In Nestor Stephen thinks of the broad "shadow" that
Jesus of Nazareth cast on later times and on people of his own
time. Several of the gospels tell the story of how the
Pharisees attempted to entrap Jesus by asking him whether or
not it was lawful to pay taxes to the Roman authorities. He
confounded them by pointing to "a coin of the tribute" (i.e.,
a coin such as would be used to pay taxes) and telling them to
give "To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's."
If Jesus had said simply that it is lawful to pay taxes to
Rome, the Pharisees could have argued that he did not support
Jewish resistance to Roman occupation and taxation. If he had
said no, they planned to hand him over to Pontius Pilate as an
insurrectionist (Luke 20:20). Jesus avoided both these traps.
Asking the Pharisees to produce a coin, he asked them whose
image it bears. To their answer, "Caesar's," he replied,
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's;
and unto God the things that are God's." At this wise and
cunning answer, the Pharisees "marvelled" (Matt 22:22).
Stephen reflects that, like so many of Jesus' parables and
pronouncements, this anecdote offers a "riddling
sentence," an obscure wisdom "to be woven
and woven on the church's looms." Where Jesus spoke
poetry, the Church must find
doctrine.
Many Christian authorities have quoted the sentence about the
coin of tribute as implying a separation of secular and sacred
responsibilities. It seems to cohere with Jesus' telling
Pilate that "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36):
religious obedience is one thing, while political obedience is
another, and the two need not clash. Reasonable as this
interpretation may be, Stephen is not interested in reducing
Jesus' subversive and elusive thoughts to Sunday school
teachings. When he says that they have been woven on the
church's looms, he uses the
same metaphor for church theologians that he used in Telemachus
to condemn the heretics who have opposed orthodox theology: "The
void awaits surely all them that weave the wind."
Stephen remains focused in both passages (and indeed
throughout the book) on the chasm between world and spirit,
event and significance, surface and symbol. The "long
look from dark eyes" that Jesus gave to the "eager
faces" of the malevolent Pharisees was opaque to
them, and would be no less opaque today.
