The Sermon on the Mount is the most discussed, written about & commented on of everything in the Gospels (and possibly the whole NT). It stands as the longest and most prominent section of Jesus’ teaching and most readers of the Gospels get to it really early on – it’s right at the front of the first Gospel (Matthew) that they come to if they pick up a New Testament. But there are plenty of different ways that the Sermon has been understood. Jonathan Pennington in his helpful The Sermon on the Mount & Human Flourishing1 lays out a good number of the options. At least fifteen in fact:
The Patristic Reading
The patristic interpretation of the Sermon can be summarized as a natural and comfortably consistent reading flowing out of the hellenized Jewish setting in which the Sermon was produced, one that focuses especially on the Sermon as casting a foundational vision for the virtuous Christian life.
The Monastic Reading
In this understanding, the teachings of Jesus are divided up into “precepts” and “counsels,” with the precepts being necessary for all people for salvation, while obedience to the counsels is necessary if one wants to achieve perfection and the higher calling.
The Lutheran Reading
For Luther, the Sermon does not present special teachings that some special people can obtain, but quite the opposite: it is the impossibly high demands of the Sermon that are meant to make all people aware of their sin and poverty before God and thereby turn to Christ in faith.
The Reformed (Calvinist) Reading
In Calvin’s reading of the Sermon we see Jesus rescuing the law of God from the Pharisees, who emphasized its external acts instead of its heart. The Sermon is the compendium of the doctrine of Christ, the new-covenant law.
The Anabaptist Reading
Key to the theological and practical outworking of this branch of Christianity is indeed an application of the Sermon with no exceptions. Thus, the Anabaptist tradition has typically advocated the rejection of oaths of any kind, encouraged the nonviolence of turning the other cheek, and applied other literalistic readings of the Sermon.
The Two Kingdoms Reading
A distinction is made between the spiritual/ private realm and the civil/ public realm. The Sermon speaks to the former, to individual morality; it does not prescribe public policy. One implication is that a Christian may do something as a member of society or officer of the public that one would not be allowed as an individual (e.g., capital punishment). That is, as a Christian one must not retaliate, but as a lawyer or prince or householder one can and indeed must uphold justice and order.
The Roman Catholic Reading
A Thomistic reading, which emphasizes a Christian understanding of virtue ethics and development, probably remains the most influential way to read the Sermon, tied closely as it always is to Catholic moral theology.
The Dispensational Reading
For classical dispensationalists, the Sermon is not applicable to Christians today because it comes from a pre-Christian “dispensation,” during the period of the law (from Sinai to Calvary), not from the period of grace (Calvary to the parousia). Therefore, the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is speaking about in the Sermon was the offer of a millennial kingdom to Jews. As a result, its teachings do not apply to Christians at all, even as an impossibly high ideal.
The Existential Reading
The Sermon doesn’t prescribe laws but “speaks instead to the individual about attitudes and internal dispositions.” It is about what we should be, not what we should do.
The Modern Reading
That is, rather than the traditional emphasis on sin and atonement, redemption, and supernatural new birth, the Sermon provides a vision for better humans and a better human society, with Jesus as the great misunderstood philosopher. This is the enduring value of the Sermon for many.
A Chinese perspective
Consistent among their readings of the Sermon is that “they treat the Sermon on the Mount first and foremost as a morality text and take it for granted that character formation of the reader is the very final goal of their biblical interpretation.”
A South Korean perspective
The Sermon on the Mount is mostly read in the churches with a focus on the “blessings” of the Beatitudes. Specifically, with the massive growth of the church in South Korea has come a heavy influence of the health and wealth gospel. In this context the Sermon is read with a skewed emphasis on getting blessings from God: the “Eight Blessing” program based on the Beatitudes read in a materialistic way. At the same time, due to the influence of the West on Korean churches and theology, there is a strong ethical and at times even Lutheran impossible-ideal reading.
A Hindu perspective (!)
Sugirtharajah notes that the Sermon was very influential for both of these Hindu thinkers (Roy & Gandhi) as they sought to understand true religion in the midst of colonial Christian influence and missions activity. They both found in the Sermon the ingredients of true religion, which was not about doctrines and beliefs but about ethical practices of truth and nonviolence.
An African perspective
Also, discussion of money and wealth (6: 19– 34) takes on a different sense in postcolonial nations that are influenced by Western consumption habits while lacking many of the natural resources and infrastructure of Western capitalism. Teachings on wealth and subsistence living sound very different to the African ear than to the Westerner today, probably much closer to how these teachings would have been understood in first-century Galilee.
An African-American perspective
For example, in the discussion of the first Beatitude there is a much more nuanced and sensitive discussion of what it means to experience poverty than is typical in modern commentaries. It is not just a matter of money or powerlessness. “Poverty was a social category and not just an economic one.” Matthew 5: 21– 48 is likewise understood from a different perspective, as being instructions about how to overcome violence and evil not with retaliation but with repentance, reconciliation, and generosity.
I’m still working through what I think and I’m interested to see how Pennington handles it but I can rule a few out already. I reject the Monastic, Lutheran, Two Kingdoms, Dispensational, Hindu and South Korean. The Patristic, Roman Catholic, Chinese, Modern, Existential and to a degree the Reformed view all have much in common and are quite similar focused as they are on character or the heart of an individual. I’m fairly sure that some of this needs to be incorporated in whatever view you end up with. And we need to pay attention to views from ‘below’ like the African & African-American perspectives.
Which leaves the Anabaptist reading and I’d say that’s where I’ve instinctively landed most of my life on the Sermon with various tweaks and nods to the ones I’ve mentioned but not rejected. So having read the above list, where do you land?
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