The Beatitudes through the Ages by Rebekah Eklund

Author:Rebekah Eklund
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Both inner and outer righteousness

Earlier, the chapter explored John Calvin’s view of the beatitude. Calvin treated “those who hunger” and “the poor in spirit” under the same rubric, viewing both as having a material component (actual material poverty or social lowliness) and a spiritual one (humility and dependence upon God). Jeremiah Burroughs politely suggested that Calvin, despite being a very good interpreter of Scripture, had not gone far enough this time. Burroughs represents those interpreters who see the longing of the beatitude as having both an inner (personal holiness) and outer (justice in the world) component.

Burroughs proposed that Christ is blessing those who long for the power of righteousness in their own hearts to prevail over sin, and those who long for righteousness to prevail in the world. Burroughs made an implicit connection between hungering for righteousness and the prayer of lament through an allusion to the martyrs crying out to God in Revelation 6:10: “They send up strong cries to God that righteousness might come into the world. How long, how long shall it be, holy and true?”64 And Burroughs gave practical advice to those who felt they were hungering and thirsting after righteousness yet could not find it (124–130), reassuring his congregation that “God is a compassionate father” (129) and that Christ is a shepherd who seeks out even the sheep lost and caught in the briars (130).

Four centuries after Burroughs, Dominican priest and Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez (b. 1928) agreed. Righteousness indicates “a relationship with the Lord—namely, holiness; and at the same time a relationship with human beings—namely, recognition of the rights of each person and especially the despised and the oppressed, or, in other words, social justice.”65 For some, this mirrors the internal and external righteousness of the two great love commandments, more often expressed as horizontal (love of neighbor) and vertical (love of God) aspects. For A.-M. Carré, for example, “total justice” is love of God and love of neighbor; it is friendship with God and with others.66 This view brings us full circle to the material aspect with which we began, since justice expressed in the world—or love of the neighbor—typically involves concrete acts that address the real needs of those neighbors.

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