Penance names an act or practice that is an acknowledgment of one’s sins and an attempt to make amends. Although no amount of penance can make amends for offenses against God, God nonetheless accepts the penitential efforts of human beings and in his grace and mercy offers them forgiveness. Penance is meant to be transformative for the sinner, as it is an opportunity to grow closer to God. Among Christians, penance has been regarded as part of the conversion to living a more Christoform life. Penance is a persistent theme throughout all of Scripture, and the penitential acts and practices in the Bible include, among other things, the rending of garments, the wearing of sackcloth and ashes, fasting, weeping, confessing sins, prayer, almsgiving, and bearing suffering well.
Old Testament
The OT contains many instances of penance, performed by individuals and by entire peoples. Penance is often indicated by the signs that were also associated with mourning; in particular, the wearing of sackcloth and ashes indicates sorrow for sin and for the temporal punishment of sin. These penitential acts demonstrated repentance from sin and sorrow for its consequences.
The OT Historical Books provide several examples of kings performing penitential acts, often on behalf of their people. King Ahab, when confronted by Elijah about his sins and impending punishment from God, rends his clothes, fasts, and dons sackcloth (1 Kgs. 21:27; see also 2 Kgs. 19:1). Following his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah, King David responds to Nathan’s confrontation by confessing, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13). David fasts, hoping to avert the punishment foretold by Nathan, and Ps. 51 exhibits David’s repentance in poetic form as he prays for forgiveness from his sin. Likewise, when he sins by taking a census of the people Israel against the will of God, David confesses the sin and asks for God’s mercy. He and the elders are described as clothed in sackcloth as they pray for the deliverance of Jerusalem (1 Chr. 21:16).
Penance by an entire people is beautifully described in the book of Jonah. When called to repentance, the Ninevites don sackcloth and ashes, proclaim a fast, and pray to God for his forgiveness (Jon. 3:5-8). As a group, they desire to make amends for their sins and together perform outward penitential acts as a testimony to this commitment. The people of Israel are also frequently
depicted as participating in penitential acts. In Nehemiah, they are described as fasting and in sackcloth, with earth upon their heads, confessing their sins (Neh. 9:1-2; see also Esth. 4:1-3). Prophets such as Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel call for the repentance of the Hebrew people as a group (Jer. 26:3, 12; Ezek. 18:30; Hos. 14:1).
New Testament
Although the NT contains numerous references to acts of penance, the word penance itself does not occur. However, the Greek noun metanoia (verb, metanoeo), which indicates a turning away from something, is usually translated as “repent,” as in both Jesus’ and John the Baptist’s calls for repentance (Matt. 3:2, 8; 4:17; Mark 1:15). Metanoia highlights the interior dimension of penitential acts. Penance is not meant to be merely exterior; in fact, this is criticized by Jesus (see Matt. 6:16; Luke 18:10-14; cf. Isa. 58:1-7; Joel 2:13). At the same time, however, external acts of penance continue into the NT. Jesus warns against doing penitential acts hypocritically (giving alms, praying, fasting), but he does not proscribe such acts (Matt. 6:2-18). When questioned about why his disciples do not fast, Jesus replies that they will fast when he is taken away from them (Mark 2:18-20 pars.). Indeed, the book of Acts contains several examples of fasting (Acts 9:9; 13:2; 14:23), as well as almsgiving (Acts 10:2-4, 31). Although such acts are not always penitential, there is often a connection, as indicated by Did. 15.5-7.
The penitential act of confessing sins again connects the interior and exterior, this time by external verbalization of one’s internal identification of sin. Those baptized by John the Baptist are described as “confessing their sins” (Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:5). This is echoed in Acts, as new believers “confessed and disclosed their practices” (Acts 19:18). Hence, it is not merely that exterior acts of penance must be matched by a fitting interior disposition but also that interior metanoia must be matched by embodied acts of penance, such as verbalizing one’s sins or any of the acts named above.
In Imitation of Christ
Acts of penance in the Christian tradition are to be done in imitation of Christ, in such a manner that unites sinners’ penitential suffering with the passion of Christ. By undertaking penance, the sinner and the entire church seek to be converted to a more Christoform life. Sins ordinarily turn the sinner away from God, while acts of penance use sins as a way for the sinner to return to God and grow closer to God.
See also Confession; Penitence; Practices; Repentance
Bibliography
Anderson, G. “Redeem Your Sins by the Giving of Alms.” Letter and Spirit 3 (2007): 39—69; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 85.
Maria C. Morrow
The word penitence (from Lat. paenitentia, “regret”) refers to remorse for wrongdoing or sin, and commitment to change one’s actions or life, via objective, disciplinary practices.
Penitence is thickly intertwined with Christianity. The call to repentance is a major theme in the Christian Scriptures. Yet, the shape of penitence throughout most of Christian history differs significantly from the scriptural witness. To relate penitence and Christian ethics today requires looking anew at penitence in Scripture.
In Scripture
Two terms convey repentance in the OT: naham and sub. The word naham, whose root means “to breathe strongly,” translates as “pity, compassion, grief, regret, comfort”; sub means “to turn, return, be restored.” Thus, in the OT repentance refers to fully embodied, affective acts of the whole person, a sense captured in the penitential psalms (Pss. 6; 32; 38; 51; 102; 130; 143). Here, repentance is bodily, evoking illness and mourning. Beyond remorse, penitence connotes voluntary concrete actions that enact bodily punishment and publicly signal the authenticity of repentance. Both
individuals and groups “proclaim a fast” (e.g., 2 Chr. 20:3) and “repent in sackcloth and ashes” (e.g., Job 42:6; Jon. 3:5). The endpoint is a return to the Lord (Deut. 30:2).
Although Genesis is rife with sin, conflict, and intrigue, actual remorse or penitence enters the story only with the Mosaic covenant and the complex practice of sin offering (Exod. 29:14-46; see also Leviticus; Deuteronomy). The first sin for which atonement must be made is Israel’s sin against the Lord at the foot of Mount Sinai (Exod. 32). The nature of this first repented sin is key: idolatry. Personal, individual sin certainly is present in the OT, but most calls for repentance concern Israel’s turning toward other gods. Most acts of penitence follow a call to the people of Israel to “re-turn,” as a people, to(ward) God, and to turn toward a different way of life, living as members of the people of God (Lev. 5:5; 1 Kgs. 8:47-48; 2 Chr. 6:37-38; Ezek. 14:6; Jeremiah; Hosea).
Idolatry, although committed by individuals (e.g., Solomon in 1 Kgs. 11), is understood
primarily as a sin of the people of Israel as a whole and penitence a corporate act (Ezek. 18:30). The sin offering in the Levitical code is largely a corporate penitential practice, conducted by the priest for individuals’ sins but also for the general sinfulness of the priest and the people (the Ninevites extend penitence even to the animals [Jon. 3:8]).
The NT continues these themes, with some shifts. The Greek verb metanoeo derives from the roots meta (“with, after, behind”) and noeo (“to perceive with the mind, understand”) and suggests a sense of changing one’s mind, captured in Paul’s phrase about having “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). The Greek verb epistrepho connotes particularly a return to the worship of God or conversion. From the beginning of the Gospels, the hearers of the prophetic proclamation are urged, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; cf. Mark 1:15). The audience—the people of Israel—is called to return to God; later, the gentiles are called to become part of that people in the church. This call to repentance reverberates throughout the NT. Penitential acts, however, are scarce (except perhaps the woman who anoints Jesus with oil [Luke 7:36-50]), for the ultimate penitential act, the sin offering, has been made in Christ. The task of the Christian and the ekklesia is less to engage in penitence than to live as (a member of) Christ’s body. The Christian and the church are called to turn their minds—that is, their whole self, their life together—toward the one true God by living as God’s people.
Tradition and History
Yet, turning one’s whole mind, self, and life toward God proved as difficult for the early church, and throughout the rest of the Christian tradition, as it did for Israel. At particular issue was apostasy under persecution (a form of idolatry): can one who has publicly renounced faith in Christ return to God’s people? Some said no (the Dona-tists), while others said only after rigorous penance (Augustine), and then only once (Tertullian). Thus, in the second century penitential practices emerged (also for murder and adultery) designed to test and reshape the sinner’s allegiances; they were imposed by church authorities and could extend over a period of years. To sin was to worship falsely; penitence required public demonstration of repentance and willingness to live as a Christian in order to be admitted again to true wor-ship—that is, participation in the sacrament of Communion.
With Constantine, the identity of the church as a distinct people of God becomes ambiguous and the function of penitential practices shifts.
Christianity and penitence become almost coextensive. Penitence loses its corporate character and its link to idolatry, focusing on individual penitence for individual sins. First within monastic communities, then through the practice of auricular confession beginning in the fifth century, penitence becomes the primary mode of Christian practice for laity. Formative, punitive, and expiatory penitential practices remain extensive in rigor and time, resulting in infrequent reception of the Eucharist by the laity. The relationship between penitence and money contributes to the Reformation and Protestant rejection of penance as a sacrament (though certainly not a rejection of penitence itself). The Catholic Counter-Reformation reemphasizes the connection between penitence, the Eucharist, and the Christian moral life in creating the discipline of moral theology (Mahoney).
Penitence and Christian Ethics
Beyond Lenten observance, penitence today is largely suspect as repressive, body-denying, or an expression of works-righteousness. Yet Scripture’s constant call to turn away from false gods remains relevant, and the tradition’s connection between penitential practices and renewed living suggests that penitence is important for Christian ethics both intellectually and practically.
1. Primary questions of Christian ethics are these: Which artifacts of culture (democracy, money, medicine) have become false gods? Which specters (terrorism, death) are worshiped, even if that worship is manifested as fear?
2. Christian ethics becomes a form of grieving for the sin of idolatry and corollary sins (violence, injustice, etc.) committed in service of false gods. It names the sins, laments, and prophetically calls Christians and the church to repent.
3. Following Scripture, Christian ethics maintains that right worship is the point of the Christian life, and that right living, wisdom, and right discernment are of a piece with right worship with being a member of God’s people.
4. Following the Christian tradition, Christian ethics highlights how centuries-old practices of penitence form critical skills: confession is training in truthfulness, naming false gods is training in seeing a situation in new ways, doing penance (e.g., fasting) trains bodies to detach from participation in practices that serve false gods that are clamoring for our attention.
See also Confession; Idolatry; Liturgy and Ethics; Penance; Practices; Repentance; Sin
Bibliography
Hauerwas, S., and S. Wells, eds. The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Blackwell, 2006, 1-50, 95-109; Mahoney, J. The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1987.
M. Therese Lysaught
Scripture presents tensions regarding notions of moral and religious perfection. On the one hand, many texts emphasize the inability of humans to live free from sin. For example, 1 Kgs. 8:46 states plainly, “There is no one who does not sin” (cf. Eccl. 7:20; Lam. 3:39). The NT picks up on this theme in Rom. 3:23 (“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”) and 1 John 1:8 (“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”). Such verses suggest that sinless perfection may be impossible for humans.
On the other hand, several texts command the imitation of God, implying that humans should at least attempt some level of godlike perfection. In Lev. 19:2, God decrees, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Likewise, in Matt. 5:48, Jesus tells the crowds, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Throughout the ages, interpreters have wrestled with whether and how individuals might be able to obey such commandments in light of human sinfulness.
Many within the Reformed tradition maintain that, although one should strive toward sinless perfection, it is not possible in this life. Others, such as John Wesley, argue that a degree of perfection can be received as a gift of divine grace. Wesley agrees with Reformers that achieving absolute perfection is impossible on earth. Yet, he stresses that humans could be perfected in the sense that love reigns in their hearts and they avoid voluntary transgressions against known laws of God. The early church voiced arguments similar to both the Reformers (e.g., Augustine) and Wesley (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa).
Biblical notions of perfection differ in some respects from modern conceptions. Both the Hebrew words related to the root tmm and the Greek words related to telos have areas of semantic overlap with the English perfection, but their basic meaning is “completion.” Thus, the OT uses words from tmm in reference to the completion of different types of actions (e.g., Josh. 3:17) and to the type of sacrifice that God expects—one “without defect” (e.g., Exod. 12:5). When the OT uses these words in reference to morality, it refrains from calling specific characters “complete” or “perfect,” save a few notable exceptions (e.g., Noah, David, Job). Psalms and Proverbs speak on generic levels of those who are “complete,” associating them with the “upright” (ysr [e.g., Ps. 37:37]) and the “righteous” (sdq [e.g., Prov. 20:7]), in contrast to those who are “crooked” (qs [e.g., Prov. 28:18]). The OT suggests that “completeness of the heart” (tm-lbb) may not necessarily entail sinless perfection (Gen. 20:4-6; 1 Kgs. 9:4).
Greek words related to telos also have to do with “completion.” Many texts using these words speak of the completion of either an activity (e.g., Luke 2:39) or a period of time (e.g., Matt. 24:6). When applied in the ethical sphere, these words can refer to the final goal, outcome, purpose, or result of one’s actions. As Rom. 6:22 puts it, “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end [telos] is eternal life.” These words can also refer to moral maturity and completeness. Thus, in 1 Cor. 14:20, Paul admonishes his readers not to be “children” (paidia) in their thinking but rather to be “mature” (teleioi) (cf. Heb. 5:12-6:1).
Given the emphasis on human sinfulness in Scripture, the qualifications that Wesley and others have placed on the type of ethical perfection they envision, and the differences between biblical terms and modern conceptions of perfection, it may be useful to abandon the language of “perfection” while retaining the biblical concepts of tmm and telos, understood in the senses of “completeness,” “maturity,” and “integrity.”
Indeed, in recent times many have been reluctant to embrace different types of perfection. Psychologically, the quest for perfection in oneself and others often is seen as problematic. In her study of the emotions, Martha Nussbaum denounces ideals of perfection both as unattainable and as failing to do justice to human contingency and frailty. Regarding medical genetics, Joel Shuman raises concerns about modernist notions of perfection that drive technological and scientific progress. Philosophically, Kenneth Burke characterizes humanity as “rotten with perfection,” showing how individuals seek to perfect the negative (e.g., Hitler’s characterization of Jews as the perfect enemy). Although many ethical systems retain a teleological focus, the quest for human perfection in this life frequently meets with skepticism.
See also Eschatology and Ethics; Holiness; Sanctification; Sin; Teleological Theories of Ethics; Wesleyan Ethics
Bibliography
Bounds, C. “The Doctrine of Christian Perfection in the Apostolic Fathers.” WesTJ 42 (2007): 7-27; Burke, K. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. University of California Press, 1966; Gregory of Nyssa. “On Perfection.” Pages 93-124 in Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works. FC 58. Catholic University of America Press, 1967; Nussbaum, M. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Press, 2001; Schlimm, M. “The Puzzle of Perfection: Growth in John Wesley’s Doctrine of Perfection.” WesTJ 38 (2003): 124-42; Shuman, J. “Desperately Seeking Perfection: Christian Discipleship and Medical Genetics.” Christian Bioethics 5 (1999): 139-53; Wesley, J. “Christian Perfection” [Sermon 40]. Pages 97-124 in Sermons U: 34—70, ed. A. Outler. Vol. 2 of The Works of John Wesley, ed. A. Outler et al. Bicentennial ed. Abingdon, 1985; idem. “Thoughts on Christian Perfection.” Pages 283-97 in John Wesley: A Representative Collection of His Writings, ed. A. Outler. LPT. Oxford University Press, 1964.
Matthew R. Schlimm
Persecution occurs when a group or individual inflicts physical, emotional, or social suffering on another individual or group because of who they are or what they believe. The biblical witness both describes the persecution of people(s) and prescribes warning and encouragement to its readers who are in the midst of persecution or may face it in the future. Most occurrences of persecution in the OT concern Israel and the persecution that they experienced as a nation or as faithful individuals at the hand of enemies. The OT writings present this persecution in two ways: as an impetus for God to show mercy (Judg. 2:18; 1 Sam. 9:16) and as a means for God to enact judgment (Neh. 9:27; Lam. 1:4-5). Persecution is also a common complaint of the prophets (Jer. 15:15) and psalmists (Pss. 10:2; 119:84-86, 150) who seek God’s deliverance and comfort. The Second Temple texts 1-4 Maccabees recount the terrible persecution of the Jewish people under Antiochus Epiphanes (see especially 2 Macc. 6-7). The book of 4 Maccabees in particular defends the value of faithfulness in persecution, attributing virtue to those who suffer it willingly (5:22-23; 6:16-19; 10:10-11).
In the NT, persecution is presented in a variety of ways. The Gospels depict the persecution that Jesus would face, detailing it in Jesus’ predictions of his death (Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; John 5:16) and in the passion accounts. The NT also records the persecution of the early church, at the hand of the preconversion Paul (Acts 9:1-2; 22:4-5; 1 Cor. 15:9) and other authorities (Acts 8:1; 11:9; 13:50; 20:22-23; 1 Thess. 1:6-7; 3:2-4, 7; 2 Tim. 3:10-12; Heb. 10:32-33; Rev. 1:9).
Jesus’ teaching about persecution serves as a warning to his disciples, who would face trials because of their faith (Matt. 10:23; Luke 11:49-50; 21:12; John 15:18-21; 16:33), and as a comfort for those who would endure suffering for God (Matt. 5:10-12). Perhaps the most radical teaching that Jesus hands down concerning persecution is in Matt. 5:44: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Paul, in his apostolic encouragement to the churches, wrote stirring accounts of his own persecution in order to inspire believers to stand strong and endure persecution and hardships (Rom. 5:3-5; 8:35; 2 Cor. 1:6; 12:9-10). The overall NT message about persecution focuses on exhorting believers to persevere under persecution and concentrate on the benefits of suffering for Christ (Acts 14:22; 2 Thess. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:8; 2:3; 4:5; 1 Pet. 5:8-10).
Persecution has plagued the church since its inception. From the Jewish persecution of the earliest believers to the oppression of Christians under communist regimes, Christianity has always experienced suffering at the hands of persecuting authorities, largely because minority groups are easy to target. However, when Christianity has not been the minority, it often has turned from persecuted into persecutor, inflicting suffering on various religious groups, especially Jews, and even on its own members. This ethical injustice is not supported by the NT message about persecution, but may stem from the OT portrayal of God using persecution as a way to judge or discipline Israel. When Christians, whether corporately or individually, act as self-appointed judges of other religions or peoples and persecute on behalf of God, they corrupt the central message of the Bible and misrepresent the person of Jesus, who endured persecution and instructed his followers to persevere in righteous suffering, not prescribe or inflict it.
See also Cruciformity; Martyrdom; Suffering Bibliography
Frend, W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. Baker, 1981.
Jennifer Garcia Bashaw
The Epistle of 1 Peter presents a banquet of ethical material, with numerous ethical admonitions and injunctions concerning issues such as household codes, Christian identity and lifestyle in a pagan society, and deference to the state. But it would be a mistake to see this epistle as simply an inchoate reservoir of ethical teachings. In fact, these ethical materials are signposts that lead to recognizing a coherent intentionality in the epistle. First Peter is an example of wisdom literature. It is written to shape the character of beleaguered Christian communities in northern Asia Minor, to encourage practical dependence on God, displaying his holy and gracious character through deepening expressions of love in the community and sustaining moral integrity toward those outside.
First Peter is an example of a paraenetic epistle, a prominent form of wisdom literature in the Greco-Roman philosophical schools. As an integrated piece of wisdom, it combines the ethical materials mentioned above with other themes that provide an intellectual context and affective motivations for considered moral action. For example, the typical wisdom theme of the “two ways” is prominent in 1 Peter, especially as related to the dichotomy of preconversion life (denigrated as “futile” in 1:18) and postconversion life (characterized by purity, love, obedience, and incorruptibility in 1:14-23). In addition, the Christology of the epistle is almost exclusively devoted to portraying Jesus as an exemplar of one who, out of reverent devotion to God, courageously maintained his moral integrity in the face of unjust suffering (2:21-25). This shaping of Christology to contextualize and motivate moral action is typical of the theology of the epistle as a whole, which is organized according to pragmatic more than systematic concerns. Theology serves the purpose of wisdom—to orient communal life toward a world where a righteous “way of life” (anastrophe) is comprehensible, laudable, and desirable. Whether in Christology, eschatology (1:13), or the new birth (1:3), doctrinal teaching moves immediately to practical implication and serves the paraenetic
wisdom agenda of shaping communal life in its
concreteness.
First Peter is addressed to Christian churches under threat, ostracized for their distinct beliefs and lifestyle and for their lack of conformity to normative social practices. Experiencing the pain of social rejection and alienation, they are simultaneously tempted toward conformity, isolation, and retaliation. It is in this context that the author encourages these churches to retain
their Christian identity and to continue to “do good.” To many this call to do good has seemed a strange response to persecution, but for our author, the greatest challenge of suffering is not despondency but vice. The moral challenges of suffering, the corruption of character and corporate life, the temptations to vengeance, isolation, and selfishness are the main targets that the author has in view in writing to these careworn Anatolian churches. So it is not surprising that from the start (1:6) the author interprets their persecutions through the image of a refining fire (another archetypal wisdom theme). In this way, sufferings have the potential of becoming a means of salvation (1:9), producing a strengthened faith that is worth more than gold (1:7). This process, however, is not automatic. Suffering has the power to refine character only when it is met with actions that reflect both the holiness and hospitality of God.
Social persecution is a dangerous challenge to the corporate identity and distinctive lifestyle of these Christian communities. The defining and retention of corporate identity is thus a key component in the author’s agenda. Incorporating images from the OT, the author defines corporate identity in terms of the electing love of God. They are a people chosen by God, a people defined by the fact that they have been shown mercy (2:9-10). Their identity arises not from themselves or from the surrounding culture but from the free love of God. Their lives, corporate and individual, are defined by this reality. The consequence of this is that they are social aliens and exiles (2:11)—a distinct society but not separate unto itself, a community that is recognizably different but not hostile, possessing what has been called “soft difference” (Volf). It is out of this unique identity, as a community called by God, that their new life of righteousness that reflects the character of God receives its form and impetus.
See also Eschatology and Ethics; Government; Household Codes; New Testament Ethics; Persecution; Suffering; Vice; Vices and Virtues, Lists of; Virtue(s)
Bibliography
Achtemeier, P. J. 1 Peter. Hermeneia. Fortress, 1996; Dryden, J. Theology and Ethics in 1 Peter: Paraenetic Strategies for Christian Character Formation. WUNT 2/209. Mohr Sie-beck, 2007; Green, J. B. 1 Peter. THNTC. Eerdmans, 2007; Volf, M. “Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation between Church and Culture in 1 Peter.” Ex auditu 10 (1994): 15-30.
J. de Waal Dryden
Like 1 Peter, this epistle adopts the modes of ancient paraenetic epistles and offers wisdom to a Christian community at a perilous crossroads. The nascent danger is false teachers leading the community away from the apostolic faith. But, perhaps surprisingly, this danger is defined in almost exclusively moral terms. The false teachers are “creatures of instinct” (2:12), who “have eyes full of adultery” and “hearts trained in greed” (2:14). Here, as elsewhere in the NT, heterodoxy and heteropraxis are two sides of the same coin, distinguishable but inseparable. Where one is present, the other is assumed. So while these false teachers are denounced as “ignorant blasphemers” (2:12), the emphasis of the epistle is on the moral threat that they pose, having the ability to “entice unsteady souls” (2:14).
The author’s main agenda is not merely to protect the church from false teachers but to lead them in a path of flourishing, where their faith produces recognizable fruits of righteousness and love. This is why the body of the letter begins with its stair-stepping catalog of virtues in 1:5-7: faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. The chief aim of the epistle is the inculcation of these (and other) Christian virtues as a means of and a sign of growth and maturity in Christian character (Charles). The false teachers are an obstacle to this process of sanctification and are denounced as such.
Typical of ancient paraenetic literature, the concern in 2 Peter is with the process of maturation (what the Stoics called prokope), the author using rhetorical techniques that foster the adoption of virtues and the repudiation of vices—for example, the rhetorical strategy of the “two ways,” a staple in ancient wisdom literature. In this epistle we have a host of such contrasts. The false teachers, who deceive and corrupt, are contrasted with the apostles, who have given a true witness of Christ that leads to righteousness and glory. The false teachers are associated with archetypal evil characters from the OT, like Balaam, while those who remain faithful to Christ are identified with archetypal characters of faith, like Noah, “a herald of righteousness” (2:5). The false teachers are “waterless springs” (2:17) that lead to destruction, whereas faithfulness to the apostolic witness leads to the “new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness is at home” (3:13). The point of these contrasts is to clarify choices. The author exposes the magnitude of the disparity between them and the apostolic faith in order to force a choice between the two; it is no longer possible to befriend both. In this way, the author safeguards this community from a lethal danger to its progress in the faith.
See also Eschatology and Ethics; New Testament Ethics; Vice; Vices and Virtues, Lists of; Virtue(s)
Bibliography
Bauckham, R. Jude, 2 Peter. WBC 50. Word, 1983; Charles, J. Virtue amidst Vice: The Catalog of Virtues in 2 Peter 1. JSNTSup 150. Sheffield Academic Press, 1997; Green, G. Jude and 2 Peter. BECNT. Baker Academic, 2008.
J. de Waal Dryden
Philemon is both the shortest of Paul’s letters and the only one in which, primarily, just one person is addressed. Philemon was the patron of a house church (probably in Colossae), a man well known by Paul, and perhaps one of the apostle’s own converts (v. 19). The letter, written from prison in an unnamed location, is an appeal on behalf of Philemon’s slave Onesimus, who has wronged his master in some unspecified way. There is no evidence to support the traditional view that he was a fugitive from Philemon’s household who subsequently was confined in the same prison from which Paul was writing. Yet somehow the two were in touch during the apostle’s imprisonment, and he converted Onesimus to the gospel (v. 10).
There is no deliberate theological exposition or argumentation in this letter, and the theological grounding of the appeal to Philemon must be largely inferred. The inferences, however, are not difficult to draw. Paul addresses Philemon, first of all, not as the master of Onesimus but as his (the apostle’s) friend and co-worker (v. 1), the patron of a house church (v. 2), and a person who has shown “love for all the saints” and “faith toward the Lord Jesus” (v. 5; cf. v. 7). When, therefore, Paul goes on to say that his appeal to Philemon is made “on the basis of love” (v. 9), presumably he is thinking both of God’s love that elicits faith and the love through which that faith is actualized in the lives of believers (see Gal. 5:6 NRSV mg.), like Philemon himself.
It is specifically the circulation of love within the believing community (the koinonia of faith [v. 6]) that is on view here. Throughout, Paul uses kinship terms to describe the relationships that bind the members of this community together: Paul’s conversion of Onesimus makes the apostle his “father” and the convert a “son” (v. 10); Timothy is “the brother” (v. 1) and Apphia is “the sister” (v. 2); Philemon is not only Paul’s “beloved friend,” “co-worker,” and “partner [koinonos]” (vv. 1, 17) but also his “brother” (vv. 7, 20); and Paul hopes that Philemon will regard Onesimus as a “beloved brother,” even as he himself does (v. 16). At several important points in the letter the phrases “in Christ” (vv. 8, 20), “in the Lord” (vv. 16, 20), and “in Christ Jesus” (v. 23) identify the sphere within which this whole network of relationships exists and is sustained.
The content of Paul’s appeal for Onesimus (vv. 9-10) is not provided in the form of a directive until v. 17: “So if you [Philemon] consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.” The convert, Onesimus, is to be accepted as a partner in the faith, “no longer as a slave” but as a “beloved brother,” both in the workaday world and in the community of faith (“both in the flesh and in the Lord”) (v. 16). Above all, the apostle wants to bring about reconciliation between these men, and he well understands that this will require a complete transformation of their relationship, even if their legal relationship as slave and master remains unchanged. But also, Paul strongly hints that when Philemon has accepted Onesimus as a Christian brother, he should allow him to resume his ministry, now on Philemon’s behalf, with the imprisoned apostle (v. 13).
Paul writes with the authority of an apostle; he is “bold enough in Christ to command” (v. 8), and he expects Philemon’s “obedience” (v. 21). Yet, his appeal is not based on this authority. He neither confronts Philemon with apostolic demands nor invokes the teaching of Jesus or the words of Scripture about mercy and compassion. He bases his appeal, rather, on the love that is constitutive of Christian community, through which its members are partners “in Christ” and brothers and sisters in the family of faith. Because reconciliation cannot be coerced, Paul leaves it to Philemon himself to determine what “good” he is called to do “for Christ” in the case of Onesimus.
In this letter one sees the apostle engaged in a “ministry of reconciliation” (see 2 Cor. 5:18). Although the parties most directly involved are a master and his slave, slavery itself is not Paul’s subject. It is doubtful whether he or any other first-century Christian could have envisioned a political order without the institution of slavery, for it was one of the foundations of the social and economic stability of the Roman Empire (hence the instructions to masters and slaves in Eph. 6:5-9; Col. 3:22-4:1; cf. 1 Pet. 2:18-25). Moreover, even if Christians could have envisioned the abolition of slavery, they would have been powerless to bring it about. Thus, although the apostle may be hinting that Onesimus deserves manumission (“knowing that you will do even more than I say” [v. 21]), he remains silent on the injustice of slavery as an institution. This is also true when, elsewhere, he counsels slaves to gain their freedom if they have the opportunity (see 1 Cor. 7:21 NRSV mg.).
Nonetheless, for Paul, the institution of slavery belongs to the old age that is “passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), for in God’s “new creation,” already inaugurated in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), “there is no longer slave or free” because all are one in Christ (Gal. 3:27-28; cf. 1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:11). Paul’s appeal to Philemon is, in effect, a summons to allow this new reality to work its transforming power in his relationship with Onesimus.
See also New Testament Ethics; Reconciliation; Slavery Bibliography
de Vos, C. “Once a Slave, Always a Slave? Slavery, Manumission and Relational Patterns in Paul’s Letter to Philemon.” JSNT 82 (2001): 89-105; du Plessis, I. “How Christians Can Survive in a Hostile Social-economic Environment: Paul’s Mind Concerning Difficult Social Conditions in the Letter to Philemon.” Pages 387-413 in Identity, Ethics, and Ethos in the New Testament, ed. J. van der Watt. BZNW 141. De Gruyter, 2006; Osiek, C. Philippians, Philemon. ANTC. Abingdon, 2000, 133-46.
Victor Paul Furnish
Writing from prison, Paul informs the Philippian Christians of his present circumstances and expectations, challenges them to be united and steadfast in their faith in the face of opposition from outsiders and dissension within their own community, and expresses appreciation for the
financial assistance they had sent to him by way of Epaphroditus.
Standing at the theological and rhetorical center of Philippians is the “Christ hymn” (2:6-11), which tells the cosmic story of Christ’s taking the form of a “slave” who is “obedient to the point of death” (2:6-8) and of God’s subsequent exaltation of him to be the “Lord” of all creation (2:9-11). When Paul calls on his church to be of the “same mind” as Christ (2:5), he does not mean that it should take the earthly Jesus as its moral “role model.” He is urging that its moral reasoning be informed and guided by the outlook that led Christ to “humble” himself and become “obedient” to God’s will (2:6-8). The Christ-mindedness that Paul calls for as he introduces the hymn (2:5) is summed up in the immediately preceding appeal: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (2:4 [cf. Rom. 15:2-3]). This is a call for selfless, serving love (2:2 [cf. 1 Cor. 13:5]), which Paul had earlier named along with “knowledge and full insight” as critical for discerning “what is best” (1:9-10).
In addition to the definitive instance of Christ’s self-giving, the letter offers several lesser examples
of what it means to “look . . . to the interests of others”: Timothy, “genuinely concerned for your welfare” (2:20-22); Epaphroditus, “your . . . minister to my need” (2:25, 29-30); and Paul himself, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ” (3:4—11). The charge to “imitate” Paul and those who live according to his “example” (3:17) is, therefore, but another way of summoning the church to be of the “same mind” as Christ (so also 4:1, “stand firm in the Lord”). It is a summons to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection” as Paul knows these, by “sharing . . . his sufferings” and “becoming like him in his death” (3:10).
The general appeals for unity, selflessness, and steadfastness likely were prompted by several particular concerns that Paul had about the Philippians. One was the opposition that these believers were continuing to face from outsiders. The apostle declares that even though they are already citizens of heaven, where Christ reigns as Lord (3:20), for the time being they are also citizens of this world, with continuing responsibilities for its welfare. Despite the risks, it is not apart from society but within it that they are both called and empowered to live in a manner “worthy of the gospel” (1:27—2:18). Moreover, Paul does not hesitate to commend, where he can, moral qualities and actions that were widely affirmed in the Greco-Roman world (4:8; cf. 4:5a, where “everyone” includes nonbelievers).
Paul is concerned, further, about a dispute between two leading members of the congregation, Euodia and Syntyche (4:2—3). Their conflict must have been consequential, or Paul would not have singled it out for attention. With an implicit appeal to the selflessness of Christ (2:6—11), he urges these women to “be of the same mind in the Lord” (4:2) and then requests a respected third party to help effect their reconciliation (4:3).
This moral outlook is evident also in the way Paul expresses gratitude for the congregation’s financial support (4:10—20). Departing from the usual practice, he does not accept their help as a gift that needs to be reciprocated. He describes it, rather, as “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” (4:18). The ancient social conventions of giving and receiving served to protect the interests of each party to the relationship. Paul, however, views the Philippians’ gift differently: acting with the mind of Christ, they had looked not to their “own interests” but to the “interests of others” (cf. 2 Cor. 8—9).
See also Cruciformity; New Testament Ethics
Bibliography
Fee, G. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. NICNT. Eerd-mans, 1995; Fowl, S. Philippians. THNTC. Eerdmans, 2005; Hooker, M. “Philippians.” Pages 467—549 in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 11, ed. L. Keck. Abingdon, 2000; Meeks, W. “The Man from Heaven in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.” Pages 329—36 in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed. B. Pearson et al. Fortress, 1991.
Victor Paul Furnish
Plagiarism See Information Technology Play
Play is a God-given human activity that, along with worship, work, feasting, and other activities, is both a present participation in the goodness of creation and an anticipation of the playful life of the future kingdom of God.
Because play is not “serious,” its theological and ethical significance often is undervalued, especially when a “work ethic” (with its conviction that productivity, hard work, and deferred pleasure are signs of high morality) has been a cornerstone of Western society for more than 250 years. This work ethic has supported the Newtonian/Cartesian idea of the world as a “machine,” thus supporting industrial and technological development in a capitalist context. This, ironically, then created a consumerist society that questions the presuppositions of the ethic that brought it about. If work is the spirit of capitalism, then play is the spirit of consumerism.
In reality, work and play are complementary, and each has its social role. The opposite of play is not work but depression. A culture that defines people solely according to work will be productive, ordered, and rational but potentially lacking in imagination, creativity, free relationships, joy, and pleasure.
A play ethic thus relates to both the conduct of specific activities and those attitudes that influence other dimensions of life, including work, worship, community, and the purpose of life. An ethic of play may, for example, be associated with worship not only through specifically playful activities (such as music and dance [Exod. 15:20]) but also as an attitude toward worship standing in contrast to a “work ethic” (with liturgy as “the work of the people of God” and an emphasis on duty and responsibility rather than grace and gratitude). Different styles of worship can be interpreted in terms of different forms of play (reflecting variously a preference for wordplay, experiential games, mystery, acting, or musical play).
Play has intrinsic qualities that enhance human experience. Although play does not produce
“things,” it does generate pleasure, joy, and laughter and is a reminder that life is not justified by works but is a gracious gift. The six days of work at creation are followed by the most holy day of nonwork—that is, a time of appreciation and enjoyment of the created order (as wisdom personified delighted in playing in the created world [Prov. 8:30-31]). Play creates friendship and community and enables people to be happier. Play stresses freedom and spontaneity (even when there is extensive preparation) and far from being a distraction from education is fundamental to it. Playing allows for testing, exploring, and learning in a safe environment. It develops the creativity and imagination essential to art, music, problemsolving, and forming scientific hypotheses. Play is essential to ongoing human re-creation and a healthy life.
Play can be distorted and sinful when it involves greed, violence, unhealthy competitiveness, selfishness, sexual immorality, the denigration of others, or the destruction of the environment, or when it is excessively costly, wasteful of time, or obsessive. The difficulties involved in determining what is appropriate should encourage teaching about the necessity of a biblical ethic of play. Such an ethic exists as a part of the created order and is enhanced by an understanding of the eschatological new creation pictured in terms of song (Rev. 14:2-3), dance (Jer. 31:4), feasting (Rev. 19:9), and play (Zech. 8:5).
See also Capitalism; Consumerism; Creation Ethics; Humanity; Sabbath; Work
Bibliography
Johnston, R. The Christian at Play. Eerdmans, 1983; Kane, P. The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. Macmillan, 2004; Moltmann, J. Theology of Play. Harper & Row, 1972.
Brian G. Edgar
The “fact of pluralism” is that liberal societies are composed of peoples with divergent moralities, religions, worldviews, and so forth. To some, this fact poses the “problem of pluralism”; the problem is that they think pluralistic societies lack adequate cultural stability or moral reserves. Others, however, believe that there is no problem; the “fact of pluralism” is to be celebrated, for it serves certain goods and does not require a unifying ideological grounding.
There have been various responses to the “problem of pluralism.” Some, such as social theorists John Rawls and Robert Bellah, have attempted to draw unifying foundations for pluralism from pluralistic culture itself. For Rawls, the upshot is the ethic of “political liberalism.” Political liberalism entails a substantive theory of justice. It also requires that, when arguing about constitutional issues or coercive law, participants in liberal societies speak in terms that are equally accessible to all citizens. Thus, religious arguments are ruled out. While some Christians find Rawls’s theory useful, some critique him for privatizing religion and for presupposing that people can and should alienate themselves from the particularities of their own lives and traditions. Some cite passages such as Matt. 5:13-14 and Luke 13:21 to show that any acceptable political theory must allow Christians to participate in society as Christians to serve as salt, light, or yeast for the world.
Robert Bellah’s project is more robust than that of Rawls in that Bellah finds within American society a civil religion, not just a common political ethic. According to Bellah, civil religion includes patriotic rituals, saints, holidays, and scriptures. America’s civil religion borrows from Christian and classical Greco-Roman cultures, but is sufficiently independent to ground a limited pluralism within American society. Bellah’s position overlaps with some Christian communitarian tendencies, but it has been criticized for restraining prophetic critique of culture and ultimately of running into the problem of cultural idolatry.
Some Christians share Rawls’s and Bellah’s concerns about pluralistic society but are less optimistic about saving pluralistic society through its own resources. One theological response has been to advocate distancing the church from liberal pluralism (the world) and emphasizing instead the unified body of Christian believers (the church). This has been a tendency among Anabaptists, early fundamentalists, and premillenial dispensational-ists. Following this tendency does not necessitate complete social withdrawal. The Christian community can continue to interact as a “witness” to the world. Still, some Christians question whether such positions advocate sufficiently for justice in broader human society, and they challenge the implied social dualism of such positions, which may deny the sovereignty of God over sacred and secular modes of life (see Rom. 13; 1 Pet. 2:13-14).
A different theological response has been to emphasize the sovereignty of God over all of life. Accordingly, these Christians have sought to reform pluralistic society by (re)claiming Christian cultural hegemony over society. This has been attempted in various ways, of course. Some, such as the English Christendom Group and many members of the Religious Right, have advocated for limited social pluralism within the context of an officially Christian culture. Pre-Vatican II Catholicism and Protestant reconstruction and dominion theologies represent more totalizing approaches, seeking to enforce upon Western society determinate forms of natural or OT law. Some Christians have accused theologians who hold these positions of Constantinianism—that is, the corruption of Christianity that occurs when the religion is directly linked with coercive ideology or power. In pushing for a Christianization of society, these theologians fail, some claim, to recognize that Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36).
In contrast to those who attempt in one way or another to solve the “problem of pluralism” are those who deny that pluralism needs any unifying ideological grounding. Among these are some epi-stemic pluralists. Epistemic pluralists assert that multiple apparently contradictory claims can be simultaneously true. Such a position is represented in the theology of religions by John Hick’s “religious pluralism.” According to Hick, all major religious traditions are equally valid approaches to “the Real”—a tradition-transcendent term for ultimate reality. Social pluralism is not a problem for the religious pluralist since all disagreements (at least all religious disagreements) are only apparent. More traditional Christian theologians of religion, often citing texts such as John 14:6, have challenged Hick. They begin with the presupposition that Christianity has the uniquely true framework for describing God and the world.
One need not embrace epistemic pluralism in order to find that there is hope for social pluralism without unifying ideological foundations. Some Christians have defended social pluralism on what they take to be uniquely true Christian grounds while denying that pluralistic society needs to accept these grounds in order to have stability. On this account, each particular group must, if it is to accept pluralism, articulate its own reasons for accepting pluralistic society These Christians may (or may not) offer Christian reasons within public debate, but they do not presuppose that society at large will accept Christian arguments. In such a pluralistic society, arguing effectively in the public sphere may require translating Christian ideas or arguing on non-Christian grounds. These groups face criticisms from those who hold that they are compromising Christian faith by potentially abandoning Christian language in public debate or, in some instances, by acquiescing to non-Christian cultural norms.
It should also be noted that, although many locate the problem of pluralism in terms of how “the Christian” should relate to “pluralistic society,” Christianity itself is marked by significant levels of social pluralism. This pluralism is reflected in denominationalism and embodied in the Bible itself, with its four Gospels and multiple apparently contradictory commands on subjects such as divorce (Matt. 5:31-32; 19:9; Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10-11). As an ecumenical problem, Christians have responded to intra-Christian pluralism in many of the same ways that Christians and others have dealt with wider social pluralism. Models from intra-Christian debate have at times influenced approaches to broader social pluralism. The future may see further exchanges of strategies as Christians and others navigate an increasingly pluralistic world.
See also Democracy; Ecumenism; Political Ethics; Public Theology and Ethics; Religious Toleration; Tolerance
Bibliography
Markham, I. Plurality and Christian Ethics. NSCE 4. Cambridge University Press, 1994; Stout, J. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton University Press, 2004; Wolterstorff, N., and R. Audi. Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
Kevin Carnahan
W. H. Auden once remarked that of the two questions that interested him most when reading a poem, one was “broadly speaking, moral” (51): What kind of person inhabits the poem? What notion of the good life is on display? Yet, in the fifty-plus years since Auden’s statement very little attention has been given to the general topic of poetry and ethics, and even less to the subject with respect to biblical verse more specifically. What follows, then, is by necessity a precursory statement on the topic, distinctly probative. And, in fact, the focus here is considerably narrower still. Ethical thinking over the years has preferred the expanded space afforded by narrative, philosophical discourse, and the like, and poetry has been commonly thought of as an irrational genre; yet there can be no doubt that poems often have proved an especially effective medium for asserting knowledge, for thinking (Vendler 1-9; von Hall-berg 105-42). The nexus of poetry and wisdom
is quite old, as the most cursory of encounters
with the biblical book of Proverbs will attest. But such assertions of truth or knowledge or wisdom are not the primary interest here. While biblical poetry, like all language arts, cannot do without semantics, without propositional content, it is the potential differences of poetry’s way(s) of saying, especially in its lyric mode (see Dobbs-Allsopp), and how these can affect ethical thinking that hold most of the attention in this article. My claim, echoing Robert von Hallberg (107), is that the (lyric) poetry of the Bible has at its “ready disposal” resources (figures, dialogue, line play, rhythm) that are conventionally less accessible to other genres and thus provide biblical poems with the capacity to open on to and stage ethical thought differently. Several examples may be offered by way of illustration.
We begin by focusing the potential gains to be had from nonlinear, nonepistemic thinking. In counterdistinction to a process of thinking in which a chain of ideas is marshaled into a “single steady trend moving toward a unified conclusion” (von Hallberg 110), lyric poems in the Bible (as elsewhere) often proceed by fits and starts, intuitive surmise, leaping over gaps, moving via juxtaposition and paradox, and generally following prosodic structures of one kind or another. And as a consequence, happily, thinking is as often as not led in directions that otherwise might not be explored, and auditors are provided with
warrants for valuing certain dispositions other
than by a chain of argument (see Altieri 267; von Hallberg 120).
The poetry of Lamentations is strongly paratac-tic in nature, which the poet exploits to good effect in shaping a response to the radical suffering caused by the 586 BCE destruction of Jerusalem. Ideas and images are routinely juxtaposed to each other without being logically linked or scripted. This forces readers to consider each idea on its own and then in relation with those most contiguous to it. Individual claims are allowed to surface and be experienced on their own, but they are also ultimately required to be considered as a part of a larger whole, which acts as a strong deterrent to the domination of any single perspective. In Lam. 1:5 we read, “Yahweh has made her [Jerusalem] suffer.” The line break after “suffer” ensures that the reader contemplates this startling statement. Yahweh did not “punish” or otherwise “reprimand” personified J erusalem, but rather intentionally caused her pain. The second line of the couplet then shifts the perspective slightly: “for the multitude of her transgressions.” In other words, Jerusalem’s “transgressions” precipitated Yahweh’s actions, and thus our original aversion to Yahweh’s behavior is mollified somewhat, but only somewhat, as we are still haunted by Yah-weh’s suffering-causing activity. The last couplet exploits this slippage one final time: “her children have gone away, captives before the foe.” Yahweh’s infliction of suffering on Jerusalem ultimately re-sults—though the link is only implicit in the concatenation of lines—in the exile of the city’s children. The image of children (however figurative) being forcefully taken into captivity evokes feelings of empathy and compassion and, ultimately, anger. Whatever guilt there is on Jerusalem’s part cannot, ever, rationalize the suffering of innocent children (figures matter ethically too).
Here, then, is a wonderful example of how the poet’s paratactic style shapes the ethical outlook sponsored. The attribution of sin and the reality of suffering both have their own claims to make, but neither can ultimately be considered in isolation from the other. Human responsibility must ultimately be owned and the consequences of past actions assumed, but sin, no matter how severe, can never justify human suffering. Beyond the unique perspective on the question of suffering and sin achieved through this manner of putting things (it is neither wholly Deuteronomistic nor prophetic in ideology), such a paratactic style, especially when employed regularly as throughout Lamentations, has the potential to habituate in readers a process of reflection and thinking that demands constant attention to, and interpretation and reinterpretation of, individual details, words, images, propositions; it stresses responsiveness and attention to complexity and discourages the search for single and all-encompassing answers. The time and circumstances of the poet of Lamentations likely did not permit the formulation of simple and singular solutions, and the poet’s paratactic habit of thought is generally reflective of and isomorphic to this. But such a style and the view of life and learning that it sponsors may hold attraction even for those of us who read these poems belatedly. At the very least, it exemplifies a productive way for thinking (even ethically) other than through logic and abstraction.
In the short but rich Ps. 133 there is, on a certain reading (Dobbs-Allsopp), a strong valorization of family—kindred dwelling together (v. 1). But this is never argued for logically. Instead, it is simply declaimed. The only warrants provided are aesthetic, what is “good” and “beautiful” about family is likened to “precious oil” (v. 2) and the most bountiful dewfall (v. 3); and theological, the poem’s one bit of significant sound play (gam, sam, ha'olam; naim, ’ahim, hayyim; mah-, mah-, habberaka) linking the opening couplet (v. 1) and closing triplet (v. 3b) and in the process identifying family as the premier site (the literal “there” [sam] of v. 3) of Yahweh’s blessing. Here, then, we have a good example of how a poem’s prosodic structures can give way to ethical insight just as productively and effectively as logic or narrative. Of course, much also depends on our readerly decision to ask ethical questions of this psalm, to embed it, for example, in a larger discussion about what constitutes a good life. There is no such thing as a given or neutral ethical point of view. All ethics, in the end, are cultural constructs. And while the positive ethical evaluation often conveyed by tob (“good” [e.g., Gen. 2:17; 3:5, 22; 1 Kgs. 8:36; Isa. 7:15]) might be taken to invite a certain ethical curiosity about this psalm, there is otherwise nothing explicitly moral about it.
And this is true too of most poems in the Bible. In these cases, whatever ethical sensibilities are to be derived from their reading(s) is the responsibility of the reader, the decision to think the psalm (in this instance) through with ethical matters chiefly in mind. And even in those places where it seems that biblical poems may be advocating specific ethical positions—as, for example, in the valorization of family life—such approbations are themselves culturally and historically motivated, and taking them up into other cultural contexts requires, at the very least, negotiating the differences that always accompany historical existence, differences, say, between what constituted a typical family household in Iron Age Israel (Meyers) and what constitutes the same today in North America—the two are by no means identical. So even when contemporary readers are won over to a perspective advocated in an ancient biblical poem, as well we might be in the case of Ps. 133, there will always be more ethical work to do should we also then want to bring that perspective (e.g., a valuing of family) to bear on our own lives. If ethics is always a constructive endeavor, it is also never-ending.
A final example to consider is the general topic of the emotions. That emotion and passion— whether in the agonizing (and angry) cry of radical suffering (Ps. 22:2), or the expressed ecstasy of sublime devotion (Ps. 9:3), or the irresistible desire of one newly in love (Song 4:6)—figure prominently and frequently in biblical poems is readily apparent (see Ryken 123-24). I would add only that this being so is entirely consistent with the strong propensity of lyric poems the world over and throughout the ages to traffic in the emotions. The ethical implications of such lyric prizing of emotion are not insignificant. Two stand out. First, there is a tacit validation of the emotional, the affirmation that the passions are part and parcel of our makeup as human beings.
Indeed, we as readers are forced to engage this poetry at an emotional level, and so emotions are made visible as topics for critical discourse and thinking. Second, one of the truths toward which emotionally charged and evocative verse spurs us is the recognition of how impoverished would be our thinking and reasoning were it unaccompanied by feeling and emotion. Emotions “embody some of our most deeply rooted views about what has importance” (Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness, 69-70), views that could be easily lost if we fail to attend routinely and intentionally to the emotional. Philosophers and scientists alike are now beginning to (re)appreciate how crucial the emotions are for the health and well-being of the human creature (Damasio; Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought). To have a discourse, therefore, so routinely charged with emotion, where engagement with the passions is easy and comfortable (however unessential), as with so many moments in Psalms or Lamentations or the Song of Songs, is also a very good thing, something to cherish and nourish. Cold, hard logic is no guarantee of right thinking, ethical or otherwise.
If there has been little attention recently given to the general topic of biblical poetry and ethics, it is not for the lack of substantive material with which to work. Even this necessarily abbreviated consideration of a small handful of examples is sufficient to make clear the wealth of still mostly untapped potential that awaits any ethical line of inquiry into this poetic corpus. In the “how” of a biblical poem’s saying there are resources for ethical thinking not so readily available to other genres or modes of discourse. Formal and stylistic choices are matters, as Alan Shapiro observes, “fraught with extraliterary judgments, biases, commitments that have moral as well as aesthetic implications” (1). In fact, to ignore “the sound and evocative power of words . . . and other rhythmic devices, associated images, repetitions, archaisms and grammatical twists” (Langer 259) in biblical poems is to miss much of how this predominantly nonnarrative kind of poetry (see Alter 27) means and to settle, ultimately, for a much impoverished moral worldview.
See also Lamentations; Old Testament Ethics; Psalms; Song of Songs
Bibliography
Alter, R. The Art of Biblical Poetry. Basic Books, 1985; Altieri, C. “Taking Lyrics Literally: Teaching Poetry in a Prose Culture.” New Literary History 32 (2001): 259-81; Auden, W. H. The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays. Vintage Books, 1989; Damasio, A. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. G. P. Putnam, 1994;
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W. “Psalm 133: A (Close) Reading.” JHS 8 (2008). http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/ article_97.pdf; idem. “The Psalms and Lyric Verse.” Pages 346-79 in The Evolution of Rationality: Interdisciplinary Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, ed. F. Shultz. Eerdmans, 2006; Langer, S. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953; Meyers, C. “The Family in Early Israel.” Pages 1-47 in Families in Ancient Israel, by L. Perdue et al. Westminster John Knox, 1997; Nussbaum, M. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 1986; idem. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge University Press, 2001; Ryken, L. The Literature of the Bible. Zondervan, 1974; Shapiro, A. In Praise of the Impure: Poetry and the Ethical Imagination; Essays, 1980-1991. Northwestern University Press, 1993; Vendler, H. Poets Thinking: Pope, Dickinson, Whitman, Yeats. Harvard University Press, 2004; von Hallberg, R. Lyric Powers. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Chip Dobbs-Allsopp
The biblical writings themselves are shaped by and at times explicitly critique particular political contexts. Thus, the figure of Moses is represented as a functionary of God, bringing national liberation to the people of Israel. The development of monarchy in Israel is both lauded and critiqued (Judg. 21:25; 1 Sam. 7). Prophetic and priestly strains fought over whether the values of society should be defined primarily by temple worship (associated with the monarchy in Jerusalem) or by concerns about social justice.
In later years, as Assyria and Babylon came to dominate the region, Israel’s monarchy came under increasing pressure. Jeremiah, following the prophetic strain, set the stage for the continuation of Judaism in exile by emphasizing obedience to covenantal commands over temple worship. The priestly emphasis would return again after the Babylonian exile, adapted to the political limitations of a vassal state, in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. This emphasis, however, was destined to wane with the last destruction of the temple in 70 CE.
The exilic and postexilic periods also witnessed the development of political and eschatological messianism. Many in Israel looked forward to the emergence of a new king (messiah, “anointed one”) who would lead Israel to national independence. Others believed that the injustices of history had become so dire that God would end present history and bring a new creation marked by covenantal justice. Cyrus, the Persian ruler who ended the exile, became the only foreign ruler to be given the title of messiah (Isa. 45:1). Later oppressive occupation by Hellenistic and Roman political powers, however, led to new yearnings for an indigenous messianic figure. These messianic hopes fueled many Jewish revolutionary movements, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem.
Jesus was born into a period marked by Jewish political diversity. Pharisees, Sadducees, revolutionaries, and other Jewish reform movements took different approaches to Roman authority, temple worship, Hebrew law, and Hellenistic culture. As the leader of a reform movement who was received as a messianic figure, Jesus’ actions and teachings no doubt had political implications. Although there is little agreement across Christian history on the content of Jesus’ politics, efforts to recover the politics of Jesus have been at times a significant impetus for various Christian political movements.
The followers of Jesus took up messianic language but modified the meaning significantly to fit the activities of Jesus, who was neither conquering king nor a mediator of the immediate end of unjust history. Early evangelists such as Paul tended to lower the ritual requirements of Hebrew law, opening the way for a Christian community that incorporated significant segments of Greco-Roman society.
Early Christian community was shaped by the need to locate itself in relation to imperial Rome. Several factors pushed Christians to distance themselves from the empire. Apocalyptic literature, especially Revelation and Daniel, portrayed empires as demonic. Jesus himself had clashed with Pilate and was crucified on a Roman cross. Christians were also subject to varying levels of persecution from the Roman Empire. Still, several other factors led Christians to emphasize the continuity between their community and imperial power. From the OT came images of Moses as lawgiver and David as ideal king. Texts such as Rom. 13 and 1 Pet. 2:13-17 drew on the Hebrew wisdom tradition, suggesting that worldly rulers participated in God’s sovereignty over the world (e.g., Prov. 8:15; 21:1; 24:21). Christ’s teachings on taxation also appeared to carve out a legitimate place for imperial power (Matt. 17:24-27; Mark 12:13-17 pars.).
Patristic Developments
The reflections of early church fathers reveal diverse approaches to these tensions. Irenaeus saw the Roman Empire as the means of God’s judgment against evil, but he believed that in the end times it would come under judgment itself as a tool of the antichrist. For Tertullian, Christians were distinguished from other citizens by
their rejections of idolatry and military service, but their prayers for the stability and success of Rome’s armies and governors made them ideal citizens. Origen imagined a progressive conversion in which the peace of God would sweep over the world through the empire.
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity set the stage for new possibilities. Seeing Constantine’s arrival as God’s means of converting the empire, Eusebius cast Constantine as the new Moses and the ideal Platonic philosopher-king. The violence necessary under his rule was simply a means to spread the peace of God.
Not all Christians agreed. After Rome was sacked in 410, Augustine came to a more dour view of imperial Christianity. In The City of God, Augustine explored the nature of the saeculum, the period between the first and second advents of Christ. In this period, Augustine found, there could be no truly peaceful or just society. Such society could come only when all ordered themselves toward the true God. In the saeculum, society is an irreducible mixture of Christians (citizens of the city of God), ordered by love of God, and non-Christians (citizens of the earthly city), ordered by love of self. The two cities have opposed ultimate ends, but they overlap in the use of a set of common worldly goods. As such, the Christian partakes in (and can forcibly defend) the relative “peace of Babylon” that exists in the saeculum and may encourage the increase of relative justice in society (see Jer. 29:7). Ultimately, however, the maintenance of order in the saeculum via worldly government
and the coming of perfect order in the kingdom of God are matters of God’s inscrutable action.
After the collapse of Rome, eastern and western branches of empire and church gradually drifted apart. Eastern Christianity tended to conceive of church and empire as facets of a single community. In the West, church and worldly society tended to be seen as separable but related political communities. In the next centuries, the principal struggles for power arose between the leaders of these communities: popes and kings.
Medieval Developments
Shortly after the fall of Rome, Pope Gelasius I articulated an influential doctrine of ecclesiastical and political authority. Christ, Gelasius wrote, was both king and priest. For the rest of history, humans are humbly confined to one or the other role. Though advised by the pope, the king’s judgment was sovereign in matters of state. As the “vicar of Christ” in the line of Peter, the pope ruled in matters of religion, for only the priest could “bind and loose” the sins of humanity (see Matt. 16:18-19; cf. John 20:22-23; 21:16-17).
Throughout the medieval period, Gelasius’s model would be almost universally acknowledged in the West, but it was rarely practiced. Kings assumed powers to call church councils, tax clergy, and appoint bishops. King Charlemagne was even called the “new Constantine” and was said to rule “in the place of God.” Popes also grew in power. Pope Gregory VII claimed sovereignty over all of Christendom. As Bernard of Clairvaux had written, the two swords (see Luke 22:38, 49-51; John 18:10-11), one of spiritual judgment and one of temporal judgment, both belong to the pope, who wields the spiritual sword directly and the temporal sword via the pope’s command to temporal authorities. The church expanded its wealth during this period, locating itself as the apostolic guarantor of the purse of Christ (see John 12:6; Acts 2:44-45). Popes also came to grant indulgences for worldly political activities, such as the Crusades.
The late medieval period witnessed the rise of the Scholastic, Franciscan, and Conciliar movements. Scholasticism grew out of the Western rediscovery of Aristotle, which led to a new injection of classical Greek thought in Christian theology. Thomas Aquinas, the paradigmatic Scholastic, emphasized the continuity between pre- and post-lapsarian existence. Especially important was Thomas’s stress on the goodness of the natural law (see Rom. 2:14), which is theoretically accessible to all people. Whereas Christianity prior to Thomas tended to see hierarchical government as a consequence of sin, Thomas saw humans as naturally political animals marked by natural inequalities. Politics was a good and natural part of life. The secular ruler was, on Thomas’s account, not only to punish evil but also to order the society toward the procurement of virtue and the realization of social justice and the common good.
The Franciscan movement was arrayed against the growing worldly wealth and militarism of the church (and occasionally against Aristotelian naturalism). Drawing on the commands given to the apostles in Matt. 10:5-10, Franciscans challenged the church to embrace missional poverty, pacifism, and service. This protest would have echoes throughout the rest of Christian history.
In 1303, the excommunicated King Philip IV captured and humiliated Pope Boniface VIII, proving that papal power was not sufficient to restrain the armies of France. This set the stage for the growth of the idea that the jurisdiction of the church was strictly nontemporal. Philip’s appeal to church councils to justify his position against the pope foreshadowed a slow process of democratization that would work its way through both worldly and ecclesiastical societies. Drawing upon Roman republicanism and Aristotelian natural law, theologians came to locate worldly political community as the ground of worldly sovereignty. Similar ideas came to be applied to the Christian church in the Conciliar movement. The Christian community was the ground for the priestly sovereignty of the pope. For support, Conciliarists drew upon the biblical image of the Christian community as a diversified body and upon the idea that the Holy Spirit is active within the community of Christianity (see Acts 20:21; 1 Cor. 1:2; 12:12-27).
Renaissance, Reformation, and Modernity By the time of the Renaissance, European Christianity was quite diverse. A revival of Thomism led scholars to explicitly expand “natural rights” to non-Christian persons (e.g., Native Americans encountered by Spanish conquistadores), develop the framework of international law, expand the role of worldly political society in grounding state sovereignty, and systematize just-war thought. At the same time, Christian humanists drew upon their Franciscan roots to ridicule the naturalism of the Thomists and the failures of society in realizing the gospel ideals of pacifistic self-sacrificial service.
In the Reformation, Martin Luther parted from the humanists by deploying his Augustin-ian-inspired “two kingdoms” theology. Luther’s love-infused “kingdom of God” was paralleled by an equally robust, violence-driven “kingdom of the world.” These two kingdoms had clearly separate jurisdictions. Within the kingdom of God, the word of God taught the true faith and imputed righteousness to sinners. In the kingdom of the world, the temporal ruler was authorized to restrain evil (see Rom. 13:1-7) by enforcing the laws of nature (paralleling the moral precepts of the Ten Commandments) but had no ecclesial role. The Christian was first a member of the kingdom of God but ought to participate in the authorized use of force to restrain evil.
Menno Simons’s Anabaptist movement followed Luther’s ethic for the kingdom of God but rejected the obligation to participate in the restraint of evil. Reclaiming an imminent eschatology, Mennonites relied on the ban (communal shunning) to maintain the order of the church and upon God’s action to order and end the worldly reign of evil.
John Calvin also took and modified Luther’s scheme. The law, Calvin concluded, not only convicted people of sin and restrained the wicked (two functions that Luther admitted) but also educated the elect. This was one of several ways in which Calvin stressed the complementary character of the two kingdoms in ways that Luther did not. Calvin favored a civil administration that enforced certain levels of (Calvinist) orthodoxy on the populace.
Neither Luther nor Calvin was a democrat. Still, many ideas from the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions contributed to the rise of democracy. Luther’s attacks on papal authority easily transferred to attacks on temporal monarchy. Calvin endorsed the role of “lesser magistrates” to counter the power of tyrants. Calvinist Huguenots would develop this idea and link it to the idea that worldly sovereignty was granted via a “covenant” with political society.
After the Reformation, religious wars broke out across Europe. A series of treaties periodically ending these wars established a system of sovereign states. At the same time, Enlightenment thinkers set out to justify political authority without problematic appeals to denominational authorities. John Locke famously argued that sovereignty was granted on the basis of a social contract. Human beings, Locke posited, are originally free and equal in relation to one another inasmuch as all of them exist as the creations and property of God. As such, humans have natural rights (which can be known independent of revelation), and worldly government is formed by individuals who establish a social contract for the purpose of protecting these natural rights. As long as one’s neighbors are trustworthy, upstanding participants in society, the ideal Christian disposition toward those of other religious affiliation is properly one of toleration.
Beyond Modernity
For the most part, modernity witnessed a decline of violent conflicts over Christian doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church maintained its opposition to democratization and religious freedom until the middle of the nineteenth century. But this trend was reversed at Vatican II. This council stands in the middle of a renaissance of Catholic political theology, embodied in the social encyclicals from Rerum novarum (1891) to the present. Within this tradition, the Roman Catholic Church has defended workers’ rights against laissez-faire capitalism and has defended rights to private property against communist theory. It has also articulated the doctrine of subsidiarity, according to which, larger institutions (such as governments) should intercede only in issues where individuals and smaller institutions cannot realize the common good under their own power. An extension of this position has been used to argue for a stronger form of international government.
Among Protestants, social activism on issues of slavery, feminism, and alcoholism was notable throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The late nineteenth century witnessed the beginnings of the split between fundamentalism and liberalism in Protestant American Christianity. Within fundamentalism, theologians tended to claim that the Bible consisted in a set of original principles from which all moral/political truths ought to be deduced. With dwindling support from mainline denominations, the rise of premillenial dispensationalism, and the embarrassment of the Scopes trial, many fundamentalists withdrew from political activity. Fundamentalism has continued, however, to spin off politically significant movements. In the latter half of the twentieth century the neofundamentalist Religious Right emerged in the culture wars in American politics. This movement has tended toward a Calvinist model of society, has wielded significant political power, and has come under criticism for its association with the Republican Party.
On the other side of the divide, liberal Protestantism tended to combine confidence in providential progress with a high appraisal of the prospects of scientific advancement, especially in social theory. In the United States, this gave rise to the social gospel movement. This movement rejected post-Reformation individualism and sought to recover an appreciation for the OT prophets who proclaimed God’s judgment on social structures. The central idea in moral theology, their leaders claimed, was the idea of the kingdom of God. It was the obligation of Christians to participate in the progressive realization of this kingdom of ultimate justice and equality through a peaceful restructuring of political and economic society.
In the early part of the twentieth century, liberal Protestantism came under attack. In Germany, Karl Barth drew upon the apostle Paul to challenge liberal Protestantism’s confidence in social development. For Barth, faith in the progress of society appeared to be a faith in something other than God’s unique act in Christ. By World War II, Barth’s anti-natural law, “neoorthodox” theology allowed the German Confessing Church to resist the cultural pressure of Nazism.
In America, Reinhold Niebuhr took up the neoorthodox critique of liberal Protestantism and pointed it squarely at the social gospel movement. Unlike Barth, however, Niebuhr (like Emil Brunner and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) found ways to maintain qualified respect for a natural law mediated through the social order within history. Other post-Barthian traditions such as postliberalism and radical orthodoxy have wedded Barth’s antinaturalism (in the form of robust claims for the uniqueness of the Christian language) with high ecclesiology. This has resulted in calls within these traditions for either neo-Mennonite tensions with the world or a return to Christendom.
The twentieth century also saw the rise of a variety of liberation theologies. Drawing from the biblical emphasis on poverty and contemporary Marxism, early liberation theologians emphasized God’s “preferential option for the poor” (see Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20; 2 Cor. 8:9), which they interpreted as a call to solidarity with impoverished peoples. Liberation theology soon diversified as it was taken up by black, feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologians. In general, however, these theologies have maintained emphasis on the themes of liberation (see Exodus; Gal. 5:1) and the realization of kingdom justice and equality for oppressed groups (see Gal. 3:28).
See also Anabaptist Ethics; Authority and Power; Common Good; Democracy; Economic Ethics; Government; Lutheran Ethics; Nationalism; Natural Rights; Public Theology and Ethics; Social Contract; Subsidiarity, Principle of; Theocracy
Bibliography
Gutierrez, G. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Trans. and ed. C. Inda and J. Eagleson. Orbis, 1973; Hatch, N. The Democratization of American Christianity. Yale University Press, 1989; Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge University Press, 1988; Murray, J. We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. Sheed & Ward, 1960; Niebuhr, R. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. 2 vols. LTE. Westminster John Knox, 1996; O’Donovan, O. The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1996; O’Donovan, O., and J. Lockwood. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. Eerd-mans, 1999; Rauschenbusch, W A Theology for the Social Gospel. Westminster John Knox, 1997; Yoder, J. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1994.
Kevin Carnahan