by Neil Richardson.
The New Testament has been criticized for its alleged antisemitism, its worst ‘offenders’ Paul and the author of John’s gospel. Yet Romans 9-11 shows conclusively that Paul continued to be an ‘Israelite’ (11.1); how could he not be? As for John, we have to be honest about John’s possible effect on us.[1] The Faith and Order Committee, perhaps wisely, omitted sections of John 8 from the Lectionary – see especially v.44.
However, a kind of antisemitism has long been preached from our pulpits: the charge that Judaism is legalistic, teaching salvation by works. But the law in the Old Testament doesn’t make the Jewish faith legalistic; the first five books of the Bible set God’s demands in the context of God’s gifts. As for the Pharisees and scribes in the gospels, we have to be careful of generalizing, caricaturing and trivializing; we have been guilty of all three. Bonhoeffer warned against trivializing the encounters of Jesus with the Pharisees. The gospel accounts have probably been sharpened by later church-synagogue differences. Judaism was not ‘legalistic’, even though today, in Tel Aviv and on the West Bank, there are some ugly distortions of the Jewish faith – as there are ugly expressions of Christian faith elsewhere, especially, it would seem, around the person of Donald Trump.
What we need to see is that most of the failures Jesus and Paul attribute to the Jewish people are also ours. ‘Because of you the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles’ (Romans 2.24), is a verdict which the Christian Churches and Christians have merited over and over again. Churches continue to close doors, literally and in attitudes, to people we should be welcoming, and what Paul calls ‘the righteousness of God’ is overlaid or distorted by our own. Church and churchgoing become the ‘law’ which distinguishes us from ‘outsiders’. Hopefully, generosity and compassion are increasingly the hallmarks of Christians. But we have a long way to go. Keeping the church going – especially by fund-raising – can make it harder to live a God-centred and Christ-centred life, rather than a church-centred one.
St Paul’s letters here are key – especially Romans. Romans 10.1-4 contrasts God’s righteousness, not with Judaism itself, but with a human distortion of religion, a human ‘righteousness’, (compare Philippians 3.4-11). It involved a human distortion of the Old Testament gospel, as Paul’s language in Galatians 3.8 implies. St Augustine wrote that the New lies hidden in the Old, not that the New was absent from the Old.
Another misinterpretation we Methodists have made: Paul was not a failed Pharisee the way that John Wesley was a failing Christian. Whatever the Greek proverb attributed by Luke to Jesus (!) in the third version of Paul’s conversion meant, it didn’t mean ‘pricks of conscience’ (Acts 26. 14).
Paul tells us the heart of his gospel: ‘the righteousness of God…. beginning in faith and ending in faith’ (Romans 1.17). ‘Righteousness’, of course, needs interpreting. Unfortunately, most modern paraphrases hardly do justice to the original Hebrew and Greek: ‘God’s saving goodness’, ‘God’s saving power’, ‘God’s justice’ etc –. The Message, for all its brilliant paraphrasing, reflects at times the Christian caricatures of Judaism.
‘The righteousness of God’ is Paul’s equivalent of ‘the Kingdom of God’ in the life and teaching of Jesus: not a standard God sets, but God’s way of doing things and God’s astonishing, totally undeserved love for all – as many Old Testament psalms testify.
Paul is best interpreted by reference to what Jesus said and did, and above all by his cross and the resurrection which reveals the meaning of the cross. For example, Jesus’ reply to John the Baptist:
‘Go tell John what you have seen and heard: blind people see, lame people walk, lepers are cleansed, deaf people hear, the dead are raised, and poor people hear the good news…’
Luke 7.22-3, Matthew 11.5-6
Other ‘miracles’ (signs) also demonstrate God’s righteousness and kingdom: the stilling of the storm, the feedings of the 5,000 and the 4,000, and the changing of water into wine. There is both a challenge and an invitation in the conclusion of what Jesus said to John: ‘Happy is the person who is not offended in me’ – i.e. God’s way of doing things won’t please everyone.
The parables provide more examples. The generous vineyard owner of Matthew 20.1-16, the welcoming father of Luke 15.11-31, and, above all (as, again, St Augustine saw) the Good Samaritan of Luke 10.26-38 – all illustrate what Paul meant by ‘the righteousness of God’. Not all the characters in the parables perfectly mirror ‘the Heavenly Father’, although the generous and then angry king of Matthew 22.18-35 makes an important point: if you don’t forgive others, God simply can’t forgive you.
Congregations need to hear the gospel again and again, in ways that not only challenge, but also gladden hearts, lifts the burdens from their souls and makes their faces shine. Let them know what faith really is: stretching out our hand to grasp the outstretched hand of God.
The life, teaching and ministry of Jesus were summed up in their climax: the crucifixion and resurrection; challenge, offence and extraordinary invitation; ‘…we proclaim Christ nailed to the cross… an offence to the religious and foolishness to the outsider alike…. Yet he is the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (1 Corinthians 1.23-4).
[1] See my John for Today, (SCM 2010), especially pp.84-90
Theology Everywhere 
Thank you, Neil, for this much needed reflection.
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I decided not to attend this year’s Christian Unity service in our town.
I told myself it was because of the storm raging outside, but in truth I was glad of an excuse not to go.
In recent years I have found the annual Christian Unity service to be nothing more than a collective pat on the back for all the good works we Christians are doing in our community. Various people from various churches get up and speak about how we are helping the poor, the refugees and those with mental health issues, and encourage each other to keep up the good work. Then we all have a nice cup of tea and go home feeling quite smug. Having done our bit for Christian Unity, we can all go back to our own churches till next year. To me it all feels very self-congratulary, no more than an exercise in halo polishing and brownie point-scoring.
For me faith is not about what we do for God; it is all about what God has done for us in Jesus, his Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what makes me want to kneel before the cross in reverent worship. This is what makes me want to sing hymns of praise with a thankful heart. This is what makes me want to ‘love others as I have loved you.’ Christian Unity is about overcoming our differences and worshipping Almighty God together, celebrating His unconditional love and amazing grace for all people, not praising our own response to it.
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Thank you Neil. Will be discussing some of this in our Bible Study on John’s Gospel chapter 8 on Thursday evening.
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Thank you Neil, this is really helpful, much to linger over, so I am going to read it again!¬
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I wholeheartedly agree that the righteousness of God, or the Kingdom of God, are not about a “standard God sets, but God’s way of doing things and God’s astonishing, totally undeserved love for all – as many Old Testament psalms testify”. This is wonderful, unconditional, amazing love freely given to all people, totally inclusive and nothing to do with judgment. But what can I then make of “if you don’t forgive others, God simply can’t forgive you”? Sometimes the wrong that someone does is unforgivable. I am thinking about crimes like murder and abuse that ruin the lives of the innocent. Surely in those circumstances it would actually be wrong to forgive. And even if we don’t forgive someone how can this alienate us from God? This would be contradictory to your statement that nothing can separate us from the totally undeserved love of God?
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I think it might help, Robert, to think in terms of healing, rather than forgiveness. If you cannot forgive someone for past hurts, then you are still carrying that pain with you. You cannot be healed while you are refusing to let go of the hurt. It’s not that God won’t forgive (heal) it’s just that he can’t forgive (heal) because you keep picking the scab off an old wound.
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Thanks for the reply. Yes, I understand the idea that forgiveness can be understood as personal healing. My issue is in forgiving someone who has not hurt me, but others. I have dealt with families torn apart by abuse with relationships broken and lives ruined. Yes, I can say I will stand by them in their suffering, and I do, but I cannot suggest that they forgive the perpetrator, and I find it difficult to forgive the perpetrator myself. In one case an abused teenager I knew quite well asked for help from her Methodist Minister who told her she must forgive her abusive father! A week later she committed suicide. Should I forgive the perpetrator? Should I forgive the Minister?
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The minister was asked for advice and he said what most Christians would say ‘we must forgive.’ Forgiveness is for our benefit, not the offender’s, so I don’t think you can blame the minister for your friend’s suicide, tragic though it was. As for forgiving the perpetrator; we pray ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us …’ Some offences are not ours to forgive!
But I stand by my earlier comment; we can’t know healing while we are allowing old wounds to fester.
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I think we will have to agree to differ on this. My “friend” desperately needed someone to stand by her in her suffering but was told that she must forgive her father. As I see it that is a denial of the injunction to love and care for each other. Knowing the perpetrator he would have laughed at her apology for not forgiving him. I don’t know what the Minister should have done but he certainly did not in any sense stand by her in her suffering – he just quoted scripture.
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Could we say that God forgives and forgets the offence but because we seek to act with love, justice and fairness we should forgive, but remember the offence; especially if this protects the innocent? Effective counselling requires that we treat all we meet with unconditional positive regard, create a relationship, demonstrate love and care for the other, but at some point the aim is to remember offences and change behaviour. This is forgiveness and remembering the offence, and I know from experience that it works.
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Forgiveness (which I understand as self-healing) is one thing; reconciliation with the offender is a different thing entirely. I have had to find it in my heart to forgive people in my own family who hurt me badly (mentally, not physically.) It has been very difficult, but I feel I have now forgiven and moved on. I feel no anger or malice towards them, but I have no desire to be reconciled with them. I would not put myself in a position to be abused by them again.
If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you are being very unfair to the minister in question. He was there for the lady who was abused. He offered what he thought, with his faith and his training, to be the best advice. Jesus himself said we must forgive (and go on forgiving!) I wonder if the outcome might have been different if your friend had decided to take the first step towards forgiveness, which is to pray ‘Lord, please grant me the desire to forgive.’
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The lady, my friend, who was physically and sexually abused was aged 16. Desperately unhappy, and I suggest ill equipped to deal with the subtle distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. Her father had almost completely destroyed her sense of self-worth. Self-healing seems so inadequate when the victim has no viable sense of self left. Her short life was the vain hope that she might survive. She told of these events in tears and I, aged 17 was ill-equipped to know what to do. I am now aged 81, but these events have stayed with me. I can never forget my friend. I am writing this in tears: Theology, religion, spirituality have to be about love or they are nothing.
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This is a very sad story which obviously affected you deeply at the time, and still does now, many decades later. What the poor girl needed was expert counselling and therapy to help her deal with the trauma she had suffered. Love shows itself in many forms, Robert. We can’t all be experts at listening and empathising, especially in such a sensitive situation. I’m sure having a friend to talk to was very comforting, and the minister’s advice was well-intentioned. It serves no purpose to blame yourself or the minister for the tragic turn of events. Your story illustrates how vital is the work done by the Samaritans in offering support to people who are in distress or despair.
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