other points it challenges them. Philosophers knew about “conversion” to philosophy, but Paul summons them to turn to the one true God (17:30). Epicureans denied life after death; Stoics affirmed the soul’s immortality but could not conceive of bodily resurrection, and also believed that history was cyclical, with no final judgment. Yet Paul preaches a final day of judgment, which God proved in advance by raising Jesus from the dead (17:31).
In a sense, Paul may “divide and conquer” his audience, as he did later with the Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 23:6-9). He had limited common ground with the Epicureans, but had at least some with the Stoics (17:18). Yet the culture’s assumptions were so different that even these intellectual conversation partners did not understand his message fully. Some wrongly thought he was preaching “strange deities”—plural—namely, Jesus and Resurrection (Acts 17:18; “Anastasis,” or “Resurrection,” was also a woman’s name in Greek!) Paul had to clarify that he announced one true God who had resurrected Jesus. When he finished, some scoffed (probably especially Epicureans), but others listened and, most importantly, some believed (Acts 17:32-34). It was a start, and eventually the Christian message spread throughout Greece.
Like Jesus and Paul, we should not avoid those outside the faith. We should labor to explain Jesus to them in terms they understand, yet without compromising the gospel’s truth. Whether we are bridging gaps with unchurched youth using some of the saner rap lyrics, secular thinkers with the best of their ethics, immigrants with genuine respect for their culture, and so on, we need to try to relate the good news of hope to people in their own language, lovingly yet unashamedly. Usually that means that we must learn to understand their culture first (as Paul must have done long before Acts 17), which comes through sensitive and caring relationships. It also means that we must labor to understand and faithfully articulate Christ’s work without compromise.
Craig Keener is author of a four-volume commentary on Acts. This post is adapted from a much earlier article in the Missionary Seer.
The discouraged prophet—Matthew 11:2-6
Have you ever faced discouragement in doing God’s work? John the Baptist had reason to feel dejected (Matt 11:2-3; see also Luke 7:18-20). Jesus had just warned his disciples about coming persecution for their mission (10:16-39), yet promised that whoever received them would receive Jesus (10:40-42). John, however, had already been rejected by those with power.
Now imprisoned, John recognized that he might never again see freedom. What would become of his calling? Was he not called to prepare the way for the coming one (3:3, 11)? He had recognized Jesus as the promised one, who would baptize in the Spirit and in fire (3:11); he even wanted Jesus to baptize him, presumably in the Spirit (3:14). (In the context of John’s announcement, baptism in fire plainly referred to judgment—3:10-12.) But now he was hearing reports about Jesus (11:2), and there was no evident baptism in the Spirit and certainly no fire.
John now had doubts. Was Jesus the coming one or another forerunner? Either way, John trusted Jesus to tell him the truth. Jesus was a true prophet; John was only unsure whether he was the baptizer in the Spirit and fire that John himself had announced. So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus openly.
At this point in Jesus’s ministry, it remained more discreet for Jesus not to specify his full identity publicly; nevertheless, he manages to communicate the idea indirectly for John. After the messengers have witnessed Jesus’s works, he sends them back with a summary of the works. The first noted works are the blind receiving sight and the disabled walking (11:5).
These first two works probably echo Isaiah 35:5-6, which belongs to promises of God’s future kingdom. Jesus’s works thus are demonstrations of God’s kingdom, or reign. The context of these signs in Isaiah includes the restoration of creation (Isa 35:1-2). Jesus’s present healings, although not universal, foreshadow a day when the Lord will renew creation, providing full healing for us and for the physical earth. Likewise, as we honor Jesus by carrying on his works, caring for people and even for the natural world, these works foreshadow the fuller deliverance to come.
Whether it was Jesus doing the works or us doing the works in his name, the works announce Jesus’s identity. Jesus is the one who inaugurated these works of the kingdom. Isaiah spoke of these works happening when God would come (Isa 35:4), just as John had announced that the one whose way he was preparing was divine—since only God could pour out God’s Spirit (Matt 3:11).
In the last line of Matthew 11:5, Jesus also echoes Isaiah 61:1, referring to the mission of God’s servant to bring good news to the poor. Caring for the poor, like caring for the blind and disabled just mentioned, was not the way people in Galilee, Judea, or elsewhere in the Roman Empire sought power. The ambitious gathered wealth and cultivated the favor of members of the elite; in Judea Jesus could have appealed to Pharisees, scribes, and especially Sadducees. Instead Jesus follows only the Father’s mission, depending on the Father’s power. Jesus embraces the lowly and the outsiders, those who are willing to receive the kingdom with the same attitude of dependence as children (Matt 18:3-4). It is the meek who will inherit the earth (5:5), and Jesus himself is meek (11:29).
After hinting about his identity to John through these biblical allusions, Jesus offers a blessing for whoever does not stumble on account of him (11:6). The stumbling block of Jesus’s limited ministry prefigured the fuller stumbling block of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23; Gal 5:11). Humility, servanthood and sacrificial death are not what the world honors or what makes sense to the world, but God’s servants are not ashamed of the cross (Romans 1:16).
We may be tempted to condemn John’s doubts and struggles, but Jesus affirmed John. After the messengers left, Jesus began to praise him behind his back (Matt 11:7-10). Prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah struggled with their callings (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18); David nearly snapped under pressure (2 Sam 25:33-34), and in his ministry Paul experienced fear and anguish (2 Cor 7:5; 11:28-29). Later in this Gospel, Jesus himself expressed feelings of despair: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matt 27:46). Of course, Jesus knew that the words he was praying were from a psalm that ended on a note of victory (Ps 22), but that does not diminish the agony he experienced at that moment.
If you have ever experienced discouragement in doing God’s work, this was also true of God’s servants before you. God was faithful to them, however, and God will be faithful to you. Be faithful to what you are called to do, and God will see to it that what you are really called to do is fulfilled. We each have our part to play, and the Lord may praise our work afterward, as he did with John (cf. Matt 25:21, 23). But the kingdom is not about us–it is about Jesus. We can have courage, because Jesus the kingdom-bringer has already inaugurated his victory. Unlike John, we know how that story ends.
The prodigal sons—Luke 15:11-32
Most people who have attended church for awhile know the story of the prodigal son, but not everyone catches the parable’s point in context. The religious people of Jesus’ day criticized him spending time with sinners (Lk 15:1-2), so Jesus responded by telling three stories: about a shepherd, a woman, and a merciful father. Most people looked down on shepherds as low-class, and courts often rejected their testimony, as well as that of women. (That God chose shepherds as witnesses of Jesus’ birth and women as witnesses of his resurrection reveals that God’s values differ from people’s.)
Thus Jesus tells the story of the lost sheep (one of a hundred), the lost coin (one of ten), the lost son (one of two)—and then of the other lost son.
First, Jesus told of a shepherd who left his 99 sheep to look for the one that was lost. (Because shepherds and others herders watched over their flocks together [see Luke 2:8], he would have left the 99 safe with these other watchmen.) When he found the lost sheep, he called his friends together and they rejoiced. Jesus explains that in the same way, when God finds those who had been lost to him, heaven rejoices. God’s “friends” rejoice when the lost is found, yet the religious people were complaining about Jesus reaching the lost. Maybe the religious people, therefore, were not really God’s friends.
Second, Jesus told of a woman who lost one of her ten coins. This was a pitifully small amount of money to most of Jesus’ hearers, but was much for the woman. Poor Galilean homes had floors of loosely-fitted stones; so often did coins get lost between the stones that archaeologists today can sometimes date the homes’ last habitation based on the coins in the floors! These homes had little lighting, so she lights the small kind of lamp that would fit in one’s hand, and sweeps with a broom, hoping to hear it. When she finds the coin, all her friends rejoice with her; in the same way, God’s friends rejoice with him when he rescues the lost person. But many religious people did not care about what mattered to God; they cared about their view of social propriety!
Third, Jesus told of a father who lost one son. The younger son demanded his share of the inheritance (one-third). Demanding one’s inheritance was equivalent to saying, “Father, I wish you were dead!” Yet the father mercifully does the unthinkable: he divides his hard-earned inheritance. Many hearers would have despised the father’s indulgence. The son then squanders the inheritance, behavior that all ancient moralists derided.
The now-destitute son is reduced to feeding pigs—hence a state of uncleanness so he would not even seek help from a synagogue. Hearers might expect the story to end here—the wicked son receives his just desserts for his crimes! Yet this son realizes that things were better off for servants in the father’s house, and returns, seeking to be a servant.
It was considered undignified for older men to run, yet when the father sees him, he runs and embraces him. His son mattered more than dignity! The son volunteered to be a servant, but the father indirectly rejects this request. He orders the best robe in the house—undoubtedly the father’s; a ring—undoubtedly a family signet ring, thus indicating the son’s reinstatement to sonship; and sandals—though poor workers, in contrast to this household’s sons, often wore no sandals. “No,” the father is saying; “I won’t receive you as a servant. I will only receive you as my son.”
Then the father orders a celebration, including the fatted calf (enough food to feed the entire village). So far the story has ended like the others: when the lost is found, there is celebration. But now Jesus turns to the final story: the story of the other lost son.
The older brother is so angry with the father’s mercy that he publicly refuses to enter the house or greet his father with a title. To publicize an intrafamily dispute in front of the villagers gathered for the celebration dishonored the father even more publicly than his younger brother had done! Elder brothers might normally reconcile estranged fathers and younger brothers, but not this son. “This son of yours,” he calls his brother. “This brother of yours,” the father pleads.
“I never even received a baby goat,” the brother protests, “but you killed the fattened calf for a party for him!” Yet the inheritance was divided, so the elder brother’s two-thirds had already been allotted to him (15:12, 31); he had nothing to lose financially, unless he chose to share with his brother. He simply acted from spite.
“It is not fair,” the older brother protests. “I served you all these years.” Notice the elder son’s basis for argument: not a son’s relationship with the father, but a servant’s relationship with a master. The elder son does not know his father’s heart. He is lost in the father’s house. Essentially, he complains, “You showed him mercy, but I am good enough that I do not need mercy.”
There are church people today who resent evangelism, missions, social concern and other forms of outreach. After all, they may feel that they have never needed any outreach to themselves. Perhaps a newcomer might take their favorite pew. There are those who look down on new believers, or believers from less socially “dignified” backgrounds than their own.
Jesus ends the parable with the father’s plea to enter, a welcome invitation to the elder brothers today who remain lost in the father’s house.
This article is adapted from an article Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006, and follows insights by Kenneth Bailey, Joachim Jeremias and other scholars.