{"id":1514,"date":"2020-12-01T15:33:58","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T21:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2020-12-01T15:33:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T21:33:58","slug":"the-beatitudes-and-eternal-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/12\/01\/the-beatitudes-and-eternal-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatitudes and Eternal Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12) form a prologue or introduction to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel.\u00a0 The corresponding blessings, but in this case with accompanying woes, play a similar role in the Sermon on the Plain found in St. Luke’s Gospel (Luke 6:20-26).\u00a0 Often these blessings are extracted from the surrounding material in much the same way that the Ten Commandments are extracted from the other commandments of the Torah as a sort of summary.\u00a0 Like the Ten Commandments, they are often memorized.\u00a0 They are sung or recited at several points in the liturgical worship of the Orthodox Church, including within the funeral services.\u00a0 The word ‘Beatitude’ is a transliteration of the Latin ‘beatitudo<\/em>‘ which refers to a state of happiness, good fortune, or blessedness.\u00a0 English Bible teachers, as a learning device, often split the word, saying that these are ‘Be-attitudes’, attitudes or forms of behavior that Christians ought to foster.\u00a0 This is a clue as to how these are often interpreted, i.e. as a series of ethical principles to be obeyed.\u00a0 The woes in Luke, then, though less often discussed, would represent unethical forms of behavior to be avoided.<\/p>\n

This presumes a primarily legal structure to what might be called ‘Biblical ethics’.\u00a0 Certainly, that is in keeping with the common English translation of Torah<\/a> as ‘the Law’.\u00a0 Christ’s delivery of these Beatitudes from a mountain top as well as a number of other features of the Sermon on the Mount as a whole clearly allude to a connection between his teaching in the sermon and that received through Moses.\u00a0 Just as the legal interpretation of the Torah distorts the revelation of the God of Israel, so also reducing the teaching of Christ solely to the level of a legal ethic distorts what he seeks to communicate.\u00a0 As will be seen, when Christ describes life in the kingdom, he is not describing an ethical way of living life on earth or of being a good person.\u00a0 Rather, he is describing the eschatological life of the age and world to come, a life which begins in this present world and continues into eternity.\u00a0 Likewise, the woes of St. Luke’s account describe a life of eternal condemnation which likewise begins in the life of this world and age.\u00a0 The life in the kingdom described by the Beatitudes is another way of speaking of what St. John calls ‘eternal life’ (John 3:15-16, 36; 4:14, 36; 5:24, 39; 6:27, 40, 47, 54, 60, 68; 10:28; 12:25, 50; 17:2-3).<\/p>\n

Though nearly universally translated in English as ‘blessed’, the Greek word which begins each of the Beatitudes is not a form of ‘evlogeo<\/em>‘, the usual Greek word for blessing someone or something.\u00a0 This understanding of blessing is used throughout all three Synoptic Gospels to describe a relational category.\u00a0 When used of people, it is generally used to describe that person being in a relationship of favor with God or to invoke divine favor upon a person (Matt 5:44; 21:9; 23:39; 25:34; Mark 10:16; 11:9; Luke 1:42; 2:34; 6:28; 13:35; 19:38; 24:50-51).\u00a0 When used of an object, it indicates that the object is being removed from its relationships in the sinful world and restored to its created state and order (Matt 14:19; 26:26; Mark 6:41; 8:7; 14:22; Luke 9:16; 24:30).\u00a0 Occasionally, the term is also used directed from humans to God, in which case it is a way of indicating favor and honor by analogy, the offering of praise to God (Mark 11:10; Luke 1:64; 2:28; 24:53).\u00a0 Though both St. Matthew and St. Luke freely use this term, it is not the ‘blessed’ of the Beatitudes.\u00a0 This moves one common reading of the Beatitudes off of the table.\u00a0 The Beatitudes are not saying that a certain behavior or way of life will bring God’s favor and result in him giving an enumerated gift.\u00a0 I.e. it is not saying, for example, that if one is meek, God will be pleased with him and give him the earth as a reward.\u00a0 The Gospel writers had the vocabulary close at hand to say that, and did not.<\/p>\n

The word used in the Beatitudes is, rather, ‘makarios<\/em>‘.\u00a0 This Greek term had a long pre-Biblical history.\u00a0 It refers not to a relationship between things but to a state of being marked by happiness or bliss.\u00a0 This is a word that was often used in the Classical period to describe the life of the gods.\u00a0 Over several centuries, that usage led to it becoming a respectful way to refer to the recently deceased, implying something similar to, in our modern parlance, that they’d “gone to heaven” or they were “with the angels.”\u00a0 In its use in the New Testament, not only in the Beatitudes themselves, the term retains this spiritual force.\u00a0 To be blessed in this sense is to be experiencing the bliss and happiness that come from sharing the life of God.\u00a0 From the perspective of Greek paganism, one participated in this divine life through sexual and other indulgences, through prosperity and leisure, and through the acquisition and of power and victory.\u00a0 In the Beatitudes, Christ reorients, indeed, inverts what it looks like to share in that life in this world and this age while maintaining in its fullness what that means in the age and world to come.<\/p>\n

The term ‘makarios<\/em>‘ is used in other New Testament texts in the same way.\u00a0 The Apocalypse of St. John uses the term frequently to describe the state of eternal life, possessed by both the living and the dead in Christ (Rev 1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14).\u00a0 St. Paul uses the term to describe the life of God (1 Tim 1:11; 6:15).\u00a0 He also uses it as a description of the Christian hope for the life of the world to come (Tit 2:13).\u00a0 Recognizing this term is important to understand the argument of St. James’ epistle.\u00a0 He states that the one who hears the Torah and truly keeps it will be blessed (makarios<\/em>) in all that he does (Jam 1:25).\u00a0 He is not here claiming that if one keeps the commandments perfectly they will have health, wealth, and success.\u00a0 Rather, he is saying that throughout a person’s life, in everything that person does, if they keep the commandments they will experience the peace, joy, and bliss of knowing God regardless of life’s circumstances.<\/p>\n

Though lacking the corresponding woes, St. Matthew’s listing of the Beatitudes has long been considered normative because of its fullness.\u00a0 Several, but not all, are paralleled in St. Luke’s account and even these are not identical in both Gospels.\u00a0 The Beatitudes follow the same pattern.\u00a0 They each state that a certain group defined by a particular characteristic is experiencing this state of divine happiness and bliss because a certain destiny awaits them in the future.\u00a0 Basic to this construction is the idea that the state of happiness and bliss is present now, but that the destiny described is a future state.\u00a0 This structure reinforces that the state of ‘blessedness’ here is not marked by prosperity in this age.\u00a0 Rather, it represents an intrusion, a foretaste, a beginning of that future destiny of happiness and bliss in this present age that finds its fulness in the age to come.<\/p>\n

The description of future destiny within the Beatitudes very clearly matches the Second Temple conception of the life of the age to come.\u00a0 The bliss of the age to come is described as possession of the reign or dominion of heaven.\u00a0 It is described as receiving the earth as an inheritance.\u00a0 It is described as being filled with justice or righteousness.\u00a0 It is described as having the vision of God.\u00a0 It is described as being ranked as sons of God.\u00a0 It is described as a great reward in the heavenly places.\u00a0 All of these are imagery used throughout Scripture to describe sharing in the reign of God over the entire creation as his kingdom.\u00a0 The angels of God’s divine council are called the sons of God.\u00a0 They are given to share in his rule, to participate in his administration of the cosmos.\u00a0 Humans, in Christ, become co-heirs with him who share in his inheritance.\u00a0 They receive mercy before his judgment seat and become judges themselves.\u00a0 Those who attain the age to come and the resurrection of the dead cannot die any more and are equal to the angels and sons of God (Luke 20:35-36).<\/p>\n

However, Christ teaches that those who experience the beginnings of this destiny in the present world are not the prosperous, the wealthy, the powerful, and the victorious.\u00a0 Rather, they are those who, despite being in the Spirit, are poor.\u00a0 They are those who mourn losses.\u00a0 They are those who are humble.\u00a0 They are those who hunger and thirst for justice which eludes them in this world.\u00a0 They are those not who conquer but who show mercy.\u00a0 They are those whose heart has been cleansed of former stain.\u00a0 They are those who make peace, not those who emerge victorious and powerful through conflict.\u00a0 They are those who suffer persecution for the sake of behaving justly.\u00a0 They are those who are hated, mocked, and even slain for the sake of Christ’s name.\u00a0 These are not those who were seen by ancient cultures to be living the best human life, let alone the life of the gods.\u00a0 These are those whom the ancients saw as unworthy at best or at worst, under a curse.<\/p>\n

St. Luke makes the contrast between ancient understanding and Christ’s teaching even more explicit by paralleling a shortened list of the Beatitudes with a series of woes.\u00a0 The poor are happy but the rich are under a curse.\u00a0 The hungry are blissful but the full are accursed.\u00a0 Those who weep are blessed but those who laugh are doomed.\u00a0 Those who are hated, excluded, mocked, and derided are experiencing the divine life, while those who are of good reputation and spoken of well by all are damned already.\u00a0 The just, the faithful, those who are in Christ have a glorious destiny which of which they already partake in this life regardless of this life’s circumstances and the hardships they here endure.\u00a0 For St. Luke, those who enjoy success, prosperity, wealth, and power in this life do so through wickedness and are on a trajectory that leads not to eternal life, but to death, curse, and condemnation in the age to come, an age which has no end.<\/p>\n

The gospel is the story of Christ’s victory over the powers of evil, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, sin, death, and Hades.\u00a0 The four written Gospels are the story of that victory according to the four evangelists.\u00a0 The Beatitudes describe the destiny of humanity, the inheritance, the glory that is won by our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ through that victory.\u00a0 They not only describe what we call theosis, becoming like God, coming to share in the eternal divine life, but they contain a promise.\u00a0 Not only a promise for the future, that one day the faithful who are in Christ will come to share in his rule and dominion over all of creation as sons of God, but that the happiness, the bliss, the joy of that future existence will be partaken of in this life, in this world.\u00a0 Those who are in Christ experience life in this age with all of its struggles and trials and hardships.\u00a0 But they face these hardships indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is God himself and who is the downpayment on the inheritance to come (2 Cor 1:21-22; Eph 1:14).\u00a0 Despite all of those troubles, the Spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.\u00a0 Therefore those who are in Christ have no fear because Christ is victorious over this present age (John 16:33).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12) form a prologue or introduction to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel.\u00a0 The corresponding blessings, but in this case with accompanying woes, play a similar role in the Sermon on the Plain found in St. Luke’s Gospel (Luke 6:20-26).\u00a0 Often these blessings are extracted from the surrounding material in much the same way that the Ten Commandments are extracted from the other commandments of the Torah as a sort of summary.\u00a0 Like the Ten Commandments, they are often memorized.\u00a0 They are sung or recited at several points in the liturgical worship of the Orthodox Church, including within the funeral services.\u00a0 The word ‘Beatitude’ is a transliteration of the Latin ‘beatitudo‘ which refers to\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"The Beatitudes and Eternal Life - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/12\/01\/the-beatitudes-and-eternal-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Beatitudes and Eternal Life - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12) form a prologue or introduction to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel.\u00a0 The corresponding blessings, but in this case with accompanying woes, play a similar role in the Sermon on the Plain found in St. Luke’s Gospel (Luke 6:20-26).\u00a0 Often these blessings are extracted from the surrounding material in much the same way that the Ten Commandments are extracted from the other commandments of the Torah as a sort of summary.\u00a0 Like the Ten Commandments, they are often memorized.\u00a0 They are sung or recited at several points in the liturgical worship of the Orthodox Church, including within the funeral services.\u00a0 The word ‘Beatitude’ is a transliteration of the Latin ‘beatitudo‘ which refers to\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/12\/01\/the-beatitudes-and-eternal-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-01T21:33:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/10\/04d23e3c833682dd4bc7a7fbec3a8ce0.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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