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From The Golden Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), by Jeffrey Wattles

CHAPTER 5

A NEW TESTAMENT RULE OF DIVINE LOVE

      Jesus is a controversial figure partly because the records of his teachings juxtapose intuitively appealing statements with controversial ones.  The golden rule, broadly accepted in its day, is associated with more problematic teachings.  Therefore, whoever would take the initial, obvious sense of Jesus' golden rule as its final sense faces a challenge when interpreting the rule in context.  Matthew's Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) and Luke's comparable Sermon on the Plain (6.20-49) may appear to associate the rule with inferior standards: Give to others, or face the punishment of God (Matthew), and Give generously in order that you may receive (Luke).  In addition, these contexts associate the rule with a high standard, including the command to be perfect and to love your enemies.  Thus two main questions arise about the New Testament golden rule: (1) How does the rule relate to notions of reciprocity?  (2) How does the rule relate to the high standard of the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, a standard some have called unreasonably high?  It is necessary to sort things out in some detail to show that a progressive, reasonable, and high standard emerges from the rule in Matthew and Luke.

      First, a word about reciprocity.  The term is often used imprecisely to express the gist of the golden rule, and different ideas associated in the first century with the vague notion of reciprocity make it necessary to remember to distinguish the rule from four other ideas with which it is sometimes confused: (1) the rule of reciprocity in a restricted sense--repay favors done to you, be friendly to those who are friendly to you; (2) the rule of retaliation--repay harm with harm, "an eye for an eye"; (3) repayment ethics--a combination of reciprocity and retaliation, such that justice means doing good to friends and harm to enemies; and (4) a principle of social and cosmic realism--acts have consequences in normal social interaction, in the course of nature, and in the life to come; if we do good, we can, on the whole, expect good in return; if we do evil, we can expect to suffer: "As you sow, so shall you reap."

Interpretation and the New Testament

      The New Testament gospels present memories and traditions, written and oral, fashioned in order to tell stories the authors and redactors (editors) regarded as supremely important.  Many scholars today emphasize the differing theological agendas of the various evangelists and so suspend judgment on the veracity of their narratives.  Some scholars hesitate to ascribe the golden rule to Jesus, since the rule was already part of popular Jewish and Hellenistic culture and could have been inserted into the texts from sources other than the teachings of Jesus.  There is a certain boldness in speaking about Jesus, instead of, say, Matthew's Jesus or simply Matthew, since we seem to have only a text and no way to verify independently the correctness of the text.  How to solve this problem?  Hegel somewhere remarks ironically about interpreting according to the spirit, namely, according to reason, namely, according to common sense (one's own opinion).

      One may, to be sure, hope for inspiration to comprehend what is written and to help fill the gaps that are necessarily part of the text.  If we understood Aramaic and could watch a videotape of Jesus and hear his voice and see his gestures, we would recognize how much readers fill in the feeling dimension of the text with our own emotions, perhaps projecting a note of unrealistic sentiment into a word of mercy or a note of fury into a warning.  How something is said communicates even more than what is said.

      Without appealing to a revealed, factual record or to spiritual experience, it is possible to explicate the coherence of the text, trusting it unless there is convincing reason to do otherwise.  My interpretive hypothesis is that some tensions between different gospel narratives or within a given narrative are consequences of the many-sidedness of Jesus' teaching.  Furthermore, on the assumption that Jesus' life reflects his teachings, my hope has been, as far as possible, to reconcile these tensions by trying to grasp the unity in his life.

      A many-sided teaching is especially vulnerable to distortion when people who differ intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually emphasize certain themes at the expense of others.  A common observation, for example, is that the author or last redactor of the "gospel" According to Matthew was addressing a Jewish audience familiar with Jewish law, and thus highlighted Jesus' rigorous moral teachings more prominently than did the writers of the other narratives.[1]  Nevertheless, Matthew includes a fair sampling of other sides of Jesus' teachings, e.g., "Come to me, all who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."[2]  The gospel according to Matthew thus indicates a redactor committed to the full spectrum of the memories of Jesus rather than to a smooth theological blanket.    Most interpreters of the Sermon on the Mount try to strike a balance--aiming to acknowledge the rigor of its standard without falling into an external legalism; to take the Sermon seriously without falling into a literalism that ignores the illustrative character of its examples (turning the other cheek, going the second mile); to give full recognition to the primacy of the spiritual dimension without ending in an extreme ethic of attitude lacking a concrete norm for action; to interpret reasonably without merely accommodating the Sermon to today's culture.[3]  A wide range of teachings are collected in the Sermon on the Mount, including tender encouragements (the beatitudes[4]) and challenging warnings (e.g., about anger as the inner equivalent of murder).  This complex matrix is the key, I propose, to understanding Jesus' golden rule.  While it is common to find great literary sophistication in Jesus' parables, which put dynamic spiritual teachings in commonplace images, there has been a tendency to read Jesus' moral teachings, stated in equally commonplace terms, as univocal and dogmatic; but the golden rule is more complex than it appears.

The rule in Matthew

      Matthew 7.12 reads, "panta oun hosa ean thelete hina poiousin humin hoi anthropoi, houtos kai humeis poieite autois; houtos gar estin ho nomos kai oi prophetai."

      All things (panta hosa)

      therefore (oun)

      which you [plural] want/wish/will (ean thelete)

      that (hina) people (hoi anthropoi)

      do (poiousin) to you (humin),

      do (poiete) thus (houtos kai) to them (autois)

      for (gar) this (outos) is (estin) the law (ho nomos) and (kai)

      the prophets (ho prophetai).

      The plural "you" suggests that the golden rule is given not only to the individual but also to the community.  Intuitive notions of wanting/wishing/willing and of doing are invoked.  In the phrase, "What you want people to do to you," the verb thelete carries no specific connotations.  It can be translated by "wish," "want," or "will."  There may be some contrast with boulomai, which connotes choice following upon reflection.  The appeal, therefore, is to an intuitive sense of how one wants to be treated.  A certain faith in humankind is expressed by inviting people to take their own desires for being well treated as a clue for how to treat others.  The point is not that one's religious heritage and personal reflections do not shape intuition, nor that one will never need to retire "to the wilderness" to deliberate and formulate one's great decisions.  The point rather is that the golden rule provides only an implicit guide to the maturing/transformation of one's willing, namely the path of experience that follows upon engaging oneself in treating others as comparable to oneself.  A similar remark can be made regarding poiein, to do or to make.  There is no implied philosophy of action here, for example, along the lines of the Greek distinction between actions undertaken merely as a means to some further end, versus actions regarded as intrinsically valuable in themselves.  The only implication for the philosophy of action is that action is understood, first and foremost, as interpersonal, as interaction.[5]

      The Matthean context of the golden rule, however, introduces another level of meaning.  The rule is given immediately after the remark about the good gifts that the Father in heaven gives to those who ask.[6]

      7 Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  8 For every one who asks receives, and he who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give a snake?  11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!  12 In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. 13 Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. (Mt 7.7-13, NRSV)

Placing the golden rule in the context of fatherly love (Mt. 7.7-11) gains for it a new level of meaning.  The rule might seem to fit oddly as directly appended to a lesson on prayer.  Luke, logically, puts the lesson on prayer with other teachings on prayer.[7]  One can understand why some scholars have construed the Sermon on the Mount as amplifying the memory of a single discourse with many additional teachings.  It might have been smoother to position the rule, say, after the teaching about removing the log from your own eye before you try to remove the speck from someone else's eye[8]; this would have strengthened the customary association of the rule with brotherly fairness between equals, whose relations tend to be spoiled by selfish distortions of perspective.

      Matthew is after something more than a rule of equity.  To love in this context means to love as the Father loves, and that means doing the Father's will.  "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."[9]  While may be said of the Creator, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts"[10], in the immediate context the Father's love is simply presented as being at least as good as human parental love, and no heroic measures are called for.

The fulfillment of the law and the prophets

      Fatherly love and the golden rule in Matthew are best interpreted in terms of Matthew's overarching theme of Jesus as the fulfillment of tradition.  "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill."[11]  That Matthew then refers to the golden rule as "the law and the prophets" attributes a special status to the rule and suggests a link between the golden rule and Jesus' mission: Jesus will demonstrate a new fulfillment of the golden rule.  "The law and the prophets" was a two-fold designation of the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures.  Later, when Matthew cites the great commandments of the love of God and neighbor, he adds, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets," and he thus suggests a link between the golden rule and these other summary principles.[12]

      What could it mean to fulfill the Torah?  In the Sermon on the Mount, fulfillment involves a combination of continuity and discontinuity.  In the first place, fulfillment involves preserving the achievements of tradition, e.g., regarding the universality of moral obligation.  The golden rule governs relations with all people (anthropoi), not just relations within the fellowship of believers.[13]  Just as God makes the sun shine on the good and the evil and the rain fall on the just and unjust, so the love of the followers of Jesus cannot be restricted to an exclusive group.[14]  The point is strengthened by Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan, not only because the Samaritan is not a member of the approved religious group, but also because the Samaritan had neither the need nor the opportunity to inquire about the religious status of the one he helped, the beaten-up, half dead man by the side of the road.[15]  Jesus told the crowds, "Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven."[16]

      Fulfillment involves adjustments to make room for emerging facts and meanings and values.  Both Matthew and Luke present the golden rule as adjusted from the previous negative formulations (e.g., "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you") to positive formulations.  This change has absorbed a disproportionately large share of commentators' attention.  First of all, there is an argument in favor of a negative formulation: One primal function of moral law is to demarcate boundaries that must not be trespassed.  The need to promulgate respect for these boundaries is as urgent today as it was during the time of Moses.[17]  Second, it seems that few first-century writers cared much about the verbal difference; negatively formulated expressions of the golden rule are more frequent in both pre-Christian and early Christian documents.[18]  Finally, there are reasons in favor of a positive formulation: it calls the one who would follow the golden rule to be morally active; it is psychologically more effective to command the good than to prohibit evil; and positive expressions, such as the law of love, are more directly expressive of the values which are presupposed by prohibitions.

      Fulfillment also involves a deepening of the commandments.  "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.'  But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment."[19]  God looks into the heart.  Although the phrase, "But I say to you" is unique among the literature of the period, and expresses what scholars regards as an undoubtedly authentic presentation of Jesus' authority, this deepening of the commandments was familiar in contemporary Jewish preaching.  Attaching the golden rule to a teaching about Fatherly love deepens the rule.

      Fulfillment can also involve change that overturns what was previously held.  For example, as we shall see in a moment, the Sermon on the Mount instructs the hearers not to return evil for evil.  This overturning does not justify a simplistic distinction between "a New Testament of love and mercy" and "an Old Testament of law and retribution."[20]  Although the Hebrew scriptures command repayment in kind for an injury[21], they also counsel kindness to an enemy[22] and proclaim a God of mercy.[23]

      In sum, though the golden rule was not part of the written Torah, it may be said to be fulfilled in Jesus' life and teachings.  The traditional golden rule is preserved, adjusted from a negative to a positive formulation, deepened in context, and associated with the overturning of the principle of retaliation.

Reciprocity in Matthew

      Tradition had promised the blessings of nature for the righteous and ruin for the unrighteous.[24]  No small proportion of wisdom literature emphasizes rewards of good conduct and penalties for bad conduct.  Regarded as generalizations about human interactions, they have a certain plausibility.  What is more normal than to respond to love with love?  What is more natural than to retaliate in response to harm?  Tobit recommends giving alms as a protection against a time of need (4.10).  Clement of Rome, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13 (which may chronologically precede or follow the gospels), includes a rule of prudence: "As you treat others, so shall you be treated."[25]  It may seem as though repayment thinking was common in society and religion and in the golden rule as well.

      According to Bruce J. Malina, in the social world of first-century Palestine, reciprocity was a normal and prominent practice, in the sense of doing favors in the expectation of receiving favors in return and repaying favors previously received.  Perhaps every society practices reciprocity in this sense.[26]

      Although someone might associate the golden-rule equation of self and other with the custom of exchanging favors, Jesus' responses to good and evil do not follow a policy of doing favors only for friends and getting even for injuries.  He insists that beneficence not be restricted to returning favors: "If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?"[27]  Nor does Jesus condone the popular notion that one may accumulate merit with God by performing enough good deeds to outweigh smaller sins.[28]  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus dismisses the principle of retaliation.  "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'  But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also."[29]   Jesus rebukes the disciples when they wanted to retaliate by calling down fire from heaven on a Samaritan town that had rejected them.[30]  To put things in perspective, recall that the "law of talio" was no maxim of wrathful vengeance.  It was originally conceived as a limitation on vengeance: an eye for an eye--and nothing more[31];  Jesus nonetheless made it clear that his apostles were not to participate in this practice.

      Jesus clearly calls for a standard higher than returning favors and retaliation, and yet there is a persistent impression that repayment ethics haunts the New Testament gospels.[32]  For example, the golden rule in Matthew is immediately followed by a remark contrasting the narrow way which leads to life and the broad way which leads to destruction.  To untangle this issue requires probing topics remote from the leading edge of the gospel, the heartening beatitudes, or the golden rule.  Does talk of reward and punishment indicate the persistence of repayment-thinking in Matthew?  The Sermon on the Mount concludes with a parable contrasting a house built on rock that will stand, with a house built on sand that will fall.[33]  One who "invests" too tentatively the talents he or she has received gains a lesser reward than one who has been fully consecrated.[34]  The link between sowing and reaping does not presuppose an arbitrary, intervening hand.  Nor would a responsible teacher omit mention of the consequences to his hearers of the choices before them.  Realism is not repayment-thinking.

      Talk of "rewards," such as the assurances given in the beatitudes, are given to those who trust God, so that they will not need to think about things balancing out when they face a situation where much is at stake.  The assurance received enables the individual to act in a crisis in a self-forgetting manner where there is no prospect of return from the other.  Luke relates that Jesus prayed and received assurance in Gethsemani[35] and then went through the crucifixion attentive to the needs of others.[36]

      Jesus prescribes punishment in the context of the efforts of mercy to rehabilitate a wrongdoer.  Consider the structure of the lesson on forgiveness given in Matthew 18.12-35, a social procedure framed by two parables.  Jesus first tells the parable of the shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep.  The purpose of the shepherd's quest is to reintegrate the lost one into the vital circuits of the community of faith.  Next comes the three-stage procedure which a member of the community is obliged to take if another member sins against him or her.  If a series of efforts, from private one-to-one conversation to small group encounter to community meeting do not succeed in rehabilitating the member, then, at the limit, the unrepentatnt, persistently willful and disruptive individual is to be disfellowshiped.  Just when the hearer/reader imagines himself/herself sitting in judgment upon someone else, a concluding parable challenges self-righteousness with an application of golden-rule thinking.  The servant owed his lord a great debt and was about to be thrown into prison, but he begged for mercy and was forgiven.  However, he was merciless in demanding punishment for one who owed him much less.  When the lord discovered the harshness, he threw the unforgiving steward into prison.[37]  Jesus' teachings on forgiveness combine a personal, spiritual attitude and a concrete social procedure.  In the spirit of recalling how much we have been forgiven, believers are to undertake the necessary activities of retrieval and community maintenance.  The Matthew 18 lesson illustrates the integration of spiritual and practical dimensions in loving a disruptive member of one's congregation, and an analogous integration surely applies in loving an enemy.

      Forgiveness, in brief, can be accepted or rejected; and a human life, finally, falls on one side or another of a great divide.  There comes a parting of the ways (cf. Joshua: "Choose this day whom you will serve"[38]).  As ambiguous as our lives may be, with our generosities and our stumblings and sin, there is an overall direction.  From the standpoint of one who sees through the inbetweenness of immaturity, Jesus could say, "Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit."[39]  After this life comes either resurrection or "the destruction of the soul.[40]  For the one who forever and finally rejects the divine offer of salvation, it can be said, "From those who have nothing, even what they have shall be taken away."[41]  It is for divine judgment to discern when such a mortal has thoroughly identified with the antithesis of reality.[42]  Judgment is not the reactive vengeance of an offended Deity, but an act that embodies the recognition of when the cup of iniquity has become full.  It is not retaliation, nor exactly retribution; it is the consequence of iniquity in a universe ordered toward advancing goodness.  Matthew shows us that Jesus was fully capable of being militant.  There is some analogy to final, negative judgment in Jesus' last temple discourse[43] condemning the sin of those religious leaders who determined that he be put to death.  The denunciation illustrates the exhaustion of patience when many appeals have been rejected.[44]

      The narrowness of the repayment ethic is not implied by the normal connection between act and consequence, nor by the necessary procedure of a group to deal with incorrigibly harmful individuals, nor by the denunciation of murderous hypocrisy.  The difference between the repayment ethic and divine love are that the repayment ethic is narrowly partisan, whereas divine love responds generously to good and mercifully to evil and judges righteously if and when mercy is finally rejected.  The repayment ethic is oriented to short-term material advantage, and divine love is oriented to the heavenly kingdom.

      Matthew's golden rule, then, should not be linked to the ethics of repaying favors and injuries.  It is a pivot between (1) a summary of the law and the prophets and (2) Jesus' teaching of Fatherly love and the progressive requirements of discipleship.

The high standard of the Sermon on the Mount

      The link between the golden rule and the high standard of the Sermon on the Mount has chronically raised the question of whether the rule thereby becomes unrealistic, even inhumane.  Part of the Sermon teaches that righteousness is, initally, a matter of the heart.  An appropriate spiritual attitude is needed to motivate conformity with such traditional requirements as the prohibitions against murder and adultery.  If genuine righteousness is spiritually motivated, the standard may be said to be high, but it cannot therefore be regarded as inhumane.

      In addition, there are requirements that require a more complex analysis.

      "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'  But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go also the second two mile.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.  "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?  Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brethren, what more are you doing than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.[45]

The hearers of the Sermon were not to resist evil, not to use the courts to defend their property rights, to love their enemies, and to be perfect.  Most of these teachings, properly understood, are applicable to the ordinary believer, though not all.

      To sort things out takes some reconstructive interpretation.  To what group was the Sermon on the Mount addressed?  The practical importance of the question is that the golden rule is associated in the Sermon on the Mount with an especially high standard, raising the question: is this standard equally binding on all believers?

      There is much discussion about which audience--the twelve apostles or all the committed disciples or the diverse crowds--were the intended recipients of which portions of the sermon.[46]  Matthew frames the sermon ambiguously: at the beginning, the reader is told that Jesus is not speaking to the crowds: "When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him."[47]  At the end, however, we read, "Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teachings."[48]  The proclamation, "You are the light of the world,"[49] would hardly fit in a sermon to the crowds.  The form and the content of the Sermon on the Mount, on one reading, "point to a group of committed disciples who go apart with their teacher and are instructed by him concerning the meaning of the separated or sacred community that gathers around him."[50]  Luke places the Sermon on the Plain right after Jesus calls the twelve apostles from among a larger group of disciples.[51]

      Should we say that among the teachings gathered in the Sermon on the Mount are some that define extraordinary requirements for the twelve apostles, the standard-bearers Jesus' mission?  As representatives of Jesus, and as heralds of the present and future kingdom, their function was to exemplify not merely currently adequate standards, but heavenly standards, the standards that represent planetary destiny, a future-oriented, "eschatological" ethic.[52]

      No textual argument can conclusively settle the issue, but if we assume that the Sermon on the Mount was addressed to the twelve to explain the requirements of their mission, a number of things fall into place.  Although most of the Sermon presents teachings like the beatitudes, suitable for the crowds, other aspects pertain specifically to the apostles.

      Regarding non-resistance, observe that, despite the Roman occupation of Palestine, Jesus rejected the idea of pursuing "the kingdoms of the world."[53]  He offered spiritual leadership as an alternative to military revolt (which eventually proved to be national suicide in the failed wars of liberation, during the years 66-70 and 132-135).  The apostles did not serve in the army, and many early disciples followed their example; similarly, the apostles were not to settle their disputes in court, and this later was urged upon believers generally.[54]  Jesus' high standard is sometimes mistaken for weakness, supine submission, returning nothing for evil.  But look at Jesus' bold, final entry into Jerusalem to bring spiritual power to confront the intellectual arguments and physical force that his enemies would muster.

      "Non-resistance" is a negative formulation of a positive, imaginative, creative, and courageous activity: returning good for evil, to "turn the other cheek" in response to a blow, to "go the second mile" when forced to go one mile (by law the Roman soldiers could compel Jewish citizens to carry their packs one mile).  The teaching is not legislation but illustration of a fearless and loving response in a situation where one's options are constrained. Nor can pacifism be deduced from the Sermon.  The term "enemy" refers to personal enemies, not enemies of the nation.  The golden rule is consistent with group defense by force of arms.  How should one want to be treated if one is a member of an invading army that is raping and killing?  Do I regard it as a requirement of love that I be permitted to continue such a spree until I am sated?  One should want to be stopped, if need be, with whatever force is necessary.[55]  Jesus never condemns the soldier's function, and (in Luke) he praises the great faith of the Roman centurion.[56]  In short, non-resistance involves some aspects that constrain the apostles and some aspects that are constructive good sense for anyone.

      The Sermon's call to abandon anxiety regarding one's economic welfare[57] is universally applicable, though the requirement to trust the heavenly Father for daily necessities and to have goods in common specifically constrained the twelve who were travelling with Jesus during the time that the crowds were supportive[58].  Thus, the rich ruler was required to sell his possessions[59]; but Jesus suspended the requirement as he prepared to leave them: "When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?"  They said, "No, not a thing."  He said to them, "But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag."[60]  W. D. Davies remarked of the early church, "The primitive experiment in 'communism', so-called, was short-lived; soon it became necessary to send money to the 'poor' of Jerusalem who had used their capital unwisely."[61]

      The call to be perfect [teleios] is addressed to all, not in the sense that apostles or disciples are expected to have completed their personal growth, but in the sense that every believer is expected to be wholehearted.  As Joachim Jeremias clarifies, we need not "take teleios in a perfectionist sense; rather, Matthew will have understood telios in the sense of the Old Testament tamim ('intact,' 'undivided') as the designation of who belongs to God with the totality of his life."[62]  "You cannot serve God and wealth."[63]  Abandoning anxiety, the disciple is to "strive first for the kingdom and his righteousness," and is to trust God for other essentials.[64]

      The specific constraints on the apostles must of course not be substituted for the gospel message itself and taken as legalistic requirements for anyone seeking to enter the kingdom; the Sermon itself refutes this view: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."[65]  Such an attitude of humility enables a genuinely child-like entrance into the kingdom.[66]  Nevertheless, having entered, each believer must grow; and growth ultimately involves having one's entire life transformed by the relationship with God.  Lest it be imagined that this view of a higher standard of morality for apostles entails a dangerously lax standard for others, consider that Jesus, before his final entry into Jerusalem, clarified the cost of anyone's following him: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."[67]

      Jesus' eschatological presence sets up a gravitational attraction that strictly holds the apostles in a close orbit; partly similar requirements hold for the seventy who were also commissioned to preach the gospel; and other disciples and the crowds are accelerated into its vortex of righteousness.[68]  The presence of Jesus generates a movement of desire and commitment to live like him: the core of his new community is to share his specific requirements, while teachings such as the golden rule function spiritually to help a morally diverse humanity to live in an increasingly God-like way.[69]

Beyond reciprocity with Luke's golden rule

      The gospel according to Luke (joined with the Acts of the Apostles) presents Jesus as bringing the kingdom of God through abundant forgiveness, with a special welcome for the poor.  Jesus heals, preaches, and teaches in the power of the Spirit which, poured out upon all flesh at Pentecost, enabled the heroic work of Stephen and Peter and Paul, and which continues to bless believers in their outreach to the world.

      The golden rule is placed, as in Matthew, within a cluster of teachings, the Sermon on the Plain.  Luke 6.31 reads, "kai kathos thelete hina poiousin humin hoi anthropoi, poiete autois homoios."

      And (kai)

      as (kathos)

      you want (thelete)

      that people do to you (hina poiousin humin hoi anthropoi)

      do thus to them (poiete autois homoios).

Luke's wording begins, "As you want people to do to you"; this wording highlights not what is done as much as how it is done.  Matthew's phrasing, "All things that you want people to do to/for you" implied individuated actions, which, presumably, may be outwardly characterized.  Both aspects of action, to be sure, are important in each gospel.  The context surrounding the golden rule in Luke pointedly raises the issues about a high standard and reciprocity.

      27 But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.  30 Give to every one who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.  32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.  35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.  Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.  37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.  For the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Luke 6.27-38, NRSV)

Again the paradigm of the Father is invoked.  Luke contrasts the golden rule with the ethic of reciprocity and identifies the rule with generosity to the poor and love of enemies, with being merciful as our Father is merciful; the one who gives abundantly will receive abundantly from the Father.[70]  The thought of reward for giving is not altogether absent, though the overflowing generosity which is called for is hardly possible without self-forgetfulness.  The teaching, therefore, is fulfilled, not by keeping its promise in mind, but by devotion to the other's needs.

      There are at least three possible relations between the golden rule and the love that Jesus exemplified and called his hearers to share.  (1) The golden rule is an important traditional summary principle, but it falls short of the love of Jesus.  (2) Jesus' love is so radical and so little adjusted to this world that it needs the golden rule of fairness to guide its expression in daily life.  (3) The golden rule receives an ideal interpretation in terms of the love that Jesus exemplified.

      The first conception, that the golden rule is inferior to the command to love, has some plausibility, inasmuch as the golden rule, in its verbal formulation, is easy to associate with reasonable beneficence, rather than overflowing love; it is also easy to imagine judicious balance conflicting in some cases with a loving generosity.  Nevertheless, Luke's golden rule is connected to the love of enemies; and it is even harder in Luke than in Matthew to restrict the meaning of the golden rule to past tradition: "The law and the prophets were in effect until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed."[71]

      The second conception, that love needs the golden rule for its wise application, is appealing if we think of love as a delight in the other and a desire to do good to the other, a desire that functions to motivate agents to learn about their recipients' concrete situation and to balance generous impulses with a proportionate awareness of competing demands.  The second conception, however, risks implying that love is a tendency to do foolish things.  If love is conceived as impulsive and undiscerning, then it is the more understandable that a complementary principle of golden-rule equity is needed for daily living.

      Paul Ricoeur, whose thought figures significantly in chapters 11 and 12, has argued for a combination of the first two conceptions.  To show how Luke's context for the golden rule transcends repayment-thinking, Ricoeur describes a move from the "the economy of exchange and its logic of equivalence" to the "economy of gift and its logic of abundance" and its associated "rhetoric of paradox."  Because a gift has been previously received (from God), one is to be generous toward others, even in situations in which it cannot be expected that they will repay one's generosity.  Generosity supplants the motive of doing good in order to get future benefits in return.  "The Golden Rule is not merely quoted here, it is integrated into a new ethics.  This would be unthinkable if it could not be reinterpreted according to the new logic of superabundance sealed by the love of enemies."[72]  Non-calculating love of enemies, for Ricoeur, is an ethical paradox which is "intended to disorient for the sake of reorienting, as many commentators have said about the parables."[73]  The love of enemies suspends and transcends ethics altogether, according to Ricoeur.  The golden rule emerges, on the other side of this disorientation to reorient social interchange.

      Despite this analysis, Ricoeur interprets the golden rule, finally, as expressing the principle of social/economic/political equity which is needed for social stability in the wake of the revolutionary, non-calculating love of enemies which closes the old order and inaugurates the new.  What is essential, for Ricoeur, is to retain the "tension" between (1) a bilateral principle of justice and fairness which preserves reciprocity and (2) a unilateral love of enemies.[74]  One must ceaselessly keep reinterpreting radical love from the perspective of fairness and fairness from the perspective of radical love.  In another article touching on the same theme, however, Ricoeur allows that the golden rule may "lean toward one direction or toward the other, according to the interpretation it is given."[75]  The abundance of the economy of giving is dramatized at 6.38: "Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.  For the measure you give will be the measure you get back."  He presents this comment as his conclusion: "The lack of measure is the good measure.  Such is the poetic transposition of the rhetoric of paradox: superabundance becomes the hidden truth of equivalence.  The Golden Rule is repeated.  But repetition means transfiguration."[76]

      Clearly, one may recognize a useful moral practice of comparing agent and recipient and a love which transcends this.  To distinguish between these two levels of value is no reason to confine the golden rule to the lower level.  In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus does not propose the golden rule just to remind his followers to keep their feet on the ground and be fair-minded in their social relationships.  Luke does not synthesize a spiritual love that is blind to actualities with a secular principle of fairness.  Luke rather implies integrated conceptions of the golden rule and of love such that they involve each other.

      The question of the reasonableness of the high standard arises again with the Sermon on the Plain.  Does the love of enemies entail neglecting prudence, inviting abuse, turning oneself into a victim, embracing pacifism?  As previously indicated, nothing in Jesus religious teaching to the individual proscribes the right to use force in national self-defense.

      In economic affairs, to argue the reasonableness of Jesus' ethic is not to bless the status quo.  The Sermon on the Plain is flatly incompatible with a complacent response to economic inequality.  Luke emphasized Jesus' attention to the poor and the dangers of wealth.[77]  In Jesus' society, notes Joachim Jeremias, "'almsgiving' is not a support for beggary, but the dominant form of social help."[78]  Luke's point about the poor is not that each person is required to relinquish his possessions.  With satisfaction Jesus addressed Zacchaeus, who had pledged just half his goods to the poor.[79]  The poor, fundamentally, are those who are distressed and afflicted.  According to Malina, "A poor person seems to be one who cannot maintain his inherited status due to circumstances that befall him and his family, like debt, being in a foreign land, sickness, death (widow), or some personal physical accident."[80]  It remains true that Jesus' primary ministry was spiritual.  When the crowds he had healed sought for him, he went elsewhere: "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose."[81]

      The love that Jesus called for is neither impossible, nor impractical, nor is his language a figure of speech designed primarily to jolt the hearer out of conventional attitudes.  Luke portrays Jesus as a man of prayer, whose spirit enables believers to imitate him, to continue living in his way; "Everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher."[82]  The seventy evangelists found that they, too, could perform wonders.[83]  Stephen, "full of the Holy Spirit," preached boldly, paid for it with his life, and died like Jesus, commending his spirit to the Lord and praying for forgiveness for those who put him to death.[84]  For the author of Luke-Acts, the spirit that Jesus lived in fullness is given to enable believers today to live in continuity with that original inspiration: "How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"[85]

      The overflowing, universal love of the golden rule in Luke is linked with basic religious teachings.  Jesus taught that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"[86]; and he portrayed God going forth in search of every "lost sheep," awaiting the return of every "prodigal son," unwilling that any should perish.[87]  Luke teaches, finally, that the spirit has been poured out upon all flesh.[88]  He presents a God who loves each of us with a boudless love.

Conclusion

      In context, then, Jesus' golden rule remotivates the normal practice of exchanging favors, and it excludes retaliation.  The New Testament shows how talk of reward and punishment can be free of repayment thinking.  The high standard associated with the rule encompasses two sorts of teachings: some that pertain specifically to the apostles as representatives of the present and future kingdom of God, and other teachings that, when reasonably interpreted, remain high, yet accessible, since every follower is spiritually equipped to grow into them.

      The flexibility of a rule which remains widely accessible and reasonable, while conveying a high standard, can be understood as engaging the hearer/reader in a movement through several levels of interpretation, including at least the following.

      1.  The golden rule of prudence.  Do to others as you want others to do to you . . . with realistic attention to the consequences of your choices for the long-run welfare of your recipient.  This rule must be distinguished from a pseudo-golden rule of self-interest: Do to others as you want others to do to you . . . with an eye to avoiding punishment and gaining rewards for yourself.  It is altogether legitimate that one have a prudent eye to the long-term welfare of one's own soul; prudence "counts the cost" of a proposed commitment or course of action.  And it is altogether fitting that Jesus gave warnings about the consequences of selfish living and gave assurances to calm the fears and intrigue the imagination of those who are open to choosing the way of love and service.  Jesus' promise of eternal life to all who will receive it in faith subverts natural concern about doing what is right at significant earthly cost to oneself.  The prudent course is to do the will of God, and that is to act with golden-rule regard for the neighbor.  But the logic of the golden rule requires that this same farseeing and forward-looking concern be extended to the recipient.  Prudence combined with the golden rule thus involves the next level.

      2.  The golden rule of neighborly love.  Do to others as you want others to do to you . . . as an expression of consideration and fairness among neighbors, where the scope of the term "neighbor" extends to all without regard to ethnic or religious differences.  Since the neighbor can be the enemy, however, fulfilling a "conventional ethic of fairness" can require extraordinary love, which involves the next level.

      3.  The golden rule of Fatherly love.  Do to others as you want others to do to you . . . imitating the divine paradigm.  The rule has its paradigm in the way the Father loves, giving good gifts and being merciful, and in the life of Jesus, which shows that love is not without its severe disciplines.

      These three levels are implied and blended in Jesus' teachings.  His authoritative teaching gave assurance that those who upstepped neighborly love to fatherly love--loving enemies, giving generously, being a peacemaker, enduring persecution, and so on--would not thereby sacrifice the eternal welfare of their souls.  A due appreciation of the spirit of Jesus' golden rule, I believe, comes from the recognition that he made use of the cream of scriptural and oral tradition which he invested with new meaning by virtue of his other teachings and by his life.

      By the same reasoning, the intention to express the parental love of God must avoid falling into the trap of adopting a superior and condescending stance.  Rather, what is fitting is the same attitude of service that one would welcome as the recipient of someone else's divinely parental love in like circumstances.