Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.9 The Character of Discipleship
amounts to no blueprint for a complete social order, such as one might construct
from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The social divisions and economic hardship of the
time are regularly reflected in the Jesus tradition. The rich are strongly counselled
to beware of the dangers their wealth brings and to give willingly to the
poor. But Jesus is not recalled as putting forward economic policies to reconstruct
society and make it more just. Conversely, however, Jesus himself neither
withdrew from 'society' nor encouraged his disciples to do so. We have noticed
more than once that Jesus' teaching and conduct indicate considerable involvement
in society. 298 Nor are there any grounds in Jesus' teaching for a clear distinction
between private and public morality. On the contrary, principles are
clearly enunciated 'across the board' — on societal topics like the importance of
providing for the poor, Sabbath, purity, and divorce, on the primary importance
of inward integrity and motivation from love of neighbour, on the dangers of
rules being allowed to stifle such love, on service of others as the true measure of
greatness — principles which certainly have an idealistic quality, but which can
nevertheless serve as a yardstick by which both social policy and private morality
might be measured. 299 Conversely, the warnings against taking the values of acquisitive
society as any kind of pattern or norm for the community of discipleship
are clear. Does all this qualify him for the epithet 'subversive sage',
'transformative sage'? 300 Why not? The prophetic protest has rarely unsettled
too comfortable, too selfish society for very long. But Jesus' protest 'remains on
the table' for any society willing to acknowledge that its ethos has been shaped
by the Jesus tradition in any measure. The political edge of Jesus' teaching at this
point should not be blunted.
d. Neither will we find a complete system of ethics in Jesus' teaching.
Claims that he ignored or abrogated the law are at best exaggerated, at worst anti-
Jewish. The principles he advocated were no less drawn from Torah than were
the rules to which he objected. But his own ethical responses were more instinctual
than systematic, taking account of the human element in the particular situation.
301 Like his vision of the kingdom to come (chapter 12 above), the ethos
which he documented by word and action is episodic and illustrative. Nor, we
should perhaps stress again, can his teachings be neatly allocated under the heading
of personal ethics rather than social ethics. True, he spoke to and dealt with
298. A major weakness of Vermes's Religion is the failure to set Jesus' teaching in its
sociopolitical context.
299. Cf. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus 370-72.
300. Borg, Jesus 116 (see also above, §4.7). Borg also accepts Horsley's description of
Jesus as 'a social prophet', but distances himself from Horsley's elaboration, as in n. 296 above
(Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship 105 and n. 24).
301. Cf. Keck: 'Jesus had a purpose, but he did not have a program' (Who Is Jesus? 156;
see also 157-59).
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