The ideal of Jesus is clear. A man is to be so truthful that his possible untruthfulness need not be reckoned with, and therefore he will take no oath, nor be asked to take one. But if men will not always trust him, owing to the general lack of trustworthiness, is he or is he not to submit to this indignity (cf. Clem. Alex. Strortmta, vii. 8, and Kant's epithet 'State blackmail' or 'civil extor- tion' [biirfjerlichcs Erpres.mnijsmittel'] in Die Reli- gion innerhalb der Grenzen dm- blossen Vernunft, 1793, p. 226; Eng. tr., 1838), in which he will feel that God is implicated? It may be said that this surrounding ' evil ' of the world would make only the demanding of the oath to be ^vrong, not the taking of it. But any submission to or compromise with the 'evil' can be regarded as an unworthy surrender, and as itself evil. Another vital point is the shrinking attitude towards God which is taken in the oath by the explicit or implicit invo- cation of His powers of punishment. The question
arises whether that is a Christian or a sub-Christian conception of Him ; whether the Christian does not tell tlie truth, in the ordinary course, from far higher motives ; and whether, by suddenly accept- ing an ollicial injunction to ' believe and shudder' before Him whom he is usually permitted'to love, he does not do an injustice to God and to him.self. Magee admits that the oath has lost its power in- creasingly with the decline of su])erstitious dread {op. rit. p. 13 f.), and Kostlin admits that the non-swearing sects have been inlluenced largely by a reverence and delicacy which lie upon the un- spoiled Christian spirit like bloom.
In f.ace of all this, can the oath be re-instated by the actual practice of Jesus or of St. Paul 1 In the case of the latter, ' the disciple is not above his master ' (see B.-irclay, quoted l)y .\. Tholuck, Sermon on the Mount, En<r. tr., 1860, p. 261) ; and apart from that, the actual examples of assevera- tion in his Epistles are not very convincing (see H. Weinel, St. Paul, Eng. tr., 1906, p. 358, and C. H. Watkins, St. PanVs Fi(jhtfor Galatia, 1914, jip. 108, 159 f.). This is especially evident at 1 Co l"-'", which, in view of the 'I thank God,' reveals a strange lack of clarity ; and, where the witness is himself uncertain, strong expressions of affirmation and invocation can but add to the difficulties.
As to Jesus, it is curious that Mt 26''"'* should be thought so conclusive. There are two important variations in the Synoptic accounts, thus :
Mt 266311. Mk 1461f- Lk 226"-
I adjure thee by Art thou the .\rt thou the the living God, that Christ, the Son of Christ? Tell us. thou tell us whether the Blessed ? thou be the Christ.
Thou hast said. 1 am. If I tell you, ye
will not believe.
For the adjuration, we have the authority of St. Matthew alone ; and an adjuration would not in any case be an ordinary oath. If one who is ' adjured' does not, by one explicit word, say that he makes the adjuration his own, it remains the utterance of the other party only, and no one can prove tliat he answers, or answers truly, because of it (see HDB, art. ' Adjure '). The Jewish use of 'Amen' in acceptance of an adjuration is often appealed to as if it occurred here (see Tholuck, op. cit. p. 254), but Jesus said no such word. He makes reference only to the question asked Him, not to the adjuration in itself. And is that repl}' explicit? According to St. Mark, He answers, 'I am (the Messiah)' ; but probably St. Mark is secondary here, for Messianic utterances are usually the more confident the later they are.* Moreover, ' I am ' can be understood as St. Mark's interpretation of 'Thou hast said,' but not vice versa. J. Weiss has argued with much force that Jesus comW not, to any purpose, answer either 'yes' or 'no' (Srhriften des NT-, i. [1906] .393 f., 516 f.; cf. W. C. Allen on Mt 26» {op. cit. p. '28:! f.] and Swete on Mk 14«- [St. Mark:-, 1902]). In St. Luke this ev.asiveness, or indefiniteness, is patent, but in St. Matthew also the emphatic pronoun ('Thou hast said' — not I ; cf. Lk i'l^") suggests that a definite answer was refused. That the high priest treated the answer (or perhaps the following prophecy) as a plain self-conilemnation proves nothing except thathe wished todoso(cf. Swete on Mk 14"' and art. Conspiracy). The tone of Jesus' reply is at any rate lofty, and not in the least submissive. Essen- tially the same reply is given by Jesus to Pilate (who has no interest in making it more definite
* St. Mark's confidence and emphasis show how far he is from the thought of an unwilling confession extorted solely by an adjuration. He mentions no adjuration, and on his showing the question might have been answered earlier if it had been asked.
OATH
OllEDIENCE
99
than it is), and it is not regarded as closing the case (Mk 15-, Mt 27", Lk 23»).
On this evidence it cannot be held, with any con- fidence, tliat Jesus accciited the adjuration, and His example does not, tiierefore, justify oaths in law, as distinguished from private conversation. In Mt 5 He is not dealinj; directly w ith law-courts, but we do not know that He would have exempted them from His prohibition, if questioned.