Finishing Hans Kung's listing of ways in which God and reality are presented as the ultimate of radicalism. This is his third heading.
3. Love means renunciation; there is a warning against exploitation of the weak. A resolute renunciation of all that hinders readiness for God and neighbor is required. Expressed forcibly, it means even cutting off one's hand if it leads to temptation. Jesus however expects renunciation, not merely of negative things - of lust and sin - but also of positive things - of rights and power.
Typical of Jesus is voluntary renunciation without accepting anything in return. This can be expressed in concrete examples:
Renunciation of rights in favor of other person; going two miles with someone who has forced me to go one mile with him.
Renunciation of power at my own expense: giving my cloak also to someone who has already taken my coat.
Renunciation of counter-force: presenting the left cheek to someone who has struck me on the right.
These last examples especially show ore clearly that even that Jesus' requirements must not be understood as laws. Jesus does not mean that, while there can be no reprisals for a blow on the left cheek, it may be right to hit back after a blow in the stomach. Certainly these examples are are not meant to be taken merely symbolically. They are very typical borderline cases (frequently formulated in a somewhat exaggerated Eastern style) which might at any time become reality. But they are not to be understood in a legal sense, as commands that do just this and to do it constantly. Renunciation of force does not mean a priori renunciation of any resistance. According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus himself certainly did not present the other cheek, but protested when he was struck. Renunciation must not be confused with weakness. With Jesus' requirements, it is not a question of ethical or still less ascetic achievements which might make sense in themselves, but of blunt requests for the radical fulfillment of God's will in each particular case to the advantage of our fellow man. All renunciation is merely the negative aspect of a new positive force.
From this standpoint even the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament seem to be - in the Hegelian threefold sense - "canceled" (aufgehoben) discarded and yet preserved, elevated to a higher plane through the radical "higher righteousness" proclaimed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
We must certainly not only have no other gods beside him, but must love him with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind and our neighbor and even our enemy as ourselves;
We must not only not use God's name pointlessly, but we must not even swear by God.
We must not only make the Sabbath holy by resting, but must be active in doing going on that day.
We must not only honor father and mother in order to have a long life on earth, but - for the sake of true love - show them respect even by leaving them.
We must not only not kill, but we must refrain from angry thoughts and words.
We must not only not commit adultery, but we must avoid even adulterous intentions.
We must not only not steal, but we must even renounce the right to reparation for the wrong we have suffered.
WE must not only not bear false witness, but we must be so absolutely truthful that "Yes" means simply "Yes" and "No" means simply "No".
We must not only not cove our neighbor's house but we must even put up with evil. We must not only not covet our neighbor's wife, but must even refrain from seeking a "legal" divorce.
Was not the Apostle Paul right - here too in striking agreement with the Jesus of history - to claim that love is the fulfilling of the law? And according to Augustine, it may be stated more forcibly, "Love and do as you will." There is no new law, but a new freedom from the law.
But precisely in the light of all this, the question arises; was Jesus himself content with words, with appeals? Did he prefer a congenial, noncommittal, inconsequential, pure theory to practical action? What did Jesus do in the last resort? Did he put his own theory into practice?
So many things jump out of that, I mean other than an observation that I'm certainly nowhere close to fulfilling much of any of it. I look at what Kung said in regard to the extension on the Commandment against stealing, we must even renounce the right to reparation for the wrong we have suffered and can well imagine how that would be used in contemporary American politics around the pending issue of reparations. I will note that while that may make especially good sense when addressing people who have not been enslaved, it takes on a very different cast when it is told to people who have been enslaved, legally or on a de facto basis. And, I will point out, while it may require those with a right toreparation to renounce that right, there is not a statement that the OBLIGATION of those who have benefited from the enslavement of others has that obligation wiped out.
The claim is often made that Christians have constructed an easy way, a way of them getting off for doing evil - especially in the misunderstood theory of the Catholic sacrament of confession - but this passage shows that couldn't be farther from the truth. Jesus doesn't set out an easy road to salvation, it is the most radical one, the one with requirements as steep as its aspirations. It is exactly the kind of thing that I noted in the two interpretations of "freedom" and "liberty" which can either be taken to mean freedom to be selfish or freedom to be selfless, both individually as well as in the entire society. And I think egalitarian democracy, requiring similar renunciations of power and privilege, even what get called "rights" when those impinge on the greater rights of others is obviously related to what is said here. I think in this we find why Habermas named, specifically, the Christian doctrine of love as the only source of nourishment of the positive aspects of modern egalitarian democracy and the personal freedom which can either bless it, if exercised in lines similar to those Kung laid out here, or it can destroy it if taken in the "enlightenment" secular view of freedom and "rights" which allow those with natural or legally bestowed power and privilege to tyrannize those beneath them and to cheat those among them that they can get away with cheating.
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