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RE: Render to Caesar that Which is Caesar's (Christian Anarchy - Part 4)

in #taxes • 8 years ago (edited)

I've got an essay on this very topic that a man named Jeffery F Barr wrote in 2010. I am going to re-read it tonight or tomorrow and see if I can't add to the topic from what I've learned from his essay, my own studies, and from this article that you posted here. I look forward to this.

By the way, I believe anotherjoe hit the nail on the head.

8 years ago in #taxes by
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     8 years ago 

    Sounds great! I'm looking forward to reading what you have to add.

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       8 years ago 

      Most do think of these passages as a pro-tax message. Even Just Martyr believed that this passage was a strict endorsement to pay taxes when he wrote, " And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him..."

      As I read from Jeffery F Barr's essay on this subject I learn that Tiberius was a pedophile, a sexual deviant, a murderer, an oppressor of millions, and he claimed to be a god over all. Is Jesus really telling us to pay our dues to men of this ilk? Is that the only message Jesus had for the Jews who lived under this false man-god? Surely that is not the only message that we have been given to walk away with? No, it is not.

      Jeffery's essay points out, along with John Howard Yoder, that it is very possible that Jesus must have opposed the Roman tribute tax previously. Yoder states in his book, The Politics of Jesus; vicit Agnus noster:

      It is hard to see how the denarius question could have been thought by those who put it to be a serious trap, unless Jesus’ repudiation of the Roman occupation were taken for granted, so that he could be expected to give an answer which would enable them to denounce him."

      Something from a previous event led them to believe Jesus would answer wrongly and either then be rejected by the Jews for disobeying the Torah or the Romans for disobeying the Roman law. By disobeying the Torah Jesus would be denying His rabbinical authority as a teacher of the law; by disobeying the Roman law He would most forwardly be rejecting the authority of the Roman state. Jeffery's essay has this to say:

      If Jesus says that it is lawful to pay the tribute, He would have been seen as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers and would alienate the people who had just proclaimed Him a king. If Jesus says that the tribute is illegitimate, He risked being branded a political criminal and incurring the wrath of Rome. With either answer, someone would have been likely to kill Him. Jesus immediately recognizes the trap. He exposes the hostility and the hypocrisy of His interrogators and recognizes that His questioners are daring Him to enter the temporal fray of Judeo-Roman politics.

      Jesus asked them to produce the coin in question. Sethlinson, you smacked this one in the face with your points. There were three main groups of workers who would have been paid in the mint of the Caesar. These were the Roman soldiers, officials, and the Jewish leaders in collaboration with the Romans. When Jesus asks them to produce the coin which bears the image of the false man-god on it they seem to be able to produce it very quickly. By so readily bringing forth this coin in the temple they have just implicated themselves within the very trap they hoped to catch Jesus in.

      Jesus uses a counter question in this confrontation and He uses two distinct rabbinical elements. By invoking the word "image" in his counter question Jesus has brought their question and His answer back to the Torah. It is here that He is pointing at the First Commandments, which forbade the worship of false gods and the crafting of any image of a false god.

      When Jesus invokes the word "inscription" He is pointing at one of the most important prayers a pious Jew can recite called the Shema. The Shema is based on Deut. 6:4-9,11:13-21 and Numb.15:37-41 as follows:

      Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
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         8 years ago 

        Jesus uses the Shema to point that the inscriptions of God are to be written upon our hearts and our minds, taught to our children, and kept near us. It is God's inscription that is to be important and first in our lives not the inscriptions of a false-man god.

        Jesus closes His answer with the famous lines of, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s." Well, what is Caesar and what is God's?

        To the religious Hebrew everything belonged to God. The hearts, minds, children, land, profits, everything was to belong to God. Jesus reminded the questioners of this when He brought up the "image" and "inscription" points. At the other end of the spectrum the Caesar also claimed that everything belonged to him; land, money, goods, worship, and Jerusalem all was claimed by the Caesar. Again, how was Jesus to respond to the trap between the Hebrew law and the Roman law of governance?

        Barr tells us this, and I believe he has his finger on something good here:

        With one straightforward counter-question, Jesus skillfully points out that the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive. If one’s faith is in God, then God is owed everything; Caesar’s claims are necessarily illegitimate, and he is therefore owed nothing. If, on the other hand, one’s faith is in Caesar, God’s claims are illegitimate, and Caesar is owed, at the very least, the coin which bears his image. Jesus’ counter-question simply invites His listeners to choose allegiances. Remarkably, He has escaped the trap through a clever rhetorical gambit; He has authoritatively refuted His opponents’ hostile question by basing His answer in scripture, and yet, He never overtly answers the question originally posed to Him. No wonder that St. Matthew ends the Tribute Episode this way: "When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away."

        Source: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1I--mLmYADqD5U_Hmv-_ztlasKSAmT2gHI8R1E8S_XUI

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