The Exegetical System of the Rev. Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook has confused me which, to be sure, is not to hard to do.

In an essay in the "Taste" pages of last Friday's The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Easterbrook advises his readers that Jesus only advocated six commandments, that he had as it were stripped down the ten commandments into a speedier, handier six. Easterbrook writes:

In the Gospel of Matthew, a man asks Jesus what a person must do to enter heaven. He answers: "Keep the commandments." The man inquires: "Which ones?" Here is how the biblical account continues: "And Jesus said, 'You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Debating what laws are more important than others was a long-standing exercise of the rabbinical tradition in which Jesus was educated. But in these verses, which have a parallel retelling in the Gospel of Mark, Christ is not merely offering an opinion about law. Something wholly remarkable happens--Jesus edits the commandments.

Quickly now, which commandments did he leave out? "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy." These are the commandments having to do with formal religious observance--from today's perspective, the ones that clash with the Establishment Clause. Jesus' Six Commandments make no mention of God or faith. They could be posted on public property without constitutional entanglements.

Easterbrook seems to believe that this is a hitherto unachieved textual insight. "If Jesus taught Six Commandments, why do Christians talk so much about 10?", asks Easterbrook

Because they're dummies, right? Ignorant boobs, even about that Bible they thump all the time?

Of course! "As a churchgoer," Rev. Easterbrook says loftily, "I am amazed at how many of my fellow Christians do not seem to know Christ's teachings."

By golly, I remember Gregg Easterbrook! He was that lisping little golden-haired know-it-all in Sunday School class! Quick, let's grab him and hold him in the toilet for a swirly after we're dismissed to church-time.

Anyway, Mr. Easterbrook is very pleased, because surely these six commandments are acceptable to just about everyone, forming as they do the basis of a sound ethics. It's those darn traditionalist Christians that get in the way:

Because the Six Commandments de-emphasize formal observation of religion, some Christian traditionalists pretend that the verses do not exist. In a lifetime of sitting through the sermons of various denominations, I have never heard a minister make more than passing reference to Christ's deletion of commandments. Such was his gift that, in the Gospel of John, he simplified all moral and spiritual instruction into a single dictum: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." That modification of the original commandments also de-emphasizes formal religion and as such is also given short shrift by institutional Christianity. Many Christians seem to prefer the Ten Commandments because they embody a sense of might, mountaintops and divine wrath.

But if displaying Scripture in public is meant to encourage morality, surely the Six Commandments serve the purpose.

He concludes:

Christians who say that morality is their concern in the public-display controversy ought to switch to the Six Commandments. The whole question of whether declarations about God may be posted on public property can be avoided simply by heeding Jesus.

This all strikes me as hideously bizarre. Greg Easterbrook seems a very intelligent fellow, who, so his author blurb says, knows something about theology; why then this bizarre exegesis, which almost deserves the Nick Kristof Award for Exegetical Incomprehension?

For he falls into what can only be called the Fundamentalist Trap. He plucks a statement out of context, and uses it for purposes other than its intention. Jesus makes this statement that Easterbrook cites as some kind of teaching dicta in the course of his conversation with the rich young man who comes to Jesus, desiring to be his disciple. If the Ombudsman were going to give a sermon on this, he would point out that the beginning and the ending have a certain symmetry, with the passage that Easterbrook cites as their centerpoint. "Good teacher", the young man addresses Jesus; "who do you call good," Jesus replies, "no one is good by God alone." Then the centerpoint, in which Jesus asks the young man if he has kept the commandments, and then lists the last six. When the young man says that he has, Jesus looks at him, "and loved him", and says, "only one more thing is lacking; go, sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and come follow me." And the young man went away broken-hearted, for he had many posessions.

So, the Rt. Rev. Ombudsman continues, it seems to me that while proclaiming his ability to keep the six commandments of proper behavior towards his fellow man, the young man fell flat on the implicit charge to give up the dolatry of his wealth and possessions. For they were the ones that kept him from following a teacher who at the very least he must have regarded as a great prophet sent from God. In the end, the last six commandments depended on the first four.

But this story occupies no part of Rev. Easterbrook's exegesis. He instead cherrypicks this "edit" of the commandments. Moreover, this exegesis does harm to other parts of the Gospel, for how can we take Easterbrook's Jesus seriously when he says he has come to fulfill the law, rather than change it or replace it? Aquinas said (I am paraphrasing very freely here) that if confused by the Scriptures, a Christian should keep reading. It follows therefore that exegetical insights like Easterbrook's can only be tested by further reading, not by how cool they seem at the moment; and further reading renders Easterbrook's interpretation incoherent.

Moreover, Jesus did summarize the commandments, and did so by using a Mosaic teaching. The essence of the law is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Why these two commandments are less acceptable than the six, I can't imagine. Is it because they emphasize the worship of God? Is it because Jesus sounds like he has been to the mountaintop?