The Perilous Sayings: Interpreting Christ's Call to Obedience in the Sermon on the Mount by Amos Winarto Oei (review)

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch," Carl Sagan said, "you must first invent the universe." In The Perilous Sayings, Amos Winarto Oei shows that if you wish to interpret "love your enemies," you must first develop a whole theological system.

Oei surveys five different readings of Matthew 5:32–48, the sections of the Sermon on the Mount collectively called the antitheses ("You have heard that it was said … But I say to you …"). Understanding how theologians interpret and employ the antitheses sheds light on the whole enterprise of Christian ethics.

In five chapters, Oei contrasts Leonardo Boff's liberationist interpretation of the antitheses, John Calvin's "two kingdoms" interpretation, Helmut Thielicke's Lutheran interpretation, John Howard Yoder's Anabaptist interpretation, and the uses of the antitheses in the Roman Catholic Catechism. For Boff and Yoder, the Sermon on the Mount is a revolutionary political statement, announcing a coming kingdom at odds with oppressive social structures. For Calvin, the Sermon on the Mount is addressed exclusively to people in their everyday interactions and serves as a corrective to flawed interpretations of Old Testament Law. Thielicke emphasizes the accusatory power of the Sermon, a beacon of moral perfection that draws our attention to human sinfulness and the need for grace. In the Catechism, the antitheses are closely connected with the Decalogue, which together point to an abiding moral code that encompasses motivations and actions. Oei's analyses constitute a helpful map of Christian moral reasoning, and the result is clearly written and accessible to popular audiences.

The last two chapters are much less clear and well-argued than those prior, and one leaves with the impression that tenuous assumptions are being made and important distinctions are being ignored. In chapter 7, Oei pushes against the sectarianism he sees in Stanley Hauerwas and others by insisting that Jesus's ethics are for everyone, not only for Christians. But in addition to arguing that Christian ethics make sense in the context of lives formed by and committed to Christ, these theologians maintain that everyone is called to live such a life. The moral teachings are for all people because the good news is for all people. Hence the debate is not about whether or not Jesus's commands are universal in scope but whether or not they merely reiterate moral principles that can be arrived at and lived out independent of communities of witness to the Triune God.

In chapter 8, Oei argues that the moral teaching of the antitheses only pertains to individuals in their everyday interactions and not to political institutions or people serving in official roles. Oei draws a hard distinction between "individuals" and "the State" and argues that relationships between individuals are governed by love, while actions of the State are regulated by justice. Though Oei chides Boff, Thielicke, and Yoder for missing these distinctions and reading their political convictions back into Scripture, one has to wonder where in the Bible Oei finds the clearly defined individual/State and love/justice dichotomies on which his interpretation hangs. Even if "two kingdoms" reasoning is sound, it is in no way the clear and obvious meaning of Scripture, but rather one more paradigm imposed upon it. After all, Jesus didn't say "love your enemy, except while serving in a government capacity." In the end, Oei preserves one sort of continuity between the Old Testament and the New at the cost of making neither testament (beyond a few verses in Genesis 9 and Romans 13) say anything about political ethics.