I too was impressed by Scaurus’s confession that he had somewhat changed his mind about the gospels in consequence of Paul’s epistles. It seemed to me to explain some inconsistencies in his letters. Also I noted that Paul’s phrase was “the solid phalanx of your faith,” and that perhaps “faith” explained “phalanx.” Scaurus now passed to the doctrine of New Birth. “I call it thus,” said he, “for brevity. Mark expresses it ambiguously, saying that no man can enter into the kingdom unless he receives it ‘as a little child.’ Now this might mean ‘as he receives a little child.’ And this interpretation is rather favoured by the fact that, somewhat earlier, Mark has a doctrine about ‘receiving one of such little children.’ I suspect some mystical doctrine is concealed in Mark. But Matthew has, ‘unless ye turn and become as little children.’ There is no mistaking that. Now I say, in the first place, this is impossible; in the second place, it is wrong. First, it is impossible. The Father of heaven, says Horace, may send fair weather to-day and foul tomorrow. But not even He—
‘⸺ diffinget infectumque reddet
Quod fugiens simul hora vexit.’
You must agree with me. Jupiter cannot cause what has been done to have been not done. In the next place, it is wrong. A full-grown man has no right to divest himself of full-grown faculties. How much better is the doctrine of Epictetus, ‘My friend, you have fallen down. Get up. Try again.’ This is possible. This is encouraging. But tell the same man, ‘Become a little child,’ ‘Be born again’! He will think you are playing the fool with him.”
I wondered why Scaurus did not see that here again he was inconsistent. He had forgotten the admissions he had made in view of Paul’s epistles. In the cities of Asia and Greece, some of the vilest among the vile had been told by Paul, “You must become new creatures in Christ,” “You must die to sin and rise again to righteousness.” They did not “think he was playing the fool.” They had (as Scaurus confessed) been morally “born again.” Moreover Paul had met his objection as to “full-grown faculties” by saying, “Be ye babes in respect of malice, but in understanding be full-grown men.” Still I was sorry that the gospels had expressed this obscurely. Neither of us had as yet read the fourth gospel. That makes the doctrine quite clear by shewing that what is needed is not to be “born over again”—for one might be “born over again” ten times worse than one was before—but to be “born from above.” This was quite different from “causing what has been done to have been not done.” It meant “created anew,” or “reshaped,” so that the Spirit of Christ, within the Christian, dominated the flesh. Both here and elsewhere, Scaurus’s criticisms would have been very different, if he had known the fourth gospel.
“The next point to be considered,” said Scaurus, “is the laws for the new kingdom. Matthew has grouped together a collection of precepts as a code. Some of these contrast what ‘has been said,’ or ‘has been said to men of old,’ with what Christ now says. Apparently Matthew intended this code of laws (uttered, he says, on a ‘mountain’) to correspond to the code promulgated on Mount Sinai. But Luke (who by the way omits the ‘mountain’ and makes the scene ‘a place on the plain’) while giving many of these precepts, scatters them about his gospel specifying various occasions on which several of them were uttered; and he never inserts the contrasting clause above-mentioned. The conclusion I draw is, that Christ promulgated no law at all. Law deals almost exclusively with actions. Christ dealt almost exclusively with motives, as the last of the Ten Commandments does. When Christ inculcates actions, they are often metaphorical or hyperbolical, as when he says, ‘If you are struck on one cheek, turn the other to the striker,’ ‘Let not your right hand know what your left hand does,’ ‘If a man takes your cloak, give him your coat too,’ and, ‘If anyone wants to make you go a mile with him, go two miles,’—to which last precept, by the way, Epictetus would say, No.”
I think Scaurus was referring to a passage where Epictetus said, “Diogenes, if you seized any possession of his, would sooner give it up to you than follow you on account of it.” Scaurus went on to say, “Matthew’s habit of grouping sentences makes it difficult to distinguish sayings uttered before the resurrection from those uttered after it. For example, he speaks of a power of ‘binding and loosing’ given to Peter, in connexion with a mention of the ‘church.’ On another occasion, a similar power is given to the other disciples, again in connexion with the ‘church.’ Now this ‘binding and loosing’ is not mentioned by any other evangelist. What does it mean? And when was this saying uttered?
“My rabbi tells me that ‘binding and loosing’ is regularly used by the Jews to indicate that a rabbi ‘forbids’ or ‘sanctions’ a certain action—for example, the eating of a particular food. Thus in the Acts of the Apostles, the Lord would be said by the Jews to ‘loose’ the eating of food that was before unclean, saying to Peter, ‘Arise, kill and eat.’ And I can conceive that a gospel might describe Jesus as saying to Peter, ‘I give thee this power of loosing unclean food, that thou and the rest of my disciples may henceforth eat with the Gentiles, and in their houses, asking no questions concerning the food.’ But I do not myself believe that Christ used the phrase ‘bind and loose’ in this sense. I think he connected it with that strange doctrine of forgiveness of sins on which he laid so much stress, and that it was uttered after the resurrection, when the term ‘church’ might be more naturally used.” Scaurus was so far right in this that I afterwards found in the fourth gospel a doctrine, not indeed about “binding and loosing,” but about “imprisoning and loosing” or “arresting and loosing”; and this was connected with “sins,” and Christ gave this power to the disciples after the resurrection.
Scaurus continued, “Look at Matthew’s words in one of these passages, ‘But if he refuse to hear the church, let him be unto thee as the heathen and the publican,’ and then, at some interval, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.’ Then look at the last words of Matthew’s gospel, uttered after the resurrection, ‘Behold I am with you always.’ Does not the saying, ‘I am there in the midst of you when you are gathered together,’ come more appropriately from Christ, appearing after the resurrection, than from Christ before the resurrection? I think so. The context indicates a tradition of some utterance made after the resurrection, conveyed through some apostle in a Jewish form, promising Christ’s presence to the disciples. Paul assumes such a presence, writing to the Corinthians ‘When ye are gathered together, and my spirit, together with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver over such a one to Satan.’ These last words about ‘Satan’ I do not profess to comprehend fully; but they seem to me to imply the opposite of ‘loosing’—some kind of’ ‘binding’ or ‘remanding to prison.’ And it is to take place in the presence of Christ, with Paul’s spirit, when the church of Corinth is ‘gathered together’.”
I thought Scaurus was probably right as to the date of this promise. But I was much more impressed by what he said concerning the tradition, in Luke, “Eat those things that are served up to you.” This, in Luke, was almost meaningless to me, but it had been full of meaning in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, where the apostle spoke about meat sold in Gentile markets: “If an unbeliever invites you, and ye desire to accept, eat everything that is served up to you, asking no questions.”