Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.5 The Character of Discipleship
form of the saying, and the same teaching seems to have influenced the formulation
of 1 Cor. 4.12 and 1 Pet. 3.9. 193 It is Jesus, then, who is recalled in the tradition
(Q?), drawn on and elaborated by Matthew and Luke, as extending the
love command to a hitherto unheard-of application. 194 No more here than before
is there any cause to attribute such teaching to some unknown disciple of
immense influence. 195 It is because it was Jesus who is remembered as so teaching,
and probably only because it was him, that the teaching has been preserved.
196 In this instance above all we catch a glimpse of how radically Jesus
was prepared to press a different motivation and ideal for community and for
discipleship under pressure. And not just as an individualistic ethic, 197 but as a
breaking through of a concept of neighbour love determined primarily by covenant
faithfulness. 198 Love should be the first and the final criterion for conduct
193. Details in my Romans 745. Note also P.Oxy. 1224 (Aland, Synopsis 84). Further
echoes and allusions, as well as OT anticipations, are suggested by Davies and Allison, Matthew
1.551-53, though they have no doubt that 'Love your enemies' was 'undoubtedly the invention
of Jesus' own mind' (552). See also J. Piper, 'Love your Enemies': Jesus' Love Command
in the Synoptic Gospels and the Early Christian Paraenesis (SNTSMS 38; Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1979) 19-65; Fitzmyer, Luke 637-38; Guelich, Sermon on the Mount
224-29, 252-55; McKnight, New Vision 206-10, 218-24.
194. It is frequently noted that the Qumran covenanters were bidden to 'hate all the sons
of darkness' (1QS 1.10-11) (e.g., Furnish, Love Command 46-47; Charlesworth, Jesus 74; further
details in Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.549-50). But W. Klassen suggests that the double
counsel, 'Be good to (or love) your friends and hate your enemies', was widespread in the ancient
world, so that it is unnecessary to look for a specific reference ('"Love Your Enemies":
Some Reflections on the Current Status of Research', in W. M. Swartley, ed., The Love of Enemy
and Nonretaliation in the New Testament [Louisville: Westminster, 1992] 1-31 [here 12]).
See further Betz, Sermon on the Mount 301-13.
195. The Jesus Seminar had no doubts that 'Love your enemies' is close to the heart of
Jesus' teaching (as also Bultmann, History 105) and were positive in their judgment regarding
Matt. 5.45b-46/Luke 6.32, but returned a negative verdict on Matt. 5.44b/Luke 6.28, despite the
parallels in Romans and Didache (Funk, Five Gospels 145-47, 291-97). Lüdemann is even
more robust in his affirmation of the authenticity of Matt. 5.44a, since 'it was evaded in primitive
Christianity' (Jesus 144). See also Holmen, Jesus 258-72. The nearest parallel outside Jewish
tradition is Epictetus 3.22.53-54: the Cynic 'must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he
is being flogged he must love those who flog him . . .'; less close parallels in Downing, Christ
and the Cynics 23-25; Vaage, Galilean Upstarts 47-50.
196. 'It is Jesus' commandment to love the enemy which most of all sets his ethic of love
apart from other "love ethics" of antiquity' (Furnish, Love Command 66).
197. 'Love of enemies is not the high point of universal love of humanity, but the high
point of overcoming of self, the surrender of one's own claim' (Bultmann, Jesus and the Word
112).
198. Jesus 'brings together the terms love and enemy not to expand the circle of those
whom one is to love, but to move away from that kind of thinking to a totally new orientation of
love' — so Becker, Jesus 255, but he presses this over-dialectically (and sermonically) into a
587