Does It Not Perhaps Go Too Far? - If You Thought What Came Before Was Hard

Here we come to the thing I have to work on the hardest, not that any of what came before comes easily or reliably.  To continue with Hans Kung . . . 

Even enemies 

Does it not perhaps go too far?  If my neighbor is anyone who needs me here and now, can I stop at that?  According to Jesus, I certainly should not.  And, after our first two answers to the question on love, we must now make our third and final answer  even more pointed.  According to Jesus love is not merely love of neighbor but essential love of enemies.  And it is this love of enemies, not love of man or even love of neighbor, which is typical for Jesus. 

It is only with Jesus that we find the requirement of love of enemies set out as part of a program.  Even Confucius, though he does not speak of "love of neighbor," at least mentions "love of man,"  but means by this simply deference, magnanimity, sincerity, diligence, kindness. As we observed, there are sporadic references in the Old Testament also to love of neighbor.  Like most of the great religions,  Judaism too had its "golden rule,"  presumably derived from Graeco-Roman pagan sources both in a negative and - as in the Jewish diaspora - in a positive form. . . 

I will break in here and say that I don't understand why that derivation should be presumed, though such presumptions were and still are all the rage in modern, Western academic and journalistic assumption.   I do find it odd that that "presumption" of appropriation seems always to flow from outside, into the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition.  Though it's impossible to tell, especially when it is based on far later than original copies of parchment or paper texts, that assumption is made.  But even traces of such alleged influence as are founded in clay tablets doesn't demonstrate that what those document are original to those with the earliest recording of their thoughts.  And those are inevitably not the product of Graeco-Roman culture. 

As I mentioned the other day,  the Jewish-Christian scriptures are universal in attributing such "instinctive" moral awareness to everyone or at least others.  In the earliest Scriptures God says he has covenants with other peoples and even all flesh, animals.  

Like most of the great religions,  Judaism too had its "golden rule,"  presumably derived from Graeco-Roman pagan sources both in a negative and - as in the Jewish diaspora - in a positive form; to treat one's fellow men as one would wish to be treated oneself.  The great Rabbi Hillel (circa 20 B.C.) described this golden rule - admittedly in a negative form - as being almost the sum total of the written Law.  But this rule could also be understood in a shrewd, selfish adaptation, one's neighbor simply as a fellow national, as a member of the same party, and love of neighbor as a precept among a mass of other religious, moral and ritual precepts.  Even Confucius was aware of the golden rule in a negative form, but expressly rejected love of enemies as unfair;  we should repay goodness with goodness, but wrong must be repaid with justice, not with goodness.  And in Judaism hatred of enemies was considered more or less permissible.; personal enemies formed an exception to the obligation of love.  The devout monks of Qumran even expressly commanded hatred toward the outsiders, the sons of darkness. 

I don't know the what state of Dead Sea Scroll scholarship was when Kung wrote that description.  What I assume he meant was what the infamous War Scroll said.  I don't know if that description would be universally accepted among scholars now or if Kung would still agree with it.  Though the excerpts I've seen would fairly lead to the conclusion that the text wanted you to hate the "Sons of Darkness".  I don't know if it's true that that war image inspired the architecture of the Shrine of the Book as I've seen asserted online.  I know I don't trust that kind of division of people, it has a history of leading to no good, at all.  No light. 

Despite their age and the romantic stuff about them, I'm not really very inspired by the "Dead Sea Scrolls," to tell you the truth.  If the various interpretations of the community that those came from are true I think they're an example of what happens when fanatics concentrate on an eccentric, insular interpretation of the Scripture as has happened in so many a subsequent cult that is as prone to fantasies of violence as much as their focus is on asceticism and separatism more than neighborliness.  I would give the overtly pacifistic, egalitarian just barely surviving Shakers of the United States as a contrast.  

Does not all this show once more how the numerous parallels between statements in Jesus' proclamation on the one hand and the sayings of the Jewish wisdom literature and of the rabbis on the other must be seen within the total context of their respective understanding of law and salvation, of man and his fellow men?  The superiority of Jesus becomes apparent, not in the often completely comparable individual statements but in the unmistakable originality of the whole teaching.  The programmatic "love our enemy" is Jesus' own expression and is typical of his love of neighbor, which now really does know no bounds. 

It is totally understandable and, I think, entirely fair of Kung to credit Jesus with that radical interpretation of Jewish law, through which any Christian use of the Mosaic Law must come or it ceases to be Christian.  Though I think he was not as far from other, specifically Jewish lines of that same tradition.  I will mention the interpretation of the extra-Scriptural, Jewish story of God drowning Pharaoh and his army to save the Children of Israel in which he scolds the angels in Heaven for rejoicing as the Children of Israel did in Exodus, saying they should mourn that he had to destroy any of his human creatures.  I don't know the age of that tradition - I'm anything but a scholar of that incredible complex of intersecting, intertwining, often contradicting interpretation of scripture - but I think it must have been there, too, then. 

But that argument isn't important to me.   I'm a political blogger living in the United States, the priority of who came up with that most radical possible interpretation of the Mosaic law matters less to me than how it can be made real in political action, in society, among individuals, here, now, today, not two thousand years ago.   

I don't think there is any possibility that it will become sufficiently present without being sufficiently believed by a sufficient number of people and it is clear that will only happen in the context of Christianity.  I would say "for the foreseeable future" but then I would be lying.  I don't foresee it coming any other way.  I have come to totally doubt that without it having that Christian context that it will ever happen in any other framing.  It certainly has not been a common phenomenon for it to become even a general trend in any number of framings, traditions and belief systems.  

I would certainly like it to have a history of having happened in other contexts, there are other faith traditions on all continents in which it may well have that potential - read what I said about the long part of the Jewish tradition of which Christianity is a part of attribution of "instinctive" moral awareness among all people, those - to use Paul's language in Romans - the "uncircumcised" as well as "the circumcised.  Paul, who repeatedly and decisively numbered himself as among the Jews,  did note that without faith in the Mosaic Law (as he newly interpreted it through the context of Jesus) even the instinctive moral awareness that God had instilled in the "uncircumcised" with whom he made covenants wasn't sufficient to save them from depravity, sexual exploitation (as he understood it) and the entire range of pagan practice, up to and including human sacrifice.  I think whatever habitual universality, of "fairness" there is in my American tradition of liberalism comes directly from the Jewish tradition but it comes into it through Jesus and Paul, James etc. 

I have the traditional American liberal habit of even-handed fairness and would love it if that potential were as widely available and as potent (it's potency in Christianity as practiced is hardly sufficient, up till now) so as to produce egalitarian democracy except in isolated instances,  I don't see that they produce behavior which is any better than what the lack luster form of it among Christians, what most of it has produced.  The problem with Christians is that they so seldom act as Jesus taught, not that they're supposed to be inclined to act that way.  If they did, I doubt any of what I wrote here would be in any way controversial.  And that it is is entirely on Christians of that kind that Christianity does not have that good a reputation.  Which is on all of us.