Oath-Taking In The Community Of The New Age (Matthew 5:33–37) -- By: Don B. Garlington

Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 16:2 (Fall 1995)
Article: Oath-Taking In The Community Of The New Age (Matthew 5:33–37)
Author: Don B. Garlington


Oath-Taking In The
Community Of The New Age
(Matthew 5:33–37)

Don B. Garlington*

I. Introduction

Matthew 5:33–37 strikes the modern reader of the Sermon on the Mount as something of an oddity. It appears to be a holdover from a bygone era—one side of an in-house discussion between Jews and Christians respecting religious and civil duty. As such, it has assumed the aspect of a fossil embedded in an otherwise recognizable contemporary program of ethics. In fact, the more one explores the Jewish context of this saying about oath-taking, the more its seeming irrelevance for modern life comes to the fore—with the exception of those Christian sects, ancient and modern, which have applied the logion quite superficially and have consciously objected to swearing under any circumstances (most conspicuously oath-taking in courts of law and oaths of national and military allegiance).1

Nevertheless, however irrelevant the saying may initially seem, oath-taking, we shall argue, is still valid for the Christian community.2 But it is a form of swearing conditioned by eschato-

* Don Garlington is Professor of New Testament at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

logical and Christological factors; specifically the conception that Israel’s long-expected Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It was this Messiah who introduced a significant modification into the oath-taking practices of his adherents. On the one hand, Jesus’ “ban” on swearing, as it is normally taken to be, was a vehicle for articulating a noticeable—not to say egregious—difference between the community of Israel, the people of the old age, and his community, the people of the new age.3 On the other hand, there is an observable continuity between the two communities, in that the Lord of the new covenant places the same demand for integrity on his followers as Yahweh did on his people Israel. Matt 5:33–37 thus assumes a decided salvation-historical pertinence for the disciples of Jesus the Christ by introducing a significant modification into a long-standing custom and yet, at the same time, preserving the essence of the command, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Exod 20:7; Deut 5:11).4

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