I am currently working through another of N.T. Wright’s books, Bringing the Church to the World, and which promises to be quite good. But on p. 34, I came across a passage that, in my view, overstates his case, and causes alarums to break out in various sectors of Christendom. He says this, speaking of Pharisaism in the first century:
“Conversely, those who appeared to go soft on these particular laws would inevitably be seen as traitorous. This had nothing to do with the attitude of petty legalism, whereby one might try to earn God’s favor by doing as many moral acts as possible. It had everything to do with a threatened nationalism and its cherished symbols” (emphasis mine).
The problem here is the phrases “nothing to do with” and “everything to do with.” If, in the Second World War, a neighborhood in Chicago was roiled by a controversy over someone there growing himself a funny mustache and naming his newborn son Adolph, we would all see this as something more than a minor phobia about names and facial hair. Larger issues would be at stake, and Wright is absolutely right to contextualize the Pharisees for us in this way. But the problem is the flaming overstatement.
Roman occupation context and all, the fact remains that a central part of Christ’s polemic against the Pharisees was their lack of a biblical sense of proportion. Jesus does not say that the “weightier matters of the law” are more important than resisting the Romans. He says that these weightier matters are more important than tithing out of the spice rack. He accuses the Pharisees of straining out a gnat and swallowing the camel, and the gnat was not “threatened nationalism and cherished symbols.” That was certainly part of the context, but on the authority of Christ we have to say that in that context of threatened nationalism a whole lot of petty legalism was thriving. Again, to use the Second World War, think of our dumb and petty responses — renaming German shepherds, for example. Or liberty cabbage for whatever German dish it was. Or our contemporary Freedom Fries instead of French fries. Just because there are larger issues at stake, it does not follow that everyone suddenly gains a sense of proportion. Despite wars and rumors of wars, the petty legalist you will always have with you. And despite the high stakes of dealing with the Roman presence, the Pharisees were petty legalists. Either that, or Christ was unfair to them.