Jesus Christ in the Prologue of John: The Word Per Se, or the Word Made Flesh Only?

100-Word Summary

(Realizing that not everyone is prepared to read a 3000+-word blog article, I've decided to start providing a 100-word summary of each article for those who like their reading 'to go.')

Christadelphians frequently refer to Jesus as 'the Word made flesh,' a qualification meant to exclude that Jesus is the Word per se. However, considerable evidence supports identifying the Word with the person of Christ throughout John 1:1-18. These include that (i) 'the Word' per se is the referent of pronouns throughout John 1:14-16, some of which clearly denote a person; (ii) 'the Light' (another impersonal noun) clearly denotes the person of Christ in John 1:7-12; and (iii) links between John 1:1-3 and 1:7-18 show that 'the Word' in 1:1-3 has the same referent as 'the Light' and 'the Word' thereafter.

1. 'The Word Made Flesh' in Christadelphian Discourse
2. The Word as the Referent throughout John 1:14-16  
3. The Personal 'Light' in John 1:7-12
4. Linking Back to John 1:1-4
 4.1. 'All things came into being through the Word'
 4.2. 'In the beginning was the Word'
 4.3. 'The Word was with God, and the Word was God'
5. Conclusion  

1. 'The Word Made Flesh' in Christadelphian Discourse

In Christadelphian discourse, a common way of referring to Jesus Christ is, 'the Word made flesh.' A Google search for this exact phrase and the term 'Christadelphian' yields easily dozens of uses of this expression for Christ, including as the title of articles and talks.1 The source of the expression is John 1:14, quoted below in the KJV (which strongly influenced early Christadelphian tradition) and NABRE:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:14 KJV) 

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14 NABRE)

The term 'the Word made flesh' is not intrinsically problematic. If the Word became flesh, and this refers to the event through which Jesus came into the world, then Jesus truly is 'the Word made flesh.' The problem is that Christadelphians use this term specifically to emphasise that Jesus Christ cannot be identified with the pre-incarnate Word, i.e. the Word as described in John 1:1-4. In such contexts, the statement 'Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh' is intended to avoid the divinity and personal pre-existence of Christ. For instance, in his Christadelphian catechetical manual Bible Basics, Duncan Heaster writes,

it cannot be over-emphasized that Christ in person was not "the word"; it was God's plan of salvation through Christ which was "the word". 'Logos' ("the Word") is very often used concerning the Gospel about Christ - e.g. "the word of Christ" (Col. 3:16; cp. Matt. 13:19; John 5:24; Acts 19:10; 1 Thess. 1:8 etc.). Notice that the 'logos' is about Christ, rather than him personally. When Christ was born, this "word" was turned into a flesh and blood form - "the word was made flesh" (John 1:14). Jesus personally was 'the word made flesh' rather than "the word"; he personally became "the word" through his birth of Mary, rather than at any time previously. (emphasis added)

Similarly, the well-known Christadelphian apologetics work Wrested Scriptures states, 'Christ was the result of the word made flesh, not the originator of the divine plan.'2 Again, an article by Matt Davies seeking to answer Trinitarians' questions states of John 1:14, 'If you read this verse carefully you will note that the word was with God from the beginning. Jesus was not the word. He was “the word made flesh” in v14.' A Belgian Christadelphian blogger writes emphatically, 'Jesus is not an idea thought, spoken or written down – he is a man. He is the word made flesh, not the word!'

Christadelphians do not understand 'the Word' to be a divine person who became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. The logos is understood as an idea or purpose that became actualised and personified in the man Jesus,3 who is also 'the Word made flesh' inasmuch as his character perfectly revealed the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures.4

The typical Christadelphian interpretation of John 1:14a described can be summarised thus: Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh because he, a human being, embodies the plan, purpose and law of God. I say typical, and not unanimous, because there has been one noteworthy dissenting voice: that of Harry Whittaker. In his book Studies in the Gospels, Whittaker describes the usual interpretation of the Word in John 1 as the eternal Divine Purpose in Christ. He rings off seven difficulties with this interpretation and thus rejects it, concluding instead that 'the Word' in John 1 refers to 'Jesus the Man, and not Jesus the Idea or Purpose.' This might appear to point toward orthodox Christological inferences (the pre-existence and divinity of Christ), but Whittaker insists that 'the beginning' described in John 1:1 is the beginning of the new creation inaugurated by Jesus' ministry, not the beginning of all creation, and that the absence of the definite article from theos in 'the Word was God' 'weakens the meaning' of this phrase.5

2. The Word as the Referent throughout John 1:14-16

The phrase 'the Word made flesh' does not occur in Scripture, but is adapted from John 1:14, which states that 'the Word became (KJV: 'was made') flesh...' However, what is often overlooked is that this is merely the first of several statements that are made about 'the Word' in John 1:14-16.

The transliterated Greek of John 1:14 reads thus,6 with my clause-by-clause literal translation. In my translation I replace pronouns with their referent to avoid having to choose between personal ('his') vs. impersonal ('its') pronouns, which could bias the reader for or against interpreting the referent as a person.7

kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskēnōsen en hēmin	And the Word became flesh and settled (lit. 'tented' or 'tabernacled') among us,
kai etheasametha tēn doxan autou	and we beheld [the Word's] glory,
doxan hōs monogenous para patros	glory as of the only Son from the Father,
plērēs charitos kai alētheias	full of grace and truth.

It is important to observe that ho logos is the subject of both verbs in John 1:14a. The Word became flesh and the Word settled among us, not, the Word became flesh and the resulting entity (Word-made-flesh) settled among us. Moreover, the Word is the unambiguous referent of several pronouns in vv. 14-16:

and we beheld [the Word's] glory (tēn doxan autou)... John testified about [the Word] (peri autou) and cried out, saying, 'This [Word] was the one of which/whom (houtos ēn hon) I said, "The one (ho) coming after me ranks ahead of me because he/it existed before me."' From [the Word's] fullness (tou plērōmatos autou) we have all received, and grace upon grace.

From this syntactical observation (that 'the Word' per se is in view throughout vv. 14-16) follows the exegetical conclusion that 'the Word' per se is Jesus Christ personally. If the reader harbours any doubt about this, consider the following. (i) The Word per se settled among us. (ii) The Word's glory is equated with the glory of the only Son from the Father.8 (iii) John the Baptist makes a remark about the Word (John 1:15) that is repeated almost verbatim when he sees Jesus of Nazareth approaching (John 1:30). Thus, the narrator construes John the Baptist's remark about Jesus as a remark about the Word. (iv) Finally, the Evangelist in v. 16 describes having received grace from the Word's fullness, but v. 17 states that grace came through Jesus Christ. In summary, it could not be much clearer that, throughout John 1:14-17, Jesus Christ is the Word per se,  not merely 'the Word made flesh' in some figurative sense (e.g., a human being who fulfills the Scriptures like no other). The Word, according to John 1:14-17, is personally the Son of God.

3. The Personal 'Light' in John 1:7-12

One of the main arguments that unitarians make against interpreting 'the Word' in the Johannine Prologue (John 1:1-18) as the Son of God personally is that ho logos, 'the Word,' is an impersonal noun (and used as such through the Old Testament). Hence, it is proposed that a literary technique such as personification is in use here, and we are not to see in 'the Word' an actual person. A serious flaw in this argument emerges from the very text of the Prologue, where 'the Light' (to phōs)—an equally impersonal noun—clearly refers to the person Jesus Christ in John 1:7-12, a portion of the Prologue that falls between the two paragraphs about 'the Word.'

'The light' is first mentioned in John 1:4-5 in connection with the Word, but here 'the light' seems to be an abstract noun opposite 'the darkness.' Only from v. 7 onward does it become evident that the author is (perhaps inspired by his language in 1:4-5) using 'the Light' in a more specialised sense to refer to the person that is Jesus Christ.

John 1:6 introduces John [the Baptist] as 'a man sent from God.'9 As in 1:15, John's function is to testify about (peri) another. The topic of John's testimony is, in 1:7, the Light; in 1:15, the Word; in 1:29-34 and 3:26-30, Jesus Christ the Son of God. This is already a clear indication that the Word = the Light = the Son of God. John testifies about the Light 'so that all might believe di' autou (through him/it).' The final pronoun autou refers to the Light rather than John, and anticipates numerous statements later in the Gospel about all/everyone believing in Jesus (e.g., John 3:15-16, 6:40, 11:48, 12:46). One hardly needs to mention that Jesus explicitly identifies himself as 'the Light' later in the Gospel (8:12; 9:5; 12:46)!10

Only in v. 8 does it become completely obvious that the narrator is using the term 'the Light' for a person. He offers a clarification concerning John the Baptist—'He was not the Light'—that would be superfluous if 'the Light' were not, like John, a person. Once again, this statement anticipates later material in the Gospel narrative in which John admits that he is 'not the Christ' (1:20; 3:28). This reinforces the identification of 'the Light' as Jesus Christ. V. 9 speaks of 'the true light' 'coming into the world.' Both of these ideas—Jesus as definitively 'true' (John 1:17; 14:6) and as having 'come into the world' as light (3:17-19; 12:46) recur later in the Gospel.11

The Prologue does not explicitly mention 'the Light' after v. 9, but vv. 10-12 contain five pronouns of which 'the Light' is the only plausible referent. Moreover, there is not the slightest doubt that a person is in view here. I will again replace pronouns with their referent to avoid biasing the reader through the gender of the translated pronouns:

[The Light] was in the world, and the world through [the Light] (di' autou) came into being, and the world did not know [the Light] (auton). Unto [the Light's] own [the Light] came, and [the Light's] own did not receive [the Light] (auton). As for those who did receive [the Light] (auton), [the Light] gave them power to become children of God, those who believed in [the Light's] name (to onoma autou)

Once again, these statements about the Light anticipate statements about Jesus later in the Gospel. The contrast between things that 'came into being' (egeneto, middle aorist of ginomai) and the Light through which/whom they came into being anticipates Jesus' contrast between Abraham, who 'came into being' (genesthai, middle aorist of ginomai) and Jesus himself who simply 'is' (John 8:58).12 That the Light was not received by the Light's 'own' (v. 11) anticipates the Fourth Gospel's emphasis on Jesus' rejection by 'the Jews.' Note, in particular, Pilate's words at the trial: 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me' (John 18:35). Similarly, speaking with 'the Jews' about the Scriptures: 'I came in the name of my Father, but you do not receive me' (John 5:43). The contrast between those that did not receive the Light and those that did anticipates John 3:32-33, and the statement about the Light's 'name' anticipates the Gospel's emphasis on belief in Jesus' name (John 2:23; 3:18; 20:31) and the life-giving power thereof (14:14; 14:26; 16:23-24).

4. Linking Back to John 1:1-4

Until now we have said little about the much-controverted opening statements about the Word in John 1:1-4. We have identified clear evidence that 'the Word' is a person, Jesus Christ, in John 1:14-17, and that 'the Light' is a person, Jesus Christ, in John 1:7-12. This provides us with a strong circumstantial case that 'the Word' is a person, Jesus Christ, in John 1:1-4. However, not content to rest our case, we will briefly observe how the statements about the Word in these opening lines are repeated and reinforced in the rest of the Gospel.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [The Word] was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through [the Word], and without [the Word] nothing came into being. In [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)

Of course, the most obvious link between John 1:1-4 and the rest of the Prologue is the term 'the Word' (ho logos). Barring the implausible event that the writer had two different 'Words' in mind within the Prologue, 'the Word' of John 1:14-16—who is clearly personal, as already seen—is 'the Word' of John 1:1-4.

 4.1. 'All things came into being through the Word'

We begin with v. 3 because it is crucial to establishing the temporal setting of the passage. We are 'in the beginning' (v. 1) when 'all things came into being.' This sounds like an obvious allusion to the Genesis creation, but some unitarians such as Harry Whittaker insist that 'the beginning' here is the beginning of Jesus' ministry, which inaugurated the new creation. True, the Johannine Jesus does use the word archē ('beginning') a few times of the start of his ministry (John 6:64, 8:25, 15:27, 16:4). However, none of these texts use the term en archē ('In the beginning'), which is borrowed from Gen. 1:1 LXX.13 The key observation here is the link between v. 3 and v. 10:

All things came into being through [the Word] (panta di' autou egeneto)

The world came into being through [the Light] (ho kosmos di' autou egeneto)

These statements clearly equate 'the Light' of v. 10 (which, as we have already seen, is the Son of God personally) with 'the Word' of vv. 1-3. Not only so, but they equate 'all things' in v. 3 with 'the world' in v. 10. Now, given the consistently negative connotation of 'the world' in the Fourth Gospel,14 there is simply no chance that the author would use 'the world' as shorthand for 'the new creation inaugurated by Jesus' ministry.' John's Gospel depicts Jesus as entering into the world to save it, not as entering the world and then creating the world!

 4.2. 'In the beginning was the Word'

From the above, it follows that the 'beginning' of John 1:1-2 is the primeval beginning, not the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry. The notion that the Word 'was' (ēn, imperfect verb) in the beginning anticipates the John the Baptist's testimony in vv. 15, 30 (concerning the Word and then concerning Jesus) that 'he was (ēn, imperfect) before me.' Since John the Baptist's testimony is unmistakably about Jesus personally, the link to vv. 1-2 shows that 'the Word' that 'was in the beginning' also denotes the same person. 

 4.3. 'The Word was with God, and the Word was God'

The sublime statement of John 1:1b-c contains an obvious paradox: the Word was with God, which would ordinarily imply that the Word was not God, and yet indeed the Word was God. The observation that the first theos has the definite article while the second theos lacks it is not a persuasive argument for weakening the sense of the second theos.15 That theos carries its fullest sense in 1:1b and 1:1c is supported by the way the ideas of 1:1 are restated in 1:14 and 1:18. Both of these latter texts offer statements of the Word's/Son's divinity precisely in the context of an intimate relationship with God.

The word skenoō in John 1:14 ('the Word...settled among us') is a verbal form of the Greek word for tent (skēnē). This is probably not coincidental but is an intended allusion to the Old Testament tabernacle, or tent,16 where God dwelt from the time of Moses until Solomon's Temple was built. God had promised, 'I will set my tent among you' (Lev. 26:11). The people saw God's glory when a cloud covered the tabernacle and the glory of God filled it 'in the sight of the whole house of Israel' (Ex. 40:34-38). That John intended to allude to this background in 1:14 is implied both by the explicit Moses/Jesus comparison in 1:17, as well as the similar imagery used in 2:19-22, where Jesus' body is described as a temple (paralleling the notion of 1:14 that his flesh was a tabernacle).

In the Old Testament, it is consistently God's glory that the people behold,17 whereas in John 1:14 the glory that is beheld is that of the Word. By describing the glory in terms of the Father-Son relationship, John shows that his intention in ascribing divine glory to the Word is not to displace God the Father—just as in 1:1, where the Word 'was God' but also 'was with God.' The statement that 'we beheld [the Word's] glory' anticipates two other editorial comments in the Gospel of John that refer to 'his glory' (tēn doxan autou) being revealed or seen. In both of these cases, 'his' is Jesus Christ! In the first statement, the narrator describes Jesus' sign at Cana thus: 'Jesus...so revealed his glory' (John 2:11). This text alludes to Isa. 40:5,which foretells that the glory of Yahweh would be revealed.18 Again, in John 12:41, after explaining unbelief in Jesus in terms of oracles from Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6, the Evangelist offers the editorial comment, 'Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him.' The 'his' and 'him' can only refer to Jesus,19 yet John is referring to a vision in which Isaiah saw Yahweh's glory in the temple (Isa. 6:1-3)! 

Thus, the statements about the Word in John 1:14 draw on Old Testament statements about God's presence and glory and thus clearly convey the Word's divinity (as in 1:1c), in the context of an intimate Father-Son relationship with God (as in 1:1b). In the Old Testament we frequently read of 'the word of the Lord' and of 'the glory of the Lord,' but here in John we read of 'the glory of the Word'!

The Father-Son relationship between God and the Word is conveyed most strikingly in the adjective monogenēs ('only', 'only-begotten'), which is used in both 1:14 and 1:18. However, whereas in 1:14 monogenēs does not explicitly modify a noun (so that one implicitly reads the noun 'Son'),20 it appears in 1:18 that monogenēs modifies the noun theos; thus, 'the only-begotten God.' There is a text-critical problem here, as the earliest manuscripts have monogenēs theos but others have monogenēs huios ('only-begotten Son'). I have discussed the text-critical problem in more detail elsewhere, but if the NA28 critical edition of the Greek New Testament is correct that monogenēs theos is the original reading, then John 1:18, the closing verse of the prologue, combines with John 1:1, the opening verse of the prologue, to form an inclusio. Just as 1:1 states that the Word was with God and yet was God, so 1:18 states that the only-begotten is God and yet is in the bosom of the Father.

5. Conclusion

When studying the Prologue of John, as with any other Scripture, there is always the risk of reading one's preconceived theological ideas into the text. One remedy for this is to closely study the syntax (the way the words fit together to form clauses and sentences) and the local context (the way the author weaves the Prologue into a coherent whole that anticipates the narrative that follows). When we do this, I believe we can arrive at something approaching certainty that the author of the Fourth Gospel used the terms 'the Word' and 'the Light' in the Prologue to refer to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, personally. Jesus is the Word made flesh, but before he became flesh he was already the Word in the beginning, the Word that was with God and was God, the Word through whom all things came into being.

Footnotes

• 1 See, e.g., the online archive of talks from the Eastern Christadelphian Bible School in 1999; and the 2014 edition of Christadelphian magazine Glad Tidings.
• 2 Ron Abel, Wrested Scriptures: A Christadelphian handbook of Suggested Explanations to Difficult Passages (Pasadena: Geddes, n.d.), 194; emphasis original.
• 3 'He was so powerfully and completely the word made flesh... all the ideas inherent in God and in His word were expressed seamlessly in Jesus' (from Christadelphian Advancement Trust); 'God’s plan and purpose which had previously been expressed in the words that He had communicated to the patriarchs and through prophets, had now been embodied in human form' (John Carter, 'The Word Made Flesh,' Glad Tidings, 1567 [2014]: 15); '[Q:] Did the Lord Jesus pre-exist before his miraculous birth that was the result of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary? [A:] He existed only in the mind, plan and purpose of Yahweh and this is the reason why in the opening chapter of the gospel of John he is described as “the word made flesh”' (Christadelphian Baptismal Review Book, p. 30); 'Because God instructed His Son and placed His words in his mouth, Jesus was also called “the Word made flesh”' (Christadelphian Bible Mission, Lesson 18, p. 4).
• 4 'Christ’s character and his whole way of life were formed by God’s word. So complete was its effect on his mind that he is described as the “word made flesh” (John 1:14)' (Rick O'Connor, The Things of the Kingdom and the Things of the Name); 'So if the word was a declaration of God and His plan, how could this be made flesh? ... the first aspect of Jesus being the word made flesh is the actual realisation of God’s declaration foretelling the birth of His Son through the seed of a woman... The second aspect of God’s word being manifest in the flesh was down to the life followed by the sacrifice of Jesus... As Jesus was a man who never once gave in to the lusts of human flesh common to all humanity and who was always totally obedient to his Father’s will, this demonstrated that he was indeed the ‘word made flesh’: a perfect manifestation of his Father’s character, will and purpose in everything he said and did' (Chris Maddocks, God's Word/Logos; Maddocks goes on to describe two other aspects related to Jesus' atoning sacrifice and resurrection).
• 5 Harry Whittaker, 'The Word (John 1:1-5),' Study 13 in Studies in the Gospels (n.d.).
• 6 Following NA28 critical text. There are no significant text-critical problems pertaining to this verse.
• 7 The Greek pronouns used are all masculine, but this is basically necessitated by the masculine gender of the noun logos. Gender does not play the same role in Greek syntax as in English, so the gender of the pronouns does not help us to determine whether or not the author regards this logos is a person.
• 8 The conjunction hōs ('as') need not be understood as comparing the Word's glory to the glory of another, the only Son—this would make little sense. Rather, hōs functions as a marker pointing to the nature of the thing described. BDAG lexicon regards John 1:14 as an instance in which hōs functions as a 'marker introducing the perspective from which a person, thing, or activity is viewed or understood as to character, function, or role' (p. 1104). For similar instances, see 1 Peter 4:15a ('Let no one... suffer as a murderer': not like a murderer but actually being a murderer), 1 Thess. 2:7 ('we were able to impose our weight as apostles of Christ'; not like apostles of Christ but actually being apostles of Christ), Col. 3:12 ('Put on then, as God's chosen ones...': not like God's chosen ones but actually being God's chosen ones), and Heb. 12:27 ('That phrase, "once more," points to removal of shaken things, as of created things': not like created things but actually being created things. Basically, the sense is: 'we beheld the Word's glory—glory, that is, of the only Son of the Father.
• 9 This expression is sometimes used by unitarians as evidence that the abundant language in John's Gospel about Jesus being 'sent from God,' 'coming from God,' 'coming down from heaven,' etc. does not imply pre-existence. However, John the Baptist's own words in John 1:15 and 1:30 undercut this interpretation by contrasting his own origin with that of Jesus Christ.
• 10 Particularly striking is the parallel between John 1:7-9 and 12:46: 'that all might believe through [the Light]... The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.' 'I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.'
• 11 On Jesus having come into the world, see also John 6:14; 10:36; 11:27; 16:28; 17:18; 18:37.
• 12 Of course, John 8:58 also draws on God's great 'I am he' statements in Isaiah 40-55 (Isa. 41:4; 43:10-13; 43:25; 45:18; 45:19; 46:4; 48:12; 51:12; 52:6), and ultimately on the divine name in Exodus 3:14, and also parallels the psalmist's declaration about God in Psalm 89(90):2 LXX, 'Before the mountains came into being... you are.'
• 13 See John 8:44 for another use of archē in a primeval sense.
• 14 E.g., John 1:29, 3:16-19, 7:7, 8:23, 12:31, 14:17, 14:27, 15:18-19, 16:8-11, 17:9, 17:14-16, 18:36.
• 15 To translate John 1:1c 'and the Word was a god' is syntactically legitimate, since theos lacks the article, unlike in 1:1b and 1:2. However, the word order of the clause (kai theos ēn ho logos) reverses the pattern of 1:1b and 1:2, in which the subject ho logos precedes the verb, and instead puts theos first. In Greek, word order does not affect syntactical sense but instead conveys emphasis. Thus theos is the most emphatic word in John 1:1c, which does not square with the theory that the writer intends theos to have a weaker sense than in 1:1b. The absence of the article in 1:1c can be explained as the author's way of clarifying that the Word is not a separate God from ho theos of 1:1b. The statement conveys the divinity of the Word, rather than positing a second, lesser god.
• 16 In the Septuagint Greek translation of the Torah, the tabernacle is referred to as hē skēnē, 'the tent.'
• 17 Thus, for example: 'Moses said, "Please let me see your glory!"' (Ex. 33:18); 'Yahweh, our God, has indeed let us see his glory and his greatness' (Deut. 5:24); 'I look to you in the sanctuary to see your power and glory' (Ps. 63:3); 'The heavens proclaim his justice; all peoples see his glory' (Ps. 97:4); 'Then the glory of Yahweh shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together' (Isa. 40:5); 'I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; they shall come and see my glory' (Isa. 66:18).
• 18 John, like the other Evangelists, has already interpreted this oracle from Isaiah 40 as being fulfilled in Jesus' ministry, by having John the Baptist identify himself as the one who makes straight the way of the Lord (John 1:23).
• 19 See the autos of v. 37.
• 20 As is explicit in John 3:16, 18.

Did Jesus Raise Himself from the Dead?

St. Ignatius of Antioch, a Christian bishop who was martyred in the early second century, wrote the following concerning Jesus Christ in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans:

For he suffered all these things for our sakes, in order that we might be saved; and he truly suffered just as he truly raised himself—not, as certain unbelievers say, that he suffered in appearance only (it is they who exist in appearance only!). (Smyrn. 1.1-2.1)1

In this passage, Ignatius asserts that Jesus had raised himself from the dead. The statement occurs in a longer paragraph in which he praises the Smyrnaean church for their conviction in the concrete historical realities of Jesus' life: his descent from David, birth from a virgin, baptism by John, crucifixion under Pilate and Herod, and resurrection. The point that he is most keen to emphasise is that Jesus' suffering and resurrection 'truly' happened and not did not merely appear to happen. The causal agency of Jesus' resurrection is not a point he belabours; indeed, elsewhere in his writings—including in this same letter—Ignatius describes Jesus as having been raised by the Father.2 Thus, for Ignatius, 'he raised himself' is simply another way of describing Jesus' resurrection. That he provides no further comment or clarification suggests that he does not regard his statement as novel or controversial, but assumed that it would be acceptable to his Smyrnaean readers.

Now, throughout the New Testament literature (all or nearly all of which predates Ignatius), the normative way of referring to Jesus' resurrection is not 'Jesus raised himself from the dead' but 'God raised Jesus from the dead' or simply 'Jesus was raised from the dead,' a divine passive that implicitly identifies God as the subject of the action. The pre-Pauline credal formula quoted in 1 Cor. 15:3-4 uses such a divine passive, and throughout the Pauline corpus we consistently read that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 4:24; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:20; Col. 2:12; 1 Thess. 1:10). The same language is used throughout Acts (2:24; 3:15; 4:10; 13:30, 34; 17:31) and also appears in 1 Peter (1:21). As for the Gospels, all four of them use divine passives, for instance in the post-resurrection narratives (Matt. 28:6-7; Mark 16:6; Luke 24:6, 34; John 21:14).

Juxtaposing the consistency of the New Testament in describing Jesus' resurrection as 'God raised Jesus' with Ignatius' seemingly uncontroversial statement that Jesus 'raised himself' leads to an obvious question: where did Ignatius (and presumably at least some of his contemporaries) get the idea that Jesus raised himself from the dead?

The most plausible answer is that Ignatius took the idea from the Gospel of John. Now, it is not certain that Ignatius knew the Gospel of John. Over a century ago, a committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology made a close study of literary dependence on the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. They gave a 'B' rating to Ignatius' knowledge of John, meaning they considered it 'highly probable,' but not 'beyond reasonable doubt,' that Ignatius knew the Fourth Gospel.3 A subsequent study by Walter J. Burghardt found that literary dependence of Ignatius on John's Gospel was the most plausible explanation of the affinity between the two, but that other forms of dependency (such as oral tradition or the influence of a post-apostolic 'Johannine school') could not be ruled out.4 Thus, we cannot take it for granted that Ignatius knew the text of the Gospel of John as we have it today, but it is almost certain that he was familiar with Johannine ideas in some form.

The Gospel of John does not state as explicitly as Ignatius that Jesus raised himself from the dead. However, there are also two passages in John that imply that Jesus raised himself from the dead. The first of these reads as follows:

19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken. (John 2:19-22 NABRE)

John explains the temple metaphor that Jesus used in this saying: the temple refers to his body (cf. John 1:14, which says literally that the Logos 'tabernacled among us, and became flesh'). Thus, as v. 22 confirms, in saying 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,' Jesus was foretelling his death and resurrection. The first-person statement, 'I will raise it up' (egerō auton) cannot be explained away as though necessitated by the temple metaphor. Jesus could easily have said, 'Destroy this temple and in three days it will rise again' or 'Destroy this temple and in three days it will be rebuilt.' Instead, he foregrounded his own agency. What is more, this statement parallels the fourfold statement of Jesus in John 6:39-54, 'I will raise him/it up on the last day' (although the latter uses a different verb, anastēsō). In that text, Jesus is clearly referring to his own future agency in raising the dead. Thus, we have every reason to think that the same idea is in view in John 2:19: Jesus foretold that he would raise his own body from the dead.5^,6 We must emphasise that this notion is not opposed to the idea that Jesus was raised from the dead by God—to the contrary, the latter idea does appear in this very context (v. 22) through the use of a divine passive. (The same is true, as we noted already, in Ignatius' Letter to the Smyrnaeans). 

How could John have conceived of both God and Jesus raising Jesus from the dead? The answer lies in different levels of causal agency. The temple metaphor is helpful here: the Jerusalem temple, forty-six years in the making, was called Herod's Temple because it was Herod's project. However, Herod probably was not involved in the day-to-day construction operations and almost certainly did not do any of the heavy lifting. Thus it would be correct to say that Herod built the temple and it would also be correct to say that workers built the temple. The second Johannine text that implies Jesus' agency in his own resurrection provides more detail about the respective causal roles of the Father and the Son:

17 This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father. (John 10:17-18 NABRE)

Here, Jesus describes his death and resurrection in terms of laying down his life and taking it up again. Notice that he specifically emphasises his volition: 'I lay it down on my own.' He then declares, literally, 'authority I have to lay it down' (or, 'to give it up,' exousian echō theinai autēn), 'and authority I have to take it up again' (or, 'to take it back', exousian echō palin labein autēn). Word order in Greek conveys emphasis and here the word order squarely emphasises Jesus' own agency. According to this text, Jesus took back his life in the same willful sense that he gave it up. As Jerome H. Neyrey states, 'John 10:17-18 and 28-38 both assert that Jesus has God's eschatological power over death, both to raise himself and to raise his followers.'7 However, the text is not saying that this was done independently of the Father. The last clause stresses that the authority with which Jesus was to act was received from the Father.8

Other passages in John's Gospel shed further light on Jesus' role in the resurrection of others (already seen in John 6:39-54). In John 11:24-25, just prior to demonstrating his power to raise the dead by raising Lazarus, Jesus responds to Martha's faith in 'the resurrection on the last day' by declaring his own definitive role therein: 'I am the resurrection and the life'. However, the Gospel's most detailed material on Jesus' role in the resurrection comes in John 5:19-29. The overarching theme here is that, a son does not work independently of his father, and the Son is no different: the Father loves him and shows him all that he does, and the Son does likewise. Here we have precisely the kind of dual Father-Son agency that is implied in the above references to Jesus' involvement in his own resurrection. John 5:21-22 gives two concrete examples of how the Son imitates the Father: resurrection and judgment. 'just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes'. 'Taking back' his own life after giving it up (John 10:18) was just such a volitional act of the Son. Jesus goes on to declare that it is the voice of the Son that will give life to the dead in the resurrection (John 5:25, 28). Jesus says in v. 26 that 'just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to his Son the possession of life in himself.' 'Having life in oneself' appears to refer to self-existence, a divine attribute. We have then the paradoxical idea that the Son has received self-existence as a gift from the Father. That the Son 'has life in himself' helps to explain how, having died, he would still have authority to reclaim his life.

We can now understand a bold Christological move that was first made in the Fourth Gospel, and then taken up by Ignatius. Because the Father gave the Son to have life in himself, and authorised him to dispense life to whomever he wished—already during his lifetime, in the case of Lazarus, and ultimately 'on the last day'—why should the Son not also have exercised this agency in his own resurrection, by 'taking back' his life as deliberately as he had given it up? After all, Jesus' resurrection was not a separate event from the eschatological resurrection. It was, in Paul's words, the firstfruits of the same harvest (1 Cor. 15:20, 23). Or, to return to Ignatius, 'our Lord' was 'truly nailed in the flesh for us under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrach...in order that he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people' (Smyrn. 1.2).9

What are the theological implications of the notion that Jesus raised himself from the dead? There are profound implications, not only for Christology—Jesus' divine authority over death is absolute—but also for anthropology. Clearly, in order to raise himself from the dead, Jesus must have still consciously existed while he was dead. This implies that death, for humans, is not the extinction of all existence.10

Footnotes

• 1 Trans. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: English Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 186.
• 2 'They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up' (Smyrn. 6.2, trans. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 189); 'Be deaf, therefore, whenever anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David, who was the son of Mary; who really was born, who both ate and drank; who really was persecuted under Pontius Pilate, who really was crucified and died while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth looked on; who, moreover, really was raised from the dead when his Father raised him up, who—his Father, that is—in the same way will likewise also raise us up in Christ Jesus who believe in him, apart from whom we have no true life' (Trall. 9.1-2, trans. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 165).
• 3 A Committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology. The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905).
• 4 Walter J. Burghardt, 'Did Saint Ignatius of Antioch Know the Fourth Gospel?', Theological Studies 1(2) (1940): 130-56.
• 5 Robert H. Gundry writes, 'Jesus' saying [in John 2:19] — with John's editorial comment — makes Jesus raise himself from the dead just as in John 10:17-18' ('Jesus' Blasphemy according to Mark 14:61b-64 and Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:5,' in Robert H. Gundry, The Old is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations [Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2010], 109; previously published by Mohr Siebeck).
• 6 Frederick Dale Bruner writes, 'Usually in the New Testament it is God who is said to raise Jesus. But John here, and notably in chapter 10 (vv. 17-18), records Jesus speaking of raising himself. Most of us are most comfortable with the majority New Testament representation: that God raised Jesus from the dead. But if John is so convinced of Jesus' full deity that he believes Jesus also contributed to his Resurrection, without any compromising of Jesus' true humanity (a true humanity that John, too, is deeply eager to maintain), then most of us have felt we can live with John's record as well, since in the final analysis, a Resurrection is mystery enough in itself' (The Gospel of John: A Commentary [Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012], 195).
• 7 An Ideology of Revolt: John's Christology in Social-Science Perspective (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2007), 79. Previously published by Fortress Press.
• 8 Bruner again: 'Usually in the New Testament it is God the Father who is reported to have raised Jesus. But here Jesus speaks of raising himself — though, notice, he says he can both "lay down" and "take back" his life only because, as he continues immediately, "I have authority" to do so (from the Father)' (The Gospel of John, 765).
• 9 Trans. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 186.
• 10 One could escape this implication by asserting that unless death for Jesus was a metaphysically different experience than death for the rest of humanity. This, however, would be a soteriologically dangerous claim to make, since it is precisely our relatedness to Jesus' death that gives us hope (see, e.g., Rom. 6:4-5; Heb. 2:9, 14).

Christadelphians, Litigation, and Social Justice (Part 2)

In the first part of this series, we described the historical Christadelphian position1 on litigation—namely, that it is morally wrong to 'recover debts by legal coercion'—and considered the argument for this position by its most ardent proponent, Christadelphian pioneer Robert Roberts. We then took a close look at one of the biblical texts used to justify the position—namely, the 'do not resist evil' saying and accompanying concrete examples from the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-42).

In this article, we will look at the other major passage seen as prohibiting believers from engaging in litigation (1 Corinthians 6:1-9a), and will then consider overarching moral-theological issues, particularly the respective roles and jurisdictions of Church and State, and close by mentioning a historical account of litigation undertaken by a Christian in the mid-second century.

1 Corinthians 6:1-9a

1 How can any one of you with a case against another dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment instead of to the holy ones? 2 Do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you unqualified for the lowest law courts? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? Then why not everyday matters? 4 If, therefore, you have courts for everyday matters, do you seat as judges people of no standing in the church? 5 I say this to shame you. Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough to be able to settle a case between brothers? 6 But rather brother goes to court against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 Now indeed then it is, in any case, a failure on your part that you have lawsuits against one another. Why not rather put up with injustice? Why not rather let yourselves be cheated? 8 Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers. 9 Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? (NABRE)

In this passage, Paul issues a sharp rebuke to some of the believers in Corinth in response to a situation that had occurred (whether once or more than once, we do not know) in which one believer sued another believer in a secular court. Paul regards this behaviour as unacceptable, because he considers the secular courts to be fundamentally 'unjust,' and because it is 'in any case' a failure (with respect to the love ethic) for brothers to sue one another, and detrimental to Christian witness. Paul mentions two options for handling the matter that would have been better than going to court. The first option would have been to adjudicate the matter internally, within the church. (Here, Paul lays the foundation for the idea of an ecclesiastical court, which will be discussed further below.) The second option would have been for the plaintiff to 'put up with injustice' and let himself be cheated. It is important to notice that 'put up with injustice...let yourselves be cheated' is not presented as the ideal outcome. Ideally, the case should have been settled justly without going to court. 'Rather put up with injustice...rather let yourselves be cheated' is not ideal from the point of view of justice, but it is better to endure injustice than to inflict it; it is better to be cheated than to cheat. Yet some Christadelphian writers remove 'let yourself be cheated' (or, in King James English, 'suffer yourselves to be defrauded') from this relative setting and make it a timeless moral principle. It is noble to sacrifice one's own right to justice; our Lord did so on the cross. However, when we allow ourselves to be cheated by our brother or sister in Christ, we are allowing our brother's or sister's sin to go unchecked. It is better that the matter be adjudicated by a competent authority within the church, so that the parties can be instructed and corrected as needed, and no injustice is done.

This passage only directly concerns the issue of a believer suing a fellow believer; it does not touch on the question of a believer engaging in litigation against a non-believer. Christadelphian writers have generally inferred that what holds in the one case also holds in the other, for two reasons. (i) Paul says the secular courts are fundamentally 'unjust,' so believers should have no recourse to them. (ii) The moral obligations of the believer are toward all men, and not only to fellow believers. Thus, if it is wrong for 'brother to go to court against brother,' it is also wrong for a believer to go to court against anyone else. To address (i) , we must consider the relative competencies of secular courts ancient and modern to render just judgment. Commentators provide abundant empirical evidence of the fundamentally unjust character of courts in the Roman world generally and in Corinth specifically.2 Suits were largely decided on the relative social standing of the litigating parties, rather than the merits of the case. Bribery was endemic, and judicial functions fell to procurators and governors, who were often installed in their positions for reasons other than expertise in matters of law (to put it lightly). It is very different today, particularly in the developed world. Legal and judicial systems have been built on the foundations of Judaeo-Christian morality. Strong accountability and transparency mechanisms are in place. Lawyers and judges are very well-trained. Of course, human justice systems remain far from perfect and the legal profession retains a reputation for willingness to manipulate truth and justice. However, we cannot fairly assume today, as Paul could in his day, that taking a civil matter before the secular courts is intrinsically unjust and tantamount to 'cheating.'

This brings us to the second consideration: treating unbelievers as we treat believers. As Paul indicated, the ideal outcome of a dispute is a just resolution. Thus, the ideal way to handle a dispute is the way most likely to lead to a just resolution. All would agree that settling a matter out of court, and avoiding costly and potentially bitter legal costs, is better than litigation. However, it is hard to deny that involving lawyers and other professional experts is preferable to asking the local church to resolve the kinds of complex legal and financial disputes that can arise today. Do most church leaders (or local church governance bodies) have the necessary expertise to determine a fair child custody arrangement or a fair amount of child support, to divide up a contested estate, or to liquidate the assets of a failed business partnership? And, in any case, a party to the dispute who is not a Christian (or even who does not belong to the same Christian community) is not going to recognise the other party's local church as a competent and impartial authority to adjudicate the matter.

If a Christian finds him/herself in a serious dispute and engages professional legal counsel, the motive must be to find a just resolution, not to achieve the best possible outcome from the perspective of the client's own financial and other welfare. This should be taken into account when choosing a lawyer. Every possible effort should be made to arrive at a mutually satisfactory settlement rather than a court judgment (cf. Matt. 5:25-26). Allowing oneself to be wronged is certainly an option the believer should consider (especially given the 'resistance through non-resistance' principle discussed in the previous article). However, there are circumstances—above all, those involving the welfare of children—when litigation may be the most prudent outcome to satisfy the demands of love-of-neighbour toward all involved.

The Legal Jurisdiction of the Church and the State

Paul infers in 1 Corinthians 6:1-3 that the Church has the God-given authority to judge matters involving its members (see also 1 Cor. 5:12-13). He makes an a fortiori argument: if the saints are judge the world and even angels in the eschatological future, how much more are they qualified to exercise judgment today? Thus Paul lays the foundation for ecclesiastical courts and tribunals, which would develop in the Church and still exist in the Catholic Church to this day. The question is, what are the scope and jurisdiction of the Church's judicial prerogatives, relative to the scope and jurisdiction of the secular courts?

This is a question that receives a fairly clear answer already in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus' opponents tried to trap him with a tricky question about paying tribute to Caesar, Jesus issued his famous line, 'Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God' (Luke 20:25). Of course, in the final analysis everything belongs to God, but in the present age, Jesus and his disciples concede jurisdiction over this-worldly affairs (such as taxation) to the State. Elsewhere in the same Gospel, Jesus extends this principle to a typical litigation scenario of his day: a dispute over an inheritance. A man in the crowd appeals to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me" (Luke 20:13). The man is effectively suing his brother with Jesus as the judge. Jesus responds, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" signifying that such disputes fall under the jurisdiction of Caesar, not God; of the State, not the Church.

The State's jurisdiction to govern and enforce earthly laws is powerfully defended by Paul in Romans 13:1-7, and his principle in 1 Corinthians 5:12 is that the Church's jurisdiction is over those who are within the Church. The things that belong to God (as opposed to Caesar) are spiritual matters; matters of faith and morals, of sin and salvation. Now often the same situation may have a this-worldly dimension (e.g. finances and taxes) as well as a spiritual dimension. In such cases, both the Church and the State must be involved. For instance, dioceses of the Catholic Church have marriage tribunals to adjudicate marital matters from a spiritual point of view (e.g., whether a marriage was validly constituted before God, or should be annulled) but defers to the secular courts regarding distribution of marital assets, in case of an annulment or separation. In the clerical sex abuse scandal, priests have gravely transgressed the laws of the Church, and so must be judged by the Church, but have also broken the just laws of nations, and so must be judged in secular courts as well.

Once it is recognised that, in the present divine economy, both the Church and the State—God and Caesar—have their respective, legitimate jurisdictions, it becomes clear that bringing a this-worldly dispute to secular courts for resolution is not intrinsically wrong. To say otherwise is to impugn the legitimacy of the State's authority, contrary to the clear teachings of Jesus and Paul. (As quoted in the previous article, Robert Roberts avers that believers need not concern themselves with the consequences of not exercising their prerogative to defend their rights through legal means, since "We are in [God's] hands." However, what if the institutions of the State are one of the primary means by which God exercises this providence? In that case, to eschew legal recourse is to eschew God's providence.)3 Nevertheless, it may be extremely imprudent for a believer to litigate a dispute before the secular courts, particularly in a social context where the secular courts are thoroughly corrupt, where the dispute is with a fellow believer, and/or where the dispute is small and simple enough to be settled through dialogue or informal arbitration.

Epilogue: St. Justin Martyr's Second Apology

We have an account from very early in Church history of a believer engaging in litigation against an unbeliever. Chapter 2 of St. Justin Martyr's Second Apology (mid-second century C.E.) relates the story of a certain married woman who converted to Christianity. Both she and her husband had previously engaged in licentious behaviour, and after repenting she tried unsuccessfully to persuade her husband to change his ways. Though prevailed upon by her advisers to remain in the marriage in the hope that he might yet change, his behaviour instead became worse and so she obtained a legal divorce (Latin: repudium) and separated from him. The husband then made a legal accusation that she was a Christian. In response, she submitted a petition to the emperor to be allowed to first set her financial affairs in order before answering the charge. In their commentary on Justin's apologies, Minns and Parvis explain that "In Roman law, dowry passed to the control of the husband for the duration of a marriage but reverted to the woman or her father at its dissolution through death or divorce."4 Thus, the woman's petition was intended to secure the reversion of the dowry. The petition was granted, but the husband then made accusations against the woman's Christian teacher, which led to his martyrdom and that of others who defended him (2 Apology 2.1-20). Since Justin includes this account in an apology (defense of the faith) addressed to the same Roman Emperor who had granted the woman's petition, he clearly did not regard her litigation against her husband as contrary to the Christian faith.

Footnotes

• 1 I must reiterate that, while this position has been 'on the books' in Christadelphian Statements of Faith since the 19th century, the extent to which these historic documents remain normative for doctrine and practice today varies from one ecclesia to the next.
• 2 To give just two examples, the Roman historian Dio Chrysostom (a younger contemporary of Paul) states that in Corinth there were 'lawyers innumerable perverting justice' (Orations 8.9). Cicero (In verrem 1.1.1) refers to rumours that throughout the Roman world 'the courts will never convict any man, however guilty, if only he has money.' For these and other examples, see David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 196-97.
• 3 This reminds one of the famous preacher's story about the man caught on a roof during a flood.
• 4 Denis Minns and Paul Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 275 n. 4.

Christadelphians, Litigation, and Social Justice (Part 1)

One of the distinctives of Christadelphian moral teaching is that believers in Christ may not engage in litigation for purposes of redress. This is considered such an important matter that it is encoded in the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith (BASF) used as a basis of fellowship by most Christadelphian ecclesias (local congregations) around the world:

We reject the doctrine - that we are at liberty to take part in politics, or recover debts by legal coercion. (Doctrines to be Rejected, Article 36)

Formally speaking, this means that any person who affirms that Christians are at liberty to recover debts by legal coercion (litigation) cannot be a member in good standing of any Christadelphian ecclesia that uses the BASF as its basis of fellowship. (In practice, some ecclesias today might not press the issue, if Christadelphian social media discussions are anything to go by.) The purpose of this series of articles is to critique this Christadelphian teaching in light of Scripture and reason.

The Christadelphian position

Christadelphian opposition to engaging in litigation dates back to the movement's founder, Dr. John Thomas.1 However, our main conversation partner here will be Thomas's protégé, Robert Roberts, who more than anyone else was responsible for the establishment of Christadelphianism as an institutional religion (including primary authorship of what became the BASF). In his best-known book, Christendom Astray, Roberts dealt with the issue of litigation under the broader rubric of resisting evil, and he was unequivocal: quoting Matthew 5:39-41, he concluded that "unresisting submission to legal and personal wrong" is "the plainest of Christ's commandments," but one ignored by most professing Christians.2 Roberts held that the examples of non-resistance depicted in these verses are to be adhered to absolutely: "If life and property must be exposed to the ravages of wicked men, unless we do that which Christ tells us we are not to do, let all houses and all lives be unprotected... It is a mistake to hamper the question of duty with any secondary consideration whatever."3 For Roberts, the reason most Christians ignore this commandment against resisting evil is that they mistakenly believe that Christ's teachings were aimed at the goal of social justice here and now. Instead, Christ's disciples should be unconcerned with social injustice here and now, because their focus is on the definitive justice that will arrive with the Second Coming of Christ. For now, believers have no duty to seek social justice for themselves or others but are called to leave things in God's hands.4 In recent times, Christadelphian writer Russell Ebbs has echoed this argument, exhorting believers to abandon "those thoughts of demanding our 'rights' or seeking redress," which are symptomatic of a carnal, disobedient way of thinking.5

Matthew 5:40 and 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 have historically been the two main biblical texts cited in support of the Christadelphian position that believers must not take legal action against another person.6 Because of this, we will explore them in some detail before commenting more generally on the morality of litigation.

Matthew 5:38-42

38 You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. 40 If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. 41 Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow. (my translation, adapted from NABRE)

This is the second-to-last of the famous Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17-48). In each Antithesis, Jesus authoritatively contrasts what the crowds have previously heard about obeying the Torah (the Law of Moses) with the true divine intent. Thus Jesus is not annulling the Law but conveying its full meaning (Matt. 5:17), and highlighting the difference between the surpassing righteousness of those who would enter the kingdom of God and the deficient righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. As Charles H. Talbert explains, "Matthew 5:21-48 asks: 'What is the purpose of your Bible reading? It advocates a radical, as opposed to a formal, obedience to Scripture.'"7 The lex talionis (law of retaliation) principle, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (Ex. 21:24; Lev. 24:19-20) is the first leg of this antithesis. This law placed limits on retaliation and thus avoided family vendettas. However, as Jesus understands it, the limits placed on retaliation show that no retaliation is actually better than proportionate retaliation.

Jesus then provides four concrete examples of the do-not-resist principle in action. The first concerns a humiliating physical attack: a blow to the face. The second concerns a legal attack: a lawsuit. The third concerns political oppression: being commandeered as a porter by a Roman soldier. The fourth concerns economic impropriety: a request for a donation or a loan, presumably from one whose intentions are suspect (hence the relevance to resisting evil). We must emphasise that these examples are illustrations of a general principle and not regulations to be followed verbatim. Bear in mind that just prior to this, Jesus has ordered, "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away" (Matt. 5:29). To use Robert Roberts' language, this too is "the plainest of Christ's commandments," and yet the most ignored, if taken literally. Yet Christadelphians have no problem with ignoring the instruction of Matthew 5:29 (taken literally). Again, the fourth example in this very series orders us to give to every beggar and accede to every request for a loan (Matt. 5:42; cf. Luke 6:30). This case seems to be overlooked by the same Christadelphians who advocate scrupulous, literal observance of the examples in vv. 39-40.

Let us look closer in the example involving litigation, in v. 40. What is sometimes overlooked is that this scenario involves hyperbole to the point of absurdity. A person in first-century Palestine wore two garments, the imation ('cloak') on the outside and the chitōn ('tunic') underneath.8 The Torah permits the cloak to be taken as collateral for a loan, but only until sunset. Keeping one's cloak was an inalienable right (Ex. 22:25-27; Deut. 24:10-13); one could not be sued for it. Hence, the crafty litigant depicted in Matt. 5:40 sues for the tunic, the undergarment. This litigation is patently contrary to the spirit of the Torah, and therefore unjust. Yet Jesus calls on the one in such a predicament not merely to decline to contest the case, but to hand over his cloak too. If the one so sued handed over his tunic and cloak, he was not only surrendering a basic, legally protected right, but would be left standing naked in public!9 Thus, Talbert rightly scolds fundamentalists for reading the Bible "as a book of revealed morality in the form of particularized commands that are viewed as timeless truths."10 The examples given by Jesus here are to be taken seriously as illustrations of the principle of non-retaliation, but not to be taken literally as case law.11

Another subtlety in these examples is that Jesus is not advocating submission to evil but resistance through non-resistance. In line with the Pauline principle that kindness to one's enemy heaps burning coals on his head (Rom. 12:20), handing one's cloak to the one who is suing for the tunic is a way of awakening the aggressor's conscience to the injustice he is inflicting. The same is true of turning the other cheek to the physical attacker. In our own day, this idea of resisting evil by not resisting has been used to great effect by great civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Thus, again resorting to Paul's language, the goal in following Jesus' teaching here is not to be conquered by evil, but to conquer it (Rom. 12:21). The fight for social justice is not abandoned, but taken up using weapons that are less lethal but ultimately more effective.

In the broader Matthaean context, love of God and neighbour are paramount (Matt. 22:34-40), and fundamental to love of neighbour are the exercise of mercy and justice (Matt. 23:23). The non-resistance ethic of Matthew 5:38-42 represents an ingenious way of achieving both of the seemingly conflicting ends of mercy and justice. By not resisting the evildoer one shows him mercy; by overcoming evil with good, one seeks justice. However, it is noteworthy that none of the scenarios in Matthew 5:39-42 are life-threatening or even life-altering. It is not difficult to imagine other scenarios in which, for instance, the welfare or very lives of one's children are at stake, and in such cases the higher principle "love your neighbour" trumps the non-resistance principle. Some proportionate resistance is not only permitted but morally imperative in such cases.

Matthew 5:40, consequently, does not command believers to avoid all participation in litigation, though it does give food for thought to anyone involved in a legal dispute, and does pronounce judgment on certain contemporary societies that are "litigation-happy." In order to properly assess the morality of litigation, we need to properly understand the place of the State in fulfilling the purposes of God in the present age, e.g. the preservation of law and order and the promotion of justice. Before we move in that direction, the next article will consider another passage usually cited by Christadelphians in support of their position on litigation: 1 Corinthians 6:1-8.

Footnotes

• 1 "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" (I Cor. 6:2). The verb here rendered judge is the same as is translated "go to law" in the preceding verse. The apostle, therefore, asks, if they do not know that they will sit judicially, and dispense justice to the world, according to the divine law; and because this is their destiny, he positively forbids believers in the covenants of promise to submit themselves to the judgment of the unjust. It is better, says he, for one to be defrauded than to submit to such a humiliation. Let the heirs of the world arbitrate their own affairs in the present state; for it is a strange thing, if men, whose destiny it is to judge the world and angels, cannot settle things pertaining to this life. (John Thomas, Elpis Israel [4th edn.; Adelaide: Logos, 1866/2000], p. 250)
• 2 "Of all the commandments of Christ, this of unresisting submission to legal and personal wrong is the one that most severely tests the allegiance of his disciples, and which accordingly is most decisively neglected in all Christendom. It would not be too much to say that it is deliberately refused and formally set aside by the mass of professing Christians, as an impracticable rule of life. That it stands there as the plainest of Christ's commandments, cannot be denied; and that it was re-echoed by the apostles and carried out in the practice of the early Christians, is equally beyond contradiction. Yet, by all classes, it is ignored as much as if it had never been written." (Robert Roberts, Christendom Astray [Nottingham: Dawn Book Supply, 1884/1960], 432-33).
• 3 op. cit., 434. Note that the first part of this particular passage is omitted in an abridged version of Christendom Astray published by The Christadelphian in 1969.
• 4 "It is commonly imagined that the commandments of Christ apply, and are intended to supply, the best modes of life among men--that is, those modes that are best adapted to secure a beneficial adaptation of man to man in the present state of life upon earth... Christendom resists evil; sues at law; resents injury... It speaks of 'duty to society,' the 'protection of life and property,' and the certain chaos that would set in if the law of Christ were in force. In this, Christendom speaks as the world, and not as 'the church,' because it is not the church, but the world... The time has not come for the saints to keep the world right. It has to be made right before even keeping it right can be in question. The position of the saints is that of sojourners on trial for eternal life. God will take care that their probation is not interfered with by murder and violence before the time. The matter is His. We are in His hands: so is all the world. We need not therefore be distressed by thoughts of what will be the effect of any course required by Christ. He will take care that His work comes out right at last" (op. cit., 433-34)
• 5 As bond slaves to Christ we have no rights; and, being no longer servants of sin, those impulses which are our natural way of thinking must be put to death—those thoughts of demanding our ‘rights’ or seeking redress must be abandoned... We should not therefore resort to litigation,1 which is a symptom of the spirit that is at work in the children of disobedience (Eph. 2:2). (Russell Ebbs, "Litigation and the Christadelphian," The Testimony [May 2002]: 198-99). Another writer warns against "the pernicious influence of the democratic human rights philosophy" (W. J. McAllister, Democracy: Its Influence upon the World and the Ecclesia [West Beach: Logos, 1993], 3).
• 6 "Going to Law: Following our baptism we follow the Law of Christ which forbid us to take legal action to redress wrongs committed against us. We have to suffer wrong for Jesus said 'do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'" (Dawn Christadelphian Bible Study Course, Part 2, p. 16; cf. quotation from 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 on p. 13)
• 7 Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5-7 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 65.
• 8 BDAG 475, 1085.
• 9 "Obeyed literally, 5:40 results in public nudity and arrest" (Talbert, Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 91).
• 10 Reading the Sermon on the Mount, 28. I have previously written about the need for a thoroughgoing moral theology rather than a simplistic recourse to "what the Bible says."
• 11 These examples "should not be taken in a pedantic fashion that would limit their intended application" (David L. Turner, Matthew [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008], 175).

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager: Does Jesus Endorse Fraud?

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager (Luke 16:1-8), part of the Gospel reading for today in the Roman Catholic lectionary, is probably the most difficult of Jesus' parables in the Gospels to interpret, particularly from a moral-theological point of view. It is probably fair to say that the story has been causing interpreters to scratch their heads throughout the nearly 2000 years since it was told. Here is the parable:

1 Then he also said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. 2 He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’ 3 The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ 7 Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’ 8 And the master [Lord?] commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. (Luke 16:1-9 NABRE)

In verses 1-7 we read of an incompetent manager who, informed of his impending dismissal, alters financial documents to reduce the debts of his master's debtors, thus winning their gratitude. This sounds like fraud, plain and simple. The puzzler, therefore, comes in verse 8, where we read that the master commended the dishonest (literally, 'unrighteous') manager for his prudence or shrewdness. Is the Gospel endorsing fraud, at least under desperate circumstances?

Marius Reiser, in his book Jesus and Judgment, offers a good discussion of different scholarly views on the meaning of the parable (including his own view), which has served as the basis for this brief summary.1 Broadly speaking there are two schools of thought on the parable. One school regards the unrighteous manager's actions as morally upright, because he sought to rectify an injustice in the original debt amounts. The other school regards the unrighteous manager's actions as morally wrong, and thus not a model for financial stewardship, but praiseworthy only for shrewdness and resourcefulness in a dire situation.

Within the first view there are at least two variations. One variation holds that debts in commodities (rather than money) were used to circumvent legal restrictions on the charging of interest (usury), and therefore the original debt amounts (100 measures of olive oil; 100 kors of wheat) were unjust. The manager acts to rectify some of his master's unjust usury, which mitigates his own guilt and wins the favour of the debtors. The master, who can hardly protest without losing face, commends the manager (perhaps ruefully, since the manager has cost him a bundle!) The second variation holds that managers behaved similar to tax collectors in that they unjustly inflated the amounts due to their masters and pocketed the excess. Knowing that he won't be around to collect his take on outstanding debts, the manager reduces them to the amount actually due to his master. He thus repents of his past corruption and also wins the favour of the debtors. In this scenario, the manager's action has not cost the master anything, so the manager can commend his shrewdness wholeheartedly. The biggest exegetical difficulty with the first view is that it hinges on unstated details about the nature of the debt reductions (i.e., the debts were reduced by an amount representing usury or corruption). It helps to resolve the parable's moral conundrum, but not entirely: is fraud an acceptable way to right financial injustices?

Under the first view, the manager is 'unrighteous' only in the previous wastefulness that (v. 1) that led to his dismissal, and not in the behaviour described in vv. 3-7. The second view, however, has the manager behaving unrighteously throughout. His action in reducing the debts due to his master is fraud, plain and simple, motivated by his own self-interest. Under this view, it is more difficult to understand why the manager wins his master's praise: not only are his actions unrighteous, but they have cost the master a bundle. A rueful commendation for shrewdness, along the lines of, 'Yeah, he got me there!' is possible, but there is another intriguing possibility. Reiser argues that the parable ends in v. 7 and that in v. 8a Luke is already describing Jesus' reaction. So it is not 'And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently', but 'And the Lord commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently' (the Greek word for 'master' and 'Lord' in Luke is the same, kyrios.) In support of this view, it is characteristic of Luke's style (unlike the other Evangelists) to refer to Jesus in the narrative simply as 'the Lord' (ho kyrios).2 Indeed, in Luke 18:1-6 we find another parable that ends abruptly and is followed immediately by a reaction from 'the Lord'.

I find the second view to be more exegetically plausible, since it does not require us to assume unstated but crucial details about the nature of the debts in the story. If so, then the manager's financial activities are not depicted as morally upright, and are not presented as a model of stewardship. Certainly there is no endorsement of fraudulent activity under special circumstances. What is commendable about the manager's 'prudence' or 'shrewdness' is precisely and only that he acted decisively to secure his future in the face of an impending day of reckoning. In Luke 16:2 the manager is called to 'give an account,' language that is used for the final judgment in other parables of Jesus (Matt. 18:23; 25:19; cf. 12:36). The manager's situation as a guilty individual whose day of reckoning is imminent thus symbolises the unrighteous in Israel,3 for whom the Day of Judgment is drawing nigh. They ought likewise to take decisive action to secure their future—particularly in the way they use their material wealth (v. 9). The 'friends' they are to make with this wealth are either the poor (who might intercede on their behalf), or possibly God and his angels (whose prerogative it would be to welcome people into the 'eternal dwellings'; cf. Luke 16:22). The message is not to defraud earthly masters (the master in the parable represents God) but to use earthly wealth in a way that will produce an eternal profit, after the earthly wealth has failed. The parable is thus of a piece with the other great parable of Luke 16, that of the rich man and Lazarus.

It is probably precisely because of the dodgy nature of the manager's actions in the parable that Luke has supplemented the parable with sayings about the importance of trustworthy stewardship and of not making financial gain one's master (verses 10-13). Luke wants to reinforce these principles to make sure his readers do not draw faulty moral inferences from this difficult parable.

Footnotes

• 1 Marius Reiser, Jesus and Judgment: The Eschatological Proclamation in Its Jewish Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 291-301.
• 2 See, e.g., Luke 7:13, 19; 10:1, 39, 41; 11:39, 42; 13:15; 17:5, 6; 18:6; 19:8; 22:61; 24:34. For an excellent treatment of the Christological implications of Luke's use of ho kyrios, see C. Kavin Rowe, Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).
• 3 E.g., the Pharisees (Luke 16:14)

Are Christadelphians Non-Liturgical?

Growing up in the Christadelphian sect, one word that I almost never heard was 'liturgy.' In fact, the only time I recall encountering this word in Christadelphian usage was in the title of a lecture delivered at my ecclesia (local congregation), entitled something like, 'How a Priesthood and Liturgy Arose in the Christian Religion.' While I cannot recall the content of the lecture, since the lectures were invariably polemical in nature, the premise of the lecture was that priesthood and liturgy represented corruptions or aberrations of the original Christianity practiced by the apostles. The Wikipedia article on Christadelphians, as it currently stands, describes Christadelphians as a 'non-liturgical denomination.' (The Christadelphians are actually a sect, not a denomination, but that is a separate issue.)

The Oxford English Dictionary (via Google) defines 'liturgy' as 'a form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship, is conducted.' It would seem to follow that a 'non-liturgical denomination' is one that conducts public religious worship without a form or formulary. Now, clearly there are degrees of how formulaic Christian public worship is. Roman Catholic worship would be at the more formulaic end of the spectrum. However, allow me to make a simple observation: there is no such thing as Christian public worship that is 'non-liturgical,' that is, completely non-formulaic. Certainly Christadelphian public worship is not devoid of liturgy, and even were one to make a concerted effort to be non-liturgical, liturgical forms would inevitably develop. In what follows I will delve into different aspects of Christadelphian 'liturgy'.

Order of Service in Public Worship

First of all, there is the order of service. Every Christadelphian ecclesia that I have ever visited had an order of events that was followed more or less rigidly at the Sunday meeting. In the ecclesia I grew up in in Canada, if memory serves, the order was Hymn, Psalm, Hymn, Prayer, Old Testament Reading, New Testament Reading, Memorial Service Remarks and Readings, Prayer for Bread, Distribution of Bread, Prayer for Wine, Distribution of Wine, Hymn, Exhortation, Hymn, Prayer. Every Sunday. The pattern may vary from one ecclesia to the next, but every ecclesia has one. How very, well, liturgical!

Scripture Readings in Public Worship

'Ah,' you might say, 'but the readings do not follow a lectionary.' That was only partly correct, in this case. The exhorting brother typically chose one of the readings to match his topic; at least one of the readings was ordinarily taken from a Christadelphian Daily Readings plan—in other words, a lectionary.

Prayer in Public Worship

'Ah, but the prayers are not scripted.' Again, only partly true. For one thing, our ecclesia had a long-standing convention—dare I say tradition—that the Sunday evening service would be closed with the Lord's Prayer, following the KJV of Matthew 6:9-13. A scripted prayer! For another, the public prayers were offered by the presiding brother and by men in the congregation. The presiding brother would make prior arrangements with these men, precisely so they would be prepared for their prayer. In other words, spontaneity was not seen as the ideal. And you didn't have to attend the ecclesial meetings for long before you would learn that each man in the congregation had certain 'favourite lines'—that is, forms—that he liked to use in his public prayers. In certain instances one could literally finish the brother's sentence for him. The younger baptized men, when they first began offering public prayers, would often borrow from these tried-and-true forms used by their elders. I am sure that every family has observed in prayers before meals this same tendency for forms of prayer to develop. All of this is liturgical, and no one seems to find it objectionable.

Sensory and Physical Public Worship

'Ah, but we don't have sensory or physical forms of worship, like candles and incense and kneeling.' Partaking ritually of bread and wine—regardless of one's doctrinal understanding about it—is clearly a sensory form of worship. The breaking of bread service in the Canadian ecclesia I grew up in always involved a ritual uncovering and covering of the bread and wine with a piece of white linen. Visual forms of worship! Liturgy! Moreover, although there was no kneeling, the ecclesia had very specific customs about standing and sitting. Everyone stood for hymns and prayers after hymns. However, only baptized persons stood for the prayers for bread and wine. As for the hymns themselves, they were invariably selected from a Christadelphian hymnbook, a collection of hymns deemed musically and theologically appropriate. The hymns were categorized in the hymnbook according to liturgical occasion, e.g., morning, breaking of bread, dismissal.

The Liturgical Calendar

The aspect of Christadelphian worship that is probably the least liturgical is the calendar. Christadelphians do not formally observe any major festivals of the Christian liturgical calendar (or the Jewish), such as Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, etc. Christadelphians also attach no liturgical significance to Sunday: their Statement of Faith explicitly rejects the doctrine 'that the observance of Sunday is a matter of duty.' I have heard Christadelphians remark that their memorial service is held on Sunday only out of convenience and could arbitrarily be held on any other day.1 Yet Christadelphians do inevitably have liturgical seasonality. The convention of Sunday worship punctuates a weekly cycle that Christadelphians would surely acknowledge is historically rooted in a divinely instituted Sabbatarian framework.  Similarly, while Christadelphians do not have an annual liturgical cycle per se, and do not celebrate any religious festivals, they do have a de facto annual cycle of events, such as 'fraternal gatherings,' 'Bible schools' and 'youth conferences'. Many Christadelphians would describe these occasions as highlights of their religious life, something they look forward to every year. They undoubtedly fulfill the same spiritual needs that an annual liturgical cycle fulfills for traditional Christians (as well as Jews, Muslims, etc.)

Conclusion

It should be clear from the foregoing that, notwithstanding considerable diversity between ecclesias in forms, the Christadelphian religion is indeed 'liturgical' in its worship; very much so. Even though Christadelphian liturgy is in numerous respects less rigid and less regulated than the liturgy of other Christian traditions, Christadelphians are not accurately described as 'non-liturgical'. Indeed, I do not think it is possible to practice a religion for any length of time without liturgical forms developing, even where the adherents of this religion express an antipathy for anything formal or traditional.

My hope in writing this article is that Christadelphians who consider themselves 'non-liturgical' might realise that their worship is actually quite 'liturgical,' and that this realisation might give rise to further reflection on the value of liturgical traditions as practiced by most other professing Christians past and present. Also, maybe someone should update that Wikipedia page.

Footnotes

• 1 On the other hand, I have also heard presiders at Christadelphian Sunday meetings refer solemnly to the meeting being held on 'this first day of the week,' implicitly linking their practice to certain New Testament texts (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).

Is it biblical to...? Google search autocomplete suggestions and the formation of conscience

In Christian circles, one often hears questions about morality and spiritual life phrased in the form, Is it biblical to...? Along the same lines, one hears of the importance of instilling a 'biblical worldview' in our children (which presumably does not mean teaching them that the earth is a flat disc resting on pillars). It is interesting that the relative frequency of the word 'biblical' grew rapidly between c. 1940 and 2000, according to Google Books Ngram viewer. It seems to be a very topical adjective.

What sorts of 'is-it-biblical-to' questions are contemporary Christians asking? You can answer this for your country of residence by going to Google.com, typing the words is it biblical to and observing the autocomplete suggestions that appear (which reflect the most common search queries entered in that country). In South Africa, the most popular 'is-it-biblical-to' searches end with:

• vote? [bear in mind that South Africa recently had a national election]
• cremate?
• say rest in peace?
• wear a wedding ring?
• pray with candles?
• be friends with your ex?
• pray to saints?
• pray to Mary?
• pray with sand?

Here is a longer list of popular is-it-biblical-to searches in South Africa, obtained by filling in the first letter of the word after 'to': Anoint your house with oil? Ask God for a sign? Ask for money? Ask for a raise? Ask for the Holy Spirit to come? Be baptized more than once? Baptize babies? Be vegan? Become a member of a church? Borrow money? Be a stay at home mom? Circumcise? Charge interest? Call on angels? Celebrate birthday? Cast lots? Celebrate Easter? Call a pastor pastor? Cut ties with family? Donate blood? Donate organs? Drink water while fasting? Drink wine? Drink beer? Drink milk? Decree and declare? Defend yourself? Date? Dance in church? Eat meat? Eat pork? Eat eggs? Eat fish on Good Friday? Eat your placenta? Elope? Exercise? Enforce the law? Fast? Fast while menstruating? Fast for someone else? Forgive yourself? Forgive and not forget? Go to church? Go to church on Sunday? Get a loan? Gamble? Get a vasectomy? Get a tattoo? Have a girlfriend? Have church membership? Have godparents? Invest in the stock market? Interpret your own tongues? Interpret dreams? Judge others? Join a church? Journal? Pray to Jesus? Plead the blood of Jesus? Kiss before marriage? Kick someone out of church? Love yourself? Leave a church? Leave an inheritance? Live together before marriage? Marry your cousin? Marry without parental blessing? Pray to the Holy Spirit? Pay pastors? Pay church musicians? Pay bride price? Pay taxes? Pray before meals? Pray for healing? Renew wedding vows? Retire? Raise hands in worship? Say God bless you? Say no? Sue someone? Save money? Save for retirement? Speak in tongues? Separate from your spouse? Stand up for yourself? Speak things into existence? Set boundaries? Take your husband['s] name? Tithe in the new testament? Take care of your parents? Take communion at home? Take communion every Sunday? Take antidepressants? Use condoms? Use birth control? Use anointing oil? Use herbs? Visit graves? Wear jewelry? Work on Sunday? Wear a cross?

The moral dilemmas reflected in the above list range from the life-changing to the mundane. However, let us focus on the phrase, 'is it biblical'. This seems to be a problematic adjective to use to classify an action as morally right or acceptable, because it assumes that the Bible directly and unambiguously addresses the issue at hand. However, there are many issues in the list above (and many others not in the list) that the Bible does not directly address, or that it mentions, but without offering unmistakable, unequivocal teaching. Indeed, there are relatively few items in the above list on which the Bible speaks clearly and unequivocally, which is perhaps one reason why people are searching Google rather than simply reading/searching their Bibles.

This suggests that 'Is it biblical?' is the wrong question to ask, because it is rooted in a flawed assumption about how Christians ought to arrive at moral judgments. The question should rather be phrased as, 'Is it right?' or 'Is it wrong?' or 'Is it obligatory?' or 'Is it forbidden?' To answer these kinds of questions is to form one's conscience. How should a Christian form his or her conscience? Certainly divine revelation plays a vital role. However, because the Bible does not directly and unequivocally answer many of the moral dilemmas we face in contemporary society, formation of conscience requires interpretation of what has been revealed. And in order to avoid a situation where every Christian does what is right in his/her own eyes (to paraphrase the Book of Judges), according to his/her private interpretations, we Christians need an interpretative authority that can speak with clarity and conviction on the moral dilemmas of our time—in other words, that can bind and loose. Fortunately, Jesus provided for just such an authority within his Church (Matthew 16:17-19).

Thus Christians have access to a living voice that speaks on moral questions old and new, navigating the complexities of divine revelation with Holy Spirit guidance and facilitating the formation of conscience among the faithful. Perhaps the best news of all is that this voice's answers are accessible to Google's web crawlers.