The "Christian" vs. "The Secular Person" (Sermon on the Mount IV)

July 10, 2010

In Luther's later treatise, entitled “The Sermon on the Mount,” we see an unfortunate shift from the promising (if somewhat disorganized) start of “On Temporal Authority.”

Having started with the Beatitudes, he asks, 

“What does it mean, then, to be meek?  From the outset here you must realize that Christ is not speaking at all about the government and its work, whose property it is not to be meek, as we use the word in German, but to bear the sword (Rom. 13:4) for the punishment of those who do wrong (1 Pet. 2:14), and to wreak a vengeance and a wrath that are called the vengeance and wrath of God.  He is only talking about how individuals are to live in relation to others, apart from official position and authority.” 

This is not an uncommon route to take--insisting that different ethical standards apply in private life vs. public life--and I am not going to contest that there must be some difference, because there is still a provisional task of judgment to execute until the fullness of the Kingdom comes.  The question we must ask, though, is whether it is an absolute difference;  should the commands of Christ have no effect on how a government decides to execute vengeance?  Do the priority of peacemaking and the value of mercy have no purchase in the public sphere?  Moreover, we must beware of articulating this eschatological distinction in terms which suggest it is simply a public/private distinction, as Luther appears to do here: do Christian ethics cease to have any relevance once we move from the individual level to the level of any institution?  The CEO of Enron had “official position and authority,” he was working not as an individual, but as representative of an institution.  Did the same ethics no longer apply?  As we go on, we will see that our concern here is not unwarranted.

Luther goes on to draw a sharp distinction between office and person: 

“The man who is called Hans or Martin is a man quite different from the one who is called elector or doctor or preacher.  Here we have two different persons in one man.”  Jesus, is not talking about the office-person: “He is not talking about this person here, letting it alone in its own office and rule, as he has ordained it.  He is talking merely about how each individual, natural person is to behave in relation to others.”  

See, now this is a very troubling move.  We have shifted from contrasting civil government and private life to contrasting any “office” such as “doctor or preacher” with private life.  While clearly every man has certain functions which belong exclusively to a particular office that he executes, and are not relevant outside of that office, it is rather more problematic to assert that different ethical principles apply within and without the office.  Moreover, if we are speaking about “offices” of this sort, it seems that very little of our lives indeed lie under the commands of Jesus.

All this is simply under the discussion of meekness.  Later, as he turns to consider the difficult commands of 5:38-40, he insists that this doesn’t mean a literal turning the other cheek-- 

“it was enough for a person to be ready in his heart to offer the other cheek....We say, therefore, that all it does is to proclaim to every Christian that he should willingly and patiently suffer whatever is his lot, without seeking revenge or hitting back.

“But the question and argument still remain.  Must a person suffer all sorts of things from everyone, without defending himself at all?  Has he no right to plead a case or to lodge a complaint before a court, or to claim and demand what belongs to him?  If all these things were forbidden, a strange situation would develop.  It would be necessary to put up with everybody’s whim and insolence.  Personal safety and private property would be impossible, and finally the social order would collapse.”

This new move is also quite troubling.  To take Christ “literally” here would mean that we would constantly have to suffer from “everybody’s whim and insolence,” and so it is clear that Christ merely means that we should turn the cheek of our hearts, so to speak, that we should be willing to suffer passively, but should not actually do so.  Such bifurcation of action and intention seems to rob these commands of most of their force, relevance, and value.  

In the following paragraphs, Luther combines the two approaches he has taken here--the distinction of civil government and private life, and the distinction of heart and outward action.  The earthly regime, we are told, must continue to “administer law and punishment,” maintain distinctions of ranks, etc.  

“But the Gospel does not trouble itself with these matters.  It teaches about the right relation of the heart to God, while in all these other questions it should take care to stay pure and not to stumble into a false righteousness.  You must grasp and obey this distinction, for it is the basis on which such questions can easily be answered.  Then you will see that Christ is talking about a spiritual existence and life and that he is addressing himself to his Christians.  He is telling them to live and behave before God and in the world with their heart dependent upon God and uninterested in things like secular rule or government, power or punishment, anger or revenge.”  

We begin, it seems, with a distinction between civil government and the kingdom of Christ, but this latter gets defined as “the right relation of the heart to God,” suggesting that, as Luther has already ventured, what matters is not that our actions conform to Christ’s commands, but that our hearts do.  

Of course, it is possible to read this at first in an Anabaptist way; Christians are to be “uninterested in things like secular rule or government, power or punishment” because they live according to a different kingdom.  However, we are going to see that he does not mean that Christians are to stay aloof from such things--of course they are to be involved in such things, but as secular persons, not as Christians.  As a Christian, we must love our enemies.  But  Christian could be, in addition to being a Christian “a prince or a judge or a servant or a maid--all of which are termed ‘secular’ persons because they are part of the secular realm.”  One’s identity in relation to other people, in this portrait, is not part of one’s being a Christian--one is a secular person inasmuch as one stands in relation to other people.  We may then ask how it is that a Christian could love his enemies, because inasmuch as he relates to his enemies, he must do so as a secular person.  You will see soon that I am not overstating the problem...Luther just plunges further and further into it.  

He expands upon the bifurcation of person and office, and considers the office to be a “secular person”:  “There is no getting around it, a Christian has to be a secular person of some sort.”  In this role, “your name is not ‘Christian,’ but father’ or ‘lord’ or ‘prince.’  According to your own person you are a Christian; but in relation to your servant you are a different person, and you are obliged to protect him.”

He continues, 

“You see, now we are talking about a Christian-in-relation: not about his being a Christian, but about this life and his obligation in it to some other person, whether under him or over him or even alongside him, like a lord or a lady, a wife or children or neighbors, whom he is obliged, if possible, to defend, guard, and protect.”  

In such cases we are told that it is wrong to apply the turn-the-other-cheek principle.  Is it wrong because the principle is in abeyance when you are acting in an office, or because the principle is about self, not others? 

He no longer draws the distinction clearly.  Observe, for instance, where he says:

“What kind of crazy mother would it be who would refuse to defend and save her child from a dog or a wolf and who would say: ‘A Christian must not defend himself’?  Should we not teach her a lesson with a good whipping and say: ‘Are you a mother?  Then do your duty as a mother, as you are charged to do it.”  

Rather than taking the obvious route with this example and saying, “Christ says a Christian must not defend himself, but clearly he should defend his child, so there is no contradiction,” Luther imagines that we must, as it were, suspend the Sermon on the Mount because we are talking about someone acting as a secular person.  We are to neatly distinguish two different identities for the Christian and two different sets of ethics for these identities: “Now, with this distinction of the boundary between the province of the Christian person and that of the secular person you can neatly classify all these saying and apply them properly where they belong, not confusing them and throwing them in one pot, the way the teaching and the administration of the pope has done.”  

What, we must ask, remains in the province of the Christian person, if we have bracketed out every aspect of his life that is in relation or in obligation to others?  It would seem that Christ’s commands are still to apply when it is solely oneself who is threatened, and Luther says so.  But having said this, he then immediately flip-flops and says, “It is permissible to use orderly procedure in demanding and obtaining your rights, but be careful not to have a vindictive heart.”  It’s fine to use the law simply for your protection, only not for vindictivenss.  “When the heart is pure, then everything is right and well done.”  

So the Sermon on the Mount does not offer us instruction when it comes to living in relation to others, and, even addressing us as individuals, it should be taken only as speaking to our hearts, our intentions, not our outward actions.  This is because any of our outward actions, it appears, are part of our “secular person.”:

“He lives simultaneously as a Christian toward everyone, personally suffering all sorts of things in the world, and as a secular person, maintaining, using, and performing all the functions required by the law of his territory or city, by civil law, and by domestic law....A Christian should not resist any evil; but within the limits of his office, a secular person should oppose every evil.  The head of a household should not put up with insubordination  or bickering among his servants.  A Christian should not sue anyone, but should surrender both his coat and cloak when they are taken away from him; but a secular person should go to court if he can to protect and defend himself against some violence or outrage.”

Since we are all secular people, we should all go to court to defend ourselves, but in our hearts, we should still live as Christians.  Here is an ethics that has been entirely emasculated and robbed of any livable form.  Here the Catholic counsels/precepts distinction gets turned on its side, separating each individual into a spiritual person who inwardly follows the counsels--the hard teachings of Christian ethics--and outwardly follows the precepts--more basic, natural law teachings.  

This is, of course, not Luther at his best, and we mustn’t imagine that Luther actually consistently applied such a bizarre and schizophrenic ethic.  Nevertheless, this sort of inward/outward ethical dualism has exerted a very strong influence on Protestantism and we must be alert to its presence.  A common form it takes in the modern world is in the dual standards we apply to the world of business: as a private individual, I am not greedy, nor combative, I seek peace with all men, but as a businessman, I can be a cutthroat competitor, seeking to destroy the competition and wring the last cent out of my customers, always seeking more and more profit.  

For Luther, the attempt to escape the hard words of the Sermon on the Mount has led him to destroy the foundations of Christian ethics.  Clearly, we need a better interpretive solution.

Luther on the Sermon on the Mount

July 6, 2010
Now, let’s turn to look at Martin Luther’s expositions of the Sermon on the Mount.  We find the first of these in his treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, and the second in, unsurprisingly, The Sermon on the Mount.  The first, while troubled by a number of inconsistencies (some simply the result of Luther’s characteristic lack of rhetorical caution), offers a much more satisfactory account than the second.  I shall resist the temptation to dwell on the inconsistencies and will stick to the core argument.

In this treatise, Luther beings by rejecting the “counsels of perfection” idea.  We must, he says, find a way to make these words “apply to everyone alike, be he perfect or imperfect.”  

All Christians then are bound by the commands of the Sermon on the Mount, and for themselves have no need of “prince, king, lord, sword, or law.”  However, the majority of those who live here in the world are not Christians; they do not observe Christ’s commands, but are full of violence and evil.  We cannot insist on applying these commands across the board in a society that is not ready for them.  “Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither.  But take heed and first fill the world with real Chrsitains before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner.”  And so it is necessary that for such people there be a temporal sword “to bring about peace and prevent evil deeds,” while the spiritual does its work of “producing righteousness.”

Now, at this point, the argument is looking quite unsatisfactory.  You are tempted to scribble in the margin (as I did), something along the lines of, “But Martin, Jesus knew that not everyone would do good when he gave the command to resist not evil; otherwise, there would have been no need for the command.  He’s presuming that we’re surrounded by violent men, but we’re supposed to overcome by love, not a sword.”  But then things become much clearer.  Luther says, 

“Since a true Christian lives and labors on earth not for himself alone but for his neighbor, he does by the very nature of his spirit even what he himself has no need of, but is needful and usefu to his neighbor.  Because the sword is most beneficial and necessary for the whole world in order to preserve peace, punish sin, and restrain the wicked, the Christian submits most willingly to the rule of the sword, pays his taxes, honors those in authority, serves, helps, and does all he can to assist the governing authority... Although he has no need of these things for himself--to him they are not essential--nevertheless, he concerns himself about what is serviceable and of benefit to others.”  

In other words, Christ has forbidden his followers to use the sword to defend themselves, he has counselled them to give up their own cloaks when demanded, but he has never said that they cannot defend others, or track down and punish the thieves who take the cloaks of others.  He finally states this clearly a couple of pages later: 

“From all this we gain the true meaning of Christ’s words in Matthew 5:39, ‘Do not resist evil,’ etc.  It is this: A Christian should be so disposed that he will suffer every evil and injustice without avenging himself; neither will he seek legal redress in the courts but have utterly no need of temporal authority and law for his own sake.  On behalf of others, however, he may and should seek vengeance, justice, protection, and help, and do as much as he can to achieve it.  Likewise, the governing authority shoud, on its own initiative or through the instigation of others, help and protect him too, without any complaint, application, or instigation on his own part.  If it fails to do this, he should permit himself to be despoiled and slandered; he should not resist evil, as Christ’s words say.”  

Now this is quite interesting, and in fact, quite different from what he started out by saying.  You will see that as he reaches his conclusion, the two kingdoms schema he had begun with proves irrelevant.  For it is not that Christians don’t use the sword, and unbelievers do, or that Christians mustn’t use the sword against one another, but must against unbelievers who do, or even that Christians don’t use the sword for themsleves, but do use it for unbelievers.  Rather, it is quite simply, no Christian uses the sword for himself, or is anxious for his own rights and well-being, but all are anxious for the rights and well-being of others, Christians or worldlings, and will use the sword to protect them if necessary.  

This solution then qualifies, under the schema identified in the first part of this essay, as the fourth approach to dealing with the Sermon on the Mount.  It has the strength of having not added to or detracted from Christ’s words there--he means exactly what he says: “If you are attacked, turn the other cheek.  If you are stolen from, give to your enemy.”  However, Luther does not stick to this solution, as we will see in the next segment.

Counsels of Perfection (Sermon on the Mount, Part II)

May 8, 2010

In the Middle Ages, a tradition of ethical thought had developed which distinguished between the precepts and the counsels (also known as the counsels of perfection or the evangelical counsels).  The former are binding upon all Christians, while the latter, including, for example, chastity and poverty, may be freely embraced by those who wish to attain to a higher level of moral perfection--e.g., those who take monastic vows.  This distinction has been canonized as a cornerstone of Catholic moral theology, but it was never undisputed (e.g., the Franciscan poverty controversy of the 13th and 14th centuries), and was rejected wholesale by Protestantism.  It was common in medieval thought to apply this distinction to the more troubling commands of the Sermon on the Mount, so that those who desired to become perfect would indeed renounce self-defense and show sacrificial love for their enemies, while ordinary Christians could safely ignore these difficult counsels and apply the criteria of justice to dealing with assailants, robbers, persecutors, etc. 

While I am not sufficient with Catholic moral theology to pronounce very much on the deficiencies (and perhaps strengths) of the precepts/counsels distinction, I do think that it is a rather unsatisfactory way of resolving questions about the Sermon on the Mount.  This strategy is, you will notice, a variation on the third approach to dealing with the Sermon that I mentioned in my last post--that is, saying that Jesus’ commands only apply to some people, but not to others.  While I can see some role for the precepts/counsels distinction in pastorally reassuring Christians that these commands are difficult, and ordinary Christians should not expect to be able to live up to them perfectly, so that perhaps not every failure is sin, the question still remains--should we strive to not resist our enemies, or not?  Because, in this case, those following the precepts and those following the counsels cannot get along so easily.  It is not as if the counsel-followers are simply doing what the precept-followers are doing, but to a greater extent; rather, they are doing the opposite.  Those following Christ’s commands here will act on the premise that it is wrong to fight against attackers or to punish evildoers, while those not following them here will act on the premise that they have a duty to fight against attackers and punish evildoers, and those who refuse to do so are gravely harming society.  The property-owners can readily coexist and make common cause with the property-renouncers; the married can readily coexist and make common cause with the chaste; but can the violent do so with the pacifists?  Perhaps, but it seems doubtful--the ethical stakes are just too high, since we are talking about the taking and the protecting of human life.  

In any case, it is difficult to read the Sermon on the Mount as simply describing a vocation that Christians may choose to adopt--some choose to marry, some not; some choose to be carpenters, some not; some choose to be clergy, some not; some choose to love their enemies, some not.  This problem is particularly insistent because of the context: “Don’t be angry at your brother, don’t lust, don’t divorce, don’t retaliate against your enemies.”  If the latter is a counsel, not a precept, then what about the others?  In short, I don’t think this is a promising route for making sense of these tough bits of the Sermon on the Mount.  Perhaps I am just too Protestant to get my head around this distinction, and if there’s any Catholics reading this, I invite you to persuade me.

I raise this medieval distinction in order to direct our attention to the interesting relationship between it, and what gets adopted in Protestantism.  We shall see that, although a number of different proposals are put forward by Protestants, one that keeps cropping up, that we will see in Luther and in Calvin, is a tendency to take this horizontal Catholic distinction, and make it vertical.  That is, where the Catholics drew the line between the counsels and the precepts through the midst of the Christian community, so that some members lived according to one, and some according to the other,  Protestantism showed a disturbing tendency to draw the line through the midst of each Christian believer, so that with one half of my being (my heart, perhaps?), I was to follow the counsels, and with the other half (my body, perhaps?), the precepts.  As we shall see, this route proves to be a rather dangerous ethical proposal.

Augustine on Self-Defense

On Facebook over the past couple weeks, one of my posts about the "Top Ten Conservative Movies" has led to a long, rambling debate about just war and the ethics of self-defense, which you can read here. The latter has been particularly interesting. In the course of the discussion, Exodus 22:2 was brought up, as proof that it was morally right to kill an intruder who might be threatening your life and that of your family's. I countered with the suggestion that there is a distinction between what is justly lawful and what is righteous. This distinction particularly applies in view of the Old Testament/New Testament progression, in which Christ tells us that what was permitted because of the people's hardness of heart in the Old Testament should be transcended by faithful believers in the New. Given that civil authority in this present ages is a holdover from the past age, in power only insofar as Christ's kingdom has not yet fully replaced it, could it be that killing in self-defense ought to be permitted by the law for the sake of order, but ought not to be practiced by Christians?

This is certainly what Augustine thought. Because they ought not to fight to defend what is not theirs to keep (including their lives and their property), the attempt to do so was the result of a sinful lust, which desired too much what was not worth such desire. There was no just way for someone to defend themselves or their property to the point of shedding blood. Nevertheless, because it would be better for civil order that a wicked attacker should die rather than an innocent victim, the law ought not to prosecute those who kill in self-defense. Here's an excerpt from De Libero Arbitrio:

"Surely, I think that a law is quite safe from this accusation [of injustice] if it permits the people it rules to do lesser evils so as to avoid greater ones. It is much better that the man who plots against another's life be killed than the man who is defending his life. It is also much worse for an innocent person to be violated than for the assailant to be killed by the person whom he tried to attack....But even though the law is blameless, I do not understand how these men can be, when the law does not force them to kill, but leaves it to their power. They are free not to kill anyone for those things which they can lose against their will and which they ought not therefore to love.
"Concerning life, perhaps there is some question whether or not it can be taken away in any way from the soul when body is slain. But if life can be taken away, then it is to be despised. If life cannot be taken away, then there is nothing to fear."

Dr. O'Donovan tells me that this was the standard Christian teaching until the introduction of "rights" language by the canonists in the 13th-century.