POOR SINNER’S GOSPEL

WILHELM WEITLING

Translated by Dinah Livingstone

 

Sheed and Ward London and Sydney

 

First published 1969

Sheed and Ward Ltd, 33 Maiden Lane, London WC2, and Sheed and Ward Pty Ltd,

204 Clarence Street, Sydney NSW 2000

© Sheed and Ward Ltd 1969

SEN 7220 0583 0
This book is set in 12 on 14 t. Plantin
Made and printed in Great Britain

by
Billing & Sons Limited, Guildford and London

 

CONTENTS

Foreword to the English Edition, David McClellan
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
1 A Glimpse into the Mind of the Evangelists
2 A Brief Look at the Story of Jesus and His Disciples to Consider their Personalities
3 The Method of Teaching
4 Proofs and Conclusions God, Jesus, the Apostles and We are All One
6 The Pure Teaching of Jesus
7 Actions
8 Interpretations
9 General Christian Morality
10 Organization of Propaganda
11 What is Communism?

Appendix: Weitling’s First Defense

 

 

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Wilhelm Weitling was born in October, 1808, when Napoleon was at the height of his career. He was the illegitimate son of a Magdeburg cook and an officer of the napoleonic garrison in Magdeburg who, leaving all he had to mother and son, departed to die soon after on a Russian battlefield. The efforts of his mother enabled Weitling to attend secondary school after which he became an apprentice tailor. His training required that he wander through Germany, as was the fashion of his profession, though he found it very difficult to make a living. The French July revolution, which instituted the ‘Bourgeois’ monarchy of Louis Philippe and made liberal influences felt even in the autocratic German state, found Weitling in Leipzig. In the following years he was in Dresden and Vienna. Here he invented a pleating machine, made a little money from it and got engaged. ‘But’, he said later, ‘the desire for like-minded men drove me on to Paris.’ These ‘like-minded men’ he found in the League of the Proscribed, a socialist group formed out of the German workers in Paris who had first begun to organize themselves about 1832.

After returning to Vienna for a short stay, he remained in Paris from September 1837 until May 1841. In 1838 he became a member of the central committee of the League of the Proscribed and was commissioned by them to write his first book — Mankind As It Is And As It Ought To Be. He was also active in other fields: he learnt French and translated Lamennais’ Book of the People into German; he travelled a lot on propaganda trips, and founded in Paris a communist canteen, to guarantee cheap meals and help the strikers and the unemployed.

From early 1841 until his arrest in June 1843 he worked in Switzerland, again at the suggestion of the central committee of the league. In spite of initial difficulties (the Swiss workers at first found Weitling’s communism too extreme), by the beginning of 1843 there were thirteen communist Workers Associations spread over several cantons with a total of more than 700 members. Weitling also started the first German communist paper and published, in December 1842, his second book Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom.

This marked the high point of Weitling’s influence. Difficulties now began to increase: his newspaper was confiscated in France and thus could not be delivered in London; finally he was expelled from Geneva. He gave up tailoring to devote himself full time to communist propaganda, moving from city to city until in the spring of 1843 he settled in arch-conservative Zurich. His success, however, was nowhere near as great as before and it was as a new propaganda approach that he began to write the Gospel. He was arrested in June 1843 before it was finished and condemned to ten months’ imprisonment. While in jail he finished his book, learnt English, and, on release, made his way to London. Here he was welcomed by the London members of the league.

In February 1846 Weitling went to Brussels where, for the first time, his path crossed that of Marx. After a violent argument, Weitling found himself excluded from the Brussels branch of the 1eague. Soon after he left for New York, founded there a new Workers’ Association and returned to Germany as its delegate on the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. He was once again active in organizing mass movements and writing articles. On his expulsion from Germany in 1849 he returned to New York.
The worsening economic situation of i 850 in America brought his agitation considerable scope and he founded a successful revolutionary newspaper. This was of very short duration, however, and by the middle of the 1850s Weitling retired from active political campaigning. He married in 1854 and had many children, remaining in the dire poverty he had known all his life. In 1871 he took part in a meeting of the First International against the Franco-Prussian War and died three days later on 25th January.

Weitling was called by Engels the ‘first German communist’, a title which, in fact, he disputes with Moses Hess. His important work is concentrated in the years 1838 to 1845. Reports in the German press on the ideas of Saint-Simon and Fourier had already interested Weitling in communism in the early 1830s and the influence of Paris was decisive. In his first book the League of the Just had asked him ‘to write something to demonstrate the possibility of a community of goods’. The book warned against conspiratorial methods and putsches — a view proved right a few months later by the failure of Blanqui’s insurrection — and urged propaganda among the masses as a means to revolution. Its style owed a lot to Lamennais and, in spite of its moral tone and appeals to natural law and christianity, it held to a rigid doctrine of class struggle. The book went through three editions and had quite a large circulation.

Weitling’s work for the league in Switzerland also prospered and his newspaper had 1.000 subscribers, 400 in Paris and 100 in London. Engels, in his report on socialist movements written for the New Moral World at the end of 1843, wrote of the paper: ‘Although written exclusively by and for workmen, this paper was from the start better than most French communist publications, even better than Father Cabet’s Populaire.’ In December 1842 Weitling produced, in his Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom, a systematic criticism of contemporary exploitative society and proposals for a future communist one. The law of uninterrupted progress, human instinct, the needs of the age, the interests of the immense majority, the precepts of reason — all required social equality as a fundamental principle of social harmony and human freedom. Bourgeois society, on the other hand, was rotten with the evils caused by private property and money which had torn society asunder into irreconcilable classes. It was this book particularly, coupled with the misguided publicity given by the Swiss authorities to his trial, that gained Weitling his reputation. He made a great impression on those radical German intellectuals who from young hegelian beginnings were evolving towards socialism: Feuerbach said he had never liked anything so much as the first half of Guarantees and wished to dedicate his next book to Weitling; Heine considered the book to be the catechism of the German communists; Marx talked in the summer of 1844 of ‘the brilliant works of Weitling which from the theoretical point of view surpassed even Proudhon, however inferior they may be in execution. Where could the bourgeoisie, its philosophers and scholars included, produce works similar to Weitling’s Guarantees?

It was in the first half of 1843, at the high point of Weitling’s influence, that he wrote the Gospel. It was written against a background of increasing difficulties in Zurich and both subject and style are affected by these circumstances. Weitling’s books being confiscated and his finances low, he wished to base his case on a text whose authority was indisputable and whose availability was guaranteed — the bible. By constant reference to the new testament he intended to answer the common charge that communism was the antithesis of christianity and the denial of all morality. Weitling hoped to turn the weapons of the rich against themselves, and refute the view that private property was willed by God, a view propagated by all the mass media at the disposal of the ruling classes. He said of his book: ‘Its aim was to strengthen belief in all places where it does not endanger the spiritual and material interests of one’s neighbour and to expose any exploitation of the faith as being the exclusive prejudice of a few.’ Yet the Gospel was no mere tactical maneuver: Weitling passionately believed contemporary communism to be the historical continuation and spiritual successor to the communist tendencies of early christianity. The kernel of christianity was the struggle of the poor for an earthly kingdom based on love, and his Gospel was a summons to those without inheritance or rights to change the corrupt world themselves. There is little concern here for a world hereafter, little emphasis on patience and humility; God is all perfection and the unknown motive force behind nature; religion is the striving after this ideal; Jesus Christ is the perfect example of a fighter for freedom and justice.

For these ideas, Weitling, like all early German socialists leaned heavily on French sources. At the time of the French Revolution, Babeuf had talked of ‘sansculotte Jesus’, and this had been taken up by his disciple Buonarotti. In the early 1840s the Utopian communist Cabet equated true christianity with communism and described Jesus as the first communist, though for him, unlike Weitling, christianity was a means of class reconciliation. Weitling also drew on the young hegelian movement and particularly on Feuerbach, by insisting that pure atheism failed to realize the positive side of religion as a vehicle of man’s fundamental, albeit idealistic, desires.

Weiling’s Gospel had a wide circulation, with translations into French, English, Norwegian, Hungarian and Russian as well as five German editions. However, Weitling’s impact on the early socialist movement soon faded: though welcomed at first as a martyr in London, his stay there and subsequently in New York made him lose touch with continental movements and ideas. There was also his quarrel with Marx in Brussels in March of 1846 which discouraged Weitling and precipitated his decision to emigrate to America. This was not only a personal clash between two men whose origins, temperaments and views were very different: it was a clash between two different sorts of socialism. For Marx, any over-hasty attempt to influence the workers without a clear body of doctrine was bound to lead to the downfall of their cause. The concept of the unity of theory and practice’ contained in his contemporaneous Theses on Feuerbach ruled out any theorizing that was not strictly linked to practical conditions. Above all it was the strain of sentimentality and emotion in Weitling’s ideas that Marx could not accept and his quarrel with Weitling represents Marx’s emphatic and final rejection of utopian communism. For Weitling, on the other hand, ‘communism was indeed a very simple doctrine of human brotherhood, quite innocent of intellectual subtleties; and he had no use for the hegelian philosophers who were developing German socialism as a theory quite unrelated to political practice. He wanted action by the workers — action in the spirit of new testament christianity: among the young hegelians he found himself out of his depth and responded by mistrusting them as self-destructive logic-choppers devoid of real feeling for the masses.’¹
Thus Weitling is a central figure in the nascent socialism of the 1840s, standing at the center of several processes. He interpreted and popularized various brands of French utopian socialism among German-speaking workers in Paris and Switzerland; he was the only early German socialist of working-class origin and thus formed a link between workers’ movements and the intellectual socialism of the young hegelians; and when the minds of radical German intellectuals were beginning to be interested in socialism, it was to Weitling that they looked as the authentic interpreter of the workers’ struggle.

But Weitling, and particularly his Gospel, are important in another respect also. The enormous number and variety of ‘new christianities’ that appeared during the first half of the nineteenth century marks a turning point in European socialism. The 1840s in particular afforded an opportunity to establish a lasting connection between a christianity that revised both its medieval and reformed tendencies and a socialism that was still being formed. With the rejection of Weitling by Marx and the condemnation of Lammenais by the Vatican, there began a continuous hostility that was to the detriment of both movements. Texts such as the Gospel are important as evidence of efforts to forge this link when the opportunity first presented itself and there was still a chance that, rather as in the sixteenth century a connection had been established between reformed christianity and the rising post-feudal class of the bourgeoisie, so in the nineteenth century a permanent connection could be formed between a ‘new christianity’ and the post-bourgeois mass of working people. The failure to achieve this has meant a fragmentation of the forces making for social renovation that is only now — one hundred years later — beginning to be overcome.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best biography, of Weitling in English is Carl Wittke’s The Utopian Communist (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1950). Information on the German intellectual background is provided in my The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx and Marx before Marxism (both Loudon, 1969). For the European socialist background as a whole, see George Lichtheim’s The Origins of Socialism (London, 1969).

 

 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This work was meant to come out in Zurich in the summer of 1843. Some like-minded people were to pay for the printing in order to bring it out as cheaply as possible. When half the printing had left the press I was arrested at night in the open street and the plates and the rest of the manuscript were confiscated. I was imprisoned for fifty weeks, banned, released, banned again and deported to England. The confiscated plates were destroyed.

But a friend managed to rescue most of the manuscript. In order to help me and also make its publication possible, he sold it while I was in prison to Mr Jenni in Bern. But while I was in prison I had decided to improve the manuscript and I did the work on it in London after my release. But this revision was too late for Jenni’s edition which was already in the press. The strange adventures of the first manuscript had given rise to false corrections and printers’ errors. To correct these and to make the work available to the poor, my friends decided to share the costs of printing a revised manuscript at a low price. It contains everything that was in the first manuscript, but arranged in a new way and expanded. In the first edition I gave references only to the gospels, in the second I give them also for the epistles. In order to prove that my interpretation of the gospel is the true one, I wrote a chapter on the contradictions in the new testament, at the same time showing that these are not thereby contradictions in the teaching of Jesus. I also wrote a plan for the organization of propaganda, which demands the reader’s particular attention.

Jenni’s edition was also subject to persecution. A hundred copies were confiscated in Zurich and their owners arrested and deported. The manuscript of the second edition, which was in the possession of one of the men who were arrested, was again in danger of confiscation but fortunately not found when the house was searched.

The government of Luzern apparently wishes to punish the possession of a communist book with five years’ imprisonment.

The so-called radical government of the Zurich canton drew up a law at the beginning of this year against the communists, and it was passed unanimously in the Great Council on the twenty-fifth of March. According to this law, those who seek to further communism through the press or through meetings may be punished by a fine of a thousand Swiss francs or two years’ imprisonment. We hope that no true communist will be too frightened by this law to go on spreading and defending communism with all the means at his disposal. Up till now communism was persecuted without a law. The Zurich government has the immortal honour of being the first to bring a law against the new doctrine. By their miserable work they hope to preserve the control over the power and the money and to keep the sovereign people in their state of folly. But the people must come to see how they have been led by the nose and throw these holders of power, together with their laws against communism, to the devil.

The persecutions of communism will come to an end, just as the persecutions of christianity did. The laws against communism will be revoked just as the laws against witches were. It is for communists to bring this about, the sooner the better. Those who paid for the publication of this book pledge themselves that any man who is imprisoned for spreading this book will be compensated for every day of his imprisonment and for every mile he had to travel. 

THE AUTHOR

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Poor sinners, this gospel is for you. Make it a gospel of freedom.

All you whose faith is foundering and whose knowledge is uncertain, whose anchor of hope finds nothing to hold on to in a sea of doubt, come and take fresh hope and fresh courage from it.

If the official explanations of the gospel has killed all your love for it, do not therefore throw this book aside in contempt. It is not written by a saint, a cleric or a holy man, it is written by a sinner.

If your conscience doubts the rightness of its own judgment, if you need comfort and hope in the storms of passion, if you long for a better life and the priest gives you no satisfactory advice, if you are so oppressed by suffering that you are left with only humility and resignation and leave the satisfaction of your needs to heaven, take this book.

If at the cleansing of the temple some of the coins from the overturned tables of the moneychangers fail into the pockets of you poor sinners and they take you to court for judgment, take this gospel.

If people disregard your exhausting day’s work and reproach you for your glass of wine or spirits, show them this gospel. You will find a ‘gluttonous man’ and a ‘winebibber’, a friend of publicans and sinners, to silence your moralizers.

With extravagant hands you poured out your costly ointment, sorrowing Magdalene. A sinner with languishing eyes. You let the unclean hand of little cupid shake the beautiful buds of your springtime and offered him but scant resistance. You were often overcome by passion but in the end you overcame it without losing the power to enjoy things and the strength to be virtuous. Queen of passion. Now you have conquered it.

Let others boast of their cloak of false virtue and parade their piety, innocence and chastity; they have not even put it to the test, in which you salvaged the power to be holy without losing the power of passion. If people reproach you quote them the gospel and say: ‘We have loved greatly and so great things will be forgiven us.’

Come, all you who work and are poor and despised and oppressed. If you want freedom and justice for all mankind. This gospel will give you new courage and new hope.

It will make pale and careworn cheeks rosy again and rekindle the light of hope in sorrowing eyes. It will strengthen the faint-hearted and give the doubting mind the power of conviction. It will kiss the forehead of the convict with forgiveness and lighten the darkness of his prison with a ray of hope. It will bring to nothing the power of money and proclaim the kingdom of freedom which belongs to the Lord of Hosts and of sinners.

It will release faith from its errors, lighten the way of hope and pour the warmth of love and freedom into every heart. So be it.

 

I

 

A GLIMPSE INTO THE MIND OF THE EVANGELISTS

I Faith and Knowledge

As long as we are children, we believe, think and behave like children. It is only when our own mind develops through age and experience, that we know, think and behave like men.

A child who wants to learn from its teachers must believe their words, until by repeated reflection and its own experience and conviction it is in a position to put what it has been taught to the proof. If it does not do this, it will have to undergo a second period of learning, often much later on, and thus lose precious time. But when the teachers are themselves uncertain of the truth, when they do not know but only believe what they teach or do not even believe what they are obliged to teach, then of course it is better for the pupil to maintain his unbelief and learn nothing, than to have his understanding and feelings disordered by damaging and irrational impressions. His scientific education in this case can only benefit by his doubt and unbelief.

But doubt and unbelief are already a level of knowledge, which must be communicated to the pupil by people he trusts. Grown-ups and respected persons, parents and teachers, hold a strong influence over children and can — if they are in agreement — pass on to them all their own prejudices, indeed proffer them these as truths. For while our mind is not mature enough to grasp a truth, if we are to learn it at all, we must take it on trust from other people. It only ceases to be a belief and becomes knowledge when we reach maturity.

For every truth is not so easily comprehensible that we can be given the proof of it as soon as we have been given the truth itself. We are often not in a position after years of study to pass final judgment upon a doctrine. Centuries pass before some succeed in solving a difficult problem. The same problem may puzzle the most eminent thinkers for thousands of years and they fail from one error into another and do not reach any conclusion. But the further we are from the knowledge of a truth, the more faith and trust we must put in the possibility of knowing it. The nearer we come to the knowledge of it, the better we grasp the new truth and our state of belief changes into a state of knowledge, as our position of learner changes into that of teacher. The growth period is stealthy like the growth of a child’s body into a man’s.

Thus as long as we only believe something we are not convinced of its truth for believing means not knowing. For someone who knows something is more permeated by the truth of it than someone who only believes it. Knowledge rests upon facts and proofs whereas belief rests only on opinions and guesses, written or oral communications which we are not yet in a position to criticize.

There are societies and individuals who have remained children intellectually when compared with other societies and individuals. These are the ones who need belief which is dispensable to the others because they are better educated and their belief has been superseded by knowledge. Every teacher of the people, every man who has an influence over the education of people, must not only believe what he teaches but he must know it, he must be permeated by the knowledge of what he teaches, must be able to offer proofs and to welcome rather than discourage criticism.

Parents, nurses, schoolmasters and every other teacher of those who are still children in mind as well as in body need the trust of their pupils and need it the more the less they know and the more basic the things they have to teach.

A teacher is in a position of power over his pupils because of his office. If he has the systematic support of others the pupil’s intellectual development is entirely in his hands. He can keep them in the state of belief or help them to pass from belief to knowledge and give them the means to set about increasing their knowledge on their own.

The ruling classes in our present society have used this power exclusively in their own interests. These people who believe little because they know much are convinced that the education of the masses would put an end to their patience under oppression and the power of their rulers. The rulers do their utmost to prevent the education of the people passing from the state of belief to the state of knowledge.

The power and the wealth of the rulers are strong weapons for the attainment of their ends. They have been used to keep the whole teaching body under their control. Belief which should be a way to knowledge is now their end and they use their knowledge to keep the people in a state of belief. Instead of the people believing in order to learn knowledge, they learn in order to believe what the teachers themselves do not believe. Belief is not used as a means of teaching and learning but teaching and learning are used as a means to belief, that is to say, in spite of all learning and teaching, not knowing.

For years in the churches priests have been passing on a word not of their own choosing but prescribed to them by a systematic organization, Critics in the congregation hardly dare to sigh under the pulpit and the weary peasants start snoring. Eighteen hundred years ago a twelve-year-old boy expounded the law to the elders in the temple, whereas in Prague a few years ago a little tailor who interrupted the preacher was banned from the feast.²

State and church are united in keeping the people in a state of belief and not wanting them to pass from belief to knowledge. Freedom of belief is allowed but freedom of knowledge is led by mammon on a golden chain which tyranny tries to make shorter and shorter. Both belief and knowledge will always have their place. But let not the one usurp that of the other. Belief is limited by knowledge. Belief comes to an end where knowledge begins and begins again where knowledge comes to an end. But knowledge has no limits except the state of perfection which is unimaginable to us.

We cannot prove what we believe, only what we know. Do you all believe in God, but what do you believe that God is? The idea of perfection, you will answer, all that our intuition suspects and our mind cannot grasp. Good, that is what the evangelists also believe.

This belief cannot be taken away from mankind however severely he is oppressed by pain and weakness. It is an anchor in the wild storms of this unpredictable life and cannot be taken away in the highest state of human happiness. Knowledge is powerful enough to dispense with every form of belief, indeed with every belief, but who is bold enough to say that he has studied the secrets of the human heart in their deepest depths and that his knowledge will always be sufficient to satisfy his desires?

Man of knowledge, you are strong enough to look death in the eye at its most terrifying, a still and empty eternity. But are you certain that this proud strength will remain with you at every moment of your life? If your physical health is shattered, will not your mental powers be threatened? Might you not fall back into a state of childhood, out of which you are striving towards the perfection of knowledge and which you now look down on from your eminence? Death does not frighten you, you proud man. But if you have to drink the bitterest dregs of the cup, when everything forsakes you that you held dear in this world, and you have no friend to weep on, when all your passions unite to take away your strength will your knowledge be strong enough to withstand despair?

In that dreadful moment you need comfort, support and refuge. Do not reject it now in the fullness of your strength. Keep faith warm in you. Keep it for the time when your spiritual strength threatens to collapse under the burden of moral and physical suffering. Keep it. Perhaps it will warm your icy spirit again and give you back what you lost. You spared this faith in God to the weak and small. You cannot entirely rid it from your own heart. For you have not come to the end of your experience, and your knowledge only lasts as long as your strength.

We poor sinners all believe in God although we do not speak much about him and seldom pray to him. But what do we know of God? Think of infinite space containing more atoms than the grains of sand in the desert. Think of these atoms as one big number and this number multiplied from eternity up till this moment by a number equally great, think of this number as the sum of all the unknowns which mankind must try to understand one after the other, and when you have solved the last of these then you will know what God is. Therefore let us believe.

2 Hope

At the street corner there stands a tired old man leaning on his stick. He looks at the passers-by with a troubled and beseeching look. He hopes for alms to keep his poor life nourished because his strength has been burned up by other people. But we poor sinners do not share his hopes. I am a poor luckless creature, sighs an old mother, was I born to misfortune? Dear God how have I deserved this hard lot, to be abandoned in my old age by my only child? Would that the dear God would take me to himself and put an end to my sufferings.

Do not despair. Put your trust in God who hears the prayers of widows and orphans, whispers the parson.

But we poor sinners do not trust him. I come home once more with an empty basket and an empty stomach, sighs another woman. My neighbour won’t lend me anything more and the baker will not go on giving me bread on credit. I cannot get anything at the pawnbroker’s for these rags. I have three hungry children at home and a sick mother, and tomorrow the landlord wants the rent. Dear God have pity on us poor creatures and send us a merciful angel to save us from our need.

We poor sinners expect no angel. Look at the sufferings of a poor beast like me sighs another. My old mother has been sick for so long. My children give me no rest the whole day. They want this, they want that. I must provide for everyone and now my husband has fallen sick. I cannot stand it. If things don’t get better I will jump in a lake.

Stand firm, good woman. The dear God will reward you richly for all that you have done, says her well- meaning neighbour.

We poor sinners do not believe it. We do not hope for such things.

But we hope that in time the poor man will not have to beg and plead for his bread but can sit down with everyone else at the table and enjoy nature’s bounty.

We hope that a time will come when no one will have to beg for food from his fellow-men or go home after begging in vain with nothing in his basket for his family. We hope for a time when no one needs to borrow from his neighbour, when pawnbrokers are no longer needed, and no landlord demands the rent.

We hope for a time when no one has to care for his family, for the sick and the children without any kind of help. For a time when no one is so overburdened by the problem of keeping going that he is tempted to take his life.

We do not hope for eternal life and pie in the sky while nothing gets better here below. We hope that this life will change and get better soon. We hope for a carefree happy life and justice for all men on earth. That is what we hope for.

Wanting things to be better in the next world is a selfish dream of people who are not satisfied with what this world can offer But we poor sinners want nothing hereafter; we want things in this world, But we hope that things will get better and very soon. We only ask for joy hereafter in so far as we work for good in this world. We only ask for heaven in so far as we ask to share in the happiness of this world. Courage and patience. The words which were like the murmur of a little brook overgrown by grass have become a great flood beating against the dykes of the ancient privileged gangs of robbers. Soon it will burst through like thunder.

Therefore let us hope.

3 Love

Is it possible to understand the power of love which fills all creatures with sweetness? Can a man know what it is capable of working in his own heart? Is there a greater power or force or perfection than what we can conceive of when we love?

We stand with all our knowledge on the edge of knowledge. Only the mysterious power of love gives us insight beyond all the boundaries of our knowledge. It gives us insight into perfect love which is God, although our mind can only formulate it in a very imperfect way.

Let us make man in our own image, says God according to Moses.

Let us make God from a man who is like him, said Christ. And that was the God-man.

The two great mysteries, God and love, were made into one by Christ when he said God is love. Centuries have passed. God and love are still mysteries. The magisterium is an enclave of privilege, religion a deception to those who have lost their way and a stumbling stone on the road to progress. The christian God has become a God made in the image of man without human weaknesses.

You blind pharisees. What use would this God be to us if he had only life among us in the form of a man, and had not taken upon himself all our weakness, lacks, passions and imperfections. Was the bitter cup in the garden, the trouble of his soul, the pain of his bloody death on the cross nothing but appearance unconnected with his divine person?

This God-man stands out in history as a great man, by his teaching and his actions, by his virtues and his failings. Leave him as he is. Do not describe his human form irrationally as an unnatural being, which is contrary to all our knowledge. If you want faith to be respected you must also respect knowledge. Religion must be destroyed to free humanity. This was what Voltaire and others said. Lamennais and before him Karlstadt, Thomas Münzer and others showed that all democratic ideas sprang from christianity.

Religion must not be destroyed but used to free humanity. Christianity is the religion of freedom, moderation and enjoyment, not of oppression, extravagance and abstinence. Christ is a prophet of freedom.

His teaching is a teaching of freedom and love and he is therefore a picture for us of God and love.

We cannot sink our thoughts into empty spaces when we feel the need to pour the secrets of our hearts and minds into our concept of God. We must make a picture of God and this picture is Christ.
But if we are to love him this Christ must be the friend and brother of us poor sinners and not a supernatural unimaginable being. He must be subject to weakness like us.

And so he was, as we read in the gospel. Therefore let us love him.

 

2

A BRIEF LOOK AT THE STORY OF JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES TO CONSIDER THEIR PERSONALITIES

I What is the bible?

The bible is a collection of books translated from different languages, written by many authors before the discovery of paper and printing. About fifteen hundred years ago the new testament was added. It is a collection of books written by different authors at different times.

What a job it must have been writing a book like that on parchment or papyrus, especially in those days when so few people knew how to write. And how hard it is to tell whether during the persecutions of the christians certain pages were dropped and certain pages added.

If in spite of everything the originals have been preserved intact, this is in itself remarkable. But even so it is still true that these books were written by men and this is all that is needed to make it possible for them to contain errors. For men make mistakes, and even though men like Socrates, Confucius and Christ taught truths which have remained for thousands of years, this does not prove that they never made mistakes. It does not prove that their truths always remain truths, needing no explanation and incapable of being perfected.

Men wrote the originals. These originals created christianity; it would be nothing without them. Is it possible to know for certain the truth of christianity from these documents? Certainly not. How then was it possible to keep the people in error for so long? Because in the new testament the ideas are not classified. Teaching and historical event are mixed up together in it. The whole is in a form which does not suit our times. It was intended to make converts among nations of fifteen hundred years ago whose political structures have long since vanished. Eight men wrote these books: Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, James and Jude. At least that is what we read. We do not have proof of this authorship in the older manuscripts. These manuscripts were first discovered in the sixth century. We do not know whether they were written then or earlier, neither do we know who wrote them. Among a hundred manuscripts which were discovered — all in the Greek language — we do not know which is the right one, they all differ a little : from each other. That is not all. There is the translation into other languages, a very difficult undertaking because no one knows the ancient languages perfectly, or which. of the ancient manuscripts is the right one. The innumerable synonyms in every language makes things even more difficult. Each man translates as he thinks fit and little shifts of meaning are inevitable. Is it surprising that there are contradictions in the new testament both in the stones and in the teaching? Obviously not.

And who were the men to whom the authorship of the book of the new testament is ascribed? What guarantee can they give us that they were never mistaken? Their contradictions, disagreements and occasional unbelief are not recommendations of their infallibility. Paul persecuted the disciples, Peter denied the Lord, and they all lost their courage and forsook him in the garden. Wasn’t that shameful for ten stout fellows? Can anyone of us defend this cowardice? Modern pharisees might suggest that if they had not run away they would have been caught too and the spread of christianity would have been impossible. Yes. Any act of cowardice can be defended in this way. When they fled they were surely not thinking of the spread of christianity. If they had stopped to think about it they would have been arrested. When people act quickly they feel before they think. Feelings govern our actions at such a moment and makes us resist or run away. And so with the disciples. If they had been fully convinced in their minds of the truth of the Lord’s teaching, and their hearts full of love for him, they would rather have been struck dead than forsake him.

These were the people who wrote the new testament, from which the principles of christianity are drawn. They were weak and fallible men like us, but because they tell us of their weaknesses and do not try to hide them, we know them as real men, with whom in our time only Rousseau can be compared, who tells us in his Confession that he once stole a silver band, and when it was found in his luggage he told the maid in front of the authorities that she had given it to him.

This story illustrates many of the stories in the new testament. There were often disputes and even bloody wars whose outcome decided the fate of whole nations. Millions of people killed each other in blind fanaticism without even knowing why. Each of the last eighteen centuries has had its religious slaughters, and its bloodthirsty fanatical tyrants. There have always been disputes about the teaching of Christ and even today it is not understood, even today christians are divided into more than a hundred sects and each member of each sect has his own way of practising his faith, according to his education and his interests.

The teaching of Christ comes from the heart and is meant to go to the heart. It is the expression of the feeling of justice and is open to various interpretations because ancient prejudices prevent the feelings of justtice being the same with everybody, and because it is a feeling it cannot be pinned down and calculated by the sure standards of reason.

The men who proclaimed the teaching of Christ only said: live together in peace and you will be happy. But they did not say at all clearly how to do this. It cannot he said more clearly as it has to do with feelings. In fact the feelings played the chief part in the christian message and the intellect a secondary part.

But today the intellect is given a larger part than the feelings in the exposition of doctrine. We know very well that if we give everything to the poor today, tomorrow we will have to beg, borrow or steal. We know that we should love our enemies and hate our father and mother, but we do not know how this is possible in our own society.

The authors of the original writings contradict each other in their teaching as well as in their facts. In other places they say unintelligible things and the whole is decked in the trappings of their own time. They speak of signs and wonders and only increase our confusion so that the places where the true christian teaching is plain to see are hidden like real pearls among a pile of fakes.

I now put myself in the place of an honest doubter and say: Because all this happened eighteen hundred and forty-five years ago it is most unlikely that it all happened as it says even in the smallest details. It can even be questioned whether there lived a man called Jesus at all. We could question the truth of the whole story. But all that does not matter very much to me. The important thing is not the life story of a religious philosopher but the teaching he gave. If one reads an interesting book one naturally looks for the author’s name, but I am more interested in what he has to say than in his biography, which is only interesting because of his writings. The teaching is the important thing
about the new testament, as always. The historical details and errors are of secondary importance.

In christianity I have found the following teachings which are worth examining and which would doubtless bring happiness to mankind if mankind could only discover how to put them into practice. Whether the teachings come from Zoroaster or Moses or Jesus, whether they come from Lapland or Rome, whether they are six thousand years old or brand new, is of secondary importance. The important thing is the teaching itself, no matter how it is clothed.

If I have understood this teaching, I will do my best to discover how it can be put into practice. If this is possible, then the teaching will be a map of truth for me and something against which to test the rest of the writings from which I have derived it.

I have done this and I have found that the teaching can best be put into practice by the most perfect form of communism. I have found this teaching here and there in formulas and phrases, which have given rise to intentional or ignorant misinterpretation. But I regarded these texts as the shell and the teaching itself as the kernel of the nut. When I had found the kernel of the teaching and became convinced of the possibility of putting it into practice, it was not difficult to classify all the other texts relating to the teaching in the light of the teaching and thus to discriminate between the true form and the false.

It is true that it is a long time since I went to church or prayed and I am not likely to start praying again in the near future, but this does not mean that I want to stop other people believing or praying or going to church. But I do not want people’s praying and believing and churchgoing to be put to use by hypocrites and cunning politicians. I want each man to enjoy the fruits of his own believing, praying and churchgoing, and no one to be compelled to do these things who does not find it makes for his happiness, no one to be compelled to pay for the believing, praying and churchgoing of others when he himself does not go in for that sort of thing.

If anyone in mistaken religious zeal sees an enemy in me because of my interpretation of the gospel, let him remember that it is therefore his duty to love me, as I myself am also aware, and with our present social relations that is no light task.

2 Unbelief of the Apostles, Disciples and early Christians

Belief makes us happy and knowledge satisfies us. Let every man choose what suits his heart and spirit best.

Belief in a truth, which of course the learner cannot easily recognize but the teacher can, makes knowledge easier for the learner. Belief in an error or a lie leads to ignorance of the truth.

This is how we should consider belief, so often recommended in the gospels. The more difficult a doctrine is for the learner, the harder it is for him to become convinced of its truth and the more important it is for him to believe it. But when knowledge shines into the darkness of belief like a brilliant light, every effort to keep the learner in a state of belief proves that the teacher was not using this belief as a means to bring his pupil more easily to the knowledge of the truth, but as a means to keep him in ignorance and error. Pythagoras divided his pupils into grades according to the progress of their initiation into the mysteries. In the lowest grades belief was indispensable, and this was also true of the people Jesus taught.

The position of a man who wants to change his contemporaries is always difficult. The higher his ideas the more careful he has to be not to bewilder his hearers. He cannot do away with their prejudices all at once but must undermine them slowly and on their own terms.

Furthermore, he is hindered by the persecutions of the sect to which he is often bound to belong and cannot speak as plainly as he might wish. This makes him all the more difficult to understand.

Pythagoras and Jesus both wanted a radical change in all social relations and had to deal with an ignorant and superstitious people. Partly because of their established way of life and partly through vanity and envy, those who would have been capable of understanding the new teaching were their enemies, and used every possible means to discredit them with the people and the government.

Pythagoras revealed his deepest mysteries at secret meetings only to pupils who had been stringently examined. This examination was so strict that often pupils had a two- to five-year silence imposed upon them. This is how mysteries were guarded in ancient times and the learner was asked simply to believe.

When put into practice, the teachings of both Pythagoras and Christ result in communism. Anyone
who can go back that far can imagine how difficult it must have been to teach a people eighteen hundred years ago a doctrine which had to be expressed in covert language to avoid persecution. How difficult it must have been to preach the nature and possibility of communism! What prejudices stood in the way of any clear explanations! They were interrupted, screamed at and jeered at. Why? Because an important doctrine like communism, with such far-reaching consequences, cannot easily be put over in metaphors, and the art of preaching itself needs to be learnt.

When there was a printed account of the teaching, things became easier, for a limited understanding finds the written word easier. Individual passages can be learnt and examined before reading on and there is less danger of a snap judgment.

Jesus and Pythagoras did not have the advantages of print. And it would not have helped them, for they appealed less to the understanding than to the feelings. They did not want everything to be easily comprehensible. That is why belief played so large a part in their teaching and so much has remained unclear to this day.

But if belief was necessary under those conditions it does not follow that it is necessary today. At least it should not be so in christendom because we have preached this doctrine for eighteen hundred years without anyone succeeding in silencing it. When a doctrine has been taught for eighteen hundred years, and printing has made its dissemination a thousand times easier, I think we should want knowledge of the doctrine and reserve faith for children and the weak, not for the grown-up and strong.

For when today faith is compelled to remain belief, deception, error and deceit has a hand in it and belief is being used for evil purposes.

Anyone who fights a doctrine in order to propagate another must be able to prove that his doctrine is truthful and the other erroneous. Jesus did this and found that the disciples of his opponents were in error, that they did not know but only believed. Jesus, however, did not believe the mosaic tenets by which he had been brought up, at least he did not obey certain parts of the law. He did not fast and did not let his disciples fast, he went about with heathens and sinners, evil people, as we would say today, and he healed the sick on the sabbath.

But just as Jesus did not believe the whole of the law of Moses, neither did his disciples believe everything he said, and the people even less.

When Nathanael heard that Jesus was from Nazareth, he said:
Jn 1:46. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

When Jesus taught that a man should forgive his neighbour seven times a day, his disciples said:
Lk 17:5. Lord increase our faith.

The disciples found it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus:
Mk 16:11. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her they would not believe it.
13. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
14. Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they would not believe those who saw him after he had risen.
Lk 24:11. But these words seemed to them as an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

12. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home wondering at what had happened.

And Jesus had often spoken to them about his resurrection on the third day:
Mt 28:17. And when they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted.

In Mt 16 Jesus tells the people that he will be given up and crucified and on the third day he will rise again. Peter answers him like a simpleton:
Mt 16:22. God forbid Lord! This shall never happen to you.

He showed his love for Jesus, his simple understanding and his disbelief in the resurrection. He also earned a rebuke from Jesus. Neither did Paul believe firmly in the resurrection:
Phil 3:11. That if possible I might attain the resurrection from the dead.
12. Not that I have already attained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
13. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

According to Col 3:1-4 we are already risen. That is perhaps why some thought that the resurrection had already happened 2 Tim 2:18. Many of the early christians did not believe in the resurrection:
1 Cor 15:12. Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.

There are many other stories in the new testament of the unbelief of the early christians and those they sought to convert:
Acts 17:32. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said ‘We will hear you again about this.’
Acts 28:24. And some were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved.
1 Cor 1:23. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
2 Pet 3:3. First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions,
4. and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of the creation.’

1 Jn 2:22. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
26. I write this to you about those who would deceive you.
1Jn 4:3. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.
2 Jn 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Jesus himself doubted that people would believe in him:
Lk 18:8. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes will he find faith on earth?

He found no belief in him in his own country:
Mt 13:58. And he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. See also Lk 4:23-29.

The Jews in Rome said to Paul about the disciples of Christ:
Acts 28:22. For with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.

The story of the feeding of the live thousand and its aftermath is also remarkable. It shows how ready the people were to attach themselves to a person for material gain, how easy it is to control them with a basket of bread. It shows that faith was demanded as an alternative to the proof of signs, wonders and promises, without which no prophet of those days could make himself heard. The disciples were expected to believe the signs, wonders and promises, even if their five senses convinced them of their impossibility.

After the resurrection they saw him on the mountain. But some doubted! He must therefore have appeared to them in a quite different form or how could they have doubted?

We must question whether the one who appeared was another man than Jesus. At any rate he did not look like him.
Lk 28 mentions the walk to Emmaus, a village 16 stadia from Jerusalem. Jesus met some of his disciples on the road, who did not recognize him, even though it was daytime. They thought he was a stranger. In the end they recognized him through the breaking of bread and the wounds in his hands and feet. But they did not believe that it was he. I am not surprised. If they had recognized his face I would be surprised that they did not believe that it was he.

Only at the meal. When the five thousand had eaten their fill and seen the miracle they said:
Jn 6:14. This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.
15. Perceiving then that trey were about to come and take him by force and make him a king, Jesus withdrew into the hills again by himself.
16. When the evening came, his disciples went down to the sea,
17. got into a boat and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark and Jesus had not yet come to them.

Then we are told that he comes to them walking on the water. Fine. I let it pass but only point out that it appears from the following verse that Jesus waited for his disciples on the shore.
21. Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

So much is certain, that Jesus first left the people himself, then the disciples left them under cover of darkness and used the way over the water as an escape route, and that on the other bank Jesus and the disciples met again. The intention was clearly to get rid of the people; Jesus could not always feed the people because he often did not have enough for himself and his disciples to eat (see Mt 21:18, 19; Mt 12:1).
Jn 6:22. On the next day the people who remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had only been one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone.
23. However, boats from Tiberias came near the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks.
24. So when the people saw that Jesus was, not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
25. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi when did you come here?’
26. Jesus answered them, ‘Truly truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fil1 of the loaves.
27. Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.’

According to Jn 6:15 Jesus disappeared because the people wanted to make him king. But we see clearly from verse 26 that he was less afraid of being made a king than of having often to feed all the people. So he answered in a manner that left them with no hope of a second meal. He said that they had come only for food, that they should seek instead food which is imperishable, and spare him the trouble of having to feed so many thousands again. Then he went on to speak of the bread of his father in heaven which is the true bread.
33. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives Life to the world.

34. They said to him ‘Lord give us this bread always.’

They were chiefly interested in getting bread and did not much care whether it came from heaven or the baker. They had seen one miracle of the loaves, and naturally imagined that things could continue in the same way. It is perfectly right for hungry people to ask a prophet for bread, but not right that he does not give it to them, particularly one who has said: ‘If anyone asks him for bread will he give him a stone?’

When I say to someone, you do not come to me because you have seen signs, I express the opinion that my signs have made no impression on him and I am unwilling to do any more signs even should he ask for them. When I say to him, you come only for bread, he realizes that I have no intention of giving him any more and will not ask for it unless he is driven to by need. But the people were hungry and asked for the bread of God. Jesus tried another way out.
35. ‘1 am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst.’

But this did not put anything in their bellies. They had been fed by a miracle and expected another one. The words of Jesus could not fil1 a hungry man. The people took them amiss:
41. The Jews then murmured at him because he said, ‘I am the bread which came down from heaven.’
42. They said, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’

There was nothing to be done except give them bread or at least make it quite clear that he did not refuse them bread because he could not give it to them. He continued:
51. I am the living bread which comes down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.
52. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

This was too much, even for his disciples:
60. Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’
61. But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, ‘Do you take offence at this?
62. Then what if you were to see the son of man ascending where he was before?’

This shows that even the disciples of Jesus were bound to him by blind faith, and Jesus intended this to be so. They contradicted him and grumbled even as we do today when people tell us such things.
66. After that many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.

Even in those days someone who concealed a truth in incomprehensible and seemingly meaningless language met with doubt, contradiction and unbelief from the thinking members of his audience. Without them no development of knowledge is conceivable. Our own doubts and unbelief are justified by the gospel itself.

 

3 Shortcomings of the Apostles, Disciples and Early Christians

 

Mt 1:19. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

If Joseph had had a good conscience he need not have divorced his intended wife quietly, and it would have been wrong of him to do so if he did not want to bring public scorn upon her. If Joseph had slept with her, which is to be expected with a young bride, his intention is blameworthy. Matthew must have thought that he had slept with her or he would not have called Joseph her husband in this sentence.

For the rest, I confine myself to a few references.
Peter’s jealousy: Jn 21:21.
Peter’s self-interest: Mt 19:27.
Peter denies the Lord: Mt 26:70, Lk 22:57, Jn 18:25.
Judas openly blames the Lord: Jn 12:4, 5.
The disciples quarrelling for first place: Mk 9:34; 10:37; Lk 9:46; 22:44.
Flight of the disciples: Mk 14:50.
Hypocrisy of the apostles Peter and Paul: Acts 11:3; 16:3; 21:20-26; Gal 2:11-14.
Neglect of early christians to attend meetings: Heb 10:25.
Murmuring about unequal care of widows: Acts 6:1.
Quarrel about going about with the uncircumcised: Acts 11:2, 3, 19.
Dispute about circumcision: Acts 15:1-29

The apostles are ill spoken of: 2 Cor 10:1-3; 10-12; Cor 8:20, 21.
John Mark leaves Paul: Acts 13:13; Paul does not want to take him with him again Acts 15:38 and quarrels with Barnabas over it Acts 15:39
Immorality among early christians: 1 Cor 5:1, 8; 11:17-21.
Distrust and jealousy among apostles and early christians: Rom 16:17; 1 Cor 1:11; 3:3; 2 Cor 12:20, 21; Gal 1:7; 5:15; 1 Tim 4:1-4; 2 Tim 2:14, 16, 18.

Paul stresses this further when he says:
Tit 3:3. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another.
1 Tim1:15. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the foremost of sinners.
1 Cor 15:9. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Eph 3:8. To me though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Even the best of us are sinners. So it was then, so it is now, and so it always will be. That is human nature and it will not change. Our mind is in constant conflict with our passions, and indeed only becomes what it is by constant victory over them. When we take up the bible, we should not forget that we have to do with a book written by men who had a human nature and passions like us.

 

4 The human Jesus

 

Mk 10:18. Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.

I quote this remark to show that Jesus himself did not consider himself good and never intended to say he was God. We never find in the gospels that he claimed to be God.

If we take Jesus as a picture of what we call God, this is because as christians we could not otherwise have any picture of God at all and we do not mean by this Jesus himself but his teaching. We must have some picture of God if we are going to pray at all. Jesus is the best concept of divinity we could have because his teaching shows the way to the greatest happiness.

But this does not mean that we must think of him as a supernatural unworldly being, free from all the passions and weaknesses of other men. We can see from the bible that he was subject to them as we are.
Mt 10:5. Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans.

Here he forbids his disciples to consort with Gentiles in accordance with the Jewish law.

On another occasion a Gentile woman begged him to heal her daughter who was badly plagued by the devil. But he answered her not a word. But when his disciples became annoyed by the woman crying after them and asked him to get rid of her he said:
Mt 15:24 I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

25. But she carne and knelt before him, saying ‘Lord, help me.’
26. And he answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’

Later Jesus gave up his hatred of foreigners and often went about among the Gentiles. The Samaritans, a small and hospitable people, denied him lodging, which they certainly would not have done if they had not known that Jesus did not accept them, and the examples mentioned above were not common knowledge to them.

Jesus did not always have the power to control his tongue. He lost his temper against his own teaching:
Mt 5:22. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.

Although this is his teaching here, he himself castigates the pharisees as foolish and blind (Mt 23:17, 19). Paul also sinned against this teaching.
 Cor `15:36. You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

The fourth commandment commands us to love our father and mother. But at the wedding in Cana Jesus said to his mother when she told him that they had no wine left:
Jn 2:4. Woman, what have you to do with me?

In verse 10 it is clear that the company had no further need of wine to quench their thirst. But Jesus created another hundred and twenty or more gallons of wine, which shows that Jesus, like us, enjoyed lingering over his cups in pleasant company. He did not deny this human nature in his attitude to wine. And quite apart from his ordinary human friendships there was his particular friendship with Mary Magdalene, Martha, Lazarus and John: Jn 11:5; 13:23; 19:26. Mary Magdalene was known in the town as a sinner, that is a woman who was held in open scorn, and with whom no one else associated (Lk 7:37, 39). The second was her sister, the third her brother.

Our human nature reveals itself in Jesus by the fact that he was affected by hunger and thirst and tiredness exactly as we are.

Like us he sought to avoid persecution: Mt 12:15; Mk 3:7; Lk 5:16; 9:10; 21:37; Jn 7:1, 10; 10:39;
11:54.

He hid on the mount of olives: Jn 7:53.

He was afraid of death like us: Mt 26:37, 39; Mk 14:33, 34, 36; Lk 12:50; 22:42.

Now let us take an unbiased look at the relationship between Judas Iscariot and Jesus. We find here two human hearts with the same passions as we, and who often speak and act without giving themselves time to reflect on what they are doing.

Jesus and his disciples held all things in common. In those days people had fewer needs than we do. People were not so selfish as they are today. There was more sharing. Begging was allowed and no passports were needed. People rated hospitality as high as today we rate our privacy. Hunting and fishing were free and so was trade. People could gather fruit from the fields to feed themselves without being punished for it. People could heal other people even if they knew as little about medicine as many doctors today. The people could get up and speak in the temple as well as the clergy. Under Roman rule life was in many ways much freer than it is for us today under national rule. I point this out in order to make what follows as plain as possible.

Jesus had forbidden his disciples to take with them gold or silver. What they were given on the way Judas carried in the common purse. Many women also went about with Jesus and the apostles, including Mary Magdalene (Lk 8:2) and the wife of Herod’s steward (8:3). Jesus and the disciples were supported by these women.

Unfortunately the good Mary Magdalene took it into her head to anoint the head of her beloved Lord with costly ointment, or as John says, his feet. According to Mt 26:7-11 and Mk 14:3-7 the disciples were angry about it:
Why was the ointment thus wasted?
5. For the ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor. According to John only Judas was angry and spoke thus to the Lord. Jesus answered:
Ja 12:7. Let her alone, she has done it for the day of my burial.
8. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.

Jesus himself could not defend her action; he could only excuse it. She has done it for my burial means that it will never happen again.

Because the evangelists Matthew and Mark were probably there at the time, and they say the disciples were angry, this proves that they at least were among those who were angry; otherwise they would have told the story differently.

At any rate, anointing the head of Jesus was against their principles and a stupid thing to do in front of the disciples and the ill-disposed Judas. The scene must have made a bad impression on the disciples. It was a flat contradiction between word and action. John himself seems to feel this, when he mentions another reason for Judas’ anger.
Jn 12:6. This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it.

John’s distrust has very slender foundations. I think Judas was really concerned about Christ’s teaching but that he was acting less out of concern for the principle than to recommend himself to his master. It is certain that even earlier on Jesus did not greatly care for Judas. Jn 6:64. ‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the first who those were who did not believe, and who it was that should betray him.
70. Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you twelve and one of you is a devil?’
71. He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was to betray him.

According to Matthew Judas only decided to betray him after the anointing, in which case Jesus showed an unjust suspicion of Judas on the earlier occasion.

Mt 26:16. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

At the anointing Judas and Jesus became irreparably at odds. Imagine how Jesus must have smarted, when a disciple whom he did not respect reproached him with apparent good reason for acting against his principles.

According to some of the evangelists that same evening, and according to others a few days later, they ate the paschal lamb together.

Think of the effect of the scene on the circle of Jesus and his disciples. Think how proud each member must have been to belong to the group which was appointed to preach and found the community of Christ, how proud to be recognized by his fellows as a useful member of the group.

Imagine them gathering for a common meal, which was not often possible for them. Such a meal needs friendship and trust, and if one has something against another it is unsuitable to take part in such a meal and turn food in his mouth to poison. Imagine Judas convinced that by his open blame of the anointing a few hours or a few days before he was more hated than ever by Jesus. What must Judas have felt when during the washing of feet Jesus said:
Jn 13:10. You are clean, but not all of you.

I can imagine how cutting this must have sounded to his guilty conscience. But I also think that I would find it difficult to be so cruel to an enemy in the presence of others whose respect he valued. And then Jesus says:
21. One of you will betray me.

Poor Judas. That was not the end of his persecution.
26. ‘It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it.’ So when he had dipped it he gave it to Judas the son of Simon Iscariot.

Nail me rather to the cross if you need martyrs for a good cause, but do not pass me this shameful sop. I would find it as hard as Judas to control the anguish which drove him to betrayal and suicide. O Jesus how cruel you were at this hour which was so important in the lives of the two of you. Even if the unhappy Judas was the frightful beast who had long intended to betray the Lord, these cruel words were what finally drove him to it.
27. Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’
30. So after receiving the morsel, he immediately went out and it was night.

Night indeed, black night outside in the world and within the heart of the traitor. Who has enough strength and courage and experience to look at the hideous void when something frightful has suddenly killed all the flowers and trees of the life of the spirit, when some blow has made us go wrong about all our experience, faith and love and turned our once sovereign personality into a being which speaks and acts without thinking and thinks without knowing what it thinks? Only someone who has had this experience can understand what went on in the heart of Judas after he had been given the sop.

True, Judas may have had an evil heart, but this sop must have thrust him right down into hell. For it robbed him all at once of everything that bound him to life, honour, respect, friendship, love, hope.

Judas began at once to hate what he had loved, and hated it the more, the more he had once loved it. His repentance and death should have been his atonement with the world and lifted from him the curse of centuries. He had the courage not to survive his shame, while at the same moment Peter, the rock upon which Jesus decided to build his church, and to whom he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven, denied his master three times.

Jesus had also received at the scene of the anointing a spiritual blow which kills the spirit without touching the body. Judas’s reproach must have more than wounded his sensitive spirit. A good friend should have made this reproach to him when they were alone and not in the presence of strangers and women and the other disciples, but our feelings can make us react without reflection and speak too hastily. It is even more difficult to control them when some passion suddenly emerges from where till then it had been. bidden. It needs enormous strength of character to keep control in such circumstances. Judas could not believe, when the interests of the movement required belief. Hurt pride, envy and distrust poured their poisons into both their hearts. Each prepared the death of the other. We too have tasted the bitter cup and must drink still deeper from it in this evil world until we have drained it.

One drank it for the sake of thirty pieces of silver, the other for the sake of three hundred pence. Some lay no money when they prepare their poison. But we must all drink the cup to the dregs.

5 Jesus was a Carpenter and had Brothers and Sisters

It is remarkable that the evangelists tell us nothing about the best eighteen years of a man’s life, the years between twelve and thirty. We have no word at all from the life of Jesus during these years.

When the evangelists have told us that he came to the temple when he was twelve years old they jump ahead to his thirtieth year and only tell us that during the interval he was a carpenter and that he had four brothers and several sisters.
Mk 6:3. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?

It follows that the virgin Mary first bore a son by the power of the Holy Ghost and then bore six children to Joseph.

There are other references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus in Mt 12:46, 48; 13:55, 57; Mk 6:3; Lk 8:20, 21; Jn 7:3,5; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor 9:5.

Although it is clearly stated that Jesus had brothers and sisters, pious christians are inclined to overlook the fact. I have known people who read their bible regularly who were quite convinced that Jesus had no brothers until I stuck the passages under their nose, and then the scales fell from their eyes. These brothers and sisters were the children of Mary which she conceived from Joseph her husband.
Mk 1:25. And he did not know her until she had borne her first-born son.

Then he did. Mary’s virginity, like that of all other girls, ends with the time of her first conception.

 

3

 

THE METHOD OF TEACHING

I The Political and Social State of the Society in which Jesus Taught

The Hebrews had lost their political freedom as a people and were under Roman rule. All classes wished to overthrow this rule, high priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Jesus and the people. They agreed on this but they were not agreed on what government to put in its place.

After the death of the last prophets the people had become weighed down with innumerable laws, orders and customs. Then a priest named Zadok proclaimed a new doctrine and rejected all laws and customs except those held to be divine. His disciples called themselves Sadducees. The opponents of the new doctrine were called Pharisees, that is to say, sinless. They were distinguished from the Sadducees by special clothes and by their strict and punctilious observance of the laws.

The Sadducees denied angels, spirits, devils and the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees believed in all these things.

The Sadducees denied the divine foreknowledge; the Pharisees believe in it. The Sadducees rejected the teachings of the elders, which the Pharisees defended. The Pharisees observed strict fasts and prayed often at street corners and in the temple in order to be seen by men. They never ate without first washing, they flogged themselves till the blood ran through their clothes. They avoided contact with the poor and whores and drunkards. Whenever they returned from the market they washed and bathed because the market was also used by gentiles and they believed that contact with them made a man unclean. There was no end to the washings that went on in their house. Their pots had always to be clean. The slept on narrow boards, hard stones or thorns and travelled about making proselytes. Their most solemn oaths were ‘by the gold of the temple’ and ‘by the sacrifice of the altar’. They regarded themselves as purer and holier than all the rest of the people and even their spittle as purer and holier than other people’s. They were very proud and wore beautiful, wide fantastic clothes and cursed everyone who did not study the law under their tuition. Many of them were of the opinion that the unlearned would have no part in the resurrection.

Because of their way of life they were highly respected by the people, although, as we are told in Mt 23:13-36, it was all hypocrisy.

Besides these two sects there were the Essenes, who held their meetings in secret, as the freemasons do today in countries where they are not openly tolerated.

The Essenes taught that good should be held in common, and on the whole they were in agreement with christian principles, but we are not told whether they disagreed on smaller issues. This suggested to me that Jesus himself could have been a member of this secret brotherhood which was like that of Pythagoras. The relationship between john the Baptist and Jesus made it seem all the more likely. John appeared before Jesus.

What Jesus later taught was what John had taught before him. It was the principle of common ownership, which had already been taught by the Essenes before John.

This John who came before Jesus was so frequented by the people, that even the Pharisees, themselves highly respected, were afraid to say that his baptism was from men, and Herod was afraid to kill him. Jesus did not have such great influence with the people. And were it possible John had even greater energy than Jesus. He told Herod to his face that it was wrong of him to take his brother’s wife, whereas Jesus before Pilate answered the questions upon which his judgment depended either by keeping silence or indirectly by ‘thou sayest it’ or sought a way out by saying ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.

John was in all respects a great teacher of the people, as Jesus himself says in Jn 5:35 when he calls John a burning and shining light. In Mt 11:11 he calls John the greatest of all who have been born of woman. Is it not strange then that John himself preaches to the people about another prophet greater than he, whose sandal strap he is not worthy to unloose.

Is it really possible that John would preach this greater prophet if he had never seen him before?

(Jn 1:31, 33). Would he have risked his prophetic vocation to preach a stranger as the Messiah, when this stranger might have lacked the power and the means and the talent for such a calling?

No, that is not possible. It would have been the maddest thing to do which could only have been done by a prophet against the interests of his own teaching. If they had known each other before, then it would have been a very good way of spreading their teaching and a very clever plan.

1. The prophet displayed the virtues which recommended him to the people, humility and modesty, and thereby only increased his reputation.
2. He deflected the jealousy and envy from himself to Jesus.
3. He made Jesus’ appearance as a prophet easier. If John had remained alive, in spite of this recommendation, his own influence with the people would probably still have been greater than that of Jesus.
4. This recommendation of Jesus may also have had the intention of deflecting the wrath of the Roman and Jewish authorities from himself to Jesus.

However, I find it highly probable that Jesus and John had both belonged to the Essene brotherhood, and had planned beforehand how to amaze the people and display signs and wonders for the prophets and their teaching.

Actually we have no more certain information than that of the historian Josephus, who mentions the rise of the Essene brotherhood.

We know for certain that this group arose and developed its activity at the time of Christ. And that John and Jesus appeared in public proclaiming the principle of the group. Every sect seeks to increase its membership with like-minded people and directs its attention principally towards the talented, energetic, brave and respected. Jesus and John could not therefore have been unknown to the Essenes. If they were unknown before their appearance in public, after it they would have been sought out by the Essenes and encouraged.

By their teaching John and Jesus were Essenes and the Essenes disciples of Jesus. Whether either of them were accepted members of the sect, or whether there were any Essenes among the apostles is uncertain. But the way in which Jesus and John were publicly received and the similarity of their teaching on their society makes it most probable. All the problems, signs and wonders can be much more easily understood if we imagine the interest and co-operation of the Essenes in them. From the words of John:
Jn 3:30. He must increase, but I must decrease.
We may gather that the roles trey were to play had been decided on beforehand, and that before they had appeared in public they had a secret understanding on the exercise of their prophetic mission.

But, of course, this is not known for certain, only very probable. Without it we cannot see the good intention in many events, only lies and deceit, The following chapter will prove that Jesus bad a secret understanding with his disciples in their policy towards the people. We do not know whether this was an understanding with the Essenes or not. The important thing was the understanding itself.

If a secret society concentrates all its strength, knowledge and courage upon one member without the people knowing this, if the work of the whole group are claimed to be supernatural powers of the one member, if the people’s faith in him is both created and strengthened by the group members, then we have an explanation for all the signs and wonders.

2 Faith was the Necessary Condition for the Signs and Wonders

Jn 20:29. Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe.

Eighteen hundred years ago people’s minds were full of belief in the devil, ghosts, signs and wonders. Religion and morals were interwoven with such things as if they were eternal truths. The leaders sought the support of the masses by strengthening and perpetuating such beliefs. In the christian middle ages the situation was even more irrational. People who made the laws and religion and who should have been among the most enlightened had innocent people burnt as ‘witches’ because of their superstitions. Luther the reformer believed in various devils. But this irrationality is not the important thing about the reformation. And in exactly the same way the stones of ghosts, spirits, devils, signs and wonders in the bible are not the important thing, they are not essential to the christian doctrine and may be interpreted at will without affecting the doctrine in the least.

Anyone who wanted to teach the people in those days must have been aware that signs and wonders were expected of him, or people would not believe in him. Jesus sought to weaken their superstition with the same weapon. You will not believe in me unless I show you signs and wonders. All right, I will perform no signs and wonders for you unless you believe. He who did not blindly believe was not his disciple and could not be helped by him. Faith allowed for no more doubt. What Jesus said must be held true even if sound reason and all five senses contested it. What better weapon could he have used against the jews so hungry for signs and wonders?

Because Jesus found faith here and there, here and there he performed miracles. Where he found no faith he performed no miracles:
Mk 6:5. And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hand on a few of the sick and healed them.
6. And he wondered at their unbelief.
With faith, everything was possible, even signs and wonders. Faith was always demanded: Mt 8:13; 9:21, 22, 28, 29; 15:28; 17:19, 20; 21:22; Mk 5:34; 9:23, 24; 10:52 16:16-20; Lk 7:9, 50; 8:25, 48, 50; 17:9; 18:42; Jn 11:40, 42; 14:12; Acts 3:16.

Anyone who preached a new doctrine to the Jews was expected to perform signs and wonders: Mk 1:22, 28-34; Jn 3:2; Acts 4:30; 5:12-16; 1 Cor 1:22. The people followed Jesus more for the sake of the signs and wonders than for the teaching itself: Jn 6:26; 7:31; 11:47-40; 12:18. Likewise the apostles, Acts 13:12.
Men who were highly respected by the people said that Jesus cast out devils: Mt 12:24; Mk 3:22; Jn 10: 1, 22.
Others said that he was possessed by the devil: Mk 3:21, 30.
Jesus did various things when he healed a man: Mk 3:5; 7:33; 8:23.
In this last passage read on and ask why did Jesus put day on the blind man’s eyes? Why could he then not see immediately? Why was he sent to a far away pool to wash? Why did not all the people recognize him again when he returned? In other words, who is telling the story and what is his interest in telling it?

Jesus often criticized people who asked for signs and wonders:
Mt12:38,39;16:1, 4, 5; Mk 8:11, 12; Lk 11:29.
Jesus did not heal all the sick who were brought to him as may be seen from the following passages in which there is mention of many: Mk 1:34; 3:10.
Jesus gave his disciples the power to cast out devils Lk 10:17-19. But they were not always able to cast the devils out: Mk 9:18, 28.
When the disciples asked why they were not able to cast out the devil Jesus answered very naïvely:
29. This kind can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. Why had he not said this earlier?
Others who did not believe also performed signs and wonders: Acts 8:9-13; 13:6; 19:13; 2 Thess 2:9;
Rev 13:13.
Jesus could not or would not prevent such unbelievers from performing signs and wonders: Lk 9:49, 50.
There would also be antichrists to perform them: Mt 24:24.
Both before and after Christ, according to the bible, the dead were raised: 2 Kings 4:35; Acts 20:9-12.
How necessary faith was to the signs and wonders can be seen from the accounts of the resurrection. The disciples speak to a man they do not know even though they can see him and hear his voice. This man tells them that he is Jesus and they do not believe it. In order to prove that he is Jesus he breaks bread among them, eats fish with them and shows the marks of his wounds. This is to make them recognize him. Why could trey not recognized him by his voice, his face and his body? It could have been someone else who claimed to the unbelieving disciples that he was Jesus.

I notice several things about the account of the raising of Lazarus. Jesus was going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover and raised Lazarus from the dead in a neighbouring village. A few days later his head was anointed, then he rode into Jerusalem and cleansed the temple. The reader can see that the scenes are related. Jesus needed followers in order to gain publicity. He could not wait tile he entered Jerusalem because he did not have many followers there and could easily be arrested (Jn 11:18); he had to collect his followers on the way up. Nothing could have served him better than the fame of the miracle of the raising of Lazarus (Jn 12:9, 11). Lazarus was the brother of Mary Magdalene who travelled around the country with him together with her sister and other women (Lk 8). The brother and the two sisters, the evangelist tells us, were loved by Jesus. Mary Magdalene, moreover, was the first person to whom Jesus appeared after he rose from the dead (Mk 16:9). Now let the reader make his judgment, taking the following passage into account:
Jn 11:15. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.

If he had said this to his disciples after he had visited Lazarus, they would not have believed that Lazarus was dead and Jesus was going to raise him. What follows from this?

Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick, but remains for two more days before paying attention to the sisters’ request (11:6). He must have known that he would be able to raise Lazarus from the dead. In that case why did he weep? (11:35).

Let it suffice that Jesus needed the reputation of a wonder worker for the propagation of his teaching. In order to make this easier he said ‘Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe’, and used every opportunity to draw attention to his prophetic power: Lk 10:18; Jn 1:48; 11:15, 48; 13:19; 14:29.

We must conclude that Jesus used jesuitical methods for the attainment of his ends: the end was to justify the means. But isn’t this a good maxim when the end is good? If a strong poison is needed to cure a disease, a milder one will not suffice. Do not doctors, teachers, nurses and parents obey the same maxim in the interests of their inexperienced, fearful or weak-headed patients?

The more ignorant the society, the more difficult it is to spread enlightenment among them, and the less choice of means there will be, and in certain cases it will be all the more necessary to resort to jesuitical methods. Such cases occur daily in every household. All forms of behaviour: which we call wrong or unlawful or sin or passion have as their purpose the attainment of a good end or the avoidance of a greater evil. Indeed there are occasions in human life when the failure to apply this maxim would be wrong, cases in which the individual or the society are subjected to great dangers and have no other way out.

There has been no great man, no teacher of the people, who has not been more or less obliged, in order to spread his doctrine, to mystify those of his hearers who could not understand him and from whose prejudices he has more to fear than to gain.

We christians know perfectly well how to explain the miracles of Mahommed. We say that the dove which spoke in Mahommed’s ear had been trained to eat out of his ear. We say the voice that cried out of the earth that Mahommed is a great prophet was a man hidden in a stream. Mahommed let him hide so that his deceit would not be discovered. The Jews said similar things about the apostles:
Mt 27:63. ‘Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.”
64. Therefore order the sepulcher to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, “He has risen from the dead” and the last fraud will be worse than the first.’

It appears that it is difficult to make a disappointed people happy without deceiving then, if they have grown up with rooted prejudices, errors and superstitions. Socrates himself said about the platonic state where all things were held in common:
We shall have to employ many means. Bodies which need no medicine may be served by a bad doctor, but if a doctor is needed he must be a good one. Our rulers will have to employ all kinds of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule.

So thought Socrates in Athens 350 years before Christ and in a more civilized society than the Jewish at the time of Christ. Should Jesus have been less familiar with the Jews than Socrates with the Athenians?

We may conclude from this chapter no more and no greater miracles were ascribed to Jesus in the bible than to others before him, in his own time and after him. They were even ascribed to him by people who did not believe in him and Jesus himself ascribed such power to his enemies. It follows that the signs and wonders of Jesus are of no great value. They cannot be for us a reason for honouring him. Even if he was the only miracle-worker of his time, what is that to us when today no one gets any benefit from them? What is that to us when people are helped here and there but not everyone? Only the doctrine that he taught can be of use to us if it is possible to put it into practice. If we want to try it, let us throw aside the shell with which it was necessary for a man teaching 1,800 years ago to cover the kernel of his doctrine, the food of faith in all subsequent centuries. Finally a number of texts which show that God is merciful even when we do not believe: Rom 11:30-32; 2 Tim 2:13; Jn 12:47.

3 Various Small Means which Jesus used to achieve his Purpose

If one wants to spread some news, one need only entrust it to a few people as a secret and under the seal of secrecy. One might pick out certain people who cannot keep their mouth shout, and then it will pass from ear to ear, under the seal of secrecy, as fire leaps through a whole town.

Jesus often commanded people to say nothing about his miracles: Mt 8:4; 9:30; 17:9; Mk 1:44-45; 3:12; 5:43; 7:36; 8:26; 9:9,30; Lk 8:56; 9:21, 36.

An exception to this is Mk 5:19.

When a man is questioned in court and avoids a straight yes or no, he is as slippery in the hands of his judges as an awl in the hands of a child. In an equally slippery way one can answer ‘you said it’ which can mean yes or no depending on the tone of voice. Jesus often gave such unclear replies: Mt 24:3, 4; 26:25; 27:11; Mk 15:2; Lk 22:70; Jn 8:25; 18:34, 37.

Further mysterious words and slippery answers are to be found in Mk 11:3 Lk 12:41; 17:37; Jn 8:25; 12:34; 13:28; 14:22; 16:18-31.

Jesus often taught in parables which even his disciples did not understand. When he was alone with them or with those of them he trusted best he explained the meaning.
Mk 4:34. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. (See also Mt 13:34.)

Why did he not explain to all his hearers these parables which he preached in public? Was not the explanation as necessary to the ignorant people as to his disciples? Jesus himself explains his practice as follows:
Mt 13:11. To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
12. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.(Mt 25:29; Mk 4:25; Lk 8:18.) Because verse 12 follows verse 11 and can only be understood by reference to it and forms one sentence with it, I translate as follows:
‘He who has understanding will understand these parables, and understand more about the purpose of my teaching than those who have no understanding and will only find the parables confusing.’
Mark puts it even more plainly:
Mk 4:10. And when he was alone, those who were about him with the twelve asked him concerning the parables.
11. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn again and be forgiven.’ (See Jn 9:39; 14:22-26.)

Here we clearly see the intention to deceive. But why deceive the people through parables?

In order to understand this we must try and imagine very clearly what things were like at that time. Among the people to whom he preached the parables, there were of course his enemies as well as his friends. With his intimate friends and followers of his teaching he did not need to speak in dark similitudes, but in the presence of his enemies it was necessary because they were ready to catch him out on his every word and either destroy his name with the people or charge him before the Jewish or Roman authorities.

Jesus had a revolutionary purpose, as we shall see in what follows. He wanted to overthrow the Roman and the priestly authority and institute a community of goods, and even of joy and suffering. He would not have needed to hide his teaching in parables if it had been about a kingdom of heaven in the sky. The Pharisees who knew very well what he was up to, tried to catch him out by their questions and put him in an impossible position, but Jesus always beat them.

 

4

PROOFS AND CONCLUSIONS

I Contradictions

In order to arrive at the pure teaching of Jesus, it is necessary to bring out the disputed contradictions in the new testament because they are what have caused the most confusion in the exposition of christian doctrine. Those contradictions which have already been pointed out by the opponents of christianity, will be more than doubled by me, trying to defend it. The philosophical atheists and anti-christians often set side by side the strange sayings in the bible and their own strange sayings. It never occurs to them to seek out the principle of Christ’s teaching. I find that their writings contain nearly as many contradictions and faulty arguments as the bible, and moreover do not even lift up our hearts. They are what Paul calls ‘the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge’.

I have found a power in the principles of the new testament, which all the contradictions are unable to weaken. As I am both pointing out the contradictions and defending the principles I am taking up arms against both philosophical and theological opponents and oblige them to find new weapons or lay down their old ones and respect the truth.

1 Jesus will judge all men:
Jn 5:22. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the son.
27. and has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man.
30. As I hear, I judge.
Jn 9:39. For judgment I came into this world, that that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.
Jesus will judge no one:
Jn 3:17. For God sent the Son into the world not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him.
Jn 12:47. If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.

2 Jesus eats with sinners:
Lk 15:2. This man receives sinners and eats with them. Paul forbids eating with sinners:
1 Cor 5:11. But rather I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or robber — not even to eat with such a one.

1 take this for a contradiction for according to my definition of the word ‘sinner’, no one can be guilty of immorality, greed, or be an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard or a robber without also being a sinner.

3 Jesus tells us to help people who are not of our faith! See the parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37).

John tells us to greet or entertain no one who is not of our faith (2 Jn 10:11).
Paul tells us to do good to all men5 especially those who are of the household of faith: Gal 6 :10.

4 John says All that is in the world is not of the Father but of the world (1 Jn 2:16).
John says all things and the nature of all things were created by God (Rev 4:11).

5 Paul tells us not to curse
Rom 12:14. Bless them that curse you. Bless and do not curse.
Paul curses
Gal 1:8. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.

6 Jesus tells us to rebuke a sinful brother privately:
Mt 18:15. If you brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
Paul tells us to rebuke the sinner openly:
1 Tim 5:20. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all.

7 John says: He who is from God does not sin (1 Jn 5:18; 3:9).
John says: We are from God (1 Jn 5:19; 4:6); therefore we do not sin.
John says: If we say we have not sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, we make God a liar (1Jn 1:8, 10).

8. Peter is hypocritical with Gentiles and Jews: Gal 2:11, 14 Acts 11:3.
Paul criticises him but behaves similarly: Acts 16:3; 21:20-26.

9 Jesus says that John the Baptist is Elijah: Mt 11:14; 17:11-13.
John the Baptist says he is not Elijah: Jn 1:21.

10 Jesus knows all things: Jn 16:30, 31.
Jesus does not know all things: Mk 13:32.

11 Jesus does not accept the witness of man: Jn 5:34. John the Baptist bears witness to Jesus: Jn 1:31-34; 3:26; Mt 17:9-13.
After John had openly borne witness to Jesus, he sent from prison to ask him whether he was the one who was to come or should we wait for another: Mt 11:3.

This last sentence itself contains a contradiction. John first proclaims Jesus as the Christ and later sends to him from prison to ask him whether it is true or should we wait for another. This is how I explain it: John in prison hoped that Jesus would soon organize a rising and sent this message to him hoping to remind him of it. It was also a reproach that nothing was happening. Moreover John testified to Jesus publicly and his question was for the private ear of Jesus and his disciples. This explanation also reinforces the theory that Jesus and John were members of the Essene brotherhood and had a secret understanding.

 

12 Jesus says: If I bear witness to myself then my witness is true (Jn 8:14).
Jesus says: If I bear witness to myself, then my witness is not true (Jn 5:31).

13 Jesus says to his disciples: ‘You will seek me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, Where I am going you cannot come’ (Jn 13:33).
Jesus also says to them: Whither I go you know, and the way you know (Jn 14:4).
Jesus also says to them: Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live you will live also. (Jn 14:19).
According to the last two sentences the disciples will not need to seek Jesus. If they see him, if they know where he is going and know the way there, why should they seek him? Do they not also know where he is going?

14 Jesus says that God leads us into temptation! (Mt 6:13).
Paul has the same opinion: 1 Cor 10:13.
James says on the other hand:
Jas 1:13. Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.

15 Paul on the kingdom of God:
1 Cor 15:50. I tell you this brethren; flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the
perishable inherit the imperishable.

 

16 Jesus on the kingdom of God:
Lk 22:29. That you may eat and drink at my table in the kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

17 Jesus says: his (God’s) form you have never seen: Jn 5:37.
Paul says: Jesus was in the form of God: Phil 2:6.

18. According to Paul the christian is not justified by works but through faith.
Rom 3:28. For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
According to James we are justified by works and not through faith alone:
Jas 2:24. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

19 According to Paul all authority is from God: Rom 13:1. According to Peter all authority is of the human order: 1 Pet 2:13.

20 According to Luke Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, showed them his hands and feet, let them touch him, but they did not know him or believe in him. Why not?
They did not believe him for joy. For joy of seeing him alive again, they did not believe that it was he! Lk 24:41. And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, ‘Have you anything to eat?’

 

21 Jesus says: Truly I say to you there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom (Mt 16:28).
The all died long ago but the kingdom has not arrived.

 
22 Peter says: When he was reviled he did not revue in return: 1 Pet 2:23.
Matthew and Mark say he reviled people even when they had not reviled him: Mt 15:26; 23:17, 19, 33.

Besides these contradictions there are many historical contradictions, which have been pointed out by other authors, but because they are historical and not doctrinal contradictions, they are not relevant to the proof of the christian doctrine. But our culture, which we call christendom, is today being shaken to its foundations by these historical contradictions. Why? Because the theologians and their opponents confuse christianity with the accretions which have for centuries surrounded
it. Both parties dispute about the shell and disregard the kernel of the nut. Because theologians have clothed their christianity in historical garments, it has not been difficult for their opponents to dig up historical contradictions. The theologians were incapable of presenting the doctrine itself without the trappings in which they had decked it. Their opponents could not do this either because they did not understand the principle or because they were afraid to see their knowledge put to shame in the face of its power and nobility. These debates between the theologians and the atheists were nothing but word battles, and no one knew what he was trying to prove.

The mistakes made by the theologians in their exposition of the christian doctrine are partly caused by the contradictions we have just discussed. I listed some of these contradictions in order to separate them from the doctrine itself which is to be discussed in the next section, and in order that ambiguities may be explained not in the light of further ambiguities, but in the light of the principle itself.

If we consider the contradictions listed above, we see that only five of them, 2, 3, 6, 15, 18 arise from any ambiguity in the principle itself. In the first four Jesus contradicts the apostles, and therefore it must be agreed that what Paul and John say here in contradiction to Jesus cannot be taken as christian doctrine. We must consider the teaching of Jesus itself and not the interpretations of the apostles. Thus we find in these four cases that there is no actual contradiction in the doctrine, for the doctrine comes from Jesus and he cannot be blamed for the apostles’ interpretations of it. In 18, two apostles are in disagreement about justice. They cannot agree whether man is justified by faith or works. Of course both are best. We need faith in justice so that we may not lack the courage to work for it. I will not try to decide the issue but leave it to the reader’s judgment — he has perhaps already decided against Paul.

The other contradictions are serious enough to shake the foundations of orthodox christianity, but do not affect the christian principle.

 

2 Ambiguities

 

‘Avoid the quarrelsome debates which are falsely called knowledge’, Paul says. But as he wrote this he must have forgotten that he was quite accomplished in this art himself. In his debates he is able to call life death, death life, sin righteousness, and perhaps even righteousness sin. He tries to affect his hearers by playing with words like a juggler, and so does John the evangelist. Both of them did a great deal to spread christianity, but I think it would have been better to have done nothing if they were incapable of speaking as radically and plainly as Jesus, John the Baptist and James. The few words that John the Baptist spoke could not be misunderstood by anybody and were not subject to contradictory explanations, unlike Paul who attracts the hypocrites and the good, the ignorant and the would-be learned to interpret him in countless ways without realizing what they are doing until they are completely lost. If one gives to words which are there for our understanding a quite different meaning and advises or encourages the reader to understand the words in this different way, then understanding is quite impossible and the result is confusion. The bible is as full of such ambiguities as the writings of many modern philosophers. I hoped to find a key in the new testament for the interpretation of some of the ambiguous words, but was unable to do so, which. is a pity when one tries to read John and Paul. The teaching of Jesus of course does not need the vocabulary of Paul, but I wanted to find as much of Paul’s writing as possible which was in agreement with it and with common sense. I did not do a great deal of work but this is what I found.
What is sin? Unrighteousness, wrongdoing, not using an opportunity to do good, that which does not proceed from faith: 1 Jn 3:4; 5:17; Js 4:17; Rom 14:23.

What is ‘subjected’? There are places in the bible where slaves are advised to obey their masters with fear and trembling. On the other hand I have found the following passage:
1 Cor 7:23. You were bought with a price; do not become the slaves of men.

What Paul recommends to slaves he also recommends to their masters, and if we take this literally it results in an equality between them. According to 1 Cor 16:15, 16 and 1 Pet 5:5, ‘subjected’ can only mean to be at peace with one another.
What does ‘rational’ mean? If christians took literally what Paul and John have to say about ‘reason’ and ‘rational’, none of them would possess reason any longer or even want to be rational. Col 1:21; 2:4, 8; Eph 3:19; 1 Cor 2:4; 1:18-28; 1 Jn 2:27; 1 Tim 6:20. These texts could harness the whole rational world against christianity. But Mark saves reason in the name of Jesus by one word:
Mk 12:34. And when Jesus saw that he answered rationally he said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’
What does ‘tempt’ mean? This word is usually used in the bible to mean to lead astray, or to seduce. But in Jn 6:6. it also used to mean ‘put to the test’. In Acts 15:6 in the lutheran translation I find ‘examine’ instead of ‘test’.

3 Strange and Difficult Phrases and Ideas

They are numerous. I quote only a few.

Acts 2:40 can be read as Peter recommending the apostles as ‘low bred’ men to those who had come to be baptised.
According to Jn 11:33, 38 Jesus became angry at the death of Lazarus.
Rom 8:10. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness.
1 Cor 15:31. I die daily.

In this category I also put the whole of the book of Revelation. What can be understood from it is not worth the trouble of keeping and can be easily replaced by other books in the new testament.

 

5

 

GOD, JESUS, THE APOSTLES AND WE ARE ALL ONE

I The Nature of the Birth of Jesus

The spirit of man, whether or not it knows the truth, enjoys deceiving itself or letting itself be deceived by fantasies. What it cannot discover by its knowledge it seeks to supply by fantasy, what it is not sure off in reality it tries to imagine. Because these fantasies are so powerfiul and have such strong influence on behaviour they have always been exploited for certain ends. They have even been used to the detriment of understanding by people who have presented them as the truth and their origin and consequences as incomprehensible truths.

In order to enhance the reputation and increase the power of exceptional men, people ascribed to them
knowledge and power far greater than that of their society and turned them into ‘supernatural’ beings,
gods.

Zoroaster, Perseus, Castor and Pollux, Alexander the Great, Romulus and many others were given super natural origins.

Jesus came at a time when the dominant Roman and Greek culture filled people’s thoughts, politics, history, religion, patriotism, domestic life, spiritual and physical being and everything. else that was important to them with splendid gods and supernatural occurrences. Which makes it easy to understand why Jesus himself had to have a supernatural origin.

Jesus was born in accordance with the angel’s annunciation. This happened to other men in the bible, such as Samson, Jude 13; John the Baptist, Lk 1:8, 13; Samuel, after a prayer, 1 Sam 1.

Jesus was born of a virgin just as the Chinese emperor Kienlong was bom of a pure virgin.

Jesus was said to be the second person of the Trinity. Vishnu, the second person of the Indian Trinity was also born of a virgin and worked a similar redemption.

Jesus came to save mankind and was boen at the end of December in a stable among oxen and asses.

Ormuzd charged her first-born son Mithras to save mankind and he was born at the end of December of a pure virgin in a stable among oxen and asses.

We see clearly that christianity continues the traditions of the pagan religions that came before it.

The bible represents Jesus as the Son of God by describing his birth from a virgin overshadowed by the power of the Holy Ghost. It also says that in his humanity he is a son of David. In this case it would have been better to trace his ancestry back to David through Mary and not through Joseph. Otherwise it sounds as if the seed of Joseph was necessary to his descent from David.

According to Rom 1:3 this must be taken literally and Joseph taken as the natural father of Jesus: concerning his Son who was descended from David according to the flesh.

It is impossible to make sense of this unless it is taken literally. The theologians quote against such plain evidence texts which are much less plain. Here is one which may be of use to them:
Rom 9:8. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God but the children of the promise are reckoned as descendants.

Has such a sentence any other purpose than to confuse us? What value can it have when it seeks to prove that we have this or that fantastic lineage? This may have been interesting to the Jews and Greeks of 1,800 years ago but what interest can it possibly have for us? The descent of Joseph from David is furthermore extremely doubtful because Matthew and Mark contradict each other and give Joseph a different father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

Jesus himself explains what we are to think of the miracles which mystify his birth. In Jn 3 he says to Nicodemus: He who is not born again cannot enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus does not understand him. Jesus explains. He who is not born of water and the spirit cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6. What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the spirit is spirit.

Consequently no one can be born of the spirit who has not already been born of the flesh. ‘To be born of the spirit’ is an expression which simply means arriving at insight, understanding and wisdom.

 

2 How the Apostles Understand the Relationship Between Jesus and God

1 Cor 3:23. We are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.

1 Cor 11:3. Christ is our head and God is the head of Christ.
Eph 1:3. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Eph 1:17. The God of our Lord Jesus.
1 Pet 1:21. Through him we believed in God.
Heb 3:2-4. He was faithful to him who appointed him.

Heb 9:24. He appears in God’s presence for us.

Consequently God and Christ are different. God is the head, the father and the God of Christ. God made Christ and Christ appears in God’s presence for us. Christ is not God but subordinate to him as we are.
1 Cor 15:28. When all things are subjected to him then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone.

The apostles therefore did not think Jesus was perfect.
Phil 2:8, 9. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him.
Heb 1:4. He has become superior to the angels.
Heb 5:8, 9. Although he was a Son he learned obedience through what he suffered, and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation.

Heb 2:10. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.
1 Cor 1:27, 28. God has chosen the foolish.
Rom 8:3. Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh.
Jesus began imperfect, disobedient and foolish. The prophecy of Isaiah which referred to Jesus corroborates this opinion.
Is 7:16. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you stand in dread will be deserted.

God is said to be almighty, omniscient, all-wise, all-good and all-just. In this case Jesus in his lifetime was not God.

He was not almighty because he gave his disciples the power to cast out devils and they still could not do it: Lk 9:40. The Pharisees silenced him, that is he did not know how to answer them: Lk 11:53.

He was not omniscient or he would have known about the Copernican system and would not have said that the sun, the moon and the stars would fall from heaven. He would have known when the last day was to come: Mk 13:32.

He was not all-wise or he would not have cursed the fig tree for bearing no fruit when it was not the season for figs.

He was not all good or he would not have snapped at his mother: Woman what have I to do with thee? Jn 2:4. Or he would have taken the man with him from whom he had cast out the devils into the herd of swine and who begged to go with him: Lk 8. He would not have been so angry with Peter (Mt 16:23) and the Pharisees.

He was not all just or he would not have forbidden the disciples to go into the lands of the heathens and Samaritans (Mt 15:24, 27).

Jesus is called ‘God’ only three times in the bible, whereas he is called the Son of Man’ about forty times and four times ‘the man Jesus Christ’: Mt 9:8; Rom 5:15; 1 Tim 2:5; 1 Cor 15-21.

3 How Jesus Understands the Relationship between Himself and God

Jn 14:28. The Father is greater than 1.
Mk 10:18. No one is good but God alone.
Jn 7:16, 17. ‘My teaching is not mine but his who sent me. If any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
Jn 5:30. I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.’

This is so clear that it needs no explanation.

4 We too can be Without Sin

Rom 5:8. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

Rom 6:11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
1 Jn 5:18. He who is born of God does not sin.

1 Jn 3:9. He who is born of God cannot sin.

5 We too can be Children of God

Rom 8:14. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
Gal 3:26. Through faith in Jesus we are children of God.
Before Christ the Jews already called God their father: Jn 11:52; 8:41; Hos 1:10.
We are called children of God in the new testament: Mt 5:16, 48; 6:14, 15; 18:14; Jn 1:12, 13; Rom 8:16, 21; 1 Pet 1:14; 1 Jn 3:1.

If we are called children of God we can also be called sons and daughters of God and every man be called the son of God. But although the expression means exactly the same as ‘child of God’ it has to be used more carefully. One has to be cautious when one is dealing with people full of prejudice and passion. One can tell them everything but must be careful how one puts it.
Jesus said to the Jews:
Jn 10:30. I and the Father are one.

This caused a great scandal. People thought he was himself claiming to be God. But Jesus explains:
34. Is it not written in your law, ‘I said you are gods?’
35. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken),

36. do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world ‘You are blaspheming’ because I said ‘I am the son of God’.

Indeed if the word ‘gods’ is used of all the Jews then each single Jew is entitled to call himself God, and Son of God if we are all called children of God. But we do not find that Jesus called himself God.

6 We can become like God and Christ

From the above we. see that the name ‘God’ in the bible is not reserved for one being alone. In those days people made other people gods as today they make them kings, ministers, etc. At the time of the apostles this custom was at its height:
Acts 12:22; 14:11, 12; 17:28, 29; 28:6; 2 Thess 2:4; Acts 1:28, 29 calls men ‘divine’. We can become exactly like Christ: Rom 8:17, 29, 30, 32; 1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 6:17.
Jesus says:
Jn 17:22. The glory which thou has given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. Mt 5:48. You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Mt I9:21. If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

 

6

THE PURE TEACH1NG OF JESUS

I The Principle of the Christian Community

 

(i) The gospel is preached to the poor
Repent, become better people, unite. The promised Messiah is coming. The kingdom of heaven, the best kingdom on earth, the most perfect society, the victory of the poor and oppressed, the overthrow of the rich and the oppressors is at hand.

This was the earliest preaching that Jesus and John offered the people.
Lk 4:18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.
Lk 6:20. Blessed are you poor for yours is the kingdom of God.
21. Blessed are you that hunger now for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now for you shall laugh.
24. But woe to you that are rich for you have received your consolation.
Jas 2:5. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him. But you have dishonoured the poor man. It is not the rich who oppress you, is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme that honourable name by which you are called?
Js 5:1. Come now, you rich, weep and how! for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have killed the righteous man; he does not resist you. Be patient therefore brethren until the coming of the Lord.

(ii) Christian freedom and equality
Mt 23:11. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;
12. whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 14:11).
Lk 7:28. I tell you among those born of women none is greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

Jesus means by this last sentence that in the kingdom of God everyone will be equally important, and he who wants to earn more respect cannot do it by arrogance, envy or pride but by humbling himself in the lowest place. Thus he would escape the envy, illwill and pride of others more easily and be loved and honoured for his modesty. This comes out even more clearly in the following passage:
Lk 14:8. When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast, do not sit down in the place of honour, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend go up higher’; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at table with you.

In the kingdom of God he who serves others the most is the most honourable, he who submits to others and is most humble, that is to say he who best fulfills the principle of loving our friends and our enemies. However, in the kingdom all brothers and sisters are equal. No one is above or below anyone else.
Mt 20:25. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.
26. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant,
27. and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.
Mt 23:8. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. See Mk
10:45, 46; Lk 22:24, 27.

Lk 12:37. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes; truly I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table and he will come and serve them. (This verse contradicts what in Lk 17:7-9 might be thought to uphold a system of inequality. See also Lk 22:27.)
Jas 1:9. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation 10. and the rich in his humiliation.
Gal 5:13. For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
1 Cor 8:9. Only take care lest this liberty become a stumbling block to the weak.
Jas 1:25. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.
Col 4:1. Masters treat your slaves justly and fairly. 1 Cor 7:21. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.
Gal 3:28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (See Col 3:11.)
1 Cor 7:23. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.

(iii) Not faith alone, but above all action is necessary to the kingdom of God
Mt 7:21. Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

Jas 2:14. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save film? If a brother.or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

(iv) Equal responsibilities and duties
Mt 7:12. So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
Lk 22:27. For which is the greater, one who sits at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves.
Jn 13:8. Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.’
Gal 6:2. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

(v) Abolition of property and community of goods
It was the abolition of property, the necessary condition for putting the teaching of Jesus into practice, which made its open proclamation and propagation so difficult. It was in the interests of Romans and Jews, priests, levites and sadducees to suppress such a doctrine.

The rich in those days were strong enough to overcome opposition to their interests. They fought for their property savagely. Four hundred years before Christ Mazdak in Persia had won the king over to this doctrine but it was repudiated by the crown princes who banished its teachers from Persia amid streams of blood. The same thing happened to the disciples of Pythagoras in Italy.

These forces are at work in our society today and the parsons use the same weapons. They confuse us by interpreting all passages in favour of this doctrine in a false and meaningless way. But could the abolition of property be more plainly advocated than in these many passages? Don’t they become nonsense unless this is their meaning? Judge for yourselves:
Lk 14:33. Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Lk 18:29. There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God
30. who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.

Let us note this last passage carefully. It is unambiguous. Jesus speaks of this time and of the future and says plainly that whatever a man renounces will be replaced manifold in this time. But only with an economic system in which work is done and goods are held in common is it possible so to raise the general standard that each man has more freedom and enjoyment and less worries than he had when he had his own houses, money and possessions.

To the rich young man who had kept all the commandments from his youth and asked what more he should do, Jesus said:
Lk 18:22. One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.
23. But when he heard this he became sad, for he was very rich.
24. Jesus looking at him said, ‘How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!
25. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’
See also Mt 19:16-30; Mk 6:8, 10; Mt 6:25, 33, 34; Mk 10:17-30; 12:28-34; Lk 10:7, 8, 25, 28, 37;
14:7, 15; Jn 15:12.
Rom 12:4. For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.
1 Cor 10:24. Let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbour.

We learn that the early christians really behaved in this way from the following:
Acts 2:44. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
45. and they sold their possessions and goods and dis tribute them all, as any had need.
Acts 4:32. Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.
34. There was not a needy person among them for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.

He who withheld his money was regarded as a thief from the community.
Acts 5:1. But a man named Ananias with his wife Sapphira sold a piece of property,
2. and with his wife’s knowledge kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
3. But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land?’

That is to say that everything that a christian keeps back for himself and does not give to the community, he has stolen from the community. We have an even stronger proof of this in the following: Lk 6:35. But love your enemies and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return.

If a christian may not exact interest, then investment is not possible. Without interest the capitalist would have to work or go hungry in spite of his capital. In the fourth century certain money lenders did not take money but goods as interest. St Ambrose said, you should take nothing, whether you take money or goods it is still usury.

Now, you capitalists. You are like the Slovaks whose clothes are greasy with bacon and they never wash or change them but let them grow foul on their bodies. They do not know the pleasure of washing themselves clean and you do not know the pleasure of a clean conscience. Because both right reason and the teaching of Christ give you a bad conscience those with a good conscience have the less to fear from you. Without christianity and the enlightenment you could oppose the abolition of property as mothers once opposed vaccination against smallpox.

You know the will of your Lord but be careful when you ask him, ‘Lord what must I do to enter the kingdom of God’, and he answers, ‘share your goods with the poor’, that you do not hang your head like the rich young man. Our society is like a shipwreck in which each man tries to grasp a plank in the wild waters and is glad when he sees his neighbour perishing and would even refuse to get in the same boat with him which would save them all.

How hard it is for the rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Our pastors know this well and have turned the needle’s eye into a barn door. The camel bucks a bit before the pastor’s great work and rushes in with God’s old cob.

(vi) Abolition of inheritance
Lk 12:13. One of the multitude said to him, ‘Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me.’
14. But he said to him,, who made me a judge and divider over you?’

We see from this how wrong the people were about the teaching of Jesus. They asked a man who taught the community of goods to be bothered with the division of an inheritance between two brothers and to judge between them.
15. And he said to them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’

Even today many people do not understand this, they are so obsessed with money. Of course one can live on money, and live well, one need not even work. Strange! Money and goods are dead things which do not work, yet someone has to work. Money has to be made by someone. It follows that no one can live on his money without working for it or depriving someone else of the fruits of his labour. If he says he can he is either ignorant or a deceiver. The ignorant man does not see that money is only a means of depriving the poor of some of his power by making him work for others without being aware of it. The deceiver knows this but takes care to maintain the poor in their blindness so that he may rest. No one lives on his money without other people’s work.

He who has much money and many goods has many means of making others work for him and himself work less or live better than they. Goods are privileges for which we poor sinners must pay the price. The handing on of this unholy and unchristian state of affairs from father to son is called ‘inheritance’, We should inherit from no one but we should ensure that our neighbours inherit the fair earth with all its fine buildings and wealth in common. Let there be no inheritors who live by deceit; they would do better to spend their time helping their wives with the washing and cooking.

(vii) Abolition of money
Poor sinner, take your dearest coin in your hands and consider the number of different things you can buy with it. Consider how many working hours this coin represents and you will find that it sometimes pays for a month’s work and sometimes for scarcely half an hour.

You will find that without it you cannot obtain the necessaries of life. If you have no money you must die, and in order to get money you must fulfill the conditions of those who have it. All who have to live by their work must agree to the conditions of those who pay for their work, although these are for the most part idle men who understand nothing of the work and are only exploiting the workers to enrich themselves. Every monetary system has become a permitted means of deceit and robbery. Things have gone so far that it occurs to no one that by money, the so-called justly earned income, he can deceive others or be deceived by them. First money must be abolished and a system of exchange introduced which makes robbery and deceit impossible.

Money can only be harmless in a christian society in which people own things in common, do not rob and deceive each other and need neither police nor judges. A society which has not reached this happy level must abolish money or surrender it to serve the above purposes.

Jesus of course did not positively say that money must be abolished. He said we should not store it up, or carry it with us or refuse it to those in need:
Mt 10:9. Take no gold nor silver nor copper in your belts.
Mt 6:19. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.

Mt 6:24. No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

But in our present society where few of these principles are obeyed, it is impossible for the poor to obey them because they must have money for their daily life, and the rich refuse to obey them, and nothing is changed. Even the disciples could not obey them literally; one of them had to carry the common purse containing what they had collected and what they had been given to pay for their common needs.
Jn 12:6. He was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it.

And so as long as the money system remains we remain more or less slaves to it. Blessed is the man — whether fate has made him the slave or the possessor of money — who does not give up trying, like a wise child of the world, to act in accordance with christian principles.

(viii) The family
Jesus’ concept of the community of mankind involved the abolition of the family. He denied the family and expected his disciples to do likewise. He did not allow anyone who wished to follow him to take leave of his parents. To a man who first wished to bury his father he said ‘Let the dead bury their dead’.

Once when Jesus sat in a house and was told that his mother and his brothers were looking for him, he said:

Mk 3:33. Who are my mother and my brothers?
34. And looking around on those who sat about him he said, Here are my mother and my brothers.
35. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
And he taught his disciples:
Mt 23:9. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven.

This string denial of the family is probably based on Jesus’ own family experiences. He was the illegitimate child of a poor girl, Mary, and according to the prejudices of his time, people despised him. Joseph the carpenter had not succeeded in removing the stain by marrying Mary, the people persisted in their attitude. Jesus probably heard many unkind remarks. It is therefore not surprising that as a fatherless waif he preferred to call himself a child of God rather than a child of Joseph, which prejudice had made into something shameful.

Jesus sacrificed the bonds of the family to the principle of community. What must be have suffered before reaching such a conclusion? What feelings of pain and joy, hatred and love before he went thus far? Surely there must be interesting stories about Jesus at the age of eighteen which are lost to us.

Jesus attacked the family, and we too want to attack it, but only the family which is held together by financial interest, inheritance and common gain, the family which is a socially disreputable herd, beset with prejudices which they pass on to their children and propagate from generation to generation. It is a herd which is bound together by self-interest and inheritance against a common enemy. It needs neither love for friendship, which is what constitutes the true family.

These are the families we should found and love more than ourselves, but we should value the family of mankind even more than our individual families.

If property was abolished, family and marital relations would improve. Now because the man is solely responsible for the support and future of his family, the wife is still partly the property of the man. Whether she loves him or not she is obliged to stay with him for financial reasons, if she has no other means of feeding her family and nowhere else to go. The man can count on her fidelity because he considers himself responsible for the support of his own children alone. But this would cease with the abolition of property. Whether a couple has ten children or none, whether a woman has twenty husbands or just the one, the children would be treated alike. Society should care for the raising of all children, without depriving the parents of their rights. No one would be obliged to remain with a partner he or she no longer loved for purely financial reasons. Marriages would not be held together by self-interest but by love and friendship. People who are morally or physically incompatible would not have to persevere in a marriage of quarrels, lies and deceit, poisoning both of their lives. Now nearly all marriages are made out of self-interest, but in a true community chis would not happen. Now people swear a hypocritical fidelity before the altar, then they would not swear at all. Jesus says with respect to marriage:

Mt 5:34. I say to you, Do not swear at all.
37. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

When love and friendship and not self-interest bind hearts together, when the woman has a freedom equal to the man’s and has security for herself and her children, when she is no longer obliged to live with a man whom she does not love, or kept from living with a man womb she does love, there will be no more illegitimate children. All children will be legitimate, even though the mother recognized no other father but God or the Holy Ghost. The woman will be proud at her first conception and none will need to be ashamed of it. The man will take pleasure in hearing her name him the father, whereas now he often regards it as a calamity.

People will no longer seek to satisfy their passions in unnatural ways, which according to some famous doctors happens almost universally, especially among women, at least those who are too old to find a husband. There will be more enjoyment and less dissipation. When a love relationship is shameful to the world this is usually because of the concept of property. But the christian who is free of such prejudices should take no notice of the world. He cannot do so without casting a slur on the mother of Jesus and on Jesus’ ancestry. Matthew mentions four women in his account of the descent of Jesus, Tamar, who seduced the father of her dead husbands, Rahab a prostitute, Ruth who won the heart of her cousin by creeping into his room at night, and Bathshebah the adulteress, Uriah’s wife.
Jesus speaks plainly enough about marriage. In

Mark 10; 11, 12 and Luke 16:18 he calls every divorce an adultery, and even calls it adultery to give an adulterer his freedom. According to Mt 19:9 every divorce is justified by adultery and in Mt 5:27, 28 Jesus calls every desire for another woman an adultery. Therefore every marriage consists of a pair of adulterers and contains grounds for divorce. The disciples said:
Mt 19:10. If such is the case of a man with his wife it is not expedient to marry.
11. But he said to them, ‘Not all men can receive this precept but only those to whom it is given.’

This proves clearly that Jesus did not think the disciples yet capable of understanding his teaching en marriage. He chose rather to leave the disciples — some of whom were married — in ignorance than to risk arousing their wildest suspicions.

Let us also remember that Jesus was unwilling to condemn the woman taken in adultery any more than any other transgressor and that he himself and many of the apostles had friendly relations with the opposite sex (Jn 11:5). So this unclear part of the teaching of Jesus agrees with the rest. But the application of a principle must be tactically different during the period of transition from when the time comes to introduce it fully. This is what causes so many mistakes when the practical application of a principle has not been fully worked out. Paul speaks about marriage in 1 Cor 7.
Among other things we find:
1 Cor 7:1. It is well for a man not to touch a woman.
2 But because of the temptation to immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

This chapter is full of truths and contradictions and each man must judge it for himself. In the early days of christianity various. christian sects even abolished marriage altogether and held everything in common, even bodily love. These sects were the Simonians, the Nicolaitans, the Carpocratians, the followers of Basilides and the Marcionites and others who were called Gnostics.

The ideas of women in common and the freedom of women were constantly confused. When women were held in common they were regarded as a herd over which each man had rights. This state, in which men are privileged, must be distinguished from that in which the, woman has equal rights with men in all her capacities and needs.

(ix) The love feast
Of course it no longer exists. But patience, poor sinners, it must come again. We must have tables loaded again with Easter meat, bread, and wine and sit down to them with our women and children. There must be no more Lazaruses who hungrily collect the scraps which fall from the rich man’s table.

You modern christians, you give us little bits of bread and little offerings but you will not even let us dip our fingers in the pan that cooked your meat. You give us a sip of wine or none at all while you go home and live it up. This is the way to make the love feast a pretense and to keep the reality from your poor brothers.

The Copts in Egypt and the Abyssinians, who were christians long before you, do not give offerings instead of a supper. The supper with. them is a common meal in church, at which bread and wine are eaten and drunk in the ordinary way, unlike the mass at which the people are spectators who smoke during the show and clap when it’s over.

The first supper was not like that. The apostles came together to eat and drink because they were hungry and thirsty, and after the death of Jesus they came together to remember him by a meal. Even with the early christians there were disruptions at the supper, which nearly always happens in societies which are not used to orderly behaviour. Paul tried to correct the evil by ordering no one to begin eating and drinking until everyone had arrived, so that some would not be full and drunk and others hungry and thirsty. Anyone who could not wait that long ought to eat and drink something beforehand at home.
1 Cor 11:21. For in eating each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk.

22. What! do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No I will not.
33. So then my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—
34. if any one is hungry, let him eat at home.
‘Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing’ means despise those who come late and whose bread you have eaten up and wine you have drunk.

Paul’s rules for the love feast are simply the rules which should be learnt by all rude people who are invited out to dinner. We can also apply them to a love feast today, without making an empty ceremony of it to shame the poor.

All this must be changed and the love feast restored. We will no longer celebrate it with downcast eyes and on our knees, but round a table with an Easter lamb, bread and wine, milk, potatoes, meat and flesh. We will enjoy it together and share with one another.

Don’t you agree, poor sinners, that would be a splendid Easter feast. But the crucified and the oppressed must first rise from the grave of deception and lies. Come out of your dark holes. The love feast is ready, the great table is laid. Come and celebrate the morning of the resurrection.

The night is dark and gloomy and our hearts are heavy and afraid, but why must our gaze rest on the darkness when beyond the fog it is already beginning to dawn.

The sorrowful clouds that lay over us are dispersing after the long storm and the light grows rosy. Get up you sleepers. Already the cock has crowed three times. How much longer will you lie abed denying your salvation?

2 Love of Enemies

When we share our burdens and our joys, when goods are held in common, a necessary condition for a truly human life, all those crimes relating to money and property will no longer exist. When we have introduced a means of exchanged which makes robbery and deceit impossible, when we have reformed the vote and our parliament, the remaining human passions of hatred, anger and impure love will not be able to do such very great damage.

How should we set about it? Build prisons? Make laws? Make police and judges and thus ten evils out of one and ten burdens out of one? Certainly not. Society must be conducted so that wrongdoers are treated as sick men needing help. Our customs and morals make it hard for us to see things in this way, even though it is the right way. We do not now regard a drunken man, or a feverish man, or a very stupid man or a psychologically disturbed man as responsible for his actions. But every thoughtless action we live to regret is irrational. Of course we seek to justify ourselves. But if our enemy whom we have injured does us good in secret, so that no one sees our shame, we may repent. This is the christian teaching of love for our enemies, and it involves regarding evil-doing as sickness and treating it as such. Scorn, shame and punishment are in direct opposition to the christian teaching.

The command to love our neighbours includes of course the command to love our enemies, but Jesus mentioned love of our enemies in particular so that love of our neighbours would not be limited by evil passions.
Mt 5:43. You have heard that it was said to you, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’
44. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (See Lk 6:27-35.) For the commandment to love in general see also Mt 6:2; 22:36-40;Lk 7:41, 42; 11:4; 1 Cor 13:1-10; 16:14; Col 3:14.

The Jews regarded certain sick people as sinners. This also happens today. ‘God has marked the man. It is God’s punishment’, can still be heard in catholic and protestant countries. Prejudice regarded the sick as sinners, whereas it should be the other way round.

Plenty has been done and written in eighteen hundred years; christian truths have often been misunderstood and distorted. I have said nothing new in saying that criminals are sick; Jesus says:
Mk 2:17. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

He compared sinners to the sick and commanded us to love them, which of course would be impossible if we did not regard them as sick and treated them with patience and sympathy. If the christian does not regard crime as sickness how can he understand this passage? Mt 5:39. But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other one also. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

If sin is sickness, the forgiveness of sins is healing. If sickness and sin go together, so do recovery and forgiveness. Mt 9:2; Mk 2:5; Jn :14.
Jas 5:16. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.
Paul describes the workings of passion:
Rom 7:14-25. I am carnal, sold under sin, etc.

I ‘hat is to say, ‘I do not know what I do, for I do not do what I want but what I hate. It is not I that do it but the sin which dwells in me. I know that in my flesh nothing good dwells. I have the will but not the ability to do good. The good that I want I do not do and the evil I do not want I do. But if I do what I do not want it is not I that do it but the sin that dwells in me. So I find that although I want to do good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self. But I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.’

Paul is also regarding sin as a sickness here. But when sin is regarded as sickness the law which exists to punish it becomes useless and damaging. Paul proves that the law requires sin. Rom 3:19, 21, 25, 26, 28; 1:13 7:6-9, 13; 1 Cor 1:56; 2 Cor 3:7, 9.
Rom 4:15. For the law brings wrath but where there is no law there is no transgression.

The law of Christ has abolished the law.
Gal 4:1-5; 5:1, 4, 5; Eph 2:14, 15; Col 1:13, 14; 2:14, 15, 20, 21; Rom 10:4.
Christ put grace and forgiveness in the place of laws and punishment: Rom 4:5, 7, 8; 5:20, 21; 9:31, 32; Gal 2:16, 21; 3:10, 11, 23; Heb 7:19.
Gal 3:24. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.

If sin and transgression are actions which our calm reason cannot approve because they will not serve our welfare or that of other people, then we should refrain from judging and blaming other wrongdoers. Lk 6:37, 41, 42; Jas 4:12; Rom 14:10, 13; But he who judges will be judged himself. Mt 7:1-5 26:52; Rev 13:10.

This is how the christian should behave with his erring brother:
Mt 18:15. If your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you then you have gained your brother.
16. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of one or two witnesses.
17. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (People whose company must be avoided.)
21. Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?
22. Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times but seventy times seven.’
Mk 11:25. And when you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
26. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
Rom 14:13. Then let us no more pass judgment on one another but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

Gal 6:1. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

2. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Col 3:13. Forbearing one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so. you also must forgive.
2. Cor 5:18. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
See also 1 Cor 6:1-8; Lk 17:3, 4.

Christians should not punish each other. If a man is incorrigible he can be expelled from the christian community.
Mt 18:17. If he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
1 Cor 5:13. Drive out the wicked person from among you.
2 Thess 3:14. If any man refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.
See Mt 25:32, 33.
All the punishments threatened in the new testament are concerned with the last judgment and not this life.

The christian has no judge save Christ. Acts 10:42; 2 Cor :10.

This Christ who judges and punishes us will come with clouds on the last day: Mt 26:64; Mk 8:38;
13:26, 27; Lk 21:27.

He comes in this way to judge us: Mt 16:27; 24:30; 25:31-46; 2 Thess 1:7,9.

We shall have to give an account of ourselves to him:
Mt 12:36, 41, 42; Lk 11:31, 32; Mt 6:15.

The bad will be meted out fearful punishments:
Mt 3:12; 5:22; 10:15; 11:22-24; Mk 6:11; Lk 3:17; 10:12-15; 12:5; 2 Pet 2:9.

They will suffer in body and soul. Mt 5:30; 10:28; Mk 9:45, 48.

The first christians expected the last judgment to come during their lifetime.
Mk 9:1. There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.

John the Evangelist says nothing about the last judgment. What he has to say about judgment and punishment makes the final judgment look quite different. Jn 3:17. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
18. He who believe in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already.
19. And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Jn 16:7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away the Counsellor will not come to you, but if I go I will send him to you.
8. And when he comes he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.

So according to John it is the Holy Ghost who will conduct the last judgment. John calls him light and comforter.

John’s opinion is what we would now consider the most appropriate. It comes to the same whether we regard our conscience or sound reason as our judge.

Whether it is the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, God, reason, or conscience or whatever that will judge us, this does not alter the teaching of Christ. The main point is that christians should not judge and punish each other, or recognize any judge or judgment amongst themselves. The christian should be subject to no law and no judge but the law of Christ. On this all the texts are agreed.

In our society laws and punishments are directed against offenders as enemies, but christians are supposed to love their enemies, that is to say not to punish them hut to make them better, heal them and do them good,, removing the causes which make them revolt against the established order. That is what we should do.

We say now, do not offend against anyone so that you will not be punished by anyone. But Christ taught ‘judge no one so that no one will judge you’.

We see the principle of reconciliation in action in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke is) and the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8). This principle should govern our actions, not judgment and punishment. The worst offence should be brought before the community and the worst punishment should be to treat the hardened offender as a heathen and a tax collector, that is to break off relations with him. But Jesus did not even follow this strictly, for as we know he went about with tax collectors and Gentiles and sinners.