Radical Moderates

I was talking to a seminarian this week about what things are like at his seminary. He said they were "radical moderates," having extreme intolerance for anything that goes one way or the other, and strictly enforcing the middle ground. 

Radical moderates - what a lovely term!

This sums up qualms I have sometimes with the Aristotelian(-ish) worldview. It's too radically moderate. After a radical moderate has had his hands on the Gospel, it seems that hardly anything Jesus said can be taken at face value. Radical moderation is as distorting an ideology as any other.

Meek means sometimes be violent, i.e., not meek.

Forgive seventy times seven times means forgive, but only if they're sorry, and with qualifications, and never forget. 

Pluck out your eye means don't really pluck out your eye. 

Sell everything means keep most things and follow Jesus just as well. 

Turn the other cheek means sometimes don't turn the other cheek, or do it in a clever way that exacts retaliation.

I read Biblical interpretations like these and I have this icky feeling like the whole message has been castrated. I imagine it as like a lawyer at the feet of Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, interrupting Him at each point and saying, "Ah, not so fast! According to [such an such...]" Why did God come into the world to say a bunch of things that are to be taken as if they don't really mean what they mean?

I think our first reaction to hearing the words of Jesus is to take them at face value and wrestle with them if we need to. What we don't need are trite ways of explaining away every thing Jesus said so that they have no direct impact on our lives.

I like what I read quoted in Richard Weaver: Plato built the cathedrals of England and Aristotle built the manor houses.