The ethics of Jesus

Preface

The aim of this book and the writer's conception of its task are pretty fully set forth in the introductory chapter; and that discussion should not be repeated here. It need only be said that the method of approach adopted involves a rather detailed survey of all the passages in the teaching of Jesus that can be regarded as clearly ethical, and should itself help to make more objective the results of the inquiry as well as more completely insure that the teaching itself should be unfolded, rather than simply talked about.

While I have tried to keep constantly in mind the ethical aspect of the teaching, as the one problem of this book, it should not be forgotten that Jesus' teaching is so completely permeated with the religious spirit, that it is impossible wholly to ignore the religious and still do justice to the ethical teaching. Jesus has no dual standpoint, corresponding to a sharp separation of the two realms of the religious and the ethical.

As one in a series of New Testament Handbooks this volume is, of course, intended to reward study but it is most earnestly hoped that that intention has not meant that the priceless vitality of the ethical teaching of Jesus has escaped in the

VI PREFACE

process. A book on the ethics of Jesus that is not vital through and through belies its theme. I can but hope, therefore, that the book may help a little to bring the unity, the sweep, the depth, and the inspiration of the ethical teaching of Jesus to many readers who do not think of themselves at all as professional students. Jesus was interested in life rather than in technical discussions about life.

HENRY CHURCHILL KING.

Oberlin College, September, 1909.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

Chapter I Introduction I

Jesus' teaching its own best witness — Extent of literature — Aim of the book — Light upon the personality of Jesus — Fresh historical interpretation — Psychological interpretation — Unfolding the teaching — Criticism of the ethics of Jesus — Application of the teaching — The entire teaching as a background — The method of a composite photograph — Critical position — Trustworthiness of the ethical teaching as given in the Synoptic Gospels — Schmiedel's " foundation -pillars " — Burkitt's " doubly attested sayings " — Limitation of theme — Jesus never separates religion and ethics — Summary of the entire teaching of Jesus as given in Luke — Amount and permanence of the ethical teaching — Emphasis on honesty — Emphasis on love — Trends in the entire teaching.

Chapter II

The Ethical Teaching in Schmiedel's Foundation-pillar Passages, and in the Doubly Attested

Sayings. Criteria 33

Schmiedel's foundation-pillars — Classification of passages — Discussion of passages — Passages bearing on Jesus' character as a whole — Passages bearing on Jesus' character as a miracle worker — Passages showing in what Jesus' greatness consists — Schmiedel's inferences — Our own inferences — The inferences logically arranged — Conclusion.

The "doubly attested sayings " — Selection of the ethi-

Vlll CONTENTS

PAGE

cal passages in the doubly attested sayings — The fundamental laws of life involved — Discussion of the passages — Summary of inferences — Logical grouping of inferences — The moral end — Faith in the triumph of the good — Love the sum of life — Moral evidence — Fidelity to the inner light — Moral means for the inner life of the man himself — Unity, integrity, and inwardness of life — Earnestness and watchfulness — The laws of habit and efficiency — The unity of the life in love — In relation to others — The laws of the contagion of the good — Of sacrifice — Of self-giving love — Of reverence for the person — -.Of priority by service — Of the sharing of all goods — The unity of the whole moral conception of Jesus — Conclusion.

Chapter III

The Ethical Teaching in Mark and in the Other Common Source of Matthew and Luke. The Oldest Sources 87

The ethical teaching in Q — Selection of passages — The temptation replies — Three ethical emphases — The contrast with the Pharisaic spirit — The necessity of sympathetic and tender forgiveness — The sense of the seriousness of life — The reason for Jesus' position as to the Pharisees — Conclusion on Q.

The ethical teaching in Mark — Outline of the entire teaching in Mark — Selection of the ethical passages to be discussed — Mark's ethical notes — Jesus' message, method, motive, goal, and the revolutionary contrast in his teaching — The great paradox — The great commandment — The demand for the childlike qualities — Social applications of his teaching — Mark's parables — Summary of the ethical teaching in Mark.

CHAPTER IV Estimate of the Ethical Teaching in the Sayings of

Jesus Peculiar to either Matthew or Luke . .145 The ethical teaching peculiar to Matthew — Summary

CONTENTS IX

PAGE

of ethical passages selected — Matthew shows both the notes of warning and judgment, and the notes of mercy, humility, and forgiveness — Comparison of the ethical inferences from the ethical teaching peculiar to Matthew, with the laws of life derived from the doubly attested sayings — Summary of the teaching peculiar to Matthew. The peculiar teaching in Luke — Amount and credibility of this peculiar material — Summary of ethical passages chosen — The discussion of Luke's peculiar material in two divisions — Consideration of the parables of grace with their related sayings — Consideration of the parables of warning and the sayings akin to these — Parables of grace — Parable of the two debtors — Of the Good Samaritan — Of the lost coin — Of the lost son — The aspect of judgment and warning — Parables of the rich fool — Of the watchful servants — Of the barren fig tree — Of the chief seats — Of the Pharisee and the publican — Of the rash builder and the rash king — Of extra service — Of the unrighteous steward — Summary on the parables of grace — Summary on the parables of warning — Comparison with doubly attested sayings — Conclusion.

CHAPTER V Genuineness of the teaching here — Outlines of the

entire Sermon — The originality of Jesus — The elements

in that originality — The spiritual discoveries of Jesus in

the Sermon on the Mount summarized.

CHAPTER VI Jesus' Conception of the Basic Qualities of Life: A

Study of the Beatitudes 204

The basic qualities for character, happiness, and influence set forth in the Beatitudes — Qualities of character involved — Teachable — Penitent — Self-controlled — Genuinely earnest in pursuit of the highest — Sympathetic with men — Reverent toward men — Promoting love

X CONTENTS

PAGE

among men — Sacrificing for men — The Beatitudes as a progress — The basic qualities of happiness — The Beatitudes a reversal of the world's code — Their qualities as to the supreme conditions of happiness — The qualities of the Beatitudes as the natural conditions for influence — Summary.

CHAPTER VII The Great Motives to Living in the Sermon on the

Mount 232

The ultimate problem — Four great motives used by Jesus in the Sermon — The unity of the inner life — The inner fulfillment of the law — The motive of God as Father

— The motive of men as brothers — The motives in the divisions of the Sermon — Jesus' putting of the principle of the unity of the inner life — Jesus' use of the motive of men as brothers — Jesus' use of the motive of God as Father — The unity of the four motives in the thought of God as Father — Summary of the great motives to living as seen in the Sermon on the Mount — Jesus' use of the four great motives as against impurity, falsity, and retaliation.

Chapter VIII

The Sermon on the Mount itself a summary of Jesus' teaching — Evidenced in the preceding discussion — Contains the ethical notes and laws of Schmiedel's passages and of the doubly attested sayings — In harmony with Q and Mark — And with the peculiar teaching in Matthew and Luke — A thoroughgoing unity in his teaching — Seen in the inevitable inferences from the thought of God as Father — Has Jesus an ethical system? — His conception of the highest good — His conception of duty

— His assumption of conscience and of freedom — Conclusion.

Index of Subjects 281

Index of Scripture Texts. 289

THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES

This Lectureship was constituted a perpetual foundation in Harvard University in 1898, as a memorial to the late William Belden Noble of Washington, D.C. (Harvard, 1885). The deed of gift provides that the lectures shall be not less than six in number, that they shall be delivered annually, and, if convenient, in the Phillips Brooks House, during the season of Advent. Each lecturer shall have ample notice of his appointment, and the publication of each course of lectures is required. The purpose of the Lectureship will be further seen in the following citation from the deed of gift by which it was established : —

" The object of the founder of the Lectures is to continue the mission of William Belden Noble, whose supreme desire it was to extend the influence of Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life; to make known the meaning of the words of Jesus, 1 1 am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' In accordance with the large interpretation of the Influence of Jesus by the late Phillips Brooks, with whose religious teaching he in whose memory the Lectures are established and also the founder of the Lectures were in deep sympathy, it is intended that the scope of the Lectures shall be as wide as the highest interests of humanity. With this end in view, — the perfection of the spiritual man and the consecration by the spirit of

Xll THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES

Jesus of every department of human character, thought, and activity, — the Lectures may include philosophy, literature, art, poetry, the natural sciences, political economy, sociology, ethics, history both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as theology and the more direct interests of the religious life. Beyond a sympathy with the purpose of the Lectures, as thus denned, no restriction is placed upon the lecturer."

THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES FOR 1909

Introduction

One feels inevitably the hopelessness of trying Jesus' teachto add to the value of the teachings of Jesus by b^witn^s. further comment upon them. The comment seems so often only to dilute and weaken the teaching rather than to strengthen its hold upon the mind. To any man able to enter in even small degree into the reality of the teaching of Jesus, that teaching must always seem its own best witness. It is possible to go over many books on the teaching of Jesus, excellently done though they seem, and yet feel curiously unrewarded, when the outcome is compared with the results of one's own first-hand study of the words of Jesus themselves.

It is impossible, too, to ignore the fact that the Extent of literature upon every aspect of the life and teach- llterature - ing of Jesus has immensely increased in recent years; and that, with the growth of the department of biblical theology, the last years have seen such attention to the teaching of Jesus as has never been witnessed before. In the light of all this literature, one can well appreciate Burkitt's remark, "that the only time when Christians would have cause to be afraid was when the faroff figure of Jesus no longer attracted the critic and the student ; but that there was no evidence that that day was within sight." 1 And yet, at the same time, one can hardly be blamed for asking himself, somewhat despairingly, Is there any excuse for adding another book to this list ? What can our discussion do ?

Light upon First of all, it may be said that it is possible for ity Sj^t [t t0 throw some h & ht (quite incidentally, for this is in no sense a volume of apologetics) upon questions of historicity and credibility ; and it is not a small matter that the world should not lose the conviction of the reality of any great personality, most of all that of Jesus. Now it is not only true that general considerations must always weigh heavily against the hypercritical judgments of a few modern writers, who ask us to believe that the character, that is most necessary to understand the history of the Christian centuries, is itself unhistorical ; but it may also be said, that the present critical situation may well be considered rather reassuring than otherwise. In any case, a careful study of the most certain portions of the teaching of Jesus must be one of the best and surest ways of coming to the life and person of Jesus. The man Jesus must stand revealed in this teaching with singular decisiveness.

In the second place, it may be possible for us to

1 Quoted by Knowling, art. " Criticism," Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, p. 393.

see a little more clearly what portions of the teachings of Jesus are most certain, and to realize how much we have in these portions that cannot be doubted.

Moreover, for the surest interpretation of any Fresh historiteaching, we must be able to see it in its full his- ^tian 611 * 6 " torical setting, and such historical interpretation is always a fresh problem, needing ever to be faced anew in view of the results of constantly advancing research. Here, for example, we must take account not only of the general influence of the Jewish literature of the time, but particularly of its Messianism, and of the religious position of the Pharisees. Though all this has far less application to the ethical than to other parts of the teaching of Jesus.

To this historical imagination one must add, as Psychologiwell, what may be called a psychological imagina- cal . mter P re - tion, to make the teaching real to himself. Here the problem especially is to get all possible light en Christ's own state of mind at the time of the teaching, and so to see how the teaching grew up first of all out of his own experience and thought.

And in all this the attempt must be to keep Unfolding close to the teaching itself, to unfold it, rather than the teachin gto write about it. No need is greater than that the teaching of Jesus should be allowed to speak for itself. One recalls Horton's striking sentence, " It is the unhappy delusion of the Church that it knows the teaching of Jesus." 1 To similar import

1 The Teaching of Jesus, p. viii.

Mr. Peile says, in his Bampton lectures, "It cannot, I think, be questioned that the striking contrast between the lives of Christians and the rules which they profess to accept is the great religious difficulty of the present day." 1 We must, therefore, do our utmost to approach the teaching in such a way as to allow it to make its own unbiased impression. Our single-minded endeavor must be to see life through Christ's eyes, to share his discernment of its laws. Only then shall we be able to bring out the relations of the parts of the teaching each to each, and the unity of all. Criticism of On the other hand, singularly violent attacks oMes^s C . S are being made just now, in some quarters, even upon the ethics of Jesus. It is not only that many even professedly Christian writers have declared that teaching impracticable, always impossible of direct application to life ; but that others are insisting that the ethics of Jesus is always " endethics," that is, teaching given only in view of an almost immediate end of the present world-age, and so clearly not of value for ordinary daily life. Still others are attributing to Jesus in a most extraordinary manner ethical judgments, which any scientific and sober exegesis must say unhesitatingly were quite the reverse of his true position. 2 And, finally, a recent and professedly very modern book says, for example, amid a large amount of similar assertion, " Luke is especially full of teach-

1 The Reproach of the Gospel, p. 6.

2 See art. " Jesus or Christ," Hibbert Journal, January, 1909.

ings quite as hard for the conscience as the wonderstories of the Bible are difficult for the reason." 1

It would seem, then, abundantly worth while to Need of make a careful objective study of the distinctly °|& tlve ethical teaching of Jesus. But this volume attempts nowhere any direct defense of the teaching of Jesus as against such criticisms, nor any direct attack upon the assumptions underlying these criticisms; except so far as such defense or attack is involved in a clear objective understanding of Jesus' ethical teaching itself. Though it would not be difficult to show, in many cases at least, that the criticisms come from failure to follow sound canons of literary or historical interpretation, from a curiously inconsistent mixture of older and newer points of view, or from a supposed higher ethical viewpoint, that takes all seriousness out of life, is sentimentalism pure and simple, justifiable neither scientifically nor philosophically.

It must be regarded, also, as of no small moment Application that the student of the teaching of Jesus should ° f a *y n try to see that teaching in its application to his own time. We are to be doers, not hearers only. And if our modern psychological emphasis upon doing in order to knowing is at all correct, it must be recognized that in this preeminently ethical realm we shall only really profit by the teaching, and rightly evaluate it, as we honestly attempt its application to the life-problems of our own time. This does not mean a mere homiletic drawing of

1 Dole, What we know about Jesus, p. 46 note.

Limitation of theme.

morals ; for moral teaching can be truly and fully seen, only as it is brought home to our own situation and to our own problems. We shall only appreciate the insight of Jesus when we share it ; and we shall not truly share it until we have tried to apply it to problems that for ourselves are real and pressing?! Just here lies a great part of the virtue of Tolstoy's writing upon Christianity. He has come into a thorough conviction of certain basic principles, as he sees them, in the teaching of Jesus, and is trying with all his heart to apply them to our own time. To relieve the minds of those who conjure with the word "scientific," it might be added that this insistence upon the modern application of the teaching of Jesus is not less scientific, but really more so, because it is the one way to genuine insight in the realm of the ethical. If the author does not do this, the reader must do it for himself, if he is to come to clear convictions. No excuses, therefore, need to be made for the occasional but deliberate present-day applications of the teaching. Probably it is just here that there lies the largest part of what we can do in making the teaching real.

Our attempt may find a further justification in the strict limitation of its theme. The book is not to undertake all the problems of New Testament introduction. On the contrary, it aims to build directly on what others have done in this field. Particularly, it is not its business to cover the ground of other books of this series of New Testament Handbooks. The very plan of the series rather requires strict limitation. Nor is the book to deal with all the teaching of Jesus. Two books of this series have already touched, one at length and another in an important part, upon this teaching in its entirety. Our discussion must rather be confined to the purely ethical teaching, to a specific field less frequently covered ; though the general books on the teaching of Jesus and on Christian ethics have had not a little to say, at least incidentally, upon our own theme ; and there are not wholly lacking books almost confined to this field.

In reaching our theme, moreover, it seems wise The entire to begin with an analytic statement of the teach- ^kgrou^ ing as a whole, as it stands in the Gospels, in order to appreciate the Evangelists' point of view, and to recognize the relative unity of the entire teaching as it has been placed before the disciples of Christ through the centuries in the longest of the Gospels. We are thus to work from the whole to the parts, and not vice versa.

But it is particularly to be noticed that, in order The method to keep the results as objective as possible, the ° s ^ t e° m " method of this volume is that of a composite photograph. photograph. Against the background of Luke's putting of the entire teaching of Jesus, the ethical teaching is presented in a series of pictures taken from different and carefully chosen points of view, superimposed one upon the other. The ethical emphases which so result, we may be certain, will give us authentic and central points in the ethics

Summary as to aim.

An individual reaction.

of Jesus. In other words, the volume undertakes seven successive studies of the ethical teaching of Jesus : two from the points of view of suggested but contrasted criteria for that teaching — the criterion of the exceptional, in Schmiedel's " foundation-pillar " passages, and the criterion of the recurring, in Burkitt's " doubly attested sayings " ; two from the points of view of the admittedly oldest sources — Mark, and the other common source of Matthew and Luke; two from the points of view of material peculiar to Matthew, and material peculiar to Luke ; and a concluding study of the Sermon on the Mount, as an early, authentic, and intentional summary of the teaching of Jesus, and as furnishing a further test of the results reached in the previous studies.

The justification, then, of our undertaking may perhaps be found in its aim to make a direct, first-hand, historico-psychological, pragmatic study of a strictly limited field, approached by the method of the composite photograph ; a method that, if it treats the teaching topically at all, will do so at the end rather than at the beginning.

In any case, the theme is of endless significance, and it can only be seen in its fullness and richness in many individual reflections of it. Any genuinely honest, individual reaction upon the teaching of Jesus will probably be not without its value for others. But if this method is to be adopted, the limitations of space demand illustrative rather than exhaustive treatment.

Critical Position

Without attempting any discussion of the synoptic problem, which properly belongs to other volumes, it may be said that there is, fortunately, an increasing consensus of opinion among scholars upon that problem, and I may content myself with quoting Sanday's recent summary : 1 "I shall as- Sanday on sume the facts on which most scholars at the pres- the sources - ent time, including Dr. Wright, are substantially agreed. I shall assume that there are three main sources, or classes of sources, of our present Gospels : (i) our present St. Mark — the actual Gospel, not an Urmarcus or older form of the Gospel, — which has supplied the outline and broad narrative of our Lord's public ministry as it is found in the other two Gospels ; (2) a collection consisting for the most part of discourses, which an ancient tradition would lead us to think was the work of St. Matthew, and which was drawn upon by both the first Evangelist and St. Luke, but not or in a much less degree by St. Mark ; we may follow the example of many scholars at the present time by using for this document the symbol Q ; (3) certain special material peculiar to the First Gospel and St. Luke, and amounting in the latter

1 Expository Times, December, 1908, p. 105; see also his The Life of Christ in Recent Research. Cf. Stanton, art. " Gospels," Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible ; White, art. " Gospels," Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels ; Knowling, art. " Criticism," D. C. G.; Bacon, art. " Logia," D. C. G. ; Garvie, Studies in the Inner Life offesus, the critical introduction.

IO

Reconstructions of Q.

Trustworthiness of the ethical teaching as given in the Synoptic Gospels.

Gospel, at what is perhaps a maximum reckoning, to nearly five hundred verses." 1

Various attempts to reconstruct the document Q have been made by Wendt, Resch, A. Wright, Reville, Wernle, Hawkins, Wellhausen (1905), Harnack (1907), and B. Weiss (1908). 2 With the exception of Weiss', Harnack's reconstruction is the most recent, and may also probably be regarded as the fruit of the most thoroughgoing study ; and as Weiss differs from most scholars in believing that Mark also made considerable use of Q, our study will be based upon Harnack's reconstruction, in his The Sayings of Jesus.

It may also be said that there is general agreement among scholars regarding the trustworthiness of the Synoptic Gospels as to no small part of the teaching of Jesus. While this general agreement does not by any means cover all topics and details, nor exclude the admission of editorial additions, it is reassuring as to the basis of our ethical studies. Thus, even so radical a critic as Schmiedel, after discussing his "foundation-pillars," says: 3 "We must therefore work upon the principle that, together with the 'foundation-pillars,' and as a re-

1 It is, of course, not forgotten that the sources of these sources, especially of Mark, may be also sought, as in some of the most recent inquiries. See Menzies, " Survey of Recent Literature on the Synoptic Gospels," Review of Theology and Philosophy, June, and July, 1909.

2 Cf. Bacon, art. " Logia," D. C. G. ; Moffatt, The Historical New Testament, pp. 641 ff.

3 Jesus in Modem Criticism, p. 27.

suit of them, everything in the first three Gospels deserves belief which would tend to establish Jesus' greatness, provided that it harmonizes with the picture produced by the 'foundation-pillars,' and in other respects does not raise suspicion. And this gives us nothing less than pretty well the whole bulk of Jesus' teaching, in so far as its object is to explain in a purely religious and ethical way what God requires of man, and wherein man receives comfort and consolation from God." The limitation to a certain kind of teaching should here be noted. 1 So too, Harnack, in discussing the historical value of Q, says: "Our knowledge of the teaching and the history of our Lord, in their main features at least, thus depends upon two authorities [Mark and Q] independent of one another, yet composed at nearly the same time. Where they agree their testimony is strong, and they agree often and on important points. On the rock of their united testimony, the

1 As to making these " foundation-pillars " sole criterion for a life of Jesus, I think Sanday's criticism holds : " The position that he takes up is the paradoxical one of insisting upon certain passages because they seem to run counter to the main tenor of Christian tradition, but at the same time practically ignoring this main tenor, which is really that which gives them their value. In other words, he builds on the exceptions, and ignores the rule to which they are exceptions. Is it not a much fairer way of proceeding to treat the passages of which we have been speaking as so much striking evidence of the generally high historical character of the documents in which they occur ? " {Expository Times, December, 1908, p. 1 10.) But this does not affect our discussion of the ethical teaching, nor the use of Schmiedel's passages as one criterion for that ethical teaching.

assault of destructive critical views, however necessary these are to easily self-satisfied research, will ever be shattered to pieces." 1 Ramsay is even inclined to believe that Q "was written while Christ was still living," and Salmon takes a similar view. 2 While these views of Ramsay and Salmon are probably, as Sanday thinks, somewhat optimistic, Allen, Wright, Plummer, Bacon, Burkitt, Loisy, Jiilicher, Wernle, and many others, may all be quoted as affirming the general trustworthiness of the Synoptic Gospels as to the simpler ethical and religious teaching of Jesus. 3 This sentence, typical of all, may be quoted from Wernle, speaking of Q : " On the whole, the historical value of these discourses is very high, higher than that of anything else; together with the words of the Lord in Mark, they give us our truest insight into the heart of the Gospel." And again, " The chief thing is how Jesus looked upon God, upon the world, upon mankind ; and how he answered the question of questions, — what really matters before God, what is religion. And this we can know; we can see it in bright daylight." 4

In our examination of this teaching, we may

1 The Sayings of Jesus, p. 249.

2 Cf. Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 172. s Cf.,e.g., Allen, The International Critical Commentary, "St.

Matthew," pp. 309 ff ; Wernle, Sources of our Knowledge of the Life of Jesus, pp. 99 ff, 129, 131, 152; Jiilicher, An Introduction to the New Testament, § 29, " The historical value of the Synoptic Gospels," pp. 37!-37 2 , 373, 374- well begin with what is most certain, indeed practically undisputed, — Schmiedel's " foundation-pillars," and " the doubly attested sayings " of Burkitt.