Pillars of the Mathetai
There is an idea in much religion of a metaphysical foundation upon which practical action can be taken. For example, Islam erects the “Five Pillars”
Profession (of the creed),
Prayers,
Charity,
Fasting,
Pilgrimage (to the holy cities).
And ancient Jewish rabbis proposed seven precepts upon which all the world should base behavior; they are the Noachide Laws:
Monotheism,
No murder,
No robbery,
Sexual purity,
No blasphemy,
Kindness to animals,
Just courts.
Another example are the various Catholic religiouses, who generally profess four vows:
Poverty,
Celibacy,
Obedience,
and the fourth varies (e.g., stability, silence, loyalty to the pope).
The Religious Society of Friends has its “testimonies”, which by now have been narrowed to
Honesty,
Simplicity,
Non-violence,
Abstinence from nicotine, alcohol, or recreational drugs.
The Amish – Mennonites among whom I grew up base their copious lifestyle-laws on a three-cornered platform, viz.:
Nonconformity (to American life),
Uniformity,
Obedience.
Perhaps it is my knowledge of these religions that has gotten me thinking: What “pillars” could I discern in Jesus’s and his Envoys’ teaching upon which to base my life’s acts? To list them accurately, I would need to put out of my head all Christian dogma, to read thoroughly but sweepingly, to think systematically. Here, tentatively, is what I propose (roughly in the order the reader can find them):
Slavery,
Poverty,
Love and non-resistance,
Honesty,
Liberty,
Chastity (with a special meaning for the married).
Exoristos
Porter Doran
Iannes
Epiktetos
Anonymous
Someone somewhere else has asked me:
“Poverty: Do you mean something like non-conformity, anticonsumerism, simplicity?
“Slavery: Wow … I find a hard word here, hehehe. It reminds me of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples while also reaffirming his Lordship (I don’t know if this is the exact word). And you also mention Liberty. How do you balance slavery and liberty?”
So I began to make reply:
This discussion really requires a whole heap of scriptures to be useful, but I’ll take a quick crack at these questions, for now.
POVERTY
Jesus’s first words to those who wished to follow him were “Sell all you have,” or some form of it such as, Leave everything or everyone. His followers are recorded saying to him, “See, we have given up everything and followed you,” specifically, “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands.”
The command is simple, and its prerequisition to Following is unequivocal; but what all “it means” may not be simple — your suggestions sound helpful to me. We might look at a day in Jesus’s life that was particularly full of potential Followers for more illustration:
“( 1 ) And as they journeyed along the way, a man said to him: ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him: ‘Foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.’ ( 2 ) And he said to another: ‘Follow me.’ But the man said: ‘Give me leave first to go and bury my father.’ But he said to him: ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but you go and announce the Kingdom of God.’ ( 3 ) And another man said: ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first allow me to take leave of the people in my house.’ But Jesus said to him: ‘No one who has put his hand to the plow and then looked back is fit for the Kingdom of God.’ ” (The counting is, needless to say, mine.)
SLAVERY
No metaphor for Following is used so often by Jesus and the Envoys as the slave. The five Greek words meaning “slave” appear 207 times in their recorded teachings. Perhaps two examples can begin to give the tenor:
“And [Jesus] said to his followers: ‘… Which of you has a slave who plows or herds the flocks and will say to him when he comes in from the fields: “Come now and eat with me”? Will he not rather say: “Prepare me something to dine on, and tuck yourself up and wait on me while I eat and drink, and after that you eat and drink”? Surely he does not feel thankful to the slave because he has done as he was told? So you, when you have done all that you were told to, should say: “We are worthless slaves. What we have done we were obliged to do.” ‘
“Keep this purpose in yourselves, one which is also in Christ Jesus. He was in the form of God, but did not think to seize on the right to be equal to God, but he stripped himself by taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of a human being; and being found in the guise of a human being, he humiliated himself and was obedient to the death, death on the cross. _Therefore_ God exalted him and graced him with the name which is above every name … .” (Emphasis I added.)
The idea is vast and various, but in essence our slavery is this: We work the works of mercy as our Father works them so that, just as a Roman son first is a slave, we may become adopted by God as his true children; Jesus’s life, death, and raising to heaven were to show us the way.
LIBERTY
“He hath anointed me … to set at liberty them that are bruised,” “… the glorious liberty of the children of God”, “Why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience?”, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” “False brethren … spy out our liberty that we have in Christ Jesus, that they may bring us into bondage,” “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,” “Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty,” “Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty … shall be blessed in his deed,” “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” I have reverted to the Authorized Version in my excitement.
And here are some words of Jesus’s that require more space:
“Then when they came to Capernaum, those who took up the two-drachma tax came up to Peter and said: ‘Does not your teacher pay the two drachmas?’ He said: ‘Yes.’ And as he was going into the house, Jesus intercepted him and said: ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take their taxes and their assessment? From their sons or from strangers?’ When he said: ‘From strangers,’ Jesus said to him: ‘Thus their sons go free. But so that we may cause them no trouble, go to the sea and let down your hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and open its mouth and you will find a stater. Take it and give it to them, for you and me.’ ”
“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed on him: ‘If you remain with my teaching, then you are truly my followers and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They answered him: ‘We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that you say: “You will be made free”?’ Jesus answered them: ‘Truly truly I tell you that everyone that commits sin is the slave of his sin. But the slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. If then the son sets you free, you will be free in truth.’ ”
The latter hints at the resolution to your paradox (“And you also mention Liberty. How do you balance slavery and liberty?”) — but first I must remark that _in his paradoces_ Jesus’s _most-penetrating truth_ is always to be found. We all remember: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
How can we be slaves and free? Or ought our question be something different — for every man and woman is a slave already: to himself, to society, to lies, to ideas, to food, to fear, to drugs, to greed, to comfort, to _something or someone_. Ought not our question instead to be: How to be free at all? How to be freed?
Here are several quotes from Paul Envoy, and then I leave the topic for now (there are dishes and cleaning to do):
“The slave called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman, and so likewise the free man called is the Lord’s slave.”
“Being free from all, I have enslaved myself to all … .”
“Do you not know that when you give yourselves as slaves to someone, to obey him, you are the slaves of him whom you obey, either of sin, for death, or of obedience, for righteousness? … As you gave your bodies over as slaves to debauchery and lawlessness, now give your bodies as slaves to righteousness. For when you were the slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. What was then the harvest you reaped from those acts of which you are now ashamed? Their end is death. But now, set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have your harvest, to be sanctified, and the end is life everlasting.”
“There is neither Hebrew nor Hellene, slave nor free, male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
By this point, I may as well go ahead with some explanation for the others.
LOVE and NON-RESISTANCE
There is too much and too deep Scripture about love, almost, to be comprehensible. I will begin with a quotation more than which cannot be said:
“God is love.”
Then teachings that are instructions:
” ‘My children, [said Jesus] I am with you still for a little while. You will look for me, and as I said to the Judeans, where I go you will not be able to go, so I say it to you now, I give you a new commandment, to love each other, as I have loved you and as you do love each other. By this all will know that you are my followers; if you have love for each other.’ ”
“The man who loves his brother [wrote John] remains in the light, and there is no offense in him; but the man who hates his brother is in the dark and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. …
“We know of our Lord’s love by this, that he laid down his life for us; and we have a duty to lay down our lives for our brothers. But when a man has worldly means and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how can the love of God be in that man? Little children, let us love, not with talk and the tongue, but in action and truth. …
“Dear friends, let us love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is sprung from God and knows God. One who does not love does not know God, because God is love. The love of God was revealed among us by this, that God sent his only-begotten son into the world so that we might live through him. Love is in this, not in that we have loved God, but in that he loved us and sent his son as propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God so loved us we also have a duty to love each other. No one has ever seen God; if we love each other, God abides in us and his love is made perfect in us. … God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
“Be kind [wrote Paul] and compassionate toward each other, forgiving each other as God through Christ forgave you. Make yourselves imitators of God as beloved children, and act in love; as Christ loved you and gave himself as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God for your sake.”
” ‘I say to you who hear me [said Jesus], love your enemies, do well by those who hate you, praise those who curse you, pray for those who revile you. When one strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other; if one seizes your coat, do not keep him from taking your shirt also. Give to any who asks you and from him who takes what is yours ask for nothing back. And as you wish men to do by you, so do by them. And if you love those who love you, what thanks do you have? For even the sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what thanks do you have? For even the sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope for a return, what thanks do you have? Even sinners lend to sinners so they may get an equal return. But love your enemies and do good and lend without hope of return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Highest, because he is good to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be compassionate as your father is compassionate; and do not judge, and you shall not be judged; and do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given you. They will pour into your lap good measure, pressed down, shaken down, running over. For by the measure by which you measured it will be measured back to you.”
And a final thought: Love is non-resistant, yes, and _love is to the death_. For: “As the father loves me, and I love you, stay in my love. … This is my commandment, that you love each other as I loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends.”
HONESTY
This hardly seems necessary much to discuss, as Jesus lived hated, and soon died, for the honest words he spoke: “He who sent me is true, and what I heard from him is what I speak to the world.” His good news was in great part: “The time is coming and it is now when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the spirit and in truth, for the Father looks for such worshippers,” and “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” He lambasted the churchmen: “The father you come from is the devil and … there is no truth in him. When he speaks his lie he speaks from what is his own, because he is a liar and so is his father.” Sometime before he died, he instructed his followers, “What I say to you in the dark, say in the light; what is said in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. And have no fear of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
His envoys taught us e.g.: “Provide things honest in the sight of all men,” “And we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong — not so that we may appear approvable, but so that you may do what is honest though we appear unapprovable,” “And keep your behavior among the heathens honest, so that, whereas they now speak against you as evildoers, they may learn from your good works and glorify God on the Day of Visitation,” “I ask you to make your prayers … for all people, for kings … so that we may live a quiet and peaceful life in all piety and honesty,” “Love … rejoices in the truth,” “We … have renounced the things of dishonesty …, but, by making plain the truth, presenting ourselves to mankind’s conscience before God,” “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth,” “Put aside falsehood, therefore, and each of you speak the truth with your neighbor; … Conduct yourselves as children of light, for what issues from light is always goodness and righteousness, and truth … everything that is exposed by the light is illuminated, for everything that is illuminated is light.”
CHASTITY (with a special meaning for the married)
We have the example of our Teacher, and we have some items of his teaching I’ll provide later. But most-coherently we have answers Paul Envoy made to five questions asked by the Followers in Corinth:
“Concerning the matters you wrote me of:
“1. It is a good thing for a man not to touch any woman, but to save you from loose living, let each man have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband.
“2. Let the man give to his wife her due, and so likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body; her husband does; and so likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body; his wife does. Do not deny each other, except by agreement for a time when you can devote yourselves to prayer, and then be as you were before.
“3. A wife should not separate from her husband; and if she does separate herself, she must remain single or else be reconciled with her husband; and a man should not divorce his wife. If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her; and a woman who has a husband who is an unbeliever and who consents to live with her should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is hallowed by his wife, and the unbelieving wife is hallowed by one who is a brother. But if the unbeliever separates, let him or her be separate; the brother or sister is not bound in such cases; God called you to peace.
“4. Concerning those who are unmarried I have no mandate from the Lord, but I give you my opinion as one who has been mercifully granted by the Lord to be trustworthy. I think that, because of the present need, it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek freedom. Are you free of a wife? Do not seek a wife. But even if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if an unmarried girl marries, she has not sinned. But such people will have affliction in the flesh. I want you to be free from care. The unmarried man cares about the things of the Lord and how he can please the Lord; but the married man cares about the things of the world and how he can please his wife, and he is of two minds. And the unmarried woman and the virgin care about the things of the Lord, how to be pure in body and spirit; but the married woman cares about the things of the world, and how she can please her husband. But if a man thinks he is acting shamefully toward his girl if he becomes too impassioned, and it has to be so, let him do what he wants. He is not sinning; let them marry. But the man who stands firm in his heart, and is not constrained, but has control over his will and decides in his own heart to keep his girl a virgin, he will be doing well. Thus the one who marries his girl does well, and the one who does not marry does better.
“5. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. If her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, as long as it is marriage in the Lord.”
(The passage is here abridged.)
And now some of Jesus’s teaching: “I tell you that any man who looks at a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” “Because of this a man will leave his father and his mother, and they will be two in one flesh: then what God has joined together let man not separate,” “There are sexless men who have made themselves sexless for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,” “When they rise from the dead they do not marry nor are they married but are as the angels in heaven.”
Someone somewhere else has objected (in part): “The Gospel is a simple message, and every human being can understand [its] commands.” I have answered:
“But let me try to explain the use of such pillars: they would have a practical use; they would not be for anything so heady as ‘defining Christian doctrine’ or ‘knowing if I am “saved” ‘ or any other thing like that. No, they would serve as a basis from which I would answer questions such as, Which job ought I take? How ought I relate to a ‘boss’? a policeman? a pastor? How ought I treat my wife? What education shall I take on? Shall I buy this? Shall I say that?
“Only love, as you say — only the Holy Spirit of the Teacher in us, only God, can answer these questions. However He has given us our reason, too. He has given us, too, his and his envoys’ teachings. So could such pillars be of any use? For now, I am taping them to my wall.”
(I feel a desire to summarize Paul’s rather long passage above [although I hope people read it], thus: The first answer forbids fornication; the second commands habitual congress in marriage; the third forbids most divorce; the fourth promotes celibacy; the fifth permits the marriage of widows and gives them choice of spouse.)