Theosis. Группа авторов

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in Jesus’ Teaching

      Stephen Finlan

      There are three particularly vivid deification passages in the Gospels:

      The kingdom of God is within you.

      Luke 17:21 NIV (1978), NCV, KJV (but default translation is NRSV)

      Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

      Matt 5:48 NRSV

      Is it not written in your law, “I said, you are gods”?

      John 10:34

      Deification Sayings in the Gospels

      The Luke text indicates an indwelling divine potential; the Matthew text suggests continuous transformation into God-likeness; the John text seems to intend the divinization of believers. Mark lacks any unmistakable divinization reference, but profound transformation is certainly suggested in the records of people doing the will of God, becoming Jesus’ brothers and sisters, receiving healing as divine “power,” and seeing the kingdom of God “come with power” (Mark 3:35; 5:30; 9:1). Still, the absence of explicit deification statements makes Mark (not John) the anomaly among the canonical Gospels. John’s harmony with Matthew and Luke in this matter causes difficulty for standard biblical scholarship, which is wont to isolate John and discount its possible historicity. This does not mean that we should reject scholarship, only that we should be attentive to the actual content of the sayings, and be prepared to encounter some surprises.

      We will begin with Luke’s kingdom-within, move to Matthew’s perfect-like-God, to John’s you-are-gods and other remarks, and then to some suggestive passages in Mark.

      The first thing to notice about the three sayings quoted above is how shocking they are. They evoke amazement, stimulating reflection. To appreciate any of these deification statements requires a willingness to depart from all the arid interpretations that would suffocate the creativity of first-hand religious living. To appreciate Jesus’ sayings demands that one abandon all standardized theologies—Jewish or Christian—and to reject as well the lifeless skepticism that sometimes taints academic discourse. The endeavor to explain Jesus sociologically and to deny any originality to his sayings is an attempt to stifle his, and their, revolutionary import. We must allow them to be as extraordinary as they seem.

      The Kingdom Within

      One does not always find such a balanced approach. Scholarship is engaged in a pendulum swing against any emphasis on the individual and any notion of a kingdom within. This extreme anti-individualism has led to a bland and misleading translation of ἐντός in Luke 17:21: “the kingdom of God is among you” (NRSV, NAB, NJB).

      The correct translation of ἐντός, “within,” occurs in KJV, NCV, and ASV, but the trend in the last seventy years has been to undermine the intention of this saying by refusing to allow ἐντός to have its usual meaning, instead insisting on giving it a social meaning, starting with RSV translating it as “in the midst of.” NAB translates it “among,” as does NRSV, but the latter provides the marginal alternate, “within.” NCV reverses this choice, preferring “within,” and giving “among” in the margin.

      I suspect that the attempt to socialize, suffocate, and domesticate this saying arises from an anti-personalist and materialistic bias. Some scholars insist the saying can only be social, that the kingdom must refer to the social circle around Jesus. Why must it? Is it because the persons offering this interpretation have lost faith in the notion of creative and spiritual power within the individual (within themselves)? Have they bought wholly into the notion that people are nothing but products of their environment?

      Some analysts think the “within you” notion sounds Gnostic, and reject it for that reason. But this is anachronistic and distorting. The Gospel was written prior to the sharp division between Gnostics and orthodox, before the Gnostics made some of his sayings their favorites, and the orthodox made others determinative. There is no reason that Jesus could not have said something that later hearers think sounds “Gnostic,” any more than it is impossible for Jesus to have said something that later hearers will pronounce “Catholic-sounding” or “Protestant-seeming,” even though he spoke them centuries before these church divisions emerged.


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