Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Steven Nemes weighs in on Matt. 5:38-42 in his Substack entry, When should Christians not resist an evildoer?
He makes some of the same points I have made over the years, most recently, here at Substack: Morality Private and Public.
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Bill and Steven,
I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think that we might also want to consider Jesus’ use of hyperbole in his teaching to stir thought, contest assumptions, and make evident the urgency of his message. His employment of this figure of speech can be found, for instance, in Lk 14:26 (“”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”). Here, the word “hate” is hyperbolic, referring not to actual hate but that the radical commitment to Jesus supersedes all other personal loyalties. Similarly, in Matt 5:29-30 (“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away…if your right hand causes you to sin, it off.), Jesus not urging physical mutilation but absolute necessity of avoiding sin. One final example: in Matt 7:3-5 (“And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”), concerns judging harshly the small fault of another while ignoring your own greater one. I think that it reasonable to regard Matt 5:38-42 as another instance of hyperbole in the preaching of Jesus, for how else are we to explain the counterintuitive response of the victim required to each of the each of the “evildoer’s” three acts (striking, stealing, coercing)? Might we not interpret the passage as aspirational, one that pushes us in the direction of a radical transformation in our spiritual values, in which love overshadows hate, and not as a literal moral prescription?
Vito
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