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7 Jerusalem In chapters 19–25 Jesus leaves Galilee and moves south toward Jerusalem. Attended by his disciples and on occasion confronted by the Pharisees, he continues to teach, usually by parables. After entering Jerusalem amid cries of “Hosanna,” he drives the moneychangers out of the temple. In chapters 24 and 25 parables yield to apocalyptic in his preaching on “the Mount of Olives,” as he describes the tribulation of the end time, the Last Judgment, and the fires of hell that are awaiting those who refuse to do God’s will. Both read the Bible day and night— But thou readest black when I read white. —William Blake In chapter 19 Matthew presents two texts (12, 13-15) that have had significant human consequences, since they relate to marriage and celibacy. They are regularly cited in Catholic defenses of clerical celibacy, notably by Pope Paul in his 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (though without mention of the “eunuchs” of v. 12). Voluntary celibacy is a gift, and its special advantage is that it is both an “imitation” of Jesus and a renunciation of those human relationships that might impede Christian commitment. Important among the “eunuchs” are those who remain celibate in order better to serve the Lord, particularly in preparation for the tribulations that will precede his early coming. (Jesus may also be alluding to the celibate Essenes.) In the third century, Origen took this injunction (and 5:29: “It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish”) so literally that he castrated himself while still a young man, an experience that may have later helped him see the advantage of allegorical and figurative interpretations. And for Peter Abelard, who was castrated at the order of the uncle of his lover, Heloise, these words, along with “cut them off, and cast them from thee” (18:8), had a special poignancy. His consolation was that, unlike Origen, he had suffered this mutilation at the hands of others; but like him, this awful fate had at least freed him from the forces of lust. “Only thus could I become more fit to approach the holy altars, now that no contagion of carnal impurity would ever again call me from them.”1 While virginity and celibacy have a respectable place in Christian service, it was only one Kondraty Selivanov who, in late-eighteenth-century Russia, took these verses so literally that he founded a sect of eunuchs (“Skoptsy”), hoping to increase their number to the 144,000 souls who would be saved in the end time (Rev. 7.4). Also encouraged by 18:8, the Skoptsy saw their selfmutilation as a kind of radical circumcision and an act of spiritual transcendence . Boys as young as ten or twelve were ritually castrated, while a less drastic procedure was available to women.2 Other sayings of Jesus that seem to devalue marriage and family ties—or at least subordinate them to the ideal of ascetic celibacy—are 22:30 (“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage”) and Luke 21:23 (“But woe unto them that are with child”); to which can be added St. Paul’s familiar endorsement of celibacy (1 Cor. 7:32: “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord”). These sayings, however, may also be interpreted as signs that in the kingdom of heaven these human ties will be transformed or transcended. And in his argument against the church’s institution of marriage, Tolstoy noted that Jesus promised “everlasting life” to those who forsake wives and children “for my sake.”3 The next paragraph (13-15) is one of a number of texts that associate children with the kingdom of heaven and was a Reformation proof text for the availability of God’s grace, freely given, to those who could not possibly have done anything to merit it. Although Jesus does not baptize children—as was often pointed out by the opponents of infant baptism—Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers also saw this as a proof text for the practice, especially since in Luke 18:15 they are called “infants.” Luther cited it in his dispute with the Anabaptists, and it was a favorite subject of the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. Later it proved to those who reject original sin, like the Unitarians, that human nature is not innately and inherently depraved. Henry Ware (1764– 1848) asked: “But if they were depraved, destitute of holiness, averse from all...

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