113 - Judge Not: A Critical Test of Faith

Judge Not: A Critical Test of Faith
By George S. Hendry

"It seems plain that in commanding us not to judge, Jesus is not asking us to perform the impossible feat of suppressing our faculty of judgment. It is a question of how our judgment may be exercised in relation to-or in correlation with-the judgment of God…. We are led to the conclusion … that a prime ingredient of faith is total reliance on the judgment of God."

THIS IS a hard saying; who can hear it?" So said the disciples as they listened to Jesus speak of giving his flesh "and his blood for the life of the world (Jn. 6:60). It is a sentiment readers of the Gospels feel inclined to echo, not once, but many times; for there are many sayings of Jesus that fit this description. And one which, I think, holds a prominent place among them is the commandment he gave in the Sermon on the Mount, "Judge not" (Mt. 7:1)

Is it possible to live without judging? Is it even conceivable? Look at the question from two angles, the psychological and the moral. It is an inescapable psychological fact that every person we meet makes an impression on us. If the meeting is short and casual, like a meeting with a salesperson in a store, the impression is superficial and quickly fades. But if the meeting is longer and frequent and develops into a continuing association of some kind, the initial impression hardens into a judgment, which influences the course of the relationship. The process would seem to be as difficult to repress as a reflex action.

If we are morally responsible persons, recognizing an obligation to observe certain standards in our conduct (whether we succeed in doing so or not), we cannot refrain from applying those standards in judgment on other people. It is not necessary that the judgment receive overt expression in speech or action. It is effective even if it is inwardly present, just as the fit of anger or the lustful look are no less offensive than murder or adultery (Mt. 5:21-30). Some people claim that their morals, like their religion, are private matters, and they have no desire to

George S. Hendry is Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary. A frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY, Dr. Hendry's most recent article was entitled "Nothing" (Oct. 1982, pp. 274-289.)

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impose them on others. But morals cannot be confined to the realm of personal privacy. It is a characteristic of moral principles, as Kant pointed out, that they are universal. As he put it, "Act only on the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."¹

This does not mean that a person may not observe peculiar or personal rules. Kant, for example, observed a strict rule of rising at five o'clock every morning, and going to bed at ten every night. But this did not qualify as a moral rule, and he did not claim that it was obligatory on others. Only a moral rule is universal in its application.

Consider, for instance, the principle of honesty. If I observe a rule to be honest in all my dealings with others, I am in effect inviting them to be honest in all their dealings with me. To adopt a rule of honesty for oneself and to condone dishonesty in others would be a form of eccentricity.

The universality of moral rules is familiar to everyone in the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you."² What, then, are we to make of Jesus' commandment not to judge?

I

One way in which it has been thought to make the commandment less difficult is to take "judge" in the sense of "condemn." On this interpretation, which seems to be favored by most commentators, what Jesus was forbidding was not judgment as such, but harsh, censorious judgment; in a word, he was forbidding us to damn other people.

Now there is no doubt that the word Jesus used here, krinein, does sometimes mean condemn, and is so rendered in the English versions. The best known example is Jn. 3:17: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world..." (so KJV and RSV; NEB has "judge"; and in the parallel statement in Jn. 12:47, where the same Greek verb is used, all versions have "judge"). Perhaps we are also predisposed to interpret judgment in the adverse sense by our observation of the judicial process in the courts. Judgment is neutral in intent, and, as we are often reminded, a person is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty. But a person is brought to judgment only when a charge of wrongdoing has been brought and when it has been decided by a district attorney or

¹ Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics, trans. by T. K. Abbott, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1923, p. 21.
² If we admit the possibility of alternative moral codes on the ground of cultural and psychological differences, Kant's principle of universality appears to be vulnerable, but it may be defended with the argument that universality remains a characteristic of the ends pursued in moral action and that the differences in moral codes pertain to the means to those ends. Such differences may arise within a single culture, where there is substantial agreement on the ultimate end of moral action. This is exemplified in our time in the field of sexual ethics. All who participate in the debate are agreed that the end they seek is human well-being: they disagree over the question of what modes of sexual behavior are conducive to that end. And the criterion of universality reappears in the requirement that the debate be conducted with civility and tolerance.

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grand jury that there is sufficient evidence to warrant the charge. And it sometimes follows that a person who has been judged innocent may remain tainted by the charge.

Judgment, however, does not mean only adverse judgment. This is made plain in Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, in which the commandment, "Judge not" is followed by a second commandment, "Condemn not" (Lk. 6:37). Judgment may be favorable-even honorific, and we have to think of this also, if not, indeed, first, if we are to understand what Jesus meant when he said, "Judge not."

II

Jesus has given us his own exposition of the theme in the Fourth Gospel, and it is to it we must turn for guidance. But we may approach it by way of an incident from one of the Synoptic Gospels which lights up the issue in a dramatic way. It is, on the face of it, a minor incident, and perhaps this is why it is recorded only by Luke. Neither Mark nor Matthew thought it fit for recording, if, indeed, they were aware that it took place. And the omission is understandable; for what importance is to be attached to an outburst by an over-excited woman in a group where Jesus was speaking?

According to the story, Jesus was delivering a solemn discourse on the kingdom of God, its powers, and its impact on human life, when he was interrupted by a woman in the audience who was carried away by her enthusiasm for Jesus and burst out, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you sucked" (Lk. 11:27). Though her words seem to refer to the mother of Jesus (and have been so understood by some Roman Catholics), it is not his mother she was thinking of, but Jesus himself. She was using the native Jewish idiom to express her admiration and praise for Jesus. Among ourselves, too, it is a common thing to congratulate a mother whose son has achieved distinction.

Was there anything wrong with that? It sounds like a spontaneous expression of appreciation. Why then did Jesus rebuff her? For that is what his response amounts to: "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it" (Lk. 11:28). If Luke is the only one of the evangelists to record it, it may be, not because he was "a snapper up of unconsidered trifles," but because he saw in this apparently trivial exchange between Jesus and this impressionable person something like a flash of lightning at midnight, lighting up the whole landscape for a fraction of a second with an unearthly clarity. It lights up the question of judgment as a critical issue in the life of faith.

How are we human beings to be judged, evaluated, appraised? More specifically, how are we to be approved, how are we to be judged worthy of respect and honor and praise? There is virtual unanimity about the answer that is given to this question in the world of today. A person's worth is measured by the quality of achievement. People acquire superior worth in the eyes of others in so far as they outstrip the rest in

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some field of achievement, be it in devotion to duty, in fidelity to principle, in brilliance of intellect, in artistic skill, in athletic prowess, in dramatic performance, and a host of other things. This kind of judgment is taken for granted in the modern world, and it is virtually imposed on us by the competitive organization of our society. But it was already present in the world in which Jesus lived, and he recognized in it a major obstacle to the message he brought. It forms a central issue in the continuing controversy between him and the religious authorities which takes up so much of the Fourth Gospel.

It appears in the question of accreditation which arose as a prime issue in this controversy. Jesus appeared to his contemporaries as a teacher and was frequently addressed as such. But "when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, 'By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?' " (Mt. 21:23). Then, as now, no-onecould become a teacher without the proper credentials. The educational establishment in Jesus' time was a closely knit society, and admission to it required attendance on instruction, sometimes from a single master (as with Paul and Gamaliel, Acts 22:3), and the satisfaction of certain requirements such as consist now in the passing of examinations and the earning of academic degrees. This is the problem that was raised by the appearance of Jesus as a teacher.

When he went up to the feast of Sukkoth and taught in the temple, "the Jews marveled at him, saying, 'How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?'" Jesus put the issue squarely in his reply: "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"; and then, continuing, he stated what is for our present theme the fundamental principle: "He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood" (Jn. 7:14-18).

What Jesus is saying here is that the truth of the message is not guaranteed by the credentials of the one who bears it. Such credentials, as he states in the following chapter, in which he became embroiled with the Pharisees over the same problem, can only be established by a process of accreditation based on mundane criteria. As he put it in the native idiom, "You judge according to the flesh" (Jn. 8:15).³

³ "Flesh" is, of course, used here metaphorically for human or worldly. But think of it for a moment in its literal sense, and consider how true it is. How much of our judgment of people is influenced by their physical appearance. Many examples could be given, but one will suffice. Presidential campaigns are now conducted more and more on TV. The candidate appears as an image on the screen-that, in fact, is all that most of us will ever see-and the candidate knows it is important to project the kind of image that will gain support; so a professional is hired to coach in projecting the right kind of image. Some time ago I heard the matter discussed on TV, and one of the speakers (Norman Mailer, if my memory serves) remarked that Lincoln could never get elected nowadays, his gangling figure and his dark and melancholy visage would project the wrong kind of image to a public which looks for a genial, smiling, well-toothed figure with an up-beat style.

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III

There is another thing to be noted in Jesus' attitude on this matter. Was there not an alternative open to him? If he could not produce a diploma from a rabbinical school, could he not point to his miracles?

The attitude of Jesus toward his miracles reveals a curious ambivalence, not to say an inconsistency. On the one hand he points to the miracles as evidence of his authority. He seems to endorse the popular view, as it was expressed by Nicodemus: "We know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him" (Jn. 3:2). Jesus himself said, "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness to me" (Jn. 10:25). Indeed, he attaches a greater weight to his works than to his words, when he pleads with his disciples, "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves" (Jn. 14:11). On the other hand, Jesus repeatedly charged people on whom he had performed a miracle to keep silent about it (Mk. 1:44; 5:43; 7:36; Mt. 8:14); and he rebuffed all suggestions that he produce a miracle on request (Mk. 8:11f.).

The reason for this apparent contradiction lies in the ambiguity of miracles themselves. The ambiguity is pointed up in the Fourth Evangelist's favorite name for miracles-"signs." A sign is something that signifies; it points to something beyond itself. But to what? This question lies at the heart of one of the temptations of Jesus: "the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written

He will give his angels charge of you, and
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone'" (Mt. 4:5f.)

The tempter, who here shows his famed skill at quoting Scripture, appeared to be inviting Jesus to perform a great act of faith in God, but, as Jesus saw, he was challenging him to perform a daring stunt (in the style of Evel Knievel) which would have the effect of calling attention to himself and his own credentials. And what would such a performance signify with regard to the message he came to deliver? It is the same question he was to take up later in his controversies with the religious authorities: How is the credibility of the message related to the credentials of the messenger?

Jesus was concerned that the signs, when he performed them, should point in the right direction. He did not want the works which he did, or, rather, which God did through him, to be used as a basis for forming a judgment on him; for that would conflict with the main burden of the gospel of the kingdom, which is that God is about to exercise supreme and definitive judgment, and so render all our judgments incompetent and superfluous. Jesus calls us to a faith that renounces all judgment, in

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respect for the judgment which God has pronounced and executes in Jesus.

IV

If the commandment of Jesus is absolute, if it forbids judgment of any kind, favorable or unfavorable, then it would seem to follow that we are forbidden to call any one good. Can we really carry it that far? To refrain from calling a person good, when that person's conduct has shown unmistakably the quality of goodness, would surely betoken a mean, grudging, ungenerous attitude in ourselves.⁴

It may, however, be noted that the New Testament, though it might be said to be concerned with the promotion of human goodness, is singularly reserved in its application to the epithet "good" to human beings; in fact, it is applied to only one (Barnabas, Acts 11:24). And the most striking thing of all is that Jesus himself declined that title. When the rich young ruler came running to him and asked, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good, but God alone" (Mk. 10:17f.).

Was Jesus really serious in declining to be called good, or was he just being modest? There was no modesty when he challenged his opponents to convict him of sin (Jn. 8:46); and it became a crucial element of belief in Jesus that "in him there is no sin" (I Jn. 3:5). How could we look to him to make us good, if we could not call him good?

It seems that some of Jesus' earliest followers were perplexed over his refusal to be called good-this may be why the wording of the account given of this saying in Matthew's Gospel is altered in a way that might seem to be designed to lessen the shock. Here the man's question is, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" Jesus' reply is, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good" (Mt. 19:16f.). To make it a question about the good, as the goal and norm of behavior, puts it in the form preferred by the philosophers. Plato devoted a great deal of thought to the question of the good; and the answer given by Jesus (in Matthew's version) bears a certain resemblance to that given by Plato. The good, the supreme and absolute good, as Plato taught, is not to be looked for in any particular thing or person we encounter in this world, and all instances of goodness we do find in things or persons are faint copies of, or approximations to, a perfect and ideal goodness which transcends all our experience.

Another philosopher nearer our own time who also gave a great deal of thought to the question of the good agreed substantially with Plato's answer, and, in addition, applied it directly to the words of Jesus. In his

⁴ It would also negate the possible effect of approbation on the future conduct of the recipient. William James observed that belief that a person, or persons, will rise to a certain level of behavior can act as an incentive to them to do so. (There is some question, however, whether James's practice in this matter reflects his psychology so much as his own generous disposition. I have been told that the references James wrote for former students who were candidates for academic appointments were so uniformly laudatory that committees learned to take them with more than a grain of salt.)

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Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argued that we cannot derive an adequate notion of what is morally good from concrete examples, since every example must first be tested by absolute principles before it can be judged good. And he added, "Even the Holy One of the Gospels must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him as such; and so he says of himself, 'Why call ye me (whom you see) good? None is good (the model of good) but God only (whom you do not see)."⁵ Kant may seem to be at one with Jesus in locating the good beyond all empirical instances; but his own principle of the autonomy of the moral will brings him into open conflict with Jesus' commandment, Judge not, for it entails that we must first judge Jesus to determine whether he conforms to our model of good, and if we are satisfied we may adopt him as an example, but he can never himself be the model.

Nevertheless Kant has laid his finger on the crucial difficulty presented by Jesus' commandment. We may express it by parodying a proverbial saying, "To judge is human." It is a distinctive mark of the human being, in contrast with other forms of being, from which it may have evolved, that it is capable of forming moral judgments, of determining that there are things we ought to do and things we ought not to do. Kant did not know about evolution, but he knew the Bible, and he read Genesis genetically. He read Genesis 3, which has been taken in theology as the story of "the fall," as an account of the "transition from an uncultured, merely animal condition to the state of humanity, from bondage to instinct to rational control-in a word, from the tutelage of nature to the state of freedom."⁶ Essential for a moral being, in Kant's view was "the power of choosing for himself a way of life [and] not being bound without alternative to a single way, like the animals."⁷

V

A crucial problem for theology has long been the interpretation of Gen. 3:5, in which the knowledge of good and evil is introduced, not as a "natural" endowment conferred by the Creator (like sex and language, Gen. 2:18-25), but as a temptation presented to violate a created nature and become "like God." According to Karl Barth, "the temptation which involves man's disobedience to God's commandment is the evil desire to know what is good and evil. He ought to leave this knowledge to God, to see his freedom in his ability to adhere to God's decisions in his own decisions."8 In a very similar manner, Bonhoeffer interpreted our human exercise of the faculty of moral judgment as a usurpation of the

⁵ Op. cit., p. 30. In all his writings on morality and religion, Kant studiously avoided referring to Jesus Christ by name. This passage may suggest why.
⁶ "Conjectural Beginning of Human History," in Kant on History, ed. L. W. Beck, Indianapolis, Liberal Arts Press, 1963, p. 60.
⁷ Op. cit., p. 56. Hegel read the story of Genesis 3 in much the same way. His comments on it are collected in Erik Schmidt, Hegels System der Theologie, 160ff.
⁸ CD IV/1, p. 231. In another place Barth says that "What the serpent has in mind is the establishment of ethics" (p. 448).

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prerogative of God, whom he described in a term that was borrowed from Neo-Kantianism and used by Barth in his Romans, as the Origin (Ursprung). He contrasted it with a state of union (or one-ness) with God, in which human life and action are marked by simplicity: "Already in the possibility of the knowledge of good and evil Christian ethics discerns a falling away from the Origin."⁹

The questionableness of this exegesis may be traced to a too literal reading of the verb "know" in Gen. 3:5. The tempter's use of the word is (characteristically) misleading; for the story shows that Adam and Eve had already become acquainted with good and evil in the command of God which permitted them to eat of some of the trees of the garden and forbade them to eat of one (Gen. 2:16f.). This is confirmed in the first exchange between the tempter and the woman in Gen. 3:1-3. The question is not the knowledge (as opposed to ignorance) of good and evil, but the ground of this knowledge: Is it grounded solely in the command of God, or may it be referred to human judgment? This is the question which received its classic presentation in Plato's Euthyphro and has continued to be discussed by theologians and philosophers down to modern times. Plato formed the question: Is the good established solely by God and imposed on us by command, or can it be established by our own judgment? The latter alternative was affirmed most emphatically by Kant. He saw the distinctive feature of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century in the emancipation of human beings from a state of blind submission to authority and their assumption of the capacity to use their own judgement. And he made the autonomy of the will, which legislates the good for itself, the basic principle of his ethics, as opposed to heteronomy, which finds the good in submission to the will of another.

The question that arises is whether the issue can be defined in terms of a simple antithesis between autonomy and heteronomy. We have seen reason to think that it is not so posed in the Genesis story, despite the ambiguity of the language; and it is not so defined in the New Testament, either by Jesus or by Paul. Neither suggests that moral judgment is to be ascribed exclusively to God and denied absolutely to human beings. There is, of course, no question that God is good, and the arbiter of "the good"; but the command of Jesus to "Judge not" implies at least that we are capable of judgment.¹⁰ And the position is stated more explicitly by Paul in his treatment of Gentile morality in Romans 2, and more specifically in his occasional use of the concept of conscience.

Paul ascribes to the Gentiles a knowledge of good and evil, which is theirs, not by revelation of God's law, but "by nature" (Rom. 2:12), and a co-knowledge (as conscience may be translated literally) which monitors the conformity, or non-conformity of their conduct to that knowledge. Conscience is no substitute for the judgment of God, which

⁹ Ethics, ed, E. Bethge, New York, Macmillan, 1961, pp. 142-161.
¹⁰ See the opening paragraph of his essay on "What is Enlightenment?" in Kant on History, p. 3.

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remains final and decisive (Rom. 2:16), but it plays a positive role in relation to it.

VI

It seems plain that in commanding us not to judge, Jesus is not asking us to perform the impossible feat of suppressing our faculty of judgment. It is a question of how our judgment may be exercised in relation to-or in correlation with-the judgment of God.

We may gain some light by a glance at the judicial system established by the state, for there is an analogy. There are three simple and general points which can be observed by everyone without training in jurisprudence.

(1) The immediate effect of an official establishment of courts and procedures for the administration of justice is to take it out of the hands of ordinary citizens. They are not to exercise judgment; they cannot "take the law into their own hands." This does not mean that ordinary citizens cannot exercise judgment in their own minds on any matter, whether it affects themselves or not. But such judgments are only opinions; they are without effect. Only a judgment reached by a court through a carefully regulated procedure is effective. This is a situation which is accepted uncomplainingly by the citizens in all civilized societies; they recognize that they stand, in effect, under a commandment which says, "Judge not."

(2) Ordinary citizens, however, are not excluded from the judicial process altogether. The official system exists by the will and consent of the people, and it can function only so long as the judgments it delivers are in general accord with the sense of justice that prevails in the population at large, in much the same way as the conscience of the heathen was, in Paul's view, in general accord with the judgment of God. A purely heteronomous conception of divine justice, like that propounded by Ockham, would be analogous to a state of martial law.

(3) The third point looks in a different direction. The elaborate structure of the judicial system with its graduated series of courts and the possibility of appeal, from lower to higher to highest, reflects an awareness of the extreme difficulty of reaching a judgment that is just. At the apex of the pyramid we have the Supreme Court, and it has the last word. But the last word is not necessarily the just word. The members of the Supreme Court are each addressed as "Mr." or "Mrs." (or "Ms.") "Justice," as if each were justice personified. But there are nine Justices, and more often than not their decisions are reached by a divided vote, which is tantamount to an admission from within their own number that these decisions fall short of perfect and absolute justice. The possibility of error, even at the highest level, is one of the arguments frequently urged by opponents of capital punishment.

It is the fallible and provisional nature of all our judgments that is the central theme of the impressive picture of the last judgment in Mt. 25. In this last and definitive judgment, our human judgments will be reversed.

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The sin of the wicked is not that they made judgments, but that the judgments they made were not perceptive. What was lacking?

The parable of the last judgment, or "the great assize," as it has been called, makes it appear that judgment is God's last word. Now God has indeed the last word in judgment, and not we. That is the point of the parable. But there is a point that goes beyond that: judgment is not God's last word. The parable shows that the judgment of God reverses human judgments; its also transcends them.

VII

What is judgment? Judgment in its most elemental form consists in distinguishing and separating.¹¹ When we judge, we discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, innocence and guilt, sheep and goats. And at the end of the process, when judgment has been given and guilt has been assigned, the division is carried a step further; the guilty person is separated from others and shut up in prison.

But the purpose of God is not division and separation, it is reconciliation and reunion. This is the central theme of the New Testament. It was the purpose of God from all eternity to make an end of all enmity and division and to bring all things into unity in Christ (Eph. 1: 10). This does not mean that God dispenses with judgment altogether. But with God, judgment is subservient to reconciliation.

We have a clue to this in the strange ambivalence of Jesus toward judgment, especially as it appears in the Fourth Gospel. There is, on the one hand, a number of sayings in which Jesus denies categorically that judgment is the purpose of his mission. "I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world," he said, in explanation of the more specific statement, "If any one-hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him" (Jn. 12:47). In another place, Jesus cites this as the decisive difference between him and his adversaries: "You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one" (Jn. 8:15).¹²

On the other hand, there are statements in which Jesus affirms, no less categorically, that judgment was precisely the object of his mission: "For judgment I came into this world" (Jn. 9:39); "The Father judges

¹¹ The sense is preserved in the German word for judgment, Ur-teil, which is related to teilen, to divide, and less vividly, in the English discriminate, which is derived from the Latin crimen, which means primarily a verdict and then a crime requiring a verdict. It is shown most drastically in the judgment of Solomon (I Kings 3).
¹² It is the view of some scholars that it is this startling statement that led to the insertion in the Gospel immediately before it of the story of the encounter between Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, in which he said, after all her accusers had been silenced, "Neither do I condemn you" (katakrino, a word found nowhere else in this Gospel, Jn. 8:11). The story formed no part of the original Gospel, being. absent from all the best and oldest MSS, but, wherever it came from, it may have been inserted here to help readers who were perplexed by Jesus' statement, "I judge no one," and wondered how such a principle would work out in practice. Whether this is how it would in fact work out in practice-that is another question.

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no one, but has given all judgment to the Son … and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man" Qn. 5:22, 27).

The contradiction between these two kinds of statements, however, is more apparent than real. The solution is indicated in the saying just quoted, and, more explicitly, in another, which has already been quoted in part. After the statement in controversy with the Jews, "I judge no one," Jesus continued, "Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true; for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me" (Jn. 8:15f.). What Jesus means is, clearly, that God alone is judge and has chosen to execute judgment, not directly, but in the person of Jesus. So when Jesus delivers judgment, it is not his own; he is acting as the authorized executor of the judgment of God.

VIII

How does Jesus execute the judgment of God? This is the question on which everything depends. It involves much more than the resolution of a verbal contradiction, it takes us to the very heart of the Gospel.

Jesus executes the judgment of God by submitting himself to it. He does not act as a judge, but as one who is judged. He identifies himself with those who are subject to the judgment of God, and thereby he performs the first act in the drama of reconciliation. He crosses the line that separates the sinful from the righteous. He does not erase the line; he does not obliterate the distinction between righteous and sinful. He brings it before the judgment of God, which is thereby revealed as a judgment fraught with reconciliation and a division overcome with reunion.

A full statement of the doctrine of reconciliation cannot be given here, but since we are concerned chiefly with words and actions of Jesus in the Gospels, it may be appropriate to illustrate the dialectic of division and reconciliation by juxtaposing two episodes from the Gospel of Luke.

Luke records that on one occasion a man approached Jesus with the request, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me," and Jesus replied, "Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?" (Lk. 12:13f.). Why, we may wonder, did Jesus rebuff this man without even hearing his case? It may be that the man was a victim of a flagrant injustice, that his brother had defrauded him of his legitimate share of the family inheritance, and that he had as much claim to the attention of Jesus as the lame and the blind who came to him to seek relief for their ailments.

Why did Jesus deny his petition? It is because he knew that judgment means division and it is impossible to heal division with division. The petitioner was already divided from his brother. They were divided over money. And is there anything that is more productive of division in human life than money? How many friendships, how many family relationships have been broken up on account of some dispute over money. It seems to be the very nature of money to cause division-and

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perhaps we get some feeling of this when we go to the bank and money is passed through a dividing grill or over a wide counter. Jesus knew it was impossible to heal division with division.

How then? Jesus showed us the other side in one of his parables. It is one of the strangest and most puzzling of the parables. It is called the parable of the unjust, or dishonest steward (Lk. 16:1-9). The story concerns a steward, or manager, who was suspected of mismanaging his master's property; so he was called in to give an account of himself. Apparently he had been tax in collecting debts. So he had recourse to a strategem. He called in all those who owed money to his master and offered each a substantial discount. Are we to admire and emulate such financial practices? They are too much like what are now called kickbacks, and kickbacks are thoroughly reprehensible and illegal. The man deserves his traditional title, the unjust, or dishonest steward. But that is not what his master called him. We read to our astonishment that "The master commended the dishonest steward for his prudence." How on earth could he do that? Obviously the master stood to suffer a substantial loss. How could he commend the man who had brought it on him? Is Jesus giving his approval to what we may call, at its mildest, financial irregularity? It sounds quite implausible. But we should not allow the implausibility to blind us to the main point.

The implausibility, in fact, throws the main point into relief. The main point is that this man, with his financial shenanigans, found a way to use money, not to promote division, which it usually does, but reunion. In a word, he used money to make friends (v. 9), and, however questionable the means may have been, his aim was on target. He was in his own crooked way doing what God is doing-overcoming division with reconciliation and reunion. His conduct has earned him the title of unjust and dishonest, but in fact he had moved beyond judgment, he had done something that in an oblique way resembles the purpose of God as it is expressed in Jesus, who came, not to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

IX

When Jesus commands us not to judge, he is calling us to follow his own practice in the matter. He is not asking us to close our eyes to all distinction between good and evil. As we observed earlier, that is impossible, both psychologically and morally. Jesus is forbidding us only to judge as if judgment were the last word, the decisive thing, the key to the realization of God's purpose with us. Judgment is a step on the way to that end, but it is not the last step. There is a step that leads beyond judgment, and it is in the light of that further step that we are forbidden to judge. How are we to do it?

There is no need to rehearse the argument against judgment in the adverse or negative sense. The Pharisaical practice of sitting in judgment

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on others stands condemned, even if there were nothing beyond judgment, by the fact that none of us is exempt from judgment, and so in passing judgment we condemn ourselves (Rom. 2: 1).

The question is much more difficult to answer if it refers to favorable judgment. We can understand why we should be forbidden to damn. But, as we noted, the commandment of Jesus applies to judgments of approval and praise. He refused to accept congratulation from that woman who was so impressed that she broke into his sermon; and in his controversy with the Pharisees, he stated explicitly, "I do not receive glory from men" (Jn. 5:41).

Here, we observe, it is primarily a matter of being judged, rather than of judging. Jesus refused to receive glory from men, and he went on to reproach the Pharisees because they received glory from one another. To judge positively, to give praise or glory to another person-that seems a fine, laudable, generous thing to do. It is hard to see why it should be forbidden. But what does it do to those who receive it? According to Jesus, it places them in a very dangerous situation. If they accept it as given to themselves, it diverts them from the true praise that comes only from God. There is, as is well known, a psychological angle to it, too. If we receive much applause, it is liable to go to our heads, and even to become an addiction on which we are dependent. Milton called fame "that last infirmity of noble mind," and in our modern culture, in which we are threatened with anonymous immersion in the mass, more and more are driven by the desire for fame, recognition, and celebrity, some even seek notoriety by the commission of crime. This is accompanied by a marked inflation in the language of adulation. Speakers, singers, and performers in the various media are commonly introduced in exaggerated terms, and it takes a strong native endowment of humility to withstand the seductive effect of such treatment.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this feature of contemporary culture is its intrusion into the church. Church is first and foremost the place of worship, the place we come to in order to worship God-and God alone; for the worship of God cannot be combined with that of any other-that is forbidden in the First Commandment. Everything that is done in church, the praise, the prayers, the preaching, the offering, is an act of worship; it is an act intended to set forth God's most worthy praise. It is disturbing, therefore, to say the least, when the praise of God is interrupted by the praise of those who offer it, the singers, the elders, the deacons, the teachers in the Sunday School, when they are brought before the congregation to be "recognized" and to receive applause. It is only in quite recent times that applause has begun to be heard in church, although it has long been heard at the church door in the form of compliments to the preacher by members of the congregation as they disperse.

These things may seem to be of little consequence, but the danger in them is that they obscure the unique character of the church as the place where everything is done soli Deo gloriae, to the glory of God alone; and

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those who do it, or lead in doing it, are robed to show that they are liveried servants and not applause-seeking performers. We may say further that it is one of the main functions of the church to offer the world the model of a company of people working together, not in competition for merit among themselves, but with a single eye to the glory of God. And it may be the more effective model, inasmuch as the objective is less concrete and tangible than those in which people vie for the prizes of fame and glory.

Finally, there is the question whether and how the commandment is applicable to us in relation to ourselves. Are we really bidden to refrain from judging ourselves? The question is thrust on us by certain words of the Johannine Jesus and of Paul. We have already referred to the former; it will now be appropriate to examine the latter, since in them the complexity of the issues involved are more clearly brought out.

The Johannine Jesus, as we saw, speaks of judgment in terms of a radical dichotomy between the judgment of God and human judgment. The judgment of God is absolute and excludes all human judgment. It is impossible to receive glory and praise from God and from any human source at the same time. They are mutually exclusive; and this, according to one saying of Jesus, is a fundamental test of faith (Jn. 5:44). Faith consists of a "simple," single-minded, whole-hearted devotion to Jesus, and excludes all judgment, which consists in discrimination and division. ¹³

For Paul, too, the supremacy of the judgment of God is axiomatic. The opening chapters of Romans contain his classic exposition of it. The Gospel is a manifestation of the righteousness of God (Rom. 1:16f.), and the panorama of human wickedness is a revelation of God's wrath (1:18f.). All human judgment, both adverse and favorable, is excluded in principle (ch. 2). But Paul qualifies this position in two ways, first by his adoption of the concept of conscience, with which, as we noted above, he concedes to the Gentiles, who have not received the revelation of the will of God in the law, a certain "natural" knowledge of good and evil, and an internal tribunal at which their conduct is scrutinized and given a preliminary verdict; and, second, by his repeated exhortations to his readers to examine and test the state of their faith. It is the latter, I believe, which provide our best clue to the understanding of the commandment of Jesus not to judge.

X

We have focused on the bare imperative, "Judge not," and ignored the attached consequence, "that you be not judged." This consequence and the whole context make it clear that Jesus is referring to judgment among human beings, such as between two brothers (Mt. 5:23f.). The

¹³ The contrast between the "simplicity" of faith and the disunion involved in the discrimination of
good and evil is a main theme in Bonhoeffer's Ethics, pp. 142-161. Cf. The Cost of Discipleship,
New York, Macmillan, 1953, pp. 157ff.

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reason he forbids it is twofold: (1) it invites retaliation and so intensifies the divisive nature of judgment, and (2) it assumes a capacity which, in fact, no one of us possesses. Indirectly, Jesus is saying that judgment so practiced among human beings is a usurpation of the prerogative of God and a travesty of the human situation, which consists not merely of relations between human beings on the human plane, but includes also their relation to God. Moreover, the relation to God is fundamental and decisive. This is the point of his answer to the question about the great commandment (Mt. 22:34-40). To put it in a figure, the shape of the human situation is not linear but triangular.

Paul's exhortation to his readers may be understood, in like manner, as an appeal to put first things first. He calls them to direct their self-examination to this point: "Examine yourselves, to see if you are in the faith [literally, as in KJV]. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? - unless indeed you fail to meet the test!" (II Cor. 13:5). Paul does not state how this self-examination is to be done or what criteria are to be employed. In some cases he suggests that his readers may assess the state of their faith by their ability to discern the will of God.¹⁴ We may gain more illumination from the example of his own practice.

Paul's relation with the church at Corinth was of a highly litigious character. The question at issue was that of his credentials-as it had been at an earlier time in the controversy between Jesus and the Jews. The opening chapters of I Corinthians present the issue in terms very similar to those used by Jesus. Just as Jesus sought to dispel the notion that judgment is a matter between human beings on the human plane, so Paul sought to disabuse the Corinthians of the idea which had taken root among them that he was pleading for a favorable judgment from them in a contest with Apollos and Cephas and even Christ (I Cor. 1: 12). Such an idea, he declared, was the mark of an infantile faith (I Cor. 3: 1), and he proceeded to try to bring them to a mature understanding of faith and its bearing on judgment. In summary, he argues that the mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit so exhibit the supremacy of the judgment of God as to reduce all our human judgments to an inferior authority. And this applies not only to our judgments of one another, but even to our judgments of ourselves.

Paul's fullest and most illuminating statement of his position is to be found at the beginning of the fourth chapter, and this passage has the added significance that it contains a reference to conscience: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself [the Greek uses the standard verbal phrase for conscience, and this is indicated in the translation of NEB: 'I have

¹⁴ Rom. 12:2; Phil. 1:9f.; Eph. 5:8ff. Bonhoeffer dealt with this point courageously and confidently, if not altogether convincingly, in his Ethics, pp. 161-166.

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nothing on my conscience'], but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes" (I Cor. 4:4f).

Paul speaks of a reorientation of judgment from our human relations to our relation to God. Judgment on matters concerning our human relations or ourselves is not eliminated. Conscience still renders its judgment. But the test of faith is the power to hold all such judgments in suspense, in prospect of the judgment of God. Paul's faith is so firmly oriented on this judgment that he is able to suspend, not only his judgment of others, but even his judgment of himself.

XI

We are led to the conclusion that the commandment of Jesus not to judge points up the fact that a prime ingredient of faith is total reliance on the judgment of God.

Our propensity for judgment has two roots. One is the assumption that if we refrain from judging one another, judgment will not be done. I referred at the beginning to the psychological and moral difficulties that stand in the way of our obeying Jesus' commandment. We may think also of the social consequences. What would happen to human society, to our life together as human beings, if we took Jesus at his word and abstained completely from judging one another? Would not the absence of judgment take away something that is essential to making and keeping human life human?

The other root is the desire to be judged by others, and judged favorably, which, as we noted above, is the complement to the commandment not to judge. This root goes deeper. It is comparatively easy to refrain from sitting in judgment on others-at least from giving overt expression to it. But to fail in others judgment of us, to lack their approval and esteem, to receive no "glory" from them-that is a deprivation that is hard to bear, the more so as it tends to undermine our judgment of ourselves.

The impulse to judge, therefore, springs from fear, and fear springs from want of faith in God. When Jesus commands us not to judge, he is not imposing a heavy burden on us; he is, in fact, relieving us of it; he is offering us liberation from the fear that prompts us to judge and to be judged. And he does this, not by abolishing judgment, but precisely the opposite: he gives us the assurance that judgment is already and sufficiently provided for. The judgment of God is done in him.

The commandment of Jesus not to judge is the equivalent of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. The choice between justification by works and justification by faith is not the choice between works and faith as means by which we shall seek to be justified. It is the choice between our seeking judgment by any means, whether for others or for ourselves, and committing ourselves to the judgment of God.

This is the critical test of faith to which we are called by the commandment of Jesus. As Paul showed by his teaching and example, it

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does not invalidate such moral judgments as register in our conscience. It sets us free from the demoralizing effect they have when they are treated as final and absolute. They are, as Paul showed in Romans 2, intimations or reverberations of the judgment of God, and they serve their purpose when they direct us to that judgment which has been accomplished in Jesus Christ and which sets us free from the tyranny of all judgments of our own.