HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Charting a New Reformation
Part XXXI– The Ninth Thesis, Ethics (continued)
Let me review the path we have walked thus far. We have exploded the myth found in the idea that the Ten Commandments or any other ancient code of law has been, or was dictated by God. This insight also proclaims that our laws always arise out of the common experience of the people. We have examined the biblical data, which suggests that the Ten Commandments did not have a single source, but came in three versions born out of different times and circumstances. All three of these versions can be read in the Bible to this day. One has only to examine Exodus 34, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Next we found evidence that this code has been dramatically edited at various points in history, destroying forever the idea that those laws were meant to be either eternal or unchanging. If the commandments have changed in the past, they are surely subject to change in the future. Thus relativity replaces certainty. The claim that we have ever possessed objectivity through the divine revelation of the laws of God becomes hopelessly compromised by every standard we apply. All of these ethical conclusions are startling to those who like to pretend that right and wrong are objective categories and not subjective evaluations.
We begin now to explore these rules that we once held in such care and respect. To our dismay, we will discover the obvious fact that there is not a single commandment of the ten that is not itself both time-bound and time-warped. There are none among the “Ten” that cannot be set aside under the stress of human circumstances. Before we seek to find a way to define both good and evil in a post-religious world, we need to spend just a little more time on why the old rules do not work and why we must all become situational ethicists. We begin by doubling back on the content of the commandments themselves.
If the moral code is the word or the revelation of God, then who or what is God? Earlier in the series, we noted that the traditional, theistic way of thinking about God as “a being, living externally to this world and equipped with supernatural power,” is no longer a viable option for belief among modern men and women. This God has been slain by the explosion of knowledge. We traced this explosion earlier. Once we discovered the size of the universe we understood immediately that we had now destroyed God’s dwelling place above the sky, rendering this God forever after homeless. Next, when we discovered the laws by which the universe operated, breathtakingly precise as they are, we destroyed most of the things we once suggested that God did. There was no longer any room for either miracle or magic, to say nothing for divine intervention into the realm of the human. In that process, we rendered the theistic God unemployed. God no longer had any work to do. God no longer, for example, was thought to control the patterns of the weather. What the insurance industry still calls “an act of God” is now explained as the result of a weather front, a high or low pressure system or a shift in or a collision of the tectonic plates on which our continents sit. God does not use the weather as a means of divine punishment. With that insight theism began its relentless retreat out of life. Next sickness, once believed to be an expression of God’s judgment on our sins, we discovered had to do with germs and viruses, tumors and cholesterol, coronary occlusions and cardio-vascular accidents. Then we began to realize that those things were not effectively treated by prayer and sacrifices, but by antibiotics, chemotherapy, open heart surgery, radiation and a variety of other physical things. No theistic God was involved directly in human sickness any longer. So then what does it mean to proclaim the reality of this theistic God in the Ten Commandments, saying that God is one and that we are to have no other gods? The words of the first commandment fall quickly into irrelevance.
Next, what does it mean to be told not to “make any graven images”? Who among us in the 21st century is tempted to violate this ancient prohibition? The closest modern parallel that I can think of is the fact that some people today still place a statue of the Virgin Mary or perhaps of St. Francis of Assisi in their yards or gardens. While the people who do this might still be superstitious enough to attribute “good luck” to these statues, seldom do these “graven images” become objects of worship to modern people. If I were to list the ten great moral laws of the universe, “making graven images” would certainly not be among the ten.
Then we come to the commandment about not taking the name of the Lord in vain. What could that possibly mean today? First, we need to state that this commandment never had anything to do with profanity. You may say, “God damn it,” when you accidentally break a valuable vase on marble counter tops, or “Jesus Christ” when you hit your thumb with a hammer. This language may not be in good taste, it may even be blasphemous as it assumes that we have the right to tell God who or what to damn, but these words, let it be clearly stated, have nothing to do with the commandment about prohibiting us from taking the name of the Lord in vain. What then was that commandment about and is it still relevant in our world today?
In the primitive culture of ancient Israel, there were no lawyers to write legal contracts and no courts to enforce the terms of a legal deal. So when a business transaction was agreed to between two people, the two negotiators would clasp hands, or sometimes thighs, and swear in the name of the Lord that they would be true to the bargain to which both had agreed. If later one or the other of them failed to abide by the agreed on terms of this deal, they were guilty of having taken the “name of the Lord in vain.” That was this commandment’s original meaning. Is such a law necessary or appropriate today?
The Sabbath, which we are commanded to keep holy by refraining from labor, was, in the Bible, the seventh day of the week, that is, Saturday. The Christian world (except for the Seventh Day Adventists) has, however, long since ceased to observe Saturday as a day for either rest or worship. By what authority, then, did we abandon Saturday for Sunday? There is no divine command in any authoritative source we know of, to justify this shift, but culturally we simply did it. If the Ten Commandments can be ignored whenever we wish, then it is hard to suggest that they have any binding integrity or eternal status.
Should parents who are abusive to their children continue to be honored by them? If the statistic is correct that up to forty percent of adult women in America have experienced some kind of sexual molestation as children at the hands of a family member – normally a father or a grandfather– are they still under some obligation to honor their parents?
How do we explain the history of war in the western Christian world that still places the commandment: “Thou shalt not Kill,” into its most sacred code? How do we understand the history of anti-Semitism by which Christians justified the killing of Jews from the time of the Church Fathers to the Holocaust? How could the Vatican have launched the crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, which were designed to kill “infidels,” which was our name for Muslims, and still proclaim that the commandment not to kill was revealed as the law of God? How were we Christians able to give lip service to the commandment not to kill during the Inquisition, in which heretics were regularly burned at the stake? How were we in the Bible belt of the South able to resist by the filibusters of our senators the passing of an anti-lynching law? Does the commandment not to kill have any force?
Are there exceptions to the 7th commandment prohibiting adultery? I was pastor to a woman once who was, unknowingly, married to a homosexual male. She was a school teacher, but because her husband appeared to have no interest in her she began to think that she must be either unattractive or unworthy of male attention. In time she had an affair which served to restore her sense of self-worth. Is adultery always wrong?
The commandment against stealing seems so clear, but in Victor Hugo’s great novel, Les Miserables, Jean Valjean steals bread to keep his family alive. Was his stealing a sin or was the sin found in the social system that seemed to grind some people into such poverty that stealing was a survival technique. By what standard do we judge?
Is the truth what we must always tell? What if truth is rude: “I had a miserable time at your home this evening and your dinner was inedible.” What if the truth violates another or puts another’s life at risk? What if the truth is cruel and serves no redeeming value? Can the injunction against “bearing false witness” be less than positive – less than life giving?
Is desire always bad? Does “keeping up with the Jones’s” have no redeeming value? Are there circumstances in which admiring ends and coveting begins? Where does necessity stop and greed take over?
Can any set of laws or rules, even one as ancient and sacred as the Ten Commandments, be invested with any kind of ultimate authority? Does not time alter circumstances and do not circumstances alter rules? When, if ever, does relative truth become unchanging truth? How do human rules become God’s laws? Can the Ten Commandments be the source of death as well as life, the source of evil as well as goodness? On what basis do we determine that good is good and that evil is evil? If it is not on the basis of some absolute standard then to what do we turn in search of ultimate answers? Does relative truth mean no truth? Does relativity in ethics mean no ethics? To those questions we will turn as this series on ethics draws to a close.
John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
Don Haase from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, writes:
Question:
Your lectures at Bay View, Michigan, in 2004 and 2008 were life changing for my wife and me. Instead of joining the church alumni association, we are now members of the local Universal Unitarian Church. We have read nearly all of your books and look forward to your weekly emails. I have two questions about biblical names that my local theological mentors haven’t been able to help me with.
1. Why has the English-speaking church stuck with the Greek translation of Jesus’ name rather than the English translation of Joshua?
2. Joshua, Jesus’ namesake from the scriptures, was the epitome of obedience; further there is no mention of Joshua having a wife, nor is there any parental information. Wouldn’t this make Joshua the perfect name for the messiah and perhaps explain the lack of information on the marital state of Jesus?
Answer:
Dear Don,
Thank you for your letter. Our time at Bay View, Michigan, still ranks high in our memories and we still run across friends we met there. I appreciate your bringing that time back to our consciousness.
To get to your question the names for Jesus are written in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. As you correctly state, Jesus is the English translation of the Greek name for Joshua, which is used in the gospels. I think we continue to use it because it is the direct translation from the gospels. Joshua was the Aramaic spelling of the same name. Yeshuah was the Hebrew spelling; the name, which literally means: “God saves.”
There are, however, two Joshua-Jesus figures, not just one, in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first is the well-known successor to Moses to whom you are referring. This Joshua was supposedly the author of the book that bears his name and the military leader for the Hebrew people during the conquest of Canaan. He is probably best known as the one who led the battle of Jericho when the walls came tumbling down. The second Joshua was a high priest, who is referred to in I Zechariah (Chapters 1-8) and who has an experience in which his tattered clothes are replaced with resplendent new vestments, a story that is in the background of the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. This Joshua is also mentioned in Haggai (1:1).
There is no doubt that early followers of Jesus saw prototypes of Jesus in both of these Joshuas. I don’t think you can draw any inference, however, from the fact that there is no mention of either of these two Joshuas having a wife. In a patriarchal world, wives were seldom mentioned. I don’t believe that the fact that a wife for Jesus is never mentioned proves that he was not married. Indeed, I believe a case can be made for the fact that Mary Magdalene was his wife, but it is not a conclusive case, only a speculative one. I sought to lay this case out in my book, Born of a woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Virgin Birth and the Place of women in a Male Dominated Church.
It is also not true that the Joshua who succeeded Moses reveals no parental information. This Joshua introduces himself as “the son of Nun.” “Nun” is a person’s name and does not mean “the son of none!” So he appears to have had a father. I would also question your suggestion that he was the “epitome of obedience.”
I think for us to recognize that the names Joshua and Jesus were identical to the Jews does, however, offer us some new interpretive doors through which to walk. I doubt, however, if this will mean that the name Joshua will replace the name Jesus in our usage.
My best,
John Shelby Spong
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