So you can imagine a catalog like Roman's 12 being a parallel to the 10 Commandments. These are all formulations for a counter-obedience of which I mention only three items. First of all that Paul enjoins the church to practice hospitality. We all know that. But imagine hospitality in Pharaoh's world. It's precluded by definition. Second Paul enjoins generosity, imagine generosity in Pharaoh's world. And thirdly, Paul says you cannot practice vengeance. Now all of us knows that those three summons of hospitality, generosity and no vengeance are as radical as you can get in Pharaoh's world or in Cesar's world.
So my thought is that these are secrets that have been kept silent in the church in order that the church should not upset anybody. But there is - you know this - there is a huge hunger in the church because People are asking is there any alternative way. And the wonderful thing about Hospitality and Generosity and No vengeance - and Sabbath and No Coveting - is that it's not liberal and it's not conservative. Everybody can do it. We don't have to all do it the same way. Everybody can do it. These are marks of a unified church that no longer needs to argue about secondary issues. And if we did these primary marks of the church there's a fair chance that most of the secondary issues would evaporate. Because we wouldn't have any energy for them.
A Youtube of a clip of Walter Brueggemann saying this came up on my sidebar yesterday so I listened to it and I went back to Romans, which, as you can see below, I differed with slightly in a big way last time and I will point out that the masterpiece that Romans is can't really be seen in excerpting a couple of sentences from it. I think Romans is like a massive psycho-spiritual therapeutic experience that, if taken to heart, brings anyone from points where they judge others for their presumed or alleged or obviously real sins and, if it is read honestly and with self-reflection and a healthy, informed conscience, they will find that the sinner they judge will turn out to be themselves is just as much called out by Paul in it. It's like one big meditation on Jesus's comparison of someone who criticizes someone with a speck of dirt in their eye while they have a log in theirs, at least in part.
The typical use of Scripture is to pick out the secondary aspects of it to focus on, especially those to do with that most sexy of obsessions, sex, and miss the entire point of it. That use of sex is certainly one of the things that has been most useful to those who want to turn Christianity into a sexual obsession instead of what the Gospels, almost all of Paul and most of the rest of the New Testament says about justice and economic justice and that most inconvenient obsession of Jesus, universal love. I'll give you more of chapter 12:
1Therefore I implore you, brothers, by God’s mercies, to present your bodies as a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God, your rational worship; 2And do not be configured to this age, but be transformed by renewal of the intellect, so you may test the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect. 3For, by the grace given me, I say to everyone among you not to be more haughtily minded than your thinking ought to be, but rather let your thinking conduce to sober-mindedness, as God has apportioned a measure of faithfulness to each. 4For, just as we have many members in one body, yet the members do not all have the same function, 5So we who are many constitute one body in the Anointed, and are members each one of one another; 6And having different gracious gifts, according to the grace given us: if prophecy, according to the proportion of faithfulness; 7If service, in serving; if a teacher, in teaching; 8If one who exhorts, in exhortation; one who distributes, in liberality; one who directs, in diligence; one who engages in acts of mercy, in joyousness. 9Love is without dissemblance. Abhorring wickedness, clinging to the good, 10Devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference of honor to one another, 11Not slothful in zeal, fervent in spirit, slaving for the Lord, 12Rejoicing in hope, enduring in affliction, persevering in prayer, 13Providing for the needs of the holy ones, pursuing hospitality—14Bless those who persecute, bless and do not curse—15To rejoice with those rejoicing, to weep with those weeping—16Being of the same mind toward one another, not loftily minded, but instead associating with the lowly—do not fancy yourselves sages—17Repaying no one evil for evil, providing things in good countenance with all human beings. 18If possible for you, be at peace with all human beings. 19Do not exact justice for yourselves, beloved, but yield place before anger; for it has been written, “‘The exacting of justice is mine, I will requite,’ says the Lord.” 20But rather, “If your enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink; for in doing this you will heap coals of fire on his head.” 21Do not be vanquished by evil, but vanquish the evil with the good.
David Bentley Hart translation
One of the good things about going back to a more Orthodox understanding of Scripture, assuming it is the universalist understanding of it, is that such startling ideas like heaping coals of fire on your hungry enemy's head by feeding them can make sense with the rest of the text. It only makes sense if you assume the fire is there to cleanse instead of torture for eternity. It makes no sense of you believe in eternal damnation, especially if you deny the concept of purgatorial suffering in favor of the more Western notion that God creates enormous numbers of human beings who he intends to torture into eternity. Without that universalism, which I agree with Origen and Gregory of Nyssa and St. Macrina the Younger, is there lying as another "secret" in the text. Augustine's and Calvin's and so many others' imposition of eternal damnation on the Gospel and the Epistles turns God and Paul and those who follow Paul into sadistic hypocrites and the act of charity to your enemies into an evil thing. a lot more evil than even the most irresponsible of adult consensual sex, never mind the most responsible.
I have a lot more respect for Paul and infinitely more for God than that.
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