The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries: From the Early Church to John Paul II

Thought.

1

Introduction

     Timothy Larsen

Such is the fame of the Sermon on the Mount that it seems almost redundant to stress its significance in this introduction. It is quite simply the most celebrated discourse by Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Word. The Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5–7 is widely considered to be the heart of Jesus’s teaching. Its influence runs through the centuries like a majestic river, giving life to new crops everywhere it goes. Indeed, so rich is this discourse that these claims could even be made for just a small portion of it. A volume such as this would still have a cornucopia to offer if its scope was confined, for example, to only the Lord’s Prayer or the Beatitudes. As Luke Timothy Johnson succinctly puts it, In the history of Christian thought—indeed in the history of those observing Christianity—the Sermon on the Mount has been considered an epitome of the teaching of Jesus and therefore, for many, the essence of Christianity.[1] In this book, we see some of the most influential Christian leaders and theologians from the early church to the present reflecting on this biblical encapsulation of the spirit of Christianity.

As was its predecessor in this series, Reading Romans through the Centuries,[2] this volume is based on the assumption that an ideal way to explore the history of Christian thought is as a conversation with Holy Scripture. Listening to Christians from different ages and different traditions speak about the same biblical passages is a particularly effective way to measure where they differ as well as—what for some of us is perhaps an even more important reminder—the many substantial things they share in common. It is also a promising way for us to learn from one another as we are challenged by what others stress that we have ignored, take seriously that we have evaded, and see clearly that we have glimpsed blurred.

Christian studies—like all areas of learning—is becoming increasingly fragmented into self-contained subdisciplines. The structure of this volume works against this unhelpful segregation and compartmentalization. These essays follow trajectories that inclusively draw together aspects of biblical studies, church history, historical theology, constructive theology, pastoral theology, spiritual and moral formation, and ethics. In any given chapter, one can witness how a figure in Christian history wrestled with the meaning of Scripture and—while being molded in some measure by their historical situatedness—went on to think theologically about the themes raised by Christ’s words and to implement a pastoral vision for moral formation in the light of them.

Toward this end, we have assembled a suggestive sequence of major Christian figures ranging from the early church to the present. Augustine is indisputably the most influential church father in the West, and John Chrysostom is a laudable representative of the East. Hugh of St. Victor, from that center of the renewal of biblical studies, provides a quintessentially medieval treatment of the Sermon on the Mount. A chapter exploring Dante and Chaucer also represents the millennium between the early church and the Reformation. These two preeminent authors remind us that the influence of the Sermon on the Mount extends well beyond theologians and ministers to permeate Western culture more generally—including some of the most exquisite heights of its literary canon. Two giants of the Protestant Reformation—Martin Luther and John Calvin—are here, while other Reformation traditions appear further downstream in the Anabaptist identity of John Howard Yoder and the Anglican identity of John R. W. Stott. John Wesley not only embodies a major Christian movement that arose in the eighteenth century, but also serves as a contrast to the Reformed identities of his neighbors in this volume. A chapter on Charles Haddon Spurgeon is an apt way to discover what the prince of preachers made of this greatest of all sermons. This leads on to the twentieth century and beyond. Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to shape profoundly theology and moral formation, decades after his death. Pope John Paul II and Leonardo Boff offer two contrasting (as well as sometimes similar) versions of modern Roman Catholic thought. The volume concludes with the international evangelicalism of the venerable John R. W. Stott who—at the time this is being written—is still active in ministry.

In other words, the diversity of the Christian tradition is well on display here. Indeed, this is underlined by the disquieting polemics of so many of these figures against the Christian identities of others in this volume. Luther, Calvin, and Spurgeon, for example, all provide examples of anti-Catholic rhetoric. The Baptist Spurgeon, himself a Calvinist, would have regretted Calvin’s attacks on the Anabaptists—a camp more fully represented by Yoder. Once again, however, the affinities are arguably what are truly surprising. Augustine teaches the deification of believers, a doctrine often thought to be uniquely Eastern. Spurgeon’s anti-Catholicism does not prevent him from appropriating Catholic medieval mysticism to an astonishing degree—making his reading of the Beatitudes much closer to that of Hugh of St. Victor than one would ever have imagined. Likewise, evangelicals might find Hugh of St. Victor’s elaborate scheme of interconnected sevens strangely appealing as they share with him a deep commitment to expounding Scripture with Scripture. Hugh’s work may best be viewed as a reverent reveling in intrabiblical exegesis. John Chrysostom’s resolute attack upon wealth reemerges in as different a context as the Methodism of Wesley—making one wonder what both the Eastern father and the evangelical pioneer would have thought of Boff’s unequivocal siding with the poor.

Inevitably, some basic challenges or choices in reading this biblical passage are perennial ones. One example of this is what to do about the absolutist language of some of Christ’s statements and demands. Many of the figures presented here, beginning with John Chrysostom and Augustine, affirm that the Sermon on the Mount is not an impossible ideal, but rather a genuine charge to all believers, while Calvin notably softens several points. A range of stances are taken on specific points, however. Many of the other figures in this volume, for example, would not read Christ’s words as demanding the thoroughgoing pacifism that Yoder challenges us to hear in them. Another issue is the relationship between law and gospel. Luther, of course, was attentive to this, and Wesley was particularly concerned to exclude both works-righteousness and antinomianism. Calvin insisted on the continuity of law and gospel, based on God’s unchanging character. Boff was quite willing to read the Sermon on the Mount as an affirmation of love in contrast to law, while Pope John Paul II emphasized that the law was not abolished but rather fulfilled in the gospel.

Such contrasts notwithstanding, much of the theological reflection offered in these chapters is complementary rather than competitive. One does not need to choose, for example, between Wesley’s emphasis on gracious holiness and Stott’s highlighting of Christian counter-culture. The counter-culture of a life of unceasing confrontation with the world is found in John Chrysostom and Augustine, in Luther and Calvin, as well in Bonhoeffer’s well-known warning against cheap grace. All of these comments are merely suggestive rather than exhaustive. The reader will no doubt wish to add to these lists of comparisons, contrasts, and complementary themes.

The genesis of this volume was a conference on the theme Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Classic Christian Resources for Moral Formation, held at Wheaton College (Illinois), in November 2005. We are grateful to everyone who participated in and helped with that conference. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Liz Klassen, graduate administrative assistant in the Biblical and Theological Studies Department. Not only did she serve as the conference secretary, but she also assisted us in the preparation of this manuscript. We are very grateful to the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, directed at the time by Lindy Scott, for providing the primary funding for the conference. Crucial additional funding was also kindly given by the following endowed chairs: Carl Armerding and Hudson T. Armerding, Blanchard Theology, Gunther H. Knoedler, and Carolyn and Fred McManis. Finally, additional funding was providing by the dean of humanities and theological studies, Dr. Jill Peláez Baumgaertner. In addition to her support for this specific project, each of us is thankful to Jill for her ongoing leadership and support of us as members of the department of biblical and theological studies. We dedicate this volume to her as an expression of our gratitude.

[1]. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Sermon on the Mount, in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, ed. Adrian Hastings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 654.

[2]. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen, eds., Reading Romans through the Centuries: From the Early Church to Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005).

2

John Chrysostom

     Margaret M. Mitchell

How did John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407) interpret the Sermon on the Mount? In one respect, one could say that he did not interpret the Sermon on the Mount, in that Chrysostom never devoted a separate treatment (homily, treatise, or commentary) to this literary composition.[1] But he does provide an exegesis and representation of those chapters as homilies 15–24 in his set of ninety sermons on the whole of Matthew’s Gospel. One could easily enough extract Chrysostom’s interpretation of this part of Matthew’s Gospel; but would that necessarily mean we were seeing Chrysostom’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, per se, as we think of it as a classic text of the Christian tradition in its own right? As I hope to show in this essay, we are justified in that inference, for in his interpretation of the Sermon, John is acutely aware of Matthew 5–7 being an oratorical or rhetorical unit, and he tries to find the structural clues to this most famous teaching discourse of Jesus within the speech itself. This is not just a matter of the literary unit, but also of genre. John interprets the Sermon on the Mount as a sermon, an integrated oral argument by Jesus, and—as one would expect from a late antique Christian orator who had had a rich rhetorical education from the greatest teacher of his day, Libanius—John is acutely attuned to the way in which Jesus has so carefully crafted each word of this masterpiece to maximal persuasive purpose.

In 170 pages of Greek text (in the Field edition of 1839) John Chrysostom[2] has some remarkable moments of intense emotion and profound admiration of the words of Jesus, exhibits keen exegetical insight and deep moral psychology of his own, and is responsible for some lengthy digressions and arresting visual comparisons (such as the Mosaic law compared to the breast from which babies are nourished and Jesus’s antitheses, which by the rhetorical form of synkrisis[3] move the law toward the solid food of adult moral engagement, said to be akin to the bitter salve a weaning mother smears on her breast to keep the child from turning back to it when words of persuasion are not sufficient).[4] Jesus in the antitheses (you have heard it said, but I say to you) is compared to the wise doctor who prescribes preventive treatments but also attends to the pathology when it erupts (hence, the prohibition of anger, in relation to the command against murder, is a prophylactic; the prescription to be reconciled with the neighbor is the medicine for the affliction which inevitably occurs at some point).[5] In speaking of prayer in relation to Matthew 6:33 (seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be added to you), John explores a set of biblical characters he regards as embodying the right approach to prayer (the Syro-Phoenician woman, the friend at night, the importunate widow, the prodigal son) and then calls on his congregation to go forth in prayer eukairōs akairōs (in a timely, nontimely fashion). He resolves the paradox of his own pun in this manner: prayer, like breathing, is never untimely.[6] Chrysostom’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount is furthermore a canonical interpretation, in that he continually seeks to show that Jesus’s teaching was echoed and affirmed also by Paul (the refrain kai ho Paulos occurs fully fifty times in the course of his exegesis of the Sermon).[7] And it very much bears the marks of Nicene Christology, as John explains that Jesus only appears to hide his divine nature for the sake of his hearers, Jews who might be offended if he were to name directly his relationship with the Father.[8] In this regard we should mention his derogatory characterization of Jews for their stubborn disobedience, vainglory, and murderous nature[9] and other moments of rather forced exegesis that quite overtly serve his contemporary purposes and biases (i.e., that Jesus’s words in Matt. 6:16 against putting on a gloomy face in fasting direct a lesson against women who disfigure their faces with makeup).[10] And no survey of his interpretation would be complete without highlighting the continual exhortative refrains of John’s own that show the pastor at work, such as the repeated call: Let us not consider that these commandments are impossible![11]

These few assorted examples will, I hope, serve as a sufficient reminder that John was interpreting the Sermon on the Mount in sermons of his own;[12] he sought not only to explicate these words as an exegetical task of decoding their meaning, but to repreach them, to issue forth the Sermon’s exhortations into his own context in the great city of Antioch in the 390s.[13] The utmost seriousness with which he takes this responsibility should not escape us. He sees his own eschatological salvation at stake in whether he presses his case urgently enough and can even envision with a shudder the possibility of his ultimate failure to repreach the Sermon on the Mount effectively: For none of the people who are rich now will protect me then, when I am indicted and accused of not having defended the laws of God with suitable vehemence.[14] At one point in his own sermon after inveighing against swearing oaths, his audience breaks into applause. John rebukes them by saying, This clapping for me is praise? If you praise what is said but do not do what you praise, then the punishment is greater, the accusation more severe, and for us it is shame and ridicule.[15]

But within his extended and multifaceted repreaching of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, I wish to demonstrate that Chrysostom works from and expounds an integrated sense of the overall purpose and import of Matthew 5–7. He understands the Sermon on the Mount as the foundational speech—now become the charter document—of the Christian politeia that constitutes the life of all Christians, who are called to a philosophical life lived always within an eschatological horizon. It is a logos peri politeias.[16] In the Sermon Jesus, through both protreptic and apotreptic rhetoric,[17] with a focus on the rewards and punishments of the future and those of the present, instructs (didaskein, paideuein) his disciples in the life-forms of a Christian philosophy, what he terms a greater philosophy (pleiōn philosophia) or the height of philosophy (akros philosophias).[18] Chrysostom’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in this way is fashioned by two major, prevailing concerns: his attention to the rhetorical composition of the Sermon (viewing Christ as, like Chrysostom himself, a skilled and deliberate speaker whose intent can be discovered through the akolouthia, or logical progression of the discourse)[19] and his apologetic concern to demonstrate that the Christian way of life is superior to all others in the history of humankind.

Chrysostom’s careful attention to the composition of the Sermon on the Mount can be seen immediately in his homily 15. He insists first that the placement and introduction Matthew has given to the mountaintop discourse (Matt. 5:1–2) are meant to demonstrate the integrated but dual-pronged ministry of Jesus both to heal bodies (sōmata therapeuein, as indicated in the summary statement about Jesus’s miracles in 4:23–24) and to correct souls (psychas diōrthoun, which is the essential purpose of the Sermon).[20] Jesus’s care for both body and soul explains a variegated ministry that combines, for maximal benefit (ōpheleia), the teaching of his words and the demonstrable proof from his deeds (anamignys tē tōn logōn didaskalia tēn apo tōn ergōn epideixin).[21] The rhetorical commonplace of logos/ergon (word/deed) is used by John not only to demonstrate consistency in the ministry of Jesus (i.e., he practiced what he preached), but also perhaps to draw a direct contrast that his own audience would recognize, but we might miss: between Plato and Jesus, for it was a commonplace that, while Apollo gave the power to heal souls to Plato, he gave the ability to heal bodies to Asclepius.[22] Christ bests both by combining philosopher and healer in a holistic ministry to save soul and body. (Full demonstration that this comparison may be in effect will be given below.)

As often in late antique Christian oratory, John seeks to fight on two fronts—against unbelievers and against heretical Christians. He claims that by this providential divine care (pronoia) of bodies and souls Jesus was proleptically muzzling the shameless mouths of the heretics (ta anaischynta tōn airetikōn emphrattōn stomata)[23] of John’s own day, whose ontological dualism denies the essential unity of the human person by attributing to God responsibility for only one half of the creature (the soul) and not the other (the body) (he has in mind Marcionites and possibly Manichees or Gnostics).

But this is a passing concern. John returns to the word/deed contrast when he confronts the introductory phrase in Matthew 5:2: kai anoixas to stoma autou edidasken autous. What we might regard as a Semitic pleonasm in Matthew (probably due to the Septuagint translation of such phrases as pṭ/p h ph with anoigein to stoma)[24] is for John an opportunity for more emphasis on this integrated psychology as the basis for human ethical conduct: Why did he [Matthew] add the phrase ‘and opening his mouth’? So that you might learn that even when silent Christ was teaching, not only when giving utterance, but at one time he teaches by opening his mouth, and at another by giving voice through his deeds.[25] So, for Chrysostom, the Sermon on the Mount is the open-mouthed portion of the teaching of Jesus.

It is at this point that John takes up for the first time what has always been and remains still one of the most famous hermeneutical cruxes of the Sermon on the Mount—to whom was it addressed, and hence for whom does its ethical guidelines apply? The exegetical issue for John is simply named: what is the antecedent of the pronoun autous in he was teaching them (edidasken autous)? The immediate context of Matthew 5:1 provides two possibilities: hoi ochloi (the crowds; cf. 7:28) or hoi mathētai (the disciples), who had approached Jesus after he went up onto the mountain and had taken a seat. John has a deft solution to what appears a difficult dichotomy, which he bases upon the educational elitism of his day. As often in these homilies, John’s rhetoric is cast in apotreptic form, warning his audience against what he takes to be a false or at least inadequate interpretation:

When you hear that he was teaching them, don’t think that he was speaking to the disciples alone, but also through them to all. For since the crowd was common folk [dēmōdes], and still composed of people who are dragged down to the ground,[26] by setting the chorus of the disciples as a foundation, he addresses his words to them. In his discourse to them he provides also to all the rest—who are greatly in need[27] of what was being said—instruction in philosophy [tēs philosophias hē didaskalia] which is not burdensome.[28]

John substantiates his interpretation that Jesus intentionally instituted a kind of two-tiered philosophical paideia by recourse to the introduction that Luke places on the Sermon on the Plain: And Jesus, after raising his eyes to his disciples, was saying, which John takes as a hint (ainittesthai) from the evangelist that he was diverting his teaching to them [i.e., the disciples].[29] Matthew was doing the same thing, John says, by his introduction (Matt. 5:1–2). Both evangelists in John’s eyes captured accurately Jesus’s own intention, that by this stratagem of focusing on the better-equipped disciples "the rest [hoi loipoi] would attend more fervently than if Jesus had extended his speech to them all."[30]

What John means by the philosophical instruction (tēs philosophias hē didaskalia) Jesus offers becomes clear in what follows. He asks a leading question that is at once exegetical and philosophical: "From where then does Jesus begin [pothen archetai],[31] and what sort of foundations [themelia] does he lay down for us for the new politeia [hē kainē politeia]?"[32] In one sense the question is about the prooimion to Jesus’s speech; in another it is about the cornerstone of the philosophical curriculum that he teaches. Before answering this crucial leading question, John enunciates two brief hermeneutical principles that readers of his vast corpus of writings will find immediately familiar: akousōmen meta akribeias tōn legomenōn (let us listen with precision to what is said) and eirētai men gar pros ekeinous, egraphē de kai dia tous meta tauta hapantas (for these things have been said to them, but they were written also for all those who come after).[33] The first methodological standard means that the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew must be read with absolute attention for exact details (akribeia), because that is the way in which it was composed.[34] John frequently insists that Jesus did not say anything haplōs (simply) or in any offhand fashion,[35] but chose his words with exquisite, deliberate care at each turn.

The second principle zeroes in on a third dimension of the exegetical chasm John had just sought to bridge (the speech was not directly to either the disciples or the crowds, but to all through the mediating role of the disciples). The transference of the Sermon from the oral to the written medium, John celebrates, brought about also a tremendous shift of audience. Spoken aloud, the Sermon had a particular set of historical auditors; once written, it stands as philosophical teaching for all those who live later. John finds this ecclesiological scriptural hermeneutic etched in the very words of the text, for the Matthean Beatitudes, written in the third person, pronounce not just the disciples blessed, but all in the future who fit the various designations (blessed are the poor in spirit). Perhaps because he remembers that the Lukan Beatitudes are in second person, John quickly corrects himself by saying that even if Jesus had said blessed are you, and so on, the meaning would still have accrued to all people in common down the ages, as it must for the final line of Matthew’s Gospel, spoken to the eleven disciples on a mountaintop once more: "Behold I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age" (28:20).[36] John finds confirmation of the principle of open addressees also in particular exegetical details of the Sermon itself, such as the blessing on the poor in spirit, which seems unnecessary as an exhortation to the disciples who, as lowly fishermen, unnotable and unskilled, would hardly need warning off from the braggadocio that is the opposite of tapeinophrosynē (humility): hē tapeinophrosynē philosophias hapasēs archē (humility is the beginning of all philosophy).[37] The clear explanation of this apparent anomaly, John thinks, is that Jesus said this with others in mind—both at that time and all who would come later—who might by life-position and achievements regard themselves too highly and hence needed to be persuaded to humility. Indeed, he says, Jesus even was speaking proleptically to the later state of the disciples in the success of their future mission years, after they had distinguished themselves by signs and wonders, worldly honor, and boldness before God and might be tempted to boast in their efforts. Hence the Sermon on the Mount is a speech spoken, and then written, with a simultaneous holographic eye on all times and circumstances in which it may pertain.

But what is the politeia that John imagines that Jesus fashioned here orally to be set down in written form for all generations? If we look at the full scope of Chrysostom’s homilies on Matthew’s Gospel, we can see that for John this politeia is a comprehensive vision of human life and society that has utterly vanquished every other option, in particular that of Plato’s famous Republic (in Greek, Politeia). For proof of this contention we must go back to the first homily in the set of homiliae in Matthaeum. John begins his treatment of Matthew’s Gospel by taking on the apologetic task, necessitated both by anti-Christian polemic[38] and heretical Christian complaint that the four canonical gospels vary from one another. John seeks to turn that apparent deficit into proof of their veracity, by insisting that the extent to which the four agree with one another is unaccountable proof that they gave true testimony to the same historical events. John allows that there is variability in wording and expression (mē rhēmata ta auta . . . eipein, kai tropous lexeōn), but insists this does not amount to discord (diaphōnia) or contradiction. It is at this point that he offers, by way of paraleipsis (pretended omission), a rhetorical comparison (synkrisis) with the unruly canon of Greek philosophical writings, which can hardly live up to the expectation of complete accord:

And I have not yet mentioned that the men who are so greatly celebrated for rhetorical and philosophical prowess [hoi mega epi rhētorikē kai philosophia kompazontes], when they wrote so many books about the same topics [polloi polla biblia grapsantes peri tōn autōn pragmatōn], also disagreed, not only incidentally, but they even spoke in contradictory fashion to one another [ou monon haplōs diephōnēsan, alla kai enantiōs allēlois eipon].[39] Now, it is one thing to say something in different words, and another to engage in a war of words [kai gar heteron esti diaphorōs eipein, kai machomenous eipein]! But may I not compose a defense from the madness of those philosophers [ek tēs ekeinōn paranoias], since I certainly do not wish to establish what is true from what is false.

Having introduced and then dropped the comparison for the moment, John goes on to rejoice in the triumph of the Christian gospel in his time, issuing a giddy declaration of the paradoxical success of worldwide Christianity in the late fourth century (indeed, remember, he is speaking in the very years in which Theodosius I was promulgating laws against traditional cults and rites):

For, after they composed the gospels, they did not bury them in a single corner, but they were spread out everywhere on land and sea by the ears of all. And even in the presence of enemies these things were being read, just as is the case even now, and none of the things said was a stumbling block to anyone. And that is rightly so. For a divine power was attending all and ensuring success in all ventures. Since if this were not the case, how was it that the tax collector, and the fisherman, and men who were illiterate were teaching a philosophy of such caliber [epei ei mē touto ēn, pōs ho telōnēs, kai ho alieus, kai ho agrammatos toiauta ephilosophei]? For that which the outsiders could not ever have imagined, not even in a dream, that is what these very men proclaim and persuade with such assurance [tauta houtoi meta pollēs tēs plērophorias kai apangellousi kai peithous]—and not only when living, but also after they died. Not 22 men, nor 100, or 1,000 or 10,000s, but cities and nations and peoples, both land and sea, both Greek and barbarian, both civilized and uninhabited territories.[40]

So, John claims, the gospel has converted all of humanity. But what was the philosophical message brought by these unlikely apostolic envoys?

They spoke about matters that very much transcend our nature [kai peri pragmatōn sphodra tēn hēmeteran hyperbainontōn physin]. For having left the earth, they discoursed entirely about matters in heaven [tēn gar gēn aphentes, panta peri tōn en ouranois dialegontai], introducing another life [hetera zōē] to us and another lifestyle [bios allos], both wealth and poverty, freedom and slavery, life and death, cosmos and politeia, everything transformed [kai ploutos kai penia, kai eleutheria kai douleia, kai zōē kai thanatos, kai kosmos kai politeia, panta exēllagmena].[41]

At this point John brings the full force of the synkrisis to bear:

Not like Plato, who composed that ridiculous politeia [ou kathaper Platōn, ho tēn katagelaston ekeinēn politeian syntheis], and Zeno, and anyone else who wrote a politeia [kai Zēnōn, kai ei tis heteros politeian egrapsen], or laid down laws [ē nomous synethēken]. Indeed, inadvertently these men were showing that an evil spirit and some wild demon combats against our nature and is an enemy of moderate behavior, one who battles against good order; doing everything from start to finish, he resounded in their soul. For when they make wives common to all,[42] and stripping virgins naked they lead them to the palaestra before the eyes of men,[43] and they confirm clandestine marriages, mixing and shaking up everything together, and overturning the boundaries of nature, what else can one say? . . . And, mind you, these things came not with