Blessed are the Peacemakers
John Bunyan the Man
When at the first I took my pen in hand,
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode. Nay, I had undertook
To make another, which, when almost done,
Before I was aware I this begun.
And thus it was: I writing of the Way
And race of saints in this our Gospel day,
Fell suddenly into an Allegory
About their journey and the way to glory,
In more than twenty things which I set down:
This done, I twenty more hand in my crown,
And they again began to multiply,
Like sparks that from the coals do fly.
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I’ll put you by yourselves, lest you at last
Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out
The book that I already am about.
Well, so I did; but yet I did not think
To show to all the world my pen and ink
In such a mode; I only thought to make,
I knew not what; not did I undertake
Merely to please my neighbors; no, not I;
I did it mine own self to gratify.
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Thus I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white.
For having now my method by the end,
Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penn’d
It down; until at last it came to be
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.
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Matthew 5:9 “Blessed Are the Peacemakers, For They Shall Be Called Sons of God”
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Hugh M. Humphrey
Although Mt 5:9 has been called the “Magna Carta” of the peace movement by the present Pontiff, it would seem that peacemaking among nations was not its original implication. This intuitive premise comes from two considerations. First, the “universal” sense of “peace” seems to have been considered and explicitly rejected in Mt 10:34 where Matthew has modified a Q saying (Lk 12:51) into an emphatic declaration: “I have not come to bring peace” on earth. Secondly, there is the consideration of the larger social world of the evangelist. An era of social and civil peace existed throughout the Roman Empire during the first century. Admittedly there were local, temporary disruptions, but the prevailing perception among the citizens of the Empire would have been of stability and, at least as an empire, of security. How would Matthew have made sense of “peace-making” as an activity among nations when no rival government was seriously competing with the Roman Empire and everyone knew this? If Matthew intended the beatitude to carry a “universal” sense, at least some of his audience/community were Gentiles and would have surely thought it a frivolous statement, since peace in that sense existed already and did no have to be “made.”
If this intuition is accurate, then it makes explicit a heremeneutical process to which Christians do not frequently advert, namely, that there is a dialectic going on between the world view of the writer and the world view of the reader. The dialectic is that of peacemaking as an activity of Christians within their community in distinction from peacemaking as activity of Christians outside their community in the world at large. These activities would provide mutual challenge. Contemporary Christians who begin with the presuppositions of a community opened to the world would be challenged by the presuppositions of the biblical author that peace is a task within the community of believers. On the other hand, the presuppositions of the present day would lead believers to read the peace mandate in a way that is faithful to the biblical mandate but within a new world of meaning. In what follows we will seek to verify our intuition about the presupposed world view of the author of Matthew and thus point to the implicit hermeneutical methodology that must underlie present-day reading of the text.
It would seem that neither the larger context of Mt 5:9 (the Sermon on the Mount) nor its immediate context (the beatitudes) provides a definite basis of interpretation for the meaning of the peace-making beatitude. A consideration of Matthew’s extension of Mk 9:50, however, and of the challenge to be “salt” (5:13) and “light” (5:14) before the world (5:16) suggests that it is in its intra community peace-making that Matthew saw his community showing itself to be righteous “sons of God” (5:9).
But Paul gives civil authority a deeper dimension by seeing it as controlled by heavenly powers. In 1 Cor 6:3, he says that Christians ought not to bring their lawsuits to civil judges and then says that the Christians will judge the angels behind these judges. In Eph 6:12, he contrasts the principalities and powers with flesh and blood, so that there is a deeper dimension to the “world rulers of this present darkness” than is visible in the human beings who exercise the power. What might this deeper dimension be? Wink suggests that it is the spirit of political and social institutions. “It is clear that we contend not against human beings as such (‘blood and flesh’) but against the legitimations, seats of authority, hierarchical systems, ideological justifications, and punitive sanctions which their human incumbents in both time and power.”
The use of many different Greek words to describe the powers highlights in itself the suprahuman dimensions of institutional power beyond the mere individual human agents. On the one hand, the many different words are interchangeable or at least synony
mous. But the juxtaposing of several of the words after each other in one passage (e.g., Col 1:16; Eph 6:12) gives the impression of the universal and comprehensive nature of the powers, which makes them difficult to narrow down to visible dimension.
On the other hand, in spite of their interchangeability the various words for the powers have nuances that again show the diffusive nature of political institutions and power. For instance, archç and archôn are used almost always to indicate the agent of power, the incumbent in office. Exousia is used generally to indicate the authorization to exercise power, i.e., political legitimation, ideological justification, etc. Thronos emphasizes the actual seat of government, the continuity of power resident in but also beyond the incumbents. Kyriotçs has the nuance of the realm or expanse of territory in which power is exercised. We can use all of the words to speak of power, but the nuances show the complexity of power. Power cannot be equated simply with the person in power, because persons can be replaced. Power is not simply in the legitimating rationale, because that needs to be given its authority by something else. Power is not simply in a role, for persons fill roles differently. Power, therefore, can only be adequately understood as the convergence of many elements, and as a reality that transcends any of its visible manifestations…
From….Apocalypse and the Word, The life and Message of George Fox
By Douglas Gwyn
King James Bible translates John 1:5 — “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
In subjection,
ye stand and live in that which scatters the clouds and keeps your eye clear to the Lord God; by which you see him (in measure) with a good understanding, through all the evil powers and spirits which work in the darkness against him . . . .
This clarity is maintained by obedience. When the motions of the light are not followed, the clouds and darkness of confusion will return.
With the gift of discernment, one comes to discern between the devil’s voice and God’s and to recognize the serpent speaking through others. At this point, one has come to see over the devil who darkens.
Thus, discernment is given by Christ who has the key (Isaiah 22:22; Luke 11:52; Rev. 3.7) to open the meaning of the scriptures and all experience. This key “brings you to see and read one another, as epistles written in one another’s hearts [2 Cor. 3:2], where in unity, love, and peace, ye will come to dwell . . . .” By this key, the Word of wisdom (1 Cor. 12:8) opens up the handiworks of God’s creation and shows their uses.
Fox understands the hearing and obeying of Christ’s voice as the only path of life. All other paths lead to confusion and death.
And he that heareth not the voice of the son of God doth not live, but is in death . . . . And the hour is come that they which have been in graves, have heard the voice of the son of God and do live . . . [John 5:24f].
Hearing and obeying the Word of God is the true life in the Word — a living possession, not a dead “talk” or profession.
And now you have an everlasting preacher, whom God hath anointed to preach . . . and everlasting prophet that God hath raised up, who is to be heard [Deut. 18:18]; all the living hear him, but the dead but talk of his fame.
This life in the Word is nothing less than life in Christ: “The Son of God hath been talked of, but now he is come and possessed.”
The light in every man which doth enlighten every man, doth teach the way to the kingdom of God, and no other way it teacheth but the kingdom . . . [it] gives them the sense of transgression, and an understanding of reproof . . . and that it is which lets all men see the Most High reigning, and shall make every tongue confess to the glory of God . . . .
As the light gives insight into good and evil, a sense of god’s power within to do good, and an understanding of how to order the creatures, the believer responds in an obedience which articulates God’s new order and declares Christ’s victorious lordship to the world. This continuing revelation is a continuing apocalypse in which the “daily cross” must be borne by the faithful as together they fend off the incursions of the world’s old order, cultivating God’s garden amidst the wilderness of confusion.
The light, the spiritual presence and power of Christ in the world, is a paradox; it is both universally bestowed as an unnamed revelation “in every man that comes into the world,” yet it is unambiguously identified with Jesus of Nazareth. Understanding this mystery is essential to grasping Fox’s message and placing it in relation to Puritanism.