Clarence Bauman, The Sermon on the Mount: The Modern Quest for its Meaning (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985).

Reflective Review by Brad Jersak

Introduction

In recent months I have been saturating myself in the Red Letters of my Bible. The words, the teachings, the sermons of Jesus have confronted me afresh with the hard truth that to a great degree, I do not actually believe what Christ believed or live according to the Way he prescribed. As I zoom in and focus on the Sermon on the Mount (and esp. the Beatitudes)—not merely as a code of conduct, but as a description of the Christian life—I find that the pursuit of such a life is in fact frowned upon as either impractical or even legalistic by many of our evangelical theologians and pastors.

Moreover, I’ve noticed that select teachings of
the Apostle Paul are frequently used to sidestep or outright negate the
teachings of Jesus in tragically ingenious ways. Meanwhile, I am
increasingly convinced that Jesus’ invitation to follow him in the
narrow way of the kingdom is not merely rhetorical but rather, demands
a serious response from those who would confess him as Lord. Warnings
about Paul’s frustration or Tolstoy’s madness notwithstanding, I’ve
been lamenting evangelicalism’s radical departure from the actual
teachings of Christ in favour of a theology about Christ that allows us to ignore him.

Bauman’s Diagnosis

In the course of my lament, along comes the late
Clarence Bauman, an Anabaptist theologian whose book I will reflect on
here. He wrote The Sermon on the Mount: The Modern Quest for its Meaning from
the quietness of a mountain hermitage just north of Hope, BC in the
years leading up to his passing. He also observed the church’s
marginalization of “the Red Letters” and wrestled through this issue
thoroughly. In his prolific but careful reading of how the great
theologians since Tolstoy have interpreted Christ’s message, Bauman
offers us clear and fair reviews, including many illustrative citations
from each of their works. I believe that none of those he covered, from
Schweitzer to Bonhoeffer to Thurneyson et al could have objected that
he misrepresented them, even in the face of some of his scathing
critique:

With
astounding ingenuity Christendom developed an amazing variety of
hermeneutical reasons why one could not or should not obey the
commandments of Jesus. Though an analysis of these various views
reveals profound elements of truth in each, most of them nevertheless
appear to imply (1) that either Jesus did not mean what he said or did
not say what he meant or (2) that what he said applied either to a
different time than now or in a different way than then… (418)

All eloquence
has been commanded to establish the infinite worth, eternal validity,
and universal relevance of Jesus’ unfathomable precepts on the subtle
supposition that his intention could never have been to legislate so
deliberately, prescribe so pedantically, or demand so legalistically as
to imply that the actual cases of prohibiting anger, lust, divorce,
retaliation, and war should or could be taken literally… This
sophistical comedy perpetuates itself in virtually a thousand
commentaries whose function it is to explain by the arts of theological
science why the plain words of Jesus mean the opposite of what they
say. And this is called interpretation and passes for hermeneutical
learning. (419-420)

This resonated deeply in a way that drove me back
to the words of Christ. What if he meant what he said? What would
“follow me” imply for me, for my family, for my church? Jesus seemed to
truly believe in what he was saying and he seemed to recognize his
disciples as those who heard his words and obeyed them… as if this were
a real and required possibility. A merely forensic or positional
righteousness is nowhere on his grid; he calls us to the Cross of lived
righteousness—empowered by grace to walk with him and like him. Bauman
argues that our failure to obey the Sermon on the Mount is no proof
that it was not to be taken seriously. Instead, we should hear Christ
anew, exhorting us to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 

Bauman’s contribution

As Bauman’s thought has done its work in my heart
and mind, it’s obvious to me that he has gone well beyond reviewing 150
years of theology by his peers. He brings some important offerings to
the table in his own right. I would like to reflect on four of them:

1. The call to take Jesus seriously contra the use and abuse of Paul to trump him.

Bauman’s survey of the modern quest to understand the Sermon shows
us a history of theological erasure throughout the literature. He draws
together summaries and quotations that illustrate this negation. Three
examples suffice to make the point:

Eduard Thurneysen:
Not only are unable to do what Jesus said, but we are not even invited
to do what Jesus did. For those who nevertheless seek to follow Jesus
is only a curse and despair. What matters is not our obedience but that
of Christ who did everything "for" us… Even apparently obvious texts
such as "Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not what I tell you,"
imply that what Jesus demands is not "deeds" but only "the right
confession" since whatever needed to be done Jesus did in his atoning
work. (275)

Martin Luther:
We are still sinners ‘even in the best life,’ so let the Christian live
like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s
standards in every sphere of life and not presumptuously aspire to live
a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the
heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists, and their kind. Let the
Christ… not attempt to erect a new religion of the letter by
endeavouring to live a life of obedience to the commandments of Jesus
Christ! (252)

Carl Stange:
[Christ’s] teaching about the ideal… only serves to make plain the
reprehensibility of the human condition… The meaning of the moral
demand [i.e. Sermon on the Mount] is not that it gives us the power for
the good but rather that it shows us our impotence for the good… when
we say that we are sinners, we mean that we are fundamentally separated
from the good and that no exertion of our will can overcome this
condition… the Christian distinguishes himself from the non-Christian
not in being free from all sin but in acknowledging his sin. (180)

Personally, I see Protestant exegesis since Luther
and Calvin as reading the Gospel imperatives through the despairing
lens of Roman 7. The revelation of early Romans ("there is none
righteous, no not one") and the frustration of Romans 7, ("the good
that I would, i do not"… as in "cannot") are treated as the fundamental
condition of humanity even after we believe in the gospel. The
alleged impossibility of obedience suggests that we read the Sermon on
the Mount as rhetorical; it is a tutor of law that teaches us to
despair of self-righteousness and look to the Saviour for mercy… rather
than something to be obeyed. Thus, the commands of Christ are treated
as pre-Cross Laws—Jesus is speaking while under the Old Covenant
(?)—and are thus trumped by the Gospel of Grace which demands faith,
not obedience. In fact, the call to obey Christ brings one under the
charge of legalism in some circles.

Bauman’s response begins with a retreat to the
words of Christ who explicitly addressed the issue, as if anticipating
it. Jesus said:

Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

Matthew 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice
is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down,
the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet
it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into
practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain
came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that
house, and it fell with a great crash.”

John 14:15 “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Jesus
is not describing frenetic busyness or legalistic self-righteousness;
he wants and commands love-led obedience. Far from being rooted in
soul-strength, Bauman cites Joachim Jeremias who retorts:

The Sermon on
the Mount is not a Law which leaves man to rely upon his own
strength… but Gospel which brings man before the gift of God and
challenges him really to make the inexpressible gift of God the basis
for his life. The Sermon on the Mount is ‘lived faith.’ (295)

and

These sayings
of Jesus delineate the lived faith. They say: You are forgiven; you are
a child of God; you belong to his kingdom. The sun of righteousness has
risen over your life. You no longer belong to yourself; rather, you
belong to the city of God, the light of which shines in the darkness.
Now you may also experience it: out of the thankfulness of a redeemed
child of God a new life is growing. That is the meaning of the Sermon
on the Mount. (294)

This feels like someone who kept reading Romans
into the promised empowerment of the Spirit in chapter eight. Christ
does not live righteously instead of us; he lives the divine life of
love in and through us. In this way, even Paul could exhort us to be
imitators of Christ’s life, not just admirers of it or passive
believers in it.

2. Continuity: Christ’s interpretation of the Law versus the abolition of the Law.

I need to spend more time meditating
on Bauman’s presentation of the continuity of between Christ and Moses
and specifically the Sinai Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. Until
now, I held to a strong theology of discontinuity when it comes to
Christ and the Law. I leaned heavily on verses that stress that the Old
Covenant is replaced by a New Covenant:

• Romans 10:4 – “Christ is the end [telos! = fulfillment] of the Law.”
• Colossians 2:14 – “blotting out” and “taking away” the written code and “nailing it to the Cross.”
• Ephesians 2:15 – “repealing” or “abolishing” the law code / commandments / ordinances. 

Bauman reopens that discussion, recalling Jesus’
statement—one that I confess troubles me as I lounge in the grace of
Galatians 3:

Think not that
I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to
destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law,
till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the
least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-20 KJV)

Bauman suggests
that rather than replacing the law, Jesus is giving the definitive
interpretation of the law, radicalizing it by internalizing it (as per
Jeremiah 31-33)… taking it deeper and writing it on our hearts by his
Spirit (whereas I had believed that he was completely replacing the Law
with the Spirit as per my understanding of Gordon Fee in God’s Empowering Spirit).
This signals a greater continuity between the Testaments with Christ as
both mediator of the New Covenant AND interpreter of the Old. Rather
than simply replacing Sinai, Bauman argues that the Sermon on the Mount
fulfills Sinai’s intent:

The
pentateuchal motifs in Matthew present Jesus in a positive relation to
Moses. The parallels in setting and content between the Sermon on the
Mount and the Decalogue portray Jesus as the messianic fulfillment of
the Mosaic prototype. The ‘new Moses’ is not opposed to his forerunner
and his demands are not antithetical to the commandments from Sinai.
This Mosaic typology is meant to confirm the mountain teaching of Jesus
from the perspective of Sinai. Mosaic categories are transcended in
that the Messianic Torah reflects the personal authority of the Lord
Messiah (Matt. 7:24,28), whose call to faith is at once an invitation
to Nachfolge Christi[to emulate Christ] and whose instruction in righteousness is training in imitatio Christi [to imitate Christ]”(384).

On first reading, this
seems right to me… the Holy Spirit was not sent as a replacement for
the Law, but as the One who would write the Law on our hearts. The
implications are huge to both my own theology and to my understanding
of so many of Paul’s texts. In fact, this is exactly the point: the
words of Christ ought to be our non-negotiable foundation. Our
commitment to Jesus’ message should not budge, even if it means having
to re-read the Epistles and develop new schemes for interpreting the
Apostle Paul’s letters. Unfortunately, this is most troubling to those
conservative evangelicals who become so thoroughly Pauline
theologically that such basic Gospel themes as “entering the kingdom”
become either expendable or reduced to sinners prayers or millennialist
novels. The greatest Anabaptist contribution is that it put Christ back
at the apex of revelation and his words as the final filter for the
whole of Scripture. I.e. in the scheme of progressive revelation, Jesus
gets the last word regardless of chronology… the rest is commentary.

Back to Matthew 5-7:
additionally, Bauman believes that the righteousness that exceeds the
Pharisees is not only internalizing the law or radicalizing it
(extending murder to include hate or adultery to include lust); we also
exceed the Pharisees by actually obeying. Period. He says that contra
Romans 7, neither the commandments of Christ nor the OT Decalogue are
impossible or too difficult to bear and obey. Deuteronomy 30 tells us
that they are not beyond our reach; they are life to the soul. Psalm
119 tells us that obeying them is a delight, a wellspring of life, and
a reliable guide to our path. Jesus’ commandments are a light yoke and
an easy burden, asking us simply to live in love. Obedience is an act
of love and worship, not an impracticable drudgery. True, loving
obedience sometimes feels like a cross… but it’s a cross that the Lord
has called us to take up as we follow him. Finally, we exceed the
righteousness of the Pharisees when we obey from a heart of love rather
than from sheer duty or in order to feed my ego or reputation. 

3. The cost of discipleship in Bonheoffer’s journey.

With regard to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bauman declares that “The Cost of Discipleship (1935-37)
may prove to be the most provocative and controversial treatise on the
subject in our time. The book… was inspired by the prophetic conviction
that the dividing line between Hitler’s Reich Church and Christ’s
Confessing Church lay not with confessional orthodoxy as such but with
the Sermon on the Mount or, more precisely, ‘with a different
understanding of the Sermon than the Reformation’s.’” (250) Bauman
summarizes and cites Bonhoeffer’s great work as

an emphatic and outspoken protest against cheap grace,
“the deadly enemy of our Church,” the denial of discipleship and, in
turn, of the Incarnation. “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that
the account has been pain in advance; and, because it has been paid,
everything can be had for nothing.” The world finds in the Church a
cheap covering for its sins. “Cheap grace means the justification of
sin without justification of the sinner.” (252)

In defiance of
cheap grace, Bonheoffer calls the Christian church to boldly and
visibly follow the way of Christ. Following Jesus “is as visible to the
world as a light in the darkness or a mountain rising from a plain.
Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call.” In this context,
Bonhoeffer goes on to apply the Sermon on the Mount to his own
philosophy of nonviolence:

The only
way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it
does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely
creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But, when evil meets
no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance,
its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than
its match. Of course, this can only happen when the last ounce of
resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete.
Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil and is
left barren… (261)

I’m not extremely well-read when it comes to Bonhoeffer’s theological journey, but I always wondered how someone who wrote The Cost of Discipleship with
such a deep devotion to obeying Christ’s message of nonviolence could
justify joining the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It appeared to me
a departure from the core of Jesus’ teaching that Bonhoeffer preached
so fervently. How did he synchronize his faith and actions at that
point? Was it a matter of interpretation or did he simply sell out?

Bauman’s appraisal is invaluable on this count. He
tracks Bonhoeffer’s path from Germany, where the destiny of his people
loomed large in his thoughts, to a broader vision of the Kingdom of God
in this world (in the years when he left Germany and wrote The Cost of Discipleship),
and back to his nationalist call upon returning to Germany, which led
him to conclude that for the sake of the nation, Hitler must die.
Bauman lays out the chronology of this philosophical trek beautifully
with summaries in Bonhoeffer’s own words. This radical swing back and
forth can be traced in Bonhoeffer’s own words:

Early nationalist Bonhoeffer: God has given me my mother, my Volk. What I have I have thanks to this Volk. What I am I am through my Volk. Thus, what I have should belong to my Volk. This is a divine order, for God created the Volker… Every Volk has a call of God within it to make history… God calls the Volk to manliness, to battle and to victory… for God himself is eternally young and strong and triumphant… Should not such a Volk be allowed to follow this call, even when it disregards the life of other Volker?… I
will raise the weapon in the awful knowledge of doing something
atrocious but being unable to do anything else… Yet love for my Volk will sanctify murder, will sanctify war. (265)

Pacifist ecumenical Bonhoeffer (in New York):  It
must never more happen that a Christian people fights against a
Christian people, brother against brother, since both have one Father.
(266)

(in Denmark): Which
of us can say he knows what it might mean for the world if one nation
should beet the aggressor, not with weapons in hand, but praying,
defenseless, and for that very reason protected by ‘a bulwark never
failing’? (266)

Bonhoeffer back in Germany: Bauman summarizes – In his subsequent Ethics (1940-43),
Bonhoeffer denounced “arbitrary” killing as unlawful destruction of
innocent life but maintained “the killing in war is not arbitrary
killing” and therefore not unlawful. He even assumed as self-evident
that there is nothing arbitrary about “the killing of civilians in war,
so long as it is not directly intended but is only an unfortunate
consequence of a measure which is necessary on military grounds.” (268)

Bonhoeffer on tyrannicide (the plot to assassinate Hitler): Bauman
summarizes – Bonhoeffer saw Jesus “as one who acts responsibly in the
historical existence of men” and thereby “becomes guilty.” Generalizing
from his own awareness of being “lost in guilt’s dark maze,” Bonhoeffer
contends that “every man who acts responsibly becomes guilty.” He
regarded Jesus as “my conscience,” who “for the sake of God and men”
became “a breaker of the law” by violating the Sabbath, forsaking his
parents, and eating with sinners.” Thus, “He became guilty,” and so,
Bonhoeffer reasoned, “He sets conscience free and especially when man
enters into the fellowship of human guilt.” The inference appears to be
that, in breaking the ceremonial law (by healing someone), Jesus freed
Bonhoeffer’s conscience to break the moral law (by assassinating
Hitler). Consequently, as Jesus remained innocent though he “became
guilty,” so for the conspirators “there is a kind of relative freedom
from sin,” for they, like Jesus, acted ‘responsibly,’ thereby
demonstrating their “real innocence.” (270)

I know what it is to move sharply from one ethical or
theological position to another over the course of ten years. But is
also important to know how and why this shift occurred, especially in someone as influential as a Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer himself clues us in to his how and why in the era when he agonized about returning to Germany from America
in 1939. He spoke of it as “unbearable” and “unthinkable” for him to
stay abroad or to identify with the Una Sancta Ecclesia when his whole
ground of being was wrapped up in the destiny of his own Volk: “It is not a matter of something pious, more like some vital urge.” (267)

Identifying wholly with the destiny of one’s
people or nation is indeed a powerful urge… a kind of nationalism that
frequently calls one to overwrite the ultimate sacrifice of “taking up
one’s cross and following Christ” with the alternative commitment to
kill and die for one’s people, whether in cross-border wars or, more
frequently, civil war and violent revolution. For the window of time in
which Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, he seemed to
have a clarity that the two callings could not co-exist. Bauman’s work
helps us place that period in the wider context of Bonhoeffer’s journey. 

We would do well to see the impact of Bonhoeffer’s
nationalism on his theology and how it affected his response to
Christ’s message–particularly as this applies to the chaos of a new
century, the demands of modern patriotism, and the “Christian”
endorsements for the global war on terror. In other words, which
Bonhoeffer will we hear and heed?

4. Confronting the powers short of anarchy.

Finally, Bauman briefly presents us
with a Christ-modeled way of dealing with “the powers” or institutions
of the world. Like Christ, the church is called to walk the fine
prophetic line between anarchy (overthrowing or negating institutions)
and institutionalism (which always tends towards dehumanizing people).
He contends that institutions such as government, legal systems,
schools, hospitals, churches, etc. are a good and necessary reality in
this present age. Christ and his followers recognize the role of the
institution in an ordered society.

However, much as we see in Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination, Bauman
recognizes that such institutions are often part of the dominant world
system and, by nature, tend to become machines that reduce people into
numbers and supplant the role of God in our lives. Rather than “buying
in” to the system, OR seeking to overtake it by Christianizing it, we
bring a “minority report” that acts as the voice of the institutions’
conscience—a thorn in the flesh of institutions wherever they become
abusive.

But why not simply Christianize the institutions? If we, the church,
can just get control of the US Senate, of the majority of seats in the
House of Parliament, of the school boards and hospital boards… won’t
everything be peachy? Won’t the Kingdom come on earth as it is in
heaven? As Tony Campolo put it during an interview on the Colbert
Report, when the church tries to become king [my words], it’s kind of
like mixing ice-cream and manure [Campolo’s words]. You still have
pretty good manure in the end, but it sure ruins the ice-cream. I.e. As
in the days of Constantine, so it is now: when church and empire
conspire, it is the church that gets co-opted and deformed. Better
rather to be the prophet who holds the king accountable: God’s Nathan
to the government’s David.

CONCLUSION

Having pondered Bauman’s thesis for several
months, my conclusion is that we need to double-check what Jesus
actually taught and believed. We need to ask ourselves if we as a
church believe what he believed and teach what he taught: whether we
do; whether we can; whether we want to. Having asked myself and my
congregation those questions, we have concluded that in great part, we
have all too often opted for a theology about Christ while
neglecting to hear and do what he says. And so we’ve gone back to the
“drawing board” to hear the Lord–the Jesus of the Gospels– afresh,
laying down our self-protective filters as best we can to hear both the
tenderness AND the sting in his words. And wherever we’ve wandered off
the Way he prescribed, we’re listening for the voice of the Good
Shepherd to call us back. I think this is what Bauman intended. I think
this is what Christ intended.

bj