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in Jesus’ Teaching
Stephen Finlan
It is beyond dispute that a major theme in patristic thought was the deification of believers, their taking on of divine character. It is almost beyond dispute that deification is also a major theme in the Pauline literature, where believers will be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29), “transformed into the same image” (2 Cor 3:18).1 There is much less data on deification in the traditions of the sayings of Jesus, but the theme is present in key passages in Matthew, Luke, and John, and is subtly suggested in Mark.
There are three particularly vivid deification passages in the Gospels:
The kingdom of God is within you.
Luke 17:21 NIV (1978), NCV, KJV (but default translation is NRSV)
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matt 5:48 NRSV
Is it not written in your law, “I said, you are gods”?
John 10:34
Deification Sayings in the Gospels
The Luke text indicates an indwelling divine potential; the Matthew text suggests continuous transformation into God-likeness; the John text seems to intend the divinization of believers. Mark lacks any unmistakable divinization reference, but profound transformation is certainly suggested in the records of people doing the will of God, becoming Jesus’ brothers and sisters, receiving healing as divine “power,” and seeing the kingdom of God “come with power” (Mark 3:35; 5:30; 9:1). Still, the absence of explicit deification statements makes Mark (not John) the anomaly among the canonical Gospels. John’s harmony with Matthew and Luke in this matter causes difficulty for standard biblical scholarship, which is wont to isolate John and discount its possible historicity. This does not mean that we should reject scholarship, only that we should be attentive to the actual content of the sayings, and be prepared to encounter some surprises.
We will begin with Luke’s kingdom-within, move to Matthew’s perfect-like-God, to John’s you-are-gods and other remarks, and then to some suggestive passages in Mark.
The first thing to notice about the three sayings quoted above is how shocking they are. They evoke amazement, stimulating reflection. To appreciate any of these deification statements requires a willingness to depart from all the arid interpretations that would suffocate the creativity of first-hand religious living. To appreciate Jesus’ sayings demands that one abandon all standardized theologies—Jewish or Christian—and to reject as well the lifeless skepticism that sometimes taints academic discourse. The endeavor to explain Jesus sociologically and to deny any originality to his sayings is an attempt to stifle his, and their, revolutionary import. We must allow them to be as extraordinary as they seem.
The Kingdom Within
Luke 17:21 says that the kingdom is not here nor there (not outwardly located), but “the kingdom of God is within [ἐντός] you” (NCV, KJV, ASV, TEV, NRSV margin). The translation of ἐντός will be addressed shortly. First we must notice that this saying draws our attention to the “kingdom of God,” the main symbol utilized by Jesus in his teaching. Scholars have long recognized more than one dimension to this concept. A nineteenth-century discussion brought out two sides to the kingdom idea: individual and social. One writer says the kingdom idea refers “primarily to the realization of a relationship between the individual soul and God,” but the “social result is essential to the realization of the kingdom of God.”2 Another claims the kingdom “is a state of loyalty to God,” which Jesus can describe in connection with the individual or with “the community, as in the prayer: ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’”3
One does not always find such a balanced approach. Scholarship is engaged in a pendulum swing against any emphasis on the individual and any notion of a kingdom within. This extreme anti-individualism has led to a bland and misleading translation of ἐντός in Luke 17:21: “the kingdom of God is among you” (NRSV, NAB, NJB).
The correct translation of ἐντός, “within,” occurs in KJV, NCV, and ASV, but the trend in the last seventy years has been to undermine the intention of this saying by refusing to allow ἐντός to have its usual meaning, instead insisting on giving it a social meaning, starting with RSV translating it as “in the midst of.” NAB translates it “among,” as does NRSV, but the latter provides the marginal alternate, “within.” NCV reverses this choice, preferring “within,” and giving “among” in the margin.
I suspect that the attempt to socialize, suffocate, and domesticate this saying arises from an anti-personalist and materialistic bias. Some scholars insist the saying can only be social, that the kingdom must refer to the social circle around Jesus. Why must it? Is it because the persons offering this interpretation have lost faith in the notion of creative and spiritual power within the individual (within themselves)? Have they bought wholly into the notion that people are nothing but products of their environment?
C. H. Dodd rightly defends “within” for ἐντός, which is “a strengthened form of ἐν used where it is important to exclude any of the possible meanings of that preposition other than ‘inside’ . . . When Luke means ‘among’, he says ἐν μέσῳ.”4
Colin Roberts takes a middle position. He recognizes “within” as the correct translation of ἐντός, dismantling the attempt to derive “among” from two Xenophon passages, arguing for the meaning “within” or “within the limits of.”5 Roberts sees Luke 17:21 intending both internal and external meanings. The kingdom is “a present reality, but only if you wish it to be so”; it is not “something external to men, independent of their volitions and actions”; elsewhere, the kingdom can be received, sought, or possessed.6 A weaker form of this view is given by J. C. O’Neill, for whom the kingdom-within means “the responsibility for doing what God required actually lay within their own grasp.”7 These are correct, as far as they go, but they do not go far enough; they underestimate the forcefulness of the single-word object; the kingdom is within “you,” not merely “within your power, your choice.” Do people have decision-making power? Of course, but this unremarkable point is not the punch line of one of Jesus’ most vivid sayings. What is it that they would be choosing, except to experience God’s reign in their own lives? This is the whole import of Jesus’ teaching, and it is obtainable by any person! A point that should follow from Roberts’s and O’Neill’s emphasis on free choice is that it is largely a message directed at individuals—not that any contrast is being made between individual and group. Verse 21 uses both the grammatically singular imperative “look!” (ἰδού) and the plural pronoun “you” (ὑμῶν).
The point is that people have the inward or spiritual capacity to experience God’s kingdom, although some readers resist this suggestion, since the saying is addressed to Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees. It is precisely this fact that testifies to its genuineness: it is too radical for doctrinaire people to handle, including latter-day scribes who are sure that Jesus cannot have made the kingdom so readily available, even to Pharisees! But it makes sense both that the historical Jesus said it, and that the author Luke recorded it, since it is consistent with the message (in all the Gospels) that the kingdom is available to all, and because Luke includes more positive portraits of Pharisees than the other evangelists.8 What is stunning about this passage is that Jesus says the kingdom is already resident within people. It may not yet be realized, but it is “within” you.
Some analysts think the “within you” notion sounds Gnostic, and reject it for that reason. But this is anachronistic and distorting. The Gospel was written prior to the sharp division between Gnostics and orthodox, before the Gnostics made some of his sayings their favorites, and the orthodox made others determinative. There is no reason that Jesus could not have said something that later hearers think sounds “Gnostic,” any more than it is impossible for Jesus to have said something that later hearers will pronounce “Catholic-sounding” or “Protestant-seeming,” even though he spoke them centuries before these church divisions emerged.