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{"id":18907,"date":"2017-06-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=630"},"modified":"2017-06-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T00:00:00","slug":"beatitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/06\/beatitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Beatitude"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A<\/span>s the title suggests, Jonathan Pennington\u2019s The Sermon on the Mount and Human\u00a0Flourishing<\/a><\/em>\u00a0sees the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus\u2019 instruction in a way of virtue and wisdom that leads to flourishing. As Pennington puts it, \u201cJesus provides in the Sermon a Christocentric, flourishing-oriented, kingdom-awaiting, eschatological wisdom exhortation<\/em>.\u201d Pennington aims to show that the theme of \u201cflourishing through wholeness\u201d provides a frame within which the details of the Sermon can be understood.<\/p>\n

His treatment of the Beatitudes illustrates the \u201ckingdom-awaiting\u201d aspect of his interpretation. Jesus\u2019 \u201cmacarisms\u201d\u2014blessings\u2014are shocking because \u201cthey describe flourishing with ironic, paradoxical, future-oriented hopes\u201d (153). We have been conditioned to think positively about the Beatitudes, and so don\u2019t recognize that \u201cJesus is authoritatively yet perplexingly commending states of being in the world that are the opposite of flourishing, despite introducing them with the standard makarios<\/em>\u201d (155).\u00a0<\/p>\n

We<\/em> may endorse \u201cpoverty of spirit,\u201d but for ancients this is the character of the low and shameful.\u00a0Hunger is not a state of blessing, nor is meekness a value to ancient readers and hearers. We misunderstand the nature of the blessing Jesus pronounces if we see him transvaluing ancient values\u2014simply pronouncing blessings on what is self-evidently an un-blessed condition, as if He were commending hunger and thirst, lowness, weakness in themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather, Pennington argues, we have to see the Beatitudes as eschatological promises. The protasis doesn\u2019t announce a blessing; the blessing is found in the apodosis.\u00a0That is, it\u2019s not the hunger, lowliness, meekness, or persecution in themselves that are blessed.\u00a0These are blessed states only insofar as they mark out a \u201cway of being in the world that will result in flourishing\u201d and insofar as they indicate that \u201cJesus is redefining flourishing as suffering while awaiting the eschaton\u201d (157\u20138).\u00a0<\/p>\n

We cannot delete the eschatological hope of inheritance, filling, vindication, from the Beatitudes without distortion.\u00a0Without the eschatological expectation, the Beatitudes amount to a quasi-Stoic ethic of \u201cgrin and bear it\u201d\u2014pretend you\u2019re blessed when you\u2019re not. For Jesus, blessing in the present depends entirely on the reliability of God\u2019s promises for the future.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"