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.
But he also makes good points that didn’t occur to me.
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
Bill,
I have been looking further into Matt 5: 38-42 and particularly how best to understand the verb antistēnai [to stand against, to oppose, to resist], and among the sources that I have read in the last two days, this short Substack essay, “Mē Antistēnai: A Brief Comment on Matthew 5:39” * is quite helpful. Here is the most essential paragraph from the essay:
“When we examine the use of antistēnai throughout the corpus of ancient Greek literature we find that this word is often used in the context of military combat (as is the case in the LXX, e.g.: Lev. 26:37; Deut. 7:24; 25:18; Josh. 7:13; 23:9; Jdg. 2:14; etc.). Other studies of the word have produced similar understandings, that it generally regards the exercise of violent retaliatory force. “The word ‘resist’ is antistēnai, almost a technical term for revolutionary resistance of a specifically military variety[,]” explains theologian N.T. Wright, ‘Taken in this sense, the command draws out the implication of a good deal of the sermon so far[,]’ that the kingdom of God will not pave the way forward through blood and the accompanying violence, but that it will seek ‘the different, oblique way of creative non-violent resistance.’ Jesus is commanding that we ‘do not use violence to resist evil,’ a translation we can qualify when we move from word-to-word to sense-for-sense.”
One additional historical point that supports this interpretation of antistēnai is the existence of violent revolutionary groups, such as the Zealots and Sicarii, in the Roman province of Judea during the time of Jesus’ ministry. Of these, he was certainly aware, and it thus makes sense that he sought to contrast his peaceful resistance to evil with their violent resistance to it.
Vito
*https://ruminatrix.substack.com/p/me-antistenai
Bill,
One final complicating observation: The pacifist interpretation of Matt 5:38-42 has been contested in light of Lk 22: 36-38 where Jesus approves the taking a weapon in self-defense (“Then He said to them, ‘But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one….’ So they said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords.’ And He said to them, ‘It is enough’”). But this understanding depends on taking Jesus’ use of the word “sword” literally, rather than metaphorically, that is, as a simile for the spiritual armor that the disciples will need to confront a hostile world. Certainly, “It is enough” can be read in this light, but a literal reading is not absolutely disproven. We might also consider Jn 18:23, when Jesus responds to the slap by one of Caiaphas’ officers not by offering his other cheek but by reproaching (scolding) him for doing so: ““If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?” Here, an evil act is directly confronted so as to put a stop to it.
Vito
Excellent comments, Vito. Will try to respond tomorrow.
And then there is the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of 12 different interpretations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount
Vito,
Very stimulating comments, but I am pressed for time. The trouble with the scriptures is that you can find almost anything you want in them. I just now pulled a book from my gun shelf of my library: Greg Hopkins, A Time to Kill: The Myth of Christian Pacifism, Mindbridge, 2013. And of course, LK 22: 36-38 looms large therein. Gun guy Xians like it; pacifists do not. I discussed the passage a while back with a hermit monk in his hermitage at a Benedictine monastery. He didn’t like it. More later.
Vito,
The monastery in question is located in a canyon accessible only by a 13-mile dirt road. Unsecured, anyone could drive to it, jihadis planning an attack, for example. (I had noticed some sort of Islamic Center not far away on the U. S highway south of the monastery turn off. So I asked the hermit what he would do if attacked. He said he would put up no defense and allow himself to be slaughtered. He dismissed a literal reading of LK 22:36-38.
What you say in your first comment is very plausible. The hating parents and tearing out of eye passages are readily interpreted as hyperbolic. The speck and beam passage is a bit different, I think. Here what we have is metaphor rather than hyperbole. Both make a sharp contrast with the sword passage, which is plausibly taken as literal. But then how would that anti-pacifist reading jibe with Christ’s being agnus dei who allowed himself to be slaughtered?
This bears upon the inerrancy question. If the Bible is inerrant in every particular as some maintain, wouldn’t we have to be inerrantly sure of every passage how it must be read? Hyperbolically. metaphorically, literally . . . .