Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, January 2009

its authenticity. ‘The interpretation of the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount’, as David Garland aptly observes, ‘has been marked by a tendency throughout history to attempt to moderate its radical demands.’ 3 Such tendencies were present in the scholastic tradition originating in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, who posited a double standard for the laity and the clergy by distinguishing between Jesus’ ‘commandments’ and ‘counsels’. Whereas obedience to the commandments was necessary for salvation, the counsels were recommended as means of perfection and as ways of obtaining greater favour with God. 4 The Protestant tradition stemming from Martin Luther also contributed to the enervation of the Sermon’s dynamic call to obedience. By maintaining a distinction between private and public morality, Luther contended that Jesus’ teachings applied only to Christians in their private lives and not to their corporate or social lives. According to Luther, one’s spiritual life is a matter between the 1 W. Kissinger, The Sermon on the Mount: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1975), p. xi. 2 For example, H. Betz’s book. The Sermon on the Mount (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), whose publication was regarded as a landmark in the history of the interpretation of the Sermon, claims that the Sermon is not a Christian text but is, rather, a compilation of pre-existing literature, which was incorporated by Matthew and Luke and added to their gospels as a foreign body in these otherwise coherent accounts of Jesus’ life. 3 D. Garland, in, Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, W. Mills (ed.) (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), p. 810. 4 Thomas wrote that, ‘The difference between a counsel and a commandment is that a commandment implies obligation, whereas a counsel is left to the option of the one to whom it is given’. See, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, 5 volumes (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1981), volume ii, pp. 1118-1119. Kissinger argues ( Sermon on the Mount, pp. 18-19) that under Thomas’ influence, the distinction between ‘counsels’ and ‘commandments’ became a standard axiom of medieval moral theology. 39 Is the Sermon on the Mount too unrealistic to serve as a resource for Christian Discipleship and Spiritual Formation? individual and God, whereas one’s moral obligations were divided among several parties: God, state, culture, etc. For instance, commenting on Jesus’ teaching on resistance to evil in Matthew 5:38-42, Luther maintained that a follower of Christ ‘lives simultaneously as a Christian toward everyone, personally suffering all sorts of things in the world, and as a secular person, maintaining, using and performing all the functions required by the law of his territory or city, by civil law, and by domestic law... A Christian should not resist any evil; but within the limits of his office, a secular person should oppose every evil.’ 5 Although su