It has become a commonplace mantra nowadays to declare “Down with Doctrine” — doctrine meaning here rationally formulated beliefs which one is exhorted in some sense or other to believe. In place of this we are summoned to moral behaviour, typically expressed as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
But there are enormous difficulties in this counsel that I want to point to.
But first let us note that my intention is not to rehabilitate belief in doctrines. Rather, it is to disabuse readers of an overly optimistic view of what it would mean to try to live by the moral demands of the Sermon on the Mount.
The first requirement is to read it (Matthew 5-7) and recognize what it actually says. Let’s look at some of these moral requirements that Jesus lays upon his followers: Don’t be angry; don’t commit adultery or even harbour lustful desires; don’t marry a divorced woman (or you will be committing adultery); don’t swear oaths but always tell the truth, unprotected by an oath; love your enemy and practice no violence; don’t even resist evil, go the second mile and turn the other cheek; be perfect.
Additionally, there are other hard sayings scattered through the gospels.
One of the hardest for me is Matthew 10:37; look it up.
It is intimidating just to read this ethical vision as a life program.
Though most of the big names in the history of Christian theology took the hard moral sayings literally, at the same time they recognized the impossibility of erecting a comprehensive social ethic on their basis.
Accordingly, they sought by one strategy or another to mitigate Jesus’ radical moral expectations. Luther, for example, limited their application to one-on-one personal relations. When, however, Christians are acting in their “office,” that is, in complex, representative social relations, then other standards like coercive justice come into play.
But this doesn’t apply just to magistrates and police officers. When is one not acting in a social context as father or mother, employee, member of educational and political organizations, etc.?
How, then, shall we interpret these hard sayings of Jesus? We might say: Literally, and without theological reservations. Jesus is laying out a way of life for those who, by faith in Him, have entered the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ disciples are to hear his words and do them.
However, one should, in integrity, then leave the United (or Anglican, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran, etc.) Church and associate oneself with the Mennonites or Quakers who do take Jesus at his word, especially on the issue of non-resistance and non-violence.
On the other hand, there may be huge reconsiderations. One of the most tenacious theories seeking to explain the relevance (or not) of the hard moral sayings of Jesus to today’s society was promulgated over a century ago by the biblical scholar Albert Schweitzer — also medical missionary to Africa, organist, philosopher — in his The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer argued that Jesus’ central teaching was the Kingdom of God whose dramatic consummation he expected imminently.
The language for this is apocalyptic, the Greek for unveiling, or disclosure. “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28).
In the brief interim between the imminent end of the world as we presently know it and the advent of the kingdom in its fullness the disciple strives to fulfill the radical ethics of the kingdom set out in the Sermon on the Mount.
But it is only for a brief period, until God puts down the mighty from the thrones and redeems the righteous with faith in Christ. Therefore (to use modern illustrations), don’t worry about pensions, job reviews, real estate, Trump or national security, abandonment of emotional ties, marriage, recompense or revenge.
This radical way of life in the sermon is an interim ethic: It was only intended for the brief time between Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion and God’s imminent and final wrap-up of history.
We can see that Jesus was wrong about eschatology; the world did not end within the lifetime of his hearers.
Did he also err in his ethics that were correlated with his end of the world vision? Following Jesus may not be as clear a program as some might like to hold.
I myself have adopted the view that Schweitzer’s apocalyptic interpretation of Jesus is essentially right.
But every congregation should be asking: Where do we go in our interpretation of following Jesus?
And what is the relevance of the Sermon on the Mount?