How Matthew wanted to be read and proclaimed

"How can Matthew, originally functioning as a catalyst for character formation, serve this end in our time? In order to allow Matthew to function in line with its original aim, it must be read and proclaimed not as a "striver's manual" but as a "verbal icon".

"Reading and proclaiming a gospel text rightly are not acts of moralism in which the text is assumed to be law and the purpose of reading to specify what we ought to do, utilizing guild and shame to motivate the desired behavior. When this type of use of Matthew occurs, the typical sermon is essentialy "here is how bad we are because we have not done what we ought to have done". The typical accompanying prayer is essentially "forgive us for being so bad and for not being willing to do better". The typical emotion of the preacher is impatience with, and sometimes anger at, the delinquent parishioners. Underlying this approach is the assumption that if humans know what to do, they can do it. Hence failure to do so is due to conscious perversity on our part. This is no way to read or proclaim a gospel text.

"A reading and proclamation of Matthew that fits with the Gospel's original concern to enable the transformation of the character of its auditors is one that treats it as a verbal icon through which one sees into the divine realm and God's will. The purpose of such reading and proclamation is to become centered on Jesus so as to see into another world, assuming that, over time, one becomes like that which he/she contemplates. The typical sermon, then, presents Jesus in his sayings and deeds as the embodiment of the divine presence, through whom one sees into God's heart and will for us. The sermon becomes an encomium (=bragging on Jesus). The typical accompanying prayer for such a reading is, "praise you Jesus for who you are and thank you for what you have done". The typical emotion of the preacher is awe and adoration. Underlying this approach is the assumption that humans cannot do what they know to be right unless they are enabled to do so. Hence, the vision of "the good", patterned in the story of Jesus, is presented so that it can function as a catalyst for a change of our perceptions, dispositions, and intentions. When Matthew is so read and so proclaimed as a catalyst for character formation today, it is once again functioning as its first auditors would have experienced it."

Charles H. Talbert, "Matthew and Character Formation", Expository Times, 121:2 (Nov 2009) pp. 58-59.

Martin Luther on the True Nature of the Church

But we are speaking of the external word, preached orally by people like you and me, for this is what Christ left behind as an external sign, by which his church, or his Christian people in the world, should be recognized.... Now, anywhere you hear or see such a word preached, believed, confessed, and acted upon, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica, a "holy Christian people" must be there, even though there are very few of them.

Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church (1539)

The Exciting New World of the New Testament

A book from the ancient East, and lit up by the light of the dawn, a book breathing the fragrance of the Galilean spring, and anon swept by the shipwrecking north-east tempest from the Mediterranean, a book of peasants, fishermen, artisans, travellers by land and sea, fighters and martyrs, a book in cosmopolitan Greek with marks of Semitic origin, a book of the Imperial age, written at Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, a book of pictures, miracles, and visions, book of the village and the town, book of the people and the peoples, the New Testament, if regard be had to the inward side of things, is the great book, chief and singular, of human souls.

Because of its psychic depth and breadth this book of the East is a book for both East and West, a book for humanity: a book ancient but eternal.

And because of the figure that emerges from the book -- the Redeemer, accompanied by the multitude of the redeemed, blessing and consoling, exhorting and renewing, revealing Himself anew to every generation of the weary and heavy-laden, and growing from century to century more great -- the New Testament is the Book of Life.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (1908), p. 392.

Gregory of Nyssa on the Imago Dei

If, then, man came into being for these reasons, viz., to participate in the divine goodness, he had to be fashioned in such a way as to fit him to share in this goodness. For ... something akin to the divine had to be mingled with human nature. In this way its desire [for divine goodness] would correspond to something native to it. Even the natures of irrational creatures, whose lot is to live in water or air, are fashioned to correspond with their mode of life. In each case the particular way their bodies are formed makes the air or the water appropriate and congenial to them. In the same way man, who was created to enjoy God's goodness, had to have some element in his nature akin to what he was to share. Hence he was endowed with life, reason, wisdom, and all the good things of God, so that by each of them his desires might be directed to what was natural to him. And since immortality is one of the good attributes of the divine nature, it was essential that the constitution of our nature should not be deprived of this. It had to have an immortal element, so that it might, by this inherent faculty, recognize the transcendent and have the desire for God's immortality.

The account of creation sums all this up in a single expression when it says that man was created "in the image of God."

Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration (4th C AD), p. 276 in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. E. R. Hardy. Phildelphia: Westminster, 1954.

Why did God leave difficulties on the surface of scripture?

If [the Bible] is, as we devoutly believe, the very source and measure of our religious faith, it seems impossible to insist too earnestly on the supreme importance of patience, candour and truthfulness in investigating every problem which it involves. The first steps towards the solution of a difficulty are the recognition of its existence and the determination of its extent. And, unless all past experience is worthless, the difficulties of the Bible are the most fruitful guides to its divine depths. It was said long since that 'God was pleased to leave the difficulties upon the surface of scripture, that men might be forced to look below the surface.'

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Bishop of Durham), The Bible in the Church (1864), p. x.