wggrace  - thank you for staying with this discussion. I hear clearly about the downplaying of the seriousness of sexual sin in our age and the passion with which you argue it.

My point is this: here is a story about a woman publically accused (presumably with witness evidence) of adultery. The law is clear. Jesus is expected to uphold strong judgment and take this sin very seriously. But instead of pointing the finger in judgement he sits down in silence and writes in the sand. The adulterer actually goes home uncondemned by both Jesus and her accusers without even being required to publically repent. No public statement is made by Jesus lest this story be misunderstood and we think sexual sin is not really serious. Jesus does seems to be willing at times to leave things far more ambiguous than we feel he should.

I have a concern that the more we write about the sexual excesses of our age and the need to address this and condemn it for what it is the more this story actually begins to judge us too.

A picture comes to mind ....

You and I and the Godly and concerned of the Christian church are gathered around Jesus. A figure is pulled into his presence. This careless and rather indifferent creature represents adultery, trivialising of sex, lust, indifference and sensualised self interest. According the teaching of Scripture and the Church this figure should be uncomprisingly judged and condemned.

But Jesus stays silent, and writes with his finger in the sand .....

Nersen - I am not trying to avoid anything.  This discussion began when I responded to your use of the rich ruler and the woman in adultery to illustrate how Jesus is direct and uncomprising in calling people to repent of sin.

I suggested neither story does this with the directness you are looking for. Jesus does do this elsewhere - quite uncompromisingly. I have no aversion to the word repentance - I just think that in these two stories it is not the most helpful word to use and to use this word here actually distorts the pastoral subtlety of what these stories teach.

To repent means 'to turn' - from and towards. Agreed. But I understood you to be using it specifically as repentance from sin. Of course no one was told that 'all will be well and all will be well etc etc'. The text says the opposite and I never said or implied anything of the sort. (And just for the record you are quoting Julian of Norwich out of context here.)

The young ruler is called to a radical and costly turning. But I do not hear this as flowing from a judgement on sin (though it will surely clearly require very tough self examination). Rather the gospel notes how much Jesus is compassionate towards him.

There are times when Jesus calls us to new and costly 'turnings' in our lives that are not helpfully called 'a call to repentance' don't you think? The first disciples on the lakeside turned away from fishing and family and followed - do you call this a call to repentance? And is Mary's response to the message from the angel an act of  'repentance'?

I hope you can see the point I am making.

David

I fully concur that the story is about hypocrisy and the power struggle between the Pharisees and Jesus. I think that is plain from my comments. More importantly it is plain in the way the Pharisees had only brought the woman before Jesus. It is plain in the way they badgered Jesus for a decision as he drew in the sand. Their target was Jesus. And the question was would he affirm Moses or Roman reality. But I do not think that the solution of Jesus should be seen as him affirming Roman reality over Moses but of affirming forgiveness even for sins rightly condemned in the Law of Moses. And he did this by exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

What I was trying, and failing, to convey is that the story makes better sense and gains immeasurably in its challenge and even emotional impact if the rejection of sexual sin made  by the OT and affirmed elsewhere by Jesus  is seen as the assumption of the passage. There is a danger today that sexual sin is seen as trivial. We would certainly be shocked to have it regarded as a crime, let alone a capital crime. But the forgiveness of Jesus is remarkable precisely because the sin is important. So the seriousness of sin is not the point of the passage. I fully agree with you there. But the point is only really made vivid when we take on the assumptions lying behind the passage. If one can express oneself in a "Wesleyan" way; the story portrays the forgiveness of the unforgiveable, much as Wesley spoke of the "Immortal dies, who can explore His strange design?". When we downplay the seriousness of sexual sin, or in fairness any other sin, we downplay the wonder of its forgiveness. What is remarkable is how sexual sin has been trivialised today, both outside and even within the church.

Clearly this last claim is something you may be inclined to resist. You seem to see sexual sin as something of a Christian hangup which the church uses to obscure more important sins such as hypocrisy (possibly) or oppression or injustice. Although there is some truth in this and I share your irritation at the capacity of the church to ignore injustice etc. (even though I share that capacity), I still find it hard to get round the facts that the sexual is shrieked from every corner of our streets and that the OT and NT took sexual sin very seriously. I go to a gym and use the treadmill. The TV screens showing the music portray an astonishing sexualising of our culture. Our culture finds it hard to believe in the seriousness of sexual sin. People have even defended Roman Polanski dammit!

wggrace, you say that, 'adultery is not a crime and we would strongly resist any move to criminalise it. Today, adultery has gone from crime, to sin and now to peccadilo or even wholesome recognition of the transience of some human relationships'.

What world are you living in? One of the striking things for me has been the emergence in western consciousness of the Islamic world. When I first heard this story, and for many years afterwards, I had great difficulty in imagining a world where adultery was a capital crime, and I had the greatest difficulty in thinking what stoning to death would be like. All that has changed. Now, it's all too easy to understand this.

This makes the story all the more powerful for me. When I read it, what comes to my mind is the reports of girls who are raped and then condemned to death for adultery, or the women and girls spirited away to arranged marriages in Pakistan, or the honour killings, or the judicial amputations and stonings that happen today. That's the context in which I now see this story.

As a result of that, it's easy for me to see that Jesus could only take the side of the woman in this case. Actually, it now seems difficult for me to imagine a Gospel which does not contain a story like this, given the practice of the time. So, of course, I'm surprised that the account is not in the synoptics at all, and only in an ambiguous way in John, with textual anomolies.

I know you were talking about the conventions of western society, but that society now contains many people who want to follow sharia law and that society has a window on to the wider world in which these things happen.

Imagine if the early church had edited this story out of the gospel record (as it nearly did). Then, the people who condemn homosexuality and divorce and women priests would no doubt be defending stoning adulterers on the grounds that Jesus didn't oppose the practice. (Don't sneer. there are many prison officals in the USA who have no problem in carrying out executions and going to church on Sunday).

It's on these borderline editorial decisions that much of our belief is based. We need to be critical of those early editors and see their decisions in thier own context.

David -  one cannot avoid the words of Christ to the rich young man and to the woman.....neither were told that all will be well and all will be well etc etc.  Both were asked to do something positive......you seem to have an aversion to the word "repentance" but you cannot get away from the fact that both were asked to turn away from certain things and go in a new direction 

wggrace - thank you for your response.

I totally agree with you about the destructiveness and sinfulness of adultery in any age and culture. But it seems to me if you want a pasage that underlines that in the teaching of Jesus you have to look elsewhere than Jn 8.  Jesus simply does not make that point and by refusing to go with the law and require her stoning he, if anything, is open to looking as if he is down playing its seriousness.

Jesus is responding to a quite different agenda.

The story makes clear he has been set up (and that makes me wonder if the woman wasn't set up too). The issue is not adultery and the law - it is a power struggle between Jesus and the authorities. That ,for John, is part of the discussion about the true Kingship of Jesus. So a chapter that begins with an attempt to stone a woman for adultery closes with an attempt to stone Jesus himself.

Jesus makes clear he does not treat sexual sin with any greater gravity than the sin of hypocrisy. Something very contemporary about that challenge. The tendency to treat some sins as more serious than others - especially sexual ones - remains a Christian failing and this story judges us for it. He does not down grade the seriousness of adultery, he upgrades all other sins to the same level as it.

He only addresses the woman when everyone else has left. So he makes no public point about adultery or repentance at all.

'Go and sin no more' may refer to her more general way of life than to sexual sin particulary. We know nothing about her actual circumstances.

Finally the point needs to be underlined that, as so often in human society, the power and initiative lies with men. Women were not regarded as having a choice in such matters - but were nevertheless blamed mercilessly if found breaking the law. A whole social system stands judged here for its hypocrisy.

That is not simplifying the issue at all. It suddenly gets a whole lot more complex.

The account of the confrontation between Jesus and 'the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees' in John 8:1-11 is an interesting one. It certainly is a story of the refutation of male hypocrisy, as David observes. But to reduce it to that is to simplify the story somewhat. Adultery was a serious crime in Jewish law, one of the few that merited capital punishment. From Jesus's comments elsewhere, e.g. Matt 5:27-30, Jesus fully accepted the enormity of the crime that adultery is in a way that is quite alien to us today. Today, adultery is not a crime and we would strongly resist any move to criminalise it. Today, adultery has gone from crime, to sin and now to peccadilo or even wholesome recognition of the transience of some human relationships. Sexual sin is for us no longer that serious.

The forgiveness offered by Jesus to the woman, the mercy he extends to her, gains its majesty from the seriousness of what she did. In the Omah bombing in Northern Ireland, one father of a victim has shown great forgiveness. But the greatness of the forgiveness is only possible because of the greatness of the crime. In the NT as in the OT, adultery is considered a major sin, huge, a sin against God and humanity and community, worthy of capitalm punishment or worse. And it is this sin which Jesus forgives. So the story should not be used to soften the opposition of the Bible to sexual sin but to emphasise that even with sexual sin, mercy is possible. This in turn only makes sense if the telos of forgiveness is intended to be leaving sexual sin rather than the acceptance of it. This is made clear by the final remark of Jesus, "Go now and leave your life of sin."

One challenge that the story makes to us, not perhaps visible to those of Jesus' day is that sexual sin is important. They understood that it was important; we often forget this and this story onlly makes sense if we recall it.

Nersen

'Do you really want to try to argue that the rich man is told that he should sell all his posessions because Christ thought his problem was something other than his attachment to his wealth i.e.greed?'

Yes it could be. My position is this. The word repentance is not used here. Nor is the word greed. The challenge seems to me to be to make space for the radical commitment that leads to real life in Christ that somewhere this man clearly yearns for. Attachment is not in itself sinful or greedy is it? - though of course it will be flawed because we are fallen creatures. My original point remains - it is not a good story for illustrating Jesus being uncompromising in condemning sin.

As to the story of the woman - you completely ignore my response to you about where the real focus of the story lies.

David - Do you really want to try to argue that the rich man is told that he should sell all his posessions because Christ thought his problem was something other than his attachment to his wealth i.e.greed? Put whatever word you like on over-attachment to wealth and possessions....Christ asks him to do something....to repent of something....despite all the young man's good qualities......he was not told that all will be well in the end and he needn't bother changing anything, was he?

With the woman caught in adultery....exactly focus on Christ....see his grace (shown to the woman) and see the response he wants to the grace he shows he when he invites her to "go and sin no more"  i.e. repentance.

'It is not a story about a woman caught  in adultery but about men caught in hypocrisy.'

Wow, thank you for this seminal insight David. You have really shed light on this pasage for me.

Makes me think, somehow of 'the Mizpah story' and how things were not quite what they seemed.  A beautiful denoument in both Genesis 31 and Gospel 4...

Nersen,

Where does Jesus accuse the young ruler of 'greed' in this story? Unless you assume that to be wealthy is always to be greedy? This man is clearly a deeply Godly and devoted man of faith. There is no reason given to doubt his sincerity.  So I do not think you can make that assumption from the text.

As to the woman in adultery - I acknowledged that Jesus speaks to the woman about sin - but it comes as an afterward, in private, following the main drama of the story. The reason I challenged your use of this story is that there is huge pastoral sensitivity behind it relating to the vulnerablity of women in a patriarchal culture. Why didn't they drag the man before Jesus  - in fact where is he? Why do you (along with so many of us) make the woman central to this story in the context of repentance rather than the men who are condemned by Jesus for standing in judgement over her. Jesus does not follow the expected line here - that is the point. The men are the core message of this story - not the woman. It is not a story about a woman caught  in adultery but about men caught in hypocrisy.

Hello David.  Saying to the woman, "Now, go and sin no more," is nothing but a call to repentance....Christ expects a response to his beautiful grace shown ...he says to her that he does not want her to continue in sin (no excuses from him to justify not repenting are there?). The rich young man is challenged to sell everything.....if greed is one's problem, that is a call for a repentant action.

 Nersen, you write 'When Christ met people who he thought needed to repent, he was not shy in saying so e.g. to the rich young ruler or the woman caught in adultery.'

But he didn't call either to repentance did he? - certainly not in the direct, no nonsense way you are wanting to illustrate. The word itself is not used in either story. 

He called the young ruler to a deeper, costly act of discipleship.

And to the woman,  it is true that he speaks to her of her previous lifestyle. But he first forgave the woman without waiting for any prior repentance on her part. In fact if a challenge to repentance to be found in that story it it is directed at men caught in hypocrisy. The story is actually wrong to focus on the woman. That is precisely what Jesus didn't do. (and he was, in a touching way, shy and gentle in his ministry to her - ministering to her after everyone else has left).