Four Moral Prescriptions From The Sermon On The Mount

In Matthew 5:38-41 Jesus propounds four important and distinctive Christian moral prescriptions which I abbreviate as JEP (for Jesus' Ethical Prescriptions).

It has been said that familiarity often dulls the critical faculty. This seems to be operative in Christians' stance toward JEP. They do not acknowledge that complying with JEP would not only be psychologically and socially problematic but also at times even seriously unethical. My case that there are major shortcomings with JEP starts with a pertinent counterexample to it.

Counterexample (CE) To JEP

According to JEP it would have been immoral for the victim's mother or anyone else to have resisted the predator. What's more, the mother would have acted immorally if she did not love and do good to the torturer/rapist/murderer. Worse yet, the mother would have acted immorally if she did not hand over another of her daughters to the torturer/rapist/murderer in order to satisfy the turn-the-other-cheek imperative of JEP.

CE's sting is rooted in the fact that, first of all, the type of predation it describes is unfortunately not all that rare. Second, there is simply no rational justification for claiming that morality requires one to behave toward the child's torturer/rapist/murderer as JEP commands. On the contrary, moral propriety requires that innocents be protected. All other things being equal, anyone who could have stopped the predator should have, including by the use of force if necessary. If someone were to have done so, then, contrary to JEP, she would have been a moral hero, not a moral reprobate. It is noteworthy that throughout history Christians have rebuked people over violations of a wide assortment of Christian moral principles. Yet, aside from a few marginal denominations, Christians and their authorities have never castigated anyone for violating any JEP imperative in CE-type situations, though such violations have been the norm. This form of ‘jury nullification' is evidence that Christians and their authorities have serious, albeit mostly unacknowledged, doubts about the moral cogency of JEP. So, CE presents a major challenge to JEP and, therefore, also to the moral sagacity of Jesus and the moral authority of Christianity.

Defenses Of JEP

Christians have offered a variety of defenses of JEP. Here follow a number of such defenses, together with my responses.

(1) Adherence to JEP is defensible because it prevents resisters from becoming like the malefactors themselves.

For example, Walter Wink, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, states: ‘Don't resist one who is evil probably means something like, don't turn into the very thing you hate. Don't become what you oppose.' [Emphasis added]

The problem with this defense is that forcefully resisting murderers, rapists, terrorists and others rarely turns resisters into evildoers. One may cite the overwhelming majority of honorable law enforcers, military personnel, battered women, rape victims and the like who have forcefully resisted CE-type villains without thereby becoming morally tainted.

(2) Adherence to JEP is defensible because it embodies a more elevated morality than previously practiced.

For example, Ralph Wilson states:

I take the gist of Wilson's defense of JEP to be that we may resist evil persons, but we must also love them – a version of ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’. The main problem with this interpretation is that the context and content of Matthew 5:38-41 neither explicitly nor implicitly supports it. The ‘do not resist’ command, like the other JEP imperatives, is given as holding unconditionally. Presumably, if Jesus had meant there to be hedging conditions, he could have easily spelled them out. That he chose not to do so warrants concluding that the prescriptions are categorical.

The remaining claims in Wilson's defense are veiled in obscurity. For example, it is unclear what he means by ‘If we seek to make a new law…’ To what ‘new law’ about what is he referring? Also, how and why do we find love as opposed to, say, justice or nothing at all ‘underneath’ the law (lex talionis)? In fact, to what sense of ‘underneath’ is Wilson referring? Finally, his last sentence adds more puzzlement: ‘Having now a glimpse of love, don't try to legislate it.’ What is the ‘it’ that we are not to try to legislate? Love? If so, then who would seek to legislate love anyway? If the ‘it’ is not love, then what is it? One would think that if love is to be brought into the moral response to malevolent actions, then instead of JEP's requirement that it be given indiscriminately to terrorists, rapists, batterers of women, child abusers, torturers and such, morality and victims would be much better served by rejecting JEP and acting on the basis of love of justice and love of those suffering predation. The Sufi sage Saadi of Shiraz sums up this up pithily, ‘Merely doing good to the evil [malefactors] may be equivalent to doing evil to the good [victims].’

I would add that Saadi's remarks are even more pertinent when ‘the evil’ are CE-level perpetrators.

(3) Adherence to JEP is defensible because Jesus was actually just speaking in hyperbole to enhance the clarity of his message. He meant JEP to apply only to modest infringements of morality, not to severe CE-type situations.

Wilson suggests this in the following two excerpts:

The only notion of hyperbole with respect to defending JEP that makes any sense is that Jesus exaggerated when he implied that JEP was to apply to all enemies. He did not intend it to apply to CE-type predators. This interpretation seems to be what Wilson is getting at when he lists the kinds of enemies we face when adhering to JEP. He says:

Noticeably absent from Wilson's list of enemies are CE-type malefactors, suggesting that he feels that Jesus' use of hyperbole involved using the universal claim, ‘Resist not evil persons', when he really meant a more restrictive claim like ‘Resist not lesser evil persons', such as those Wilson lists.

There are a number of difficulties with this interpretation however. First, there is no evidence that Jesus was speaking hyperbolically in giving JEP. In fact, the claim of hyperbole seems suspiciously ad hoc, put forth merely to inoculate JEP from charges of being unreasonable – especially when applied to CE-type depredations. If Jesus meant JEP to be applied only to lesser slights and harms, then, once again, he could have easily and clearly said as much without having to use hyperbole. In fact, hyperbole would likely have unnecessarily confused his largely uneducated and rhetorically unsophisticated audience. It is frankly implausible to think that Jesus, as God incarnate, would have given such new momentous moral imperatives by solemnly intoning one thing but really meaning another, so that it would take later human expositors to clarify what he really meant.

A second problem with Wilson's defense is that even in cases of lesser harm than that which CE describes there is no obvious reason why one should be morally required to not resist, to love, to bless, to seek the good of, and to turn the other cheek for, an immoral enemy. Granted, there may be something to be said for forgiveness and mercy considered on a case by case basis, but this can be done without morally requiring people to adhere to JEP. It is interesting to compare Jesus' views with those of Confucius on these matters. In the Analects it is written: ‘Someone inquired: “What do you think of requiting injury with kindness?” Confucius said “How then do you requite kindness? Requite injury with justice and kindness with kindness.”’

(4) Adherence to JEP is defensible because the nonresistance part of JEP does not proscribe resistance per se but only retaliatory or vengeful resistance.

Patrick Rose gives voice to this defense as follows:

Let us suppose that Jesus (like many before and after him) did oppose acting vengefully. It is still unlikely that his purpose in commanding JEP was only, or even primarily, to proscribe vengeful resistance to evil persons. Once again, if that were his purpose, he could have very simply said something like: ‘You may resist evil persons, but only in a non-vengeful manner.’ But, of course, he did not. He forbade any resistance. To make this perfectly clear he described three brief scenarios (Matt. 5:39-41) involving absolute non-resistance. They include turning the other cheek to one who has unjustly assaulted you, giving your cloak to one who has unjustly taken your tunic, and volunteering additional servitude to an unjust authority. These scenarios are not examples of refraining from vengeful behavior. A battered wife who does not turn her other cheek to her abuser is not acting with a vengeful spirit; a person who has had some of his possessions unjustly taken is not acting vengefully if he refuses to turn over the rest of his possessions to the robber; a kidnapped person who takes the opportunity to flee from her kidnapper is not engaging in vengeance. These three scenarios are not examples of people foregoing vengeful resistance to enemies. Rather, they are examples of people who are practicing Jesus' radical ethical prescription to eschew all, not just vengeful, resistance. Noted conservative biblical scholar, R.T. France, says as much in the following:

(5) Adherence to JEP is defensible in that it should not be understood literally because doing so would contradict commands and actions of Jesus in other parts of the Gospels.

Doug Apple expresses this defense as follows:

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't explain what Jesus did mean by the ‘resist not’ imperative. In Apple's defense Jesus comes across unflatteringly as inconsistent in violating his own imperative. Apple concludes, therefore, that we too are thereby warranted in violating JEP. Note that Apple's remarks implicitly concede that, literally understood, JEP is morally counterintuitive. So Apple infers that what it says must not really be what Jesus meant. But then why did Jesus command ‘resist not’ in the first place? We are still left with the questions of what Jesus intended and why he didn't just say it straight out.

It is interesting to note that, although Apple claims that we don't have to adhere to JEP because Jesus didn't, other Christian commentators have argued precisely the opposite, namely, that we do have to adhere to JEP because Jesus did, as exemplified in his response to his maltreatment by the Romans. These conflicting claims highlight that even after two millennia Christians still lack a consensus about how they should understand and act with regard to JEP.

(6) Adherence to JEP is defensible in that its prescriptions are to be understood more as suggestions applying to private individuals rather than public authorities.

The following excerpt from the New Catholic Encyclopedia (NCE) supports this defense.

One can reasonably surmise that the NCE employs this defense in order to block the otherwise unavoidable conclusion that JEP requires an indefensible pacifism which would be exceedingly objectionable to the vast majority of Christians (among others). The problem with the NCE defense, as we've seen time and again with defenses of JEP, is that there is no indication whatsoever that Jesus did, in fact, intend it to be merely ‘a counsel rather than a precept, and for private individuals rather than for public authorities’. Yet once again, if this were what Jesus meant, why wouldn't he have just said it? There is no precedent for the counsel vs. precept or private individuals vs. public authorities distinction in any of Jesus' other Sermon on the Mount prescriptions. One would think that, as with any unqualified imperatives, unless there are clear indications to the contrary, Jesus' imperatives should be understood as applying to all moral agents, public or private, and as strictly binding rather than merely suggestive (if that is indeed what the NCE means by ‘counsel’). Note finally that the NCE defense still leaves unanswered all the difficulties exposed by the CE that are associated with even a limited application of JEP only to private individuals.

(7) Adherence to JEP is defensible in that its prescriptions do permit one to resist evil, but only non-violently.

Walter Wink, for one, expresses this as follows:

In response to this defense I will first of all repeat the pertinent comments of France presented above.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument assume, contrary to fact, that proscribing only violent resistance was what Jesus had in mind. That assumption would still not rescue JEP from charges of implausibility or worse. History records that in the vast majority of cases resisting CE-type malefactors nonviolently has proven to be ineffective in stopping, countering, or ameliorating the great evil that they do. For example, resisting Holocaust Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, or the murderer from the CE ‘in a way that is not injurious or harmful to the other person’ would not only have been unavailing but in some instances would have been a substantial dereliction of moral duty. Add to this the other requirements of JEP to love, do good to, and ‘turn the other cheek to’ Nazis, Khmer Rouge, and CE murder-rapist-torturer types, and the unacceptability of JEP becomes even more manifest. It is very likely that if either the non-violence or the literal interpretation of JEP were normative and followed, no reasonably just society could survive for long. France put it this way:

(8) Adherence to JEP is defensible because its prescriptions were not meant to be taken literally but simply as exhortations to us to strive for moral perfection.

In support of this interpretation one might cite Matthew 5:48: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Obviously, there is no way a human being can be perfect like God; but Christians could argue that JEP should be understood as a call to use the ideal of God's perfect moral character, partially embodied in JEP, to guide and encourage our best moral efforts.

The problem with this defense, however, is not just that socially and psychologically JEP is nearly impossible to live up to, but that there is insufficient justification for claiming that it even should be lived up to. This was argued for all along in the article by defending the efficacy of CE by showing the weaknesses of the various Christian defenses of JEP. In short, JEP is by no means an ideal standard that should be followed.