My second post on the Pharisees...

 

A VERY short post on the historical Pharisee.
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Under King Solomon there was a mastery and unity over the land of Palestine. After his death, around 722 B.C., that unity was broken. The Northern Kingdom of Israel in which 10 of the 12 tribes consisted was conquered by Assyria and it is probable that those Hebrew people went into exile and/or became absorbed into the people with whom they dwelt. Essentially, they ceased being Jews.

In 586 B.C. the Southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon. The Temple was destroyed, the rituals brought to an end and most of its inhabitants were taken into captivity. Questions that had befallen the Northern Kingdom would now be the same for the Southern Kingdom. Would Judah give way to the seductions of the surrounding alien culture? Would she become assimilated and absorbed into it? However they survived, one thing seems sure, the people maintained their identity through the Law.

The religious leaders of Jewry by and large realized that Israel could attain a separate entity and keep it that way only on a religious basis. As a result, the synagogue, the place where the Law would be read and studied came into being and the scribe or the instructor came to the fore in the community. And it is over against this background that Pharisaism is to be understood. That is, out of the fires of exile, a people were pledged to a life of conformity to the revealed will of their God made known in Law.

Definitions
Most scholars derive the term Pharisee from the Hebrew word, “parush” meaning “separated” or “isolated.” The question then arises, "Separated from whom or from what?" One theory says, that this separation is from the nations based on Ezra 6:21--“So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbours in order to seek the LORD, the God of Israel.” However, the term Pharisee does not appear at all in Ezra and though the idea of Pharisaism is beginning to come into being, it is not fully explicit.

A second more acceptable theory is that separation was from the later period of the second century B.C. in which Jewry was in a struggle against Greek culture that was being forcefully imposed on it by Antiochus Epiphanes

However, though the idea of separation is prominent among scholars, the question as noted above arose as to whom this applied too. Was it to the whole community, the people of Israel or was it applied to a separate group?

Though some scholars have pointed out that it applied to the whole community, the reason this was so was because it was thought that the whole community itself struggled against the priests who claimed to be the SOLE interpreters of the law they (the community) thought that ALL who obeyed the law could interpret it as well. The bottom-line though for most scholars is that the term referred to a group or sect and that it is probable, that the separation was from some furious political nationalism which marked the emergence of the Pharisees as a distinct party.

Now, though Pharisaism connoted the idea of separation, that is only the negative side to it. The positive side was that Pharisaical saintliness demanded obedience to the commandments--a submission to the yoke of the Law. As noted in my comments in the previous post (and I will say more about this later) this was not always some mere formalism or externalism and at this point one should begin to wonder about not only the caricature of the Pharisee as has been portrayed throughout most of Christendom, but should also cause us to pause and reflect upon our own spirituality--about our own “walk with the Lord”---about our own separation, consecration and obedience to the God. Jesus tell his disciples that their obedience should out do the righteousness of the Pharisees, but one has to wonder if the Pharisees obedience is out doing ours. If God has told us not to bear false witness against our neighbour, should we not be OBLIGATED to reconsider the witness that we have assented to and scrape the barnacles off?

Haven’t been on here for a while. I want to begin where I left off from the last post. Essentially, the idea that I was trying to convey there was that one could be a Pharisee, attending to the law out of a heart felt and genuine faith-that not everything was formalism and externalism--that there could be a genuine love and “trust in” AND “obedience to God.”

Now, my point was not to say that one could be made righteous upon doing such works and therefore there is no need for a Messiah. The Messiah has come and for our BEING MADE RIGHTEOUS, the works of the law no longer apply.

However, in much recent theological literature what this has translated into is that because we have no need for the law in our being made right with God all we have to do is follow the Spirit (listening to that “still small voice”) in whatever situation we are in without ANY external criteria to follow. In other words, freedom in Christ means freedom from the domination of the Law which is to say that the Christian lives a life no longer under a detailed code which regulates each particular action but in the new life of the Spirit (a point that my buddy Randy was attempting to get across in one of his responses to my first post where he says that the Pharisees always asked “Why” to have perfect knowledge in order to know how to respond [live for God] in any given situation).

However, before commencing any further (I will deal with following the Spirit within the next couple of posts) I think it is needful that we recognize two strains in Pauline thought. As indicated above, one is the “indicative.” That is, the indicative is that we are “free ‘in’ Christ”--Christian liberty and the other is, the imperative--our part. Such that it would look something like this:

Indicative: “God is at work in the Christian’s life.”
Imperative: “Work out your own salvation.” Phil 2:12
Indicative: “You are ‘in’ Christ.”
Imperative: “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” Rom 13:14
Indicative: “dead to sin and alive to God ”
Imperative: “…consider yourself so to be…” Rom 6:11
Indicative: “Sin will have no dominion over you.”
Imperative: “…so do not permit sin to have dominion over you.” Rom 6:12-14
Indicative: “You are free from the law.”
Imperative: “…so stand fast.” Gal 5:1
Indicative: “You live by the Spirit.”
Imperative: “Walk by the Spirit.” Gal 5:25

It seems that one cannot separate the two for to do so, is a “satanic parody” as one scholar put it. And the question then arises as to what the relationship of the imperatives to the indicative are. Two points come to the fore. One is that the they are based in the fact of a new nature and the other is that they are motivated by love.

New Nature--In Romans 6 Paul says the Christian has become “a new creation” and out of this capacity Christians are exhorted to PRESENT THEMSELVES “as those alive from the dead.” (out of the actuality--‘hosei’ Rom 6). That is, Paul declares the very fact of the believer’s death to the old nature and his resurrection to the new ought to settle the question of his allegiance.

The same can be said of the “fruit of the Spirit” in Gal 5:19-24 where the contrast between the “works of the flesh” and the “fruits of the Spirit” points out the same emphasis of the changed nature as the basis for the acceptance and fulfillment of the Gospel imperatives. The word, “fruit” seems to have been deliberately chosen to suggest that the good deeds of the believer are characterized by a certainty spontaneity. That is, they are the natural outcome of a transformed nature rather than the laborious attempt to conform to an external code ie. again, not mere gruelling formalism or externalism.

Also, Luther’s translation of Rom 6 “presenting their bodies IN ORDER that you become holy” is probably more appropriately read in light of Rom 12 where Paul again urges his readers to present their bodies WITHOUT the idea that by so doing they gain a further degree of holiness but rather, that they thereby but respond to the mercies of God. Again, here, not a mere formalism but rather arising out of a “trust in” and “obedience to” dichotomy.

Motivated by Love-The imperatives find their motivation in the indicatives of the Gospel. That is, that Christian ethics is motivated by love and not impelled by the desire to gain righteous. In other words, Christian ethics has the character of works which doesn’t establish the relation of man to the Transcendental but rather it takes the form of OBEDIENCE to the One who has already established that relationship. For Paul, righteousness was already realized in Christ such that New Testament ethics--Gospel ethics is a “therefore-wherefore” ethic.

This should be a reminder to Christians who so many times, quote Philippians 2:12 which exhorts us to “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling…” but what they often neglect is that this verse starts off saying, “…as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now MUCH MORE in my absence…” assumes that the works of the Christian is to be under the caption obedience.

So there is a distinction between works in order to gain righteousness and works taking the form of obedience based on righteousness which ultimately lead Martin Luther to declare: “Our faith in Christ does not free us from works, but from false opinions about works.”