I Judge No One

Part 3, A Mystical Divider and Judge

After rejecting the use of coercive power in the temptation narratives at the beginning of his public ministry, David Lloyd Dusenbury goes on to argue in I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus that Jesus continues to face this same temptation throughout his ministry, and that Jesus rejects assuming coercive power over and over again. 

For example, Dusenbury highlights a little commented on text in Luke 12:

Someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

“Friend,” he said to him, “who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?” He then told them, “Watch out and be on guard against all greed, because one’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions.”

Again, not a text a lot of people have thought about, but for Dusenbury it's highly significant, even paradigmatic, for how Jesus saw his ministry. In this passage, Jesus rejects stepping into a legal dispute, to become a political judge. Rather, Jesus shifts the focus away from the political to the spiritual, the proper location of his authority. Dusenbury observes,

Jesus' claim that human 'life' (Greek zoe) is not a matter of possessions, or a thing that humans ultimately possess, is in keeping with his earlier division of authority (Luke 12:4-5). There is authority over the body and tangible, heritable, fungible things--the life of the body; and there is authority over human life itself--the soul, which gives life to the body. Jesus seems to be legislator of the life of the soul, and his sayings in Luke 12 seem to call his hearers to a kingdom of the soul and a future body.

Interestingly, while rejecting coercive power to "divide" bodily, material things in the story above, just a few verses later Jesus goes on to describe himself as a "divider":

Do you think that I came here to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

How to reconcile the paradox here? Again, Dusenbury turns to the strangeness of Jesus' kingdom. Jesus rejects being a political divider in this present age but assumes authority as a mystical, spiritual and eschatological divider in the age-to-come:

So Jesus reveals that though he is, like Moses, a prophetic liberator of Israel (Luke 4:16-21), his is not a like Moses...And though he is, like Moses, a prophetic legislator of Israel (Luke 4:31-32), the law of the gospels is not like the law of Moses...[Moses] and his law judge the body and constitute a body politic. Jesus and his law judge only the soul in this world-age, and thus constitute a mystical body.

...In the same chapter of Luke in which Jesus says that we should not "fear those who kill the body", he reveals that he is not one of those who "kill the body." He is not a political judge or divider. Yet he exhorts the multitude in this cluster of sayings to "fear him who...has authority to cast in Gehenna", the realm of the miserable dead (Luke 12:4-5). And in many other sayings, Jesus envisions himself as a mystical judge and a mystical divider. His time to perfectly judge will, according to Luke's gospel, come. 

Personally, I don't like the word "mystical" here. I'd prefer "spiritual" judge and divider. Still, we see the point Dusenbury is making: Jesus claims authority but frames this authority as spiritual and eschatological. Jesus refuses to assume authority over bodily and material matters--that is, he rejects political authority--but assumes full authority to judge souls, both now and in the life to come.