Thursday, November 03, 2005
Political Agendas And The Gospel
Mark Roberts has been examining the reliability of the New Testament documents is a recent series. One post recent post caught my eye concerning the possible imposition of a political agenda on the documents by the early church. Mark cites numerous examples of this happening with second century documents, many of the commonly cited non-canonical "gospels," and then goes on to point out how the four gospels were often "out-of-synch" to the likely agenda of the early church.
The answer, I think, is far simpler than we often think it is. Much of that stuff just does not matter. Consider for example the question of economic systems. The Old Testament is full of affirmations of private property. Christ chastises rich people, and Acts is full of communities that "held all things in common." Why didn't Jesus tell us exactly how to do it?
Set aside for a minute questions concerning God and foreknowledge, and consider God's history of interaction with man. He had, prior to Christ, a long history of just such precise dictation of how to order things -- and it did not get Him the desired result. The Jews just kept messing up. He'd also tried several different things, judges, kings, diaspora -- none of it "worked." What conclusion can be drawn from this?
The system, the ordering of society, matters less in accomplishing God's purpose with and for mankind that the people themselves. Here we are again, back at transformation. What God "learned" (if such can be said) through His history with the Jews was that He needed to change man, once changed, man would then function well within whatever particular ordering of society was in place.
Consider the question of caring for the poor. Socialism seems like a good answer, and the idea presented in Acts. But we have seen in communism that it is as corrupt and vile as capitalism -- its not about the system, its about the people. Will transformed people automatically order themselves in a socialistic manner? I'm not sure, you see transformed people would be sufficiently generous in a capitalistic setting that it might not matter.
But the point here is the gospel is not about politics, its about transformation, politics simply follow in the wake of that transformation.
The gospel writers understood that, that's why they did not need to impose a political agenda on their documents.
For example, if one supposes that the early Christians made up sayings of Jesus to address current concerns, then it's hard to figure why they didn't do a much better job of it. So many of the conflicts and challenges faced by the early church were never addressed by sayings Jesus, for example: the question of speaking in tongues; the issue of women in leadership; etc.Why do you think Jesus left so many question unanswered? Why, for example, did Jesus in fact chastise many of His followers for wanting to conquer Rome. Why didn't Jesus redeem the society?
Moreover, some of the sayings of Jesus that were passed on orally and then incorporated into the gospels made matters more complicated for the early church, not less. For example, if anything characterized early Christianity, it was an evangelistic zeal that included the Gentiles. Yet some of the sayings of Jesus in the gospels seem, at first glance, to be contradictory to this very mission (see Matt 10:5, Mark 7:24-30). If the writers and editors of the gospels were motivated by their agenda to play fast and loose with history, surely they would have improved upon or even eliminated things in the Jesus tradition that were awkward. Yet this didn't happen with the New Testament gospels.
The answer, I think, is far simpler than we often think it is. Much of that stuff just does not matter. Consider for example the question of economic systems. The Old Testament is full of affirmations of private property. Christ chastises rich people, and Acts is full of communities that "held all things in common." Why didn't Jesus tell us exactly how to do it?
Set aside for a minute questions concerning God and foreknowledge, and consider God's history of interaction with man. He had, prior to Christ, a long history of just such precise dictation of how to order things -- and it did not get Him the desired result. The Jews just kept messing up. He'd also tried several different things, judges, kings, diaspora -- none of it "worked." What conclusion can be drawn from this?
The system, the ordering of society, matters less in accomplishing God's purpose with and for mankind that the people themselves. Here we are again, back at transformation. What God "learned" (if such can be said) through His history with the Jews was that He needed to change man, once changed, man would then function well within whatever particular ordering of society was in place.
Consider the question of caring for the poor. Socialism seems like a good answer, and the idea presented in Acts. But we have seen in communism that it is as corrupt and vile as capitalism -- its not about the system, its about the people. Will transformed people automatically order themselves in a socialistic manner? I'm not sure, you see transformed people would be sufficiently generous in a capitalistic setting that it might not matter.
But the point here is the gospel is not about politics, its about transformation, politics simply follow in the wake of that transformation.
The gospel writers understood that, that's why they did not need to impose a political agenda on their documents.
