
Matthew
18:35
Well, so much for an unconditionally
loving God!
In
his revolutionary 1963 Harvard
Theological Review article entitled, “The
Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Krister
Stendahl asserted that the Scriptural notion of “sin” may not match the modern
idea of it as some specific behavior that we feel guilty about. St. Paul demonstrates incredible moral
arrogance in Philippians: “I was blameless as to righteousness – of the Law
that is.”[i] But Stendahl contrasts this against Paul’s
insistence in Romans that no one can keep the Law:
What then? Are
we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and
Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written,
“There is no one
righteous;
no, not one.
There is no one
who understands.
There is no one
who seeks after God.
They have all
turned away.
They have
together become unprofitable.
There is no one
who does good,
no, not so much
as one.”
“Their throat is
an open tomb.
With their tongues
they have used deceit.”
“The poison of
vipers is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is
full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are
swift to shed blood.
Destruction and
misery are in their ways.
The way of
peace, they haven’t known.”
“There is no fear
of God before their eyes.”[ii]
Stendahl
suggested that these two concepts - the possibility of individual perfect
obedience to the Law and yet nonetheless somehow falling short - should be
interpreted as being consistent with one another. The solution is to see Paul’s idea of sin as
being something shared by Jews, Gentiles and finally the entirety of the human
family rather than something we each do or don’t do. This may be why the word “forgiveness” does
not appear in any of the epistles attributed to Paul and he instead uses the
terms “justification” and “remission.”[iii] Theologian Joseph Fitzmyer came to a similar
conclusion: “The confrontation of the Ego with sin and the law is not
considered by Paul on an individual, psychological level, but from a historical
and corporate point of view.”[iv] Fitzmyer equates Paul’s concept of sin as
shared shortcoming with an Essene text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls:
As
for me, I belong to wicked humanity, to the assembly of perverse flesh; my
iniquities, my transgressions, my sins together with the wickedness of my heart
belong to the assembly doomed to worms and walking in darkness. No human being sets his own path or directs
his own steps, for to God alone belongs the judgment of him … in His
righteousness He cleanses me of human defilement and of human sinfulness … as
for me, I know righteousness belongs not to a human being, nor perfection of
way to a son of man.[v]
Our fundamental human shortcoming is not
the accumulation of less-than-perfect behaviors, but our lack of dignity as creatures so insignificant that we should be utterly beneath God’s notice. But God becoming one of us, taking the form
of a slave,[vi]
as Paul puts it, becomes our atonement and covers our profanity, because we are
forever after identified with the divine. This is a story of immense power and
beauty. When God becomes human, the soul
feels its worth and a weary world rejoices.
It is easy to allows one’s eye to focus
on the torturers in today’s reading. As the journalistic advice goes, “if it
bleeds, it leads.” In fact, Jesus is
highlighting the hypocrisy inherent in accepting your status as a child of God,
but not accepting someone else’s.
Image: Aleksander Gierymski, The Feast of Trumpets (1880)
[i]
Philippians 3:6, quoted in Krister
Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” Harvard Theological Review Vo. 56, No. 3
(July 1963). 201[ii]
Romans 3:9-18[iii]
Stendahl, 202[iv]
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary by Joseph A. Fitzmyer , The
Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday (1993) 465 See also, Gunther Bornkamm,
Paul. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1995) 123; and Raymond E. Brown, et al The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. p
1408 and Raymond Brown, An Introduction
to the New Testament. 568[v]
Fitzmyer, Romans. 465, quoting
Hôdāyôt (Thanksgiving Psalms) from Cave 1[vi]
Philippians 2:7.