| 7. The Commandment of Love | ||||
The requirement for conduct toward others may then be epitomized in the commandment of love. This commandment is generally accepted as the essentially Christian requirement, as the new ethic which Jesus taught. But if Jesus requirement of love is to be correctly understood, two points must first be considered. First, that the word "love" and the command to love appear relatively seldom in the words of Jesus; indeed only in the Sermon on the Mount as the requirement of love for enemies (Matt. 5 :43-48) and in the answer to the question about the chief commandment as the requirement of love of neighbor which stands next to the love of God. These are emphatic passages, but they are so few that it is plainly to be seen that neither Jesus nor his church thought of establishing by this demand for love a particular program of ethics. Rather the demand for love is included under the general requirement of doing the will of God; or better expressed, the will of God, in so far as it determines conduct toward other men, may be designated as the commandment of love. | ||||
This definition brings us to the second point, that neither Jesus nor his church thought that the command to love was a new requirement which had been hitherto unknown. In fact not only does "Love your neighbor as yourself" serve in Jewish literature as a summary of the Law (Paul too says in Rom. 13:8-10 that love means the fulfillment of the Law), but also in pagan literature love�love of man and even love of enemies�is regarded as one of the highest virtues. It appears for example in the writings of the Stoic philosopher Seneca: "Let us not grow weary of laboring for the general welfare, of helping individuals, of giving aid even to enemies." In another passage he protests against the objection of natural feeling: "But anger is refreshing�it is a satisfaction to requite injury!" He answers: "No! It is indeed worthy of honor to requite good with good; but not injustice with injustice. In the former it is ignominious to be conquered; here it is ignominious to conquer." | ||||
But it is evident that here the requirement of love is based upon the idea of humanity. It belongs to the ideal of man that he should not let himself be moved out of his repose, out of the harmony of his spiritual equilibrium, by any injury which overtakes him. That would be ignominious. He must have such control over himself, be possessed of such moral energy, that he is elevated above anger and the desire of revenge. If some one strikes him, that disturbs him no more than if an ass had kicked him; if he is spit upon, it affects him no more than if the sea had sprinkled him with its foam. Who would get excited over that? The basis of Jesus demand for love is entirely different�not the conception of strength of character and personal worth, but the concept of obedience, of renunciation of one s own claim. | ||||
One more difference must be noted. In the classical literature the requirement of love is based on still another idea, which Seneca clearly expresses in the brief words: "Man is for man something holy." This motivation too is derived from man; the intrinsic value of man is assumed as something certain, objective. Because man is valuable, worthful, holy, the demand for love of man, philanthropy, is valid; and its highest consummation is love for enemies. Jesus does not support his demand for love by referring to the value of other men as human beings, and love of enemies is not the high point of universal love of humanity, but the high point of overcoming of self, the surrender of one s own claim. | ||||
Jesus thought of love neither as a virtue which belongs to the perfection of man, nor as an aid to the well-being of society, but as an overcoming of self-will in the concrete situation of life in which a man encounters other men. Hence Jesus requirement of love cannot be more nearly defined in content, or be regarded as an ethical principle from which particular concrete requirements can be derived, as would be possible with the humanistic command of love, which depends on a well-defined ideal of humanity. What a man must do in order to love his neighbor or his enemy is not stated. It is assumed that every one can know that, and therefore Jesus demand for love is no revelation of a new principle of ethics nor of a new conception of the dignity of man. In love man does not gain infinite spiritual value and thereby obtain a share in the divine essence; love is simply the requirement of obedience and shows how this obedience can and ought to be practised in the concrete situation in which man is bound to man. | ||||
This follows from the conjunction of the command of love for neighbor with the command of love for God. This connection is not in itself a new idea which Judaism had never before known. This can be seen from the narrative in which the question of the chief commandment occurs. | ||||
"A scribe came, who had heard them [Jesus and the Sadducees] arguing, and noticed that Jesus had answered them well. He asked him, What command is the first of all ? | ||||
"Jesus answered, The first is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. | ||||
"Then the scribe said to him, Master, you have spoken truly; there is One, and none beside Him. And to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one s neighbor as oneself, is worth more than all burnt-offerings and other sacrifices. | ||||
"And Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, and said to him, You are not far from the Kingdom of God." (Mark 12 :28-34) | ||||
It can and must be said that this double command wins its full significance only when it appears in connection with the preaching of Jesus. Its meaning then is this: the two commands, to love God and to love one s neighbor are not identical, so that love of neighbor would be without anything further love for God. This misunderstanding can arise only when neighbor-love is taken in the philanthropic sense, when an intrinsic worth, something divine, is ascribed to man. Then truly the relation to God has been lost and for it a relation to men has been substituted. You cannot love God; very well, then, love men, for in them you love God. No; on the contrary the chief command is this: love God, bow your own will in obedience to God s. And this first command defines the meaning of the second�the attitude which I take toward my neighbor is determined by the attitude which I take before God; as obedient to God, setting aside my selfish will, renouncing my own claims, I stand before my neighbor, prepared for sacrifice for my neighbor as for God. | ||||
And conversely the second command determines the meaning of the first: in loving my neighbor I prove my obedience to God. There is no obedience to God in a vacuum so to speak, no obedience separate from the concrete situation in which I stand as a man among men, no obedience which is directed immediately toward God. Whatever of kindness, pity, mercy, I show my neighbor is not something which I do for God, but something which I really do for my neighbor; the neighbor is not a sort of tool by means of which I practise the love of God, and love of neighbor cannot be practised with a look aside toward God. Rather, as I can love my neighbor only when I surrender my will completely to God s will, so I can love God only while I will what He wills, while I really love my neighbor. | ||||
This love, although not a principle from which concrete requirements can be derived, is by no means so without content that I must ask, What am I then to do, in order to love? Whoever so asks has plainly not understood the words "Love your neighbor as yourself." For what it means to love himself, he knows very well, and without any theory or system about the self. For self-love is not a principle of morality, but the attitude of the natural man. If a man then is to love his neighbor as himself, he knows very well how to direct his conduct in the concrete situation. Kierkegaard was right when he said, "If a man is to love his neighbor as himself, the command turns the lock of the stronghold of self-love as with a master key and casts self-love out. Were the command of neighbor-love expressed otherwise than by the little phrase as yourself, which is so easy to grasp and yet has the reach of eternity, the command could not so master self-love. This as yourself cannot be twisted nor subtly rationalized. With the penetrating keenness of the eternal it presses into the farthest corner in which a man loves himself; it leaves self-love not the slightest excuse, nor the smallest loophole. How wonderful! One could give long and ingenious discourses on how a man should love his neighbor, and self-love would still always know how to bring forward excuses and evasions, because the subject is not covered, one case would be overlooked, one point would be not exactly or strictly enough expressed and described. But this as yourself�no wrestler can grip his opponent so closely, with a hold so inescapable, as this command grips self-love." | ||||
It is therefore stupid to say�and this again is possible only in association with the humanistic ideal of man�that a justifiable self-love, a necessary standard of self-respect, must precede love of neighbor, since the command runs "love your neighbor as yourself." Self-love is thus presupposed. Yes, it is indeed presupposed, but not as something which man needs to learn, which must be expressly required of him. It is the attitude of the natural man which must be overcome. | ||||
One requirement among others of this love of neighbor is the readiness to forgive one s neighbor, and this readiness characterizes most distinctly the love which is here demanded. For if the thought of forgiveness is taken seriously, this requirement is the most difficult which natural self-love encounters. To renounce revenge, to do good to the enemy, even to pray for him�to all this a man can force himself. But to forgive him? This is possible only if one really loves him. But how seriously the demand for forgiveness is intended, Jesus shows in his answer to the question, "How often must I forgive my brother when he sins against me ? Are seven times enough?" Jesus answers, "I tell you, not seven times but seventy times seven times." (Matt.18 :21ff.) This means that forgiveness is no limited duty, of which a man can acquit himself, but it results necessarily from the attitude which he is to take toward his neighbor, the attitude which knows no claim of his own. | ||||
Finally it is now clear that love does not mean an emotion which quickens the spiritual life and makes it sensitive, but a definite attitude of the will. Love for neighbor and enemy depends not on an emotional and sentimental feeling of pity or admiration, which finds in the most profligate individual the spark of the divine, of noble, inextinguishable humanity; rather it depends on the command of God. Love is then not an affection of peculiar strength among the feelings and affections which fill the human soul in all possible shades and varieties. If love were emotion and affection, it would be conceivable that besides love and hate there could also be a third attitude, indifference. But if love means the surrender of one s own will for the good of the other man, in obedience to God, there exists for man only the Either-Or of love and hate. Whoever does not love, whoever is indifferent, is in bondage to his natural feelings, his natural self; he lives in hate. For to do good only to those who do good to us, to be kind only to those who are kind to us, means acting as the sinners and heathen also do, that is, it is the behavior of the natural, selfish man. | ||||
In reality the love which is based on emotions of sympathy, on affection, is self-love; for it is a love of preference, of choice, and the standard of the preference and choice is the self. Friendship and family love are expressions of the natural self; they are as such neither good nor bad; they are bad when the will of the man is bad. But to see in them the fulfillment of God s command to love is to falsify this command and to set self-love in the place of obedient love of neighbor. For the neighbor is not this or that man with whom I feel a bond of sympathy, it is every man; yet not every man in general, but every man with whom I come in contact. The command is, you must love; the will is called to action, that is, the man is addressed, with the implication that he is placed by God under the necessity of decision and must decide through his free act. Only if love is thought of as an emotion is it meaningless to command love; the command of love shows that love is understood as an attitude of the will. | ||||
Such love is clearly neither weak nor feeble. It does not consist in sentimental emotion, nor look upon the neighbor in his actual person as something especially precious, which must be admired or cherished. It is not the fostering of the individuality of others because of one s joy in it. For man is not seen by Jesus as "individuality" at all. He is seen as standing under the demand of God. So true love of neighbor will never indulge and weaken him, but will recognize him as also under the necessity of decision and treat him accordingly. Otherwise Jesus call to repentance could not be understood as an act of love. | ||||
In conclusion, there is a saying of Jesus which perhaps can show how little it is possible to seek for an ethic of Jesus in the sense of an idealistic doctrine of duties and virtues, or in the sense of an ethic of goods or values; how, on the contrary, the responsibility for all concrete moral decisions is thrust upon man, and these decisions are bound up with the one Either-Or, obedience or disobedience. It is the saying, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5 :48) | ||||
The saying is of course preserved in another form, "Be merciful as your Father is merciful." (Luke 6 :36) But the first form is probably the older, and was changed by Luke to make a transition to the following section. However, in order to understand the saying we must consider�on the assumption that it is genuine, and therefore spoken not in Greek but in Aramaic�that it is not allowable to introduce here the Greek idea of perfection. For the Greeks, perfection is the ideal, the highest possibility of conduct, to be attained by gradual improvement; the perfect is the pinnacle of all relative values. That would not be consistent with Jesus view of God, according to which God does not stand in direct relation to relative values. Neither does this Greek view correspond at all to the Semitic conception of "perfect," which is an absolute conception. The latter means "sound," "whole"; applied to man, it can also mean "exact," "true." In this way must Jesus words be understood; they assert that the conduct of man should be whole and undivided, not this and that together; true and exact, unwavering, no running back and forth. And this requirement is based on the reference to God Himself, with whom also there is only the Either-Or, not Both-And. This saying expresses the whole emphasis of the demand of Jesus; man stands in the crisis of decision, and this decision is not something relative, a stage of his development, but the Either-Or before which God has placed him, so that the man s decision has final character; he becomes thereby a righteous man or a sinner. | ||||
Again the question arises, is this requirement not impossible? And what if the man is a sinner? | ||||
8. The Will of God and the Coming of His Kingdom | ||||
Before we enter upon this question, there is still one thing to consider. How is the preaching of Jesus concerning the will of God related to his proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom ? Or, as it could be phrased, how are Jesus the rabbi and Jesus the prophet related? This question is not intended to apply to Jesus personality and the methods of his historical ministry, but to the content of his preaching. Is it conceivable that he who as eschatological prophet proclaims the coming of the Kingdom and drives out demons, at the same time as a rabbi teaches his disciples and enters into disputes about questions of the Law which were important at that time? In what sense do the message "The Kingdom of God is near" and the demand "Be perfect" form a unity? Indeed, are they a unity at all? | ||||
In more recent times this has been frequently disputed. It would be possible to say simply: The fulfilling of the will of God, obedience, is the condition for participation in the Kingdom, for entrance into it. In a certain sense this is true, yet it is not a wholly satisfactory answer. For this connection could be conceived externally; participation in the Kingdom of God might appear as the reward sought by obedience, and thus the radical character of obedience would be lost. Especially from that point of view the peculiar way in which Jesus speaks of obedience would be misunderstood. For all other possible requirements, for example the requirement of complete observance of the Law, may otherwise be thought of as the condition for entrance into the Kingdom. From a rabbi, for instance, this word is recorded: "If the Israelites should keep strictly to the Law for only two Sabbaths, they would immediately be redeemed." Jesus says nothing of this kind. | ||||
An intrinsic connection of eschatological preaching and moral demand would evidently exist only if the coming Kingdom is so conceived that it becomes clear without further explanation that there can be no other condition except the one, radical obedience. On the other hand this inner connection can exist only if in this demand for obedience nothing is involved which conflicts with the belief in the coming Kingdom, if rather the demand for obedience really coincides with the call to prepare for the future. | ||||
Since Jesus did not preach theoretical reflections, but appealed immediately to the will of the hearer, the answer to this question is not to be found directly in his words, but must be sought in the fundamental view underlying them. Indeed it seems strange at first sight that the prophet should also have been a rabbi, that interpretation of the Law and eschatological preaching should belong together. Thus it is easy to understand why many scholars have ignored or changed the meaning of the eschatological preaching of the coming Kingdom. They have understood the Kingdom as an inner spiritual possession, or as the actual fellowship of those who in obedience to God s will build by moral endeavor the Kingdom of God on earth. Both are, as we have previously shown, historical misunderstandings, and these conceptions are today almost completely abandoned.( Professor Bultmann is of course speaking for German theologians.) | ||||
There is still another way out; the explanation has been given that the eschatological preaching does not come from Jesus. He was only a teacher of the Law, who taught a new morality, a "better righteousness." The eschatological message was first put into his mouth by the church. After his death his adherents, at first despairing, united under the lasting influence of his personality, and after they had seen him in visions as risen from the dead, they expected that he would return as the Messiah, the "Son of Man," on the clouds of heaven, and would set up the Kingdom. From their glowing hope for the future the eschatological sayings originated which were attributed to Jesus. | ||||
This is possible. Yet if it were true, the meaning of the eschatological message would still be fundamentally the same, and the question would still remain whether and how this message and the preaching of the will of God were combined into a unity in the early church. Instead of the preaching of Jesus the preaching of the early church would call for explanation, and since the investigation really concerns the content, meaning, and validity for us of what is taught in the gospels, the question of how much the historical Jesus and how much other people have contributed to that content is of secondary importance. | ||||
This is possible. But it is historically extremely improbable. For the certainty with which the Christian community puts the eschatological preaching into the mouth of Jesus is hard to understand if he did not really preach it. Further, the critical analysis of the text shows that later sayings have often been added to an older eschatological stratum, and these later editions exhibit characteristic interests of the church, for example the interest in the dignity of their leaders and the rewarding of the faithful (Matt. 19:27, 28, or Luke 22:28, 29; Mark 10:28-30), or the anxiety over the delayed coming of the "Son of Man" (Luke 12 :35-38, 47-48; Mark 13 :31, 33-37), or threats of punishment against the unbelieving Jews. (Cf. Matt. 11:21-24, Luke 19:39-44, 23:28-31) It is probable that such sayings as betray no church interests at all really go back to Jesus. Finally, the movement which Jesus started, his entry into Jerusalem, and his death on the cross, are historically comprehensible only if he really spoke as a Messianic prophet. Indeed he was probably far more an eschatological prophet than is apparent from the tradition. | ||||
It is then natural that other scholars have thought just the opposite, that he was only an eschatological prophet, and either that his preaching of the will of God is to be understood only in the light of the eschatology, or that it does not come from him at all but was ascribed to him by the church. When after his death the first turbulent movement subsided and his adherents united to form a community, they came more and more into conflict with orthodox Judaism, from which they had separated. From this time come the disputes over interpretation of the Law, in which they appealed to the authority of Jesus and represented him as the rabbi which he had never been. | ||||
This too is extremely improbable. In one point only is it correct, that in fact the community separated more and more from orthodox Judaism, that the disputes between Jesus and his opponents were now recounted and written down as models, and were naturally told in such a way as to correspond to the interests of the church. Doubtless, then, without critical scrutiny some words were attributed to Jesus which had originated in the community, in controversy with opponents or in the interests of closer organization of the church. Probably most of the sayings where proof texts are used in argument took shape first in the community (cf. Matt. 9:I3; 12:5, 6, 7; Mark 7:6, 7; 12:26, 27); likewise certain directions for the life of the church. (Matt. 5:17-19; 18:15-17, 19, 20, etc.) | ||||
But against the supposition that all words of Jesus about the Law and the requirement of God originated in the community, there are two decisive reasons. First there is the fact that the community saw in Jesus the Messiah, and expected his coming in Messianic glory. It is incredible that they would transform into a rabbi him whom they looked upon as Messiah. For stories to be told of him as a rabbi, the picture of his actual work as a teacher of the Law must have been distinctly impressed on their memory; later it was gradually thrust into the background by the figure of the Messiah. Further we know that the primitive church held fast to the Law with great fidelity; it did not understand the double edge of certain of the sayings of Jesus about the Law, and in opposition to Paul and other Hellenistic Christian missionaries maintained firmly the ideal of legalistic perfection. It is then incredible that the words of Jesus which in their implications shatter this ideal and destroy the spirit of legalism originated in the church; they must go back to Jesus himself. Of course in many special cases we cannot be certain what comes from the community and what from Jesus. But we cannot doubt that the most important sayings, which demand radical obedience to the will of God, go back to Jesus. | ||||
There is one more expedient which has often been tried: the words of Jesus about the will of God are to be understood strictly in the light of the eschatological message. That is in a certain sense entirely correct, but here it has a special meaning which remains to be tested. The eschatological message is taken one-sidedly to mean the prediction of the dramatic events of the end of the age, the prediction of the destruction of the world. It is argued that because of this expectation of the imminent end of the world, Jesus had no interest in the different aspects of moral life, in marriage and work, in the value of property and civil order. He did not intend to give absolute rules for man s conduct; his ethic was an "interim-ethic," that is, his commands were only practical rules for the last short span of time which remained before the end. For this brief time one must do his utmost, enlist all his energy. | ||||
Now it is certainly true that as a result of the expectation of the imminent end of this world, Jesus was not interested in many of the concrete possibilities in which man s obedience can be proved on earth. But this does not mean that obedience is merely relative, a matter of prudent rules for attaining a share in the Kingdom, rather than radical and absolute. We need only remember that eschatological expectation in itself is not necessarily associated with the call to repentance and with the preaching of the will of God. It can be combined just as well with wishful fantasies of future glory, with economic ideals and hopes, with thoughts of revenge and pictures of hell. Jewish apocalyptic as well as the history of eschatology elsewhere offers abundant proof of this. It still needs to be explained why such ideas are not found with Jesus and why, on the contrary, with him the demand for obedience goes hand in hand with the proclaiming of the future age. | ||||
Moreover Jesus sayings about the will of God in detail show very clearly that they are by no means meant as interim-ethic. We need only compare with Jesus teaching on the will of God a prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah in order to see the difference. | ||||
"A word of Yahweh came to me: | ||||
"So has Yahweh spoken: | ||||
Here we see plainly how the behavior of the prophet, his renunciation of marriage, of participation in the mourning for the dead and the festal joy of his people, is not based on the absolute demand for obedience but on the vision of the approaching catastrophe. It is otherwise with Jesus; for neither in the condemning of legalistic piety nor in the requirements of the Sermon on the Mount does reference to the imminent end of the world play any part whatever. Hypocrisy is rebuked without the threat of hell fire; love of enemies is demanded without the promise of heavenly joys. Altogether the will of God is complete obedience, surrender of one s own claim. There can therefore be no question of an interim-ethic, of relative requirements by which the claim of man is merely deferred for awhile. It is true however that Jesus demands are in one point to be understood in the light of the eschatological message�namely that in them "Now" appears as the decisive hour. | ||||
This leads us to see how truly the eschatological message and the preaching of the will of God are to be comprehended as a unity. It should first be noted that in the great prophets of the Old Testament and the great prophet of Iran, Zarathustra, a similar association of eschatology and moral demand is found. It can be easily understood that the prophet, in the consciousness of having freshly and clearly discerned the will of God, would look upon the unhappy earthly conditions as ripe for destruction and preach an overturning of all things by a mighty catastrophe. But if we seek so to explain the preaching of Jesus, we should have only a psychological explanation, not an insight into the inner relationship of eschatology and demand. | ||||
Rather we should say: the difficulty in gasping this connection as a unity really arises because both the eschatology and the demand are not understood in their final decisive sense. So long as we speak of an ethic of Jesus in the usual sense, we cannot understand how the teacher of a system of ethics can at the same time preach the imminent end of everything in the world. For a system of ethics presupposes the existence of the world and of the human race under the conditions of this world as they are known to us. It presents ideals, or at least ends, which are to be realized by our action, and at the same time a future which is under our control. All this is expressly denied in the eschatological message of Jesus; he knows no ends for our conduct, only God s purpose; no human future, only God s future. But so we have learned to understand Jesus preaching of the will of God. In it no ends were prescribed for man, no future placed under his control. Every ideal of personality or of society, every ethic of values and goods was repudiated. The one concern in this teaching was that man should conceive his immediate concrete situation as the decision to which he is constrained, and should decide in this moment for God and surrender his natural will. Just this is what we found to be the final significance of the eschatological message, that man now stands under the necessity of decision, that his "Now" is always for him the last hour, in which his decision against the world and for God is demanded, in which every claim of his own is to be silenced. Since, then, the message of the coming of the Kingdom and that of the will of God point men to the present moment as the final hour in the sense of the hour of decision, the two do form a unity, each is incomplete without the other. | ||||
For the Kingdom of God remains a dark and silent entity, like death, as long as it is not plain that the demand for decision has for man a clear, comprehensible meaning. Only then is the determination of the present by the future Kingdom not a denial of the present but its fulfillment; only so is the future a controlling factor in the present. | ||||
Conversely, the will of God, as calling man in the present to decision, is comprehensible only if this will gives man a future. For this decision is no choice between two possibilities which lie equally at man s disposal; it is a true crisis, that is, the Either-Or between two possibilities, in which the "old man" leaves his position of independence and comes under the sovereignty of another. The sovereign in both cases is God, either the angry, judging God, or the gracious God. A man becomes through the decision either a sinner or righteous. The real future stands before man in decision, not the false future over which he already has control, but the future which will give him a character which he does not yet have. This is the meaning of the present instant, that it involves the necessity of decision because it leads into the future. | ||||
Then the question becomes all the more urgent: How does it stand with the sinner? Is there still a future for him? Can there be one, if he is condemned by God? Can the freedom of decision for man be repeated? Or does not the seriousness of the last hour mean that the decision is final? | ||||