to be a restricting and
pharisaical creed rather than a liberating
For he has a hard core of enlightened social philosophy without fellow-feeling for the political Brahmins of the now
Pharisaical Congress".
In sum, the new Marxists are the high-minded moralists of the old
pharisaical creed with a penchant for self-dissimulation; clairvoyant prophets, denouncing "greed, corruption, and power-mongering of the present, warning us that unless we change our ways we might well have no future at all," yet apparently without an inkling of sound economic theory or a cogent solution for the current financial crisis (66-67).
Switzerland:
Pharisaical (in the biblical sense of arrogant or vain), and also, neither the prettiest of people, nor the wittiest.
Ironically enough, liberalism, with its respect to human beings, is rooted in Christianity despite the denial of such roots among liberals themselves and contrary to the
pharisaical dogmatism of Christian fundamentalists, but this is too high mathematics even for the majority of 'Christian' philosophers.
Furthermore, the righteousness of the disciples must exceed
Pharisaical measures (5:20).
In her latest book, she turns her attention to Winthrop and his contemporaries (some of the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony), focusing less on their
pharisaical foibles than their emphasis on education and attention to detail--virtues that Vowell feels today's America lacks.
(...) my task is to get rid of the last vestiges of a
Pharisaical division between the sacred and the secular, and to see that the whole world is reconciled to God in Christ, not just the monastery, nor only the convents, the churches, and the good Catholic schools." Dancing in the Water of Life.
48: "the Orthodox
Pharisaical Judaism to which Paul belonged").
Therefore, Christ makes it a topic so that he may admonish that this
pharisaical teaching is below standard, "Moreover, I say to you, you shall not swear at all." In what way?
Furthermore, the traditional--and laudable--Baptist determination to keep church and state separate can, when applied to the conduct of Christians in the White House, become a painfully
pharisaical matter of splitting hairs in order to quarantine one aspect of a believer's life from the ethical demands that Jesus makes of his disciples.
I regret to recall that my not-always-subliminal attitude vis-a-vis fellow missionaries sometimes bordered on the
pharisaical (see Luke 18:9-14).
Rabelais extends such mundane chiding to the level of scathing satire against the
pharisaical attitudes personified in the haute dame de Paris.
Comment: Too many in the church - not all - are more concerned about the
pharisaical "essentials" - looking spiritual, keeping rules, throwing stones - than rolling up their sleeves and doing the gritty but loving work of Jesus.
