One of my favorite authors to read is David Bentley Hart. Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher. He writes profoundly and is often difficult to read. (Even though I have a fairly good vocabulary, I keep a dictionary by my side when I read his works. Sometimes, I can’t even find some of the words he uses in the dictionary!). He has a reputation of being arrogant and dismissive of others’ positions. I think he is so brilliant that he simply cannot tolerate lazy or irrational thinking. If you read him carefully, you will find a compassionate heart accompanying the mind of a genius.
Hart is also thoroughly knowledgeable of Greek: Classical Greek, Koine Greek (the Hellenistic Greek/common Greek in which the New Testament was written), and modern Greek. It was his deep knowledge of Greek which prompted Yale University Press (as in Yale University) to ask him to offer a new translation of the New Testament. I find Hart’s translation to be unique in two ways: (1) He translates the Greek as literally as possible to allow the readers to understand and experience the intentions of the authors, and (2) he applies his immense understanding of the meaning of Greek words and their background in his efforts to translate. He also offers an introduction and a postscript which are themselves worth pondering. In the postscript, he goes into detail explaining why he translated key words in the New Testament in unexpected ways. His translation exposes some of the ways other translations were influenced by erroneous theological beliefs (such as the mistaken notion of Original Sin as well as inadequate or distorted understandings of terms like spirit, justification, hell, eternal, faith, works, etc.) Most Western translations were influenced by the Latin Vulgate which assumed some of the unfortunate positions of theologians like Augustine (who “invented” the idea of Original Sin as it was, and in places still is, understood by Christians in the West). The Eastern Orthodox Church used Greek New Testaments which were better able to reflect the original intentions of the writers. Consequently, Eastern Christians are not burdened with the guilt-ridden idea of Original Sin.
As he painstakingly translated the Greek New Testament from the best manuscript evidence available, Hart experienced a surprise. He writes: What perhaps did impress itself upon me with an entirely unexpected force was a new sense of the utter strangeness of the Christian vision of life in its first dawning—by which I mean, precisely, its strangeness in respect to the Christianity of later centuries. When one truly ventures into the world of the first Christians, one enters a company of “radicals” (for want of a better word), an association of men and women guided by faith in a world-altering revelation, and hence in values almost absolutely inverse to the recognized social, political, economic, and religious truths not only of their own age, but of almost every age of human culture. The first Christians certainly bore very little resemblance to the faithful of our day, or to any generation of Christians that has felt quite at home in the world, securely sheltered within the available social stations of its time, complacently comfortable with material possessions and national loyalties and civic conventions. In truth, I suspect that very few of us, in even our wildest imaginings, could ever desire to be the kind of persons that the New Testament describes as fitting the pattern of life in Christ (The New Testament: A Translation, pp. xxiv-xxv). Hart then gives example after example of the radical Christianity of the early church regarding economics (just one of the many areas he could have chosen to make his point).
Later in this introduction he writes: Again, the first, perhaps most crucial thing to understand about the earliest generations of Christians it that theirs was an association of extremists, radical in its rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at it most reasonable and decent also. They were rabble (The New Testament: A Translation, p. xxxii).
Of course, Hart is not condemning or dismissive of those early Christians. He sees them as totally transformed in light of the Christ Event they have experienced. They believed, trusted, and radically lived out the good news of the New Creation begun by Jesus. I would assume by “radical” he means both their strangeness compared to the contemporary culture and the original meaning of the word radical as the root/source of their faith. That radical root was Jesus. They were totally committed to following him in a world which saw that way as a folly that should be rejected and resisted. Those early Christians were so close to the Christ Event that their whole beings were “afire with the energy of the New Creation.”
Like Hart, I doubt whether Christians today or in any time will ever be able to recover the radical following of those earliest disciples. In truth, if you read Paul’s letters, it’s obvious that some of those Christians even in the early days were far from being radically committed to the way of Jesus. However, that initial and extreme faithfulness does serve as a judgment on all the partial and compromised forms of Christianity we see today. I’m not thinking about the obviously corrupt, racist, and violent forms of Christianity in the U. S. such as Christian Nationalism. I assume anyone with a smidgen of integrity and a dollop of experience in the way of Jesus sees how idolatrous and evil such distortions of the faith really are. I’m thinking of myself and most of “the respectable and nice Christians” who find it so easy to live in this world and in the process, bit by bit, become of this world.
Sometimes I believe we have chosen to become vaccinated with just enough Christianity so we can be immune to the real thing. Rather than being the primary center of our lives, our faith is often on the periphery. It’s just a part of who we are, what we value, what we do, and how we live our lives. We eat, sleep, work, play, attend to personal needs, and “go to church” once a week and perhaps at times take into consideration what we should do as followers of Jesus (whether we actually follow up on our conclusions as to what we should do is another matter.) However, we are a far cry from Jesus’ mandate, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness (justice).” To seek first we must put first. Too often the radical Kingdom of God is one of the last things on our agenda, and sometimes, it’s not even on our agenda. At best, it’s an afterthought.
I am not suggesting that we become irrational fanatics. The world has suffered enough from such foolishness. However, I do believe most of us have never understood how radically different the way of Jesus is from the world—especially our world of ruthless competition, greed, arrogance, bigotry, violence, and alienation. As a country, we are fast approaching a dark and evil abyss. We are hell-bent on self-destruction as a decent society. Much of the church is either complicit with this disastrous path or blind, deaf, and indifferent to the threats which could cast us into a new dark age which could take decades if not centuries to overcome. To avoid such a terrible eventuality, we need “radical” solutions and “radical” individuals and communities willing to incarnate an alternative way. For those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus, perhaps what we need most is to rediscover (or, more than likely, discover for the first time) his radical message and learn to become afire with the New Creation he came to bring. Our lukewarm approach to faith, according to John the Divine of Revelation, is enough to make God vomit. (See Revelation 3:15-16).
God needs some radicals today who are both knowledgeable of the Source and are willing to embrace that Source. Only then can it be said of us as it was of the early church: “These who have turned the world upside down have come even here.” (Acts 17:6) If ever our world needed to be turned upside down and inside out, it is today. I don’t know all this means for me, much less for you. But I do know it means something—something radical, something real, and something now.
