Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lums@ai.mit.edu (Andy Lumsdaine) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Question for Net.theologians Message-ID: Date: 5 Jun 90 03:10:31 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 104 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu > When Jesus, in the the temple, got angry and began to turn over > tables and create a fuss, what if by some terrible misfortune > a young child was hit over the head by a turned table and was > killed. I suppose one of the answers might be he would have > simply worked a miracle on the spot and brought the boy back > to life, but I don't think that is a very satisfactory answer, > and it fails to address the ethical, and moral implications > I am dealing with. Were his violent actions in temple > excusable because he was the son of God? As our example what > are we to make of this example? > Again, regardless of whether he is able to bring the boy back to > life, he would have killed him, and this would be considered a > sin. His loss of temper resulted in a violent death, and if any > of us did the same thing, we would surely recognize it as sinful. > Is his anger and the resulting emotional outburst justifiable. > Since the Bible dosen't tell of anyone getting hurt in the melee, > I suppose most of you might consider this a worthless question, > but if we are to consider what Jesus himself said when he said > just the exsistence of anger counted as sinful, regardless of > whether or not someone killed somebody, then how do we apply it > the scene in the temple. No one was hurt, or killed but somebody > could have been, and that is my point. > The issue is that if "he that is without sin" can do something > violent and possibly harmful out of righteous indignation that > anyone of us could not do without being pulled into sin, then > what else could he have done without being pulled into sin? > Sexual relations? Gluttony? Excessive drinking. If we > pardon his anger because of who he was, what else do we > pardon, and if we don't pardon his anger, then how can he > be called sinless? Hmm. These are interesting questions. First you ask what are the ramifications of Jesus' anger, given that he could have accidently hurt or killed someone in his cleansing of the temple. The pat answer here is that no "terrible misfortune" could happen to Jesus -- He is the Son of God, or really, he is God. And maybe this answer isn't so pat. If Jesus is truly God, then he would have certainly been completely aware of all possible consequences of his actions. So really, no one could have been accidently hurt or killed. Furthermore, in reading the accounts of the cleansing of the temple (Mt 21:12-13, Mk 11:15-18, Lk 19:45-46, and Jn 2:14-16), it's not clear that Jesus was acting because of some outburst of his temper. Rather, his actions seem very deliberate. Now, one could still certainly imagine that the Lord was angry, or at least was displaying characteristics which in us would be indicative of anger. So why wasn't it a sin for him to be angry? To answer this, I think we need to define exactly what we mean by sin (this would probably be a great news thread in itself). I've always liked C.S. Lewis' definition (paraphrased by me): sin is a corruption of something good that God has given Man. For instance, there is nothing wrong with sex in and of itself. Sex only becomes sinful when God's intentions for its use have been corrupted, e.g., adultery. All right then, what about anger? Is anger in and of itself a sin, is it a corruption of something good? Or, are there two kinds of anger, righteous and unrighteous? I claim the latter is the case; I think that anger becomes a sin when the intention in the heart of the one who is angry is unloving. For instance, I am personally angry about the state of the earth's environment. But this anger is compelling me to take positive action, to recycle, to support environmental causes, etc. On the other hand, I sometimes get angry when driving around Boston (if you've ever driven here, you understand), but in these cases, my anger makes me curse, makes me wish I had a rocket launcher, etc. It seems to me that the first type of anger is not a sin, but that the second clearly is a sin. That's my own two cents worth, but there does seem to be scriptural support for this. In Ephesians 4:26, Paul says: "Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." The implication seems to be that anger in and of itself is not sin, but that it can lead to sin if not properly controlled. Now I want to bring up something in the temple cleansing that might be even more troubling than the question previously posed. In John's account of the event, Jesus fashioned and used a whip to aid in the cleansing. This is somewhat troubling, because were it the case that he used the whip on the money changers, it seems that he would be *deliberately* hurting people. I checked a few different translations of this account. In the RSV, one reads: "... he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple ...", but in the NIV, one reads: "... and [he] drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle ...". There is a subtle difference here. The RSV seems to imply that Jesus used the whip on everyone, but the NIV seems to imply that he just used it on the sheep and cattle -- a perfectly reasonable way of getting them out of the temple. I checked the Greek on this, and it seems there that he used the whip only on the sheep and cattle, but I'm no Greek scholar. If he did indeed only use the whip on the sheep and cattle, there's no problem. But even if he did direct the whip towards the money changers, it was to shoo them out, not to hurt or abuse or punish them. The Lord's primary intention was to cleanse the temple. I can only conclude that his actions were not sinful. I hope this was helpful. Peace, A.L. -- Andrew Lumsdaine "When aiming for the common denominator, lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu be prepared for the occasional MIT RLE division by zero."