Nowhere to Lay His Head

But even on historic grounds the accidental resemblances between the Lord and other teachers are superficial and trivial compared with the great fundamental differences between them. There is a huge classic literature dealing with the activities of traveling wise men and religious teachers in late antiquity. These men all had certain well-marked characteristics. After the manner of the seven wise men, they wandered unattached through the world as spectators of God’s works; Christ always stayed within a few miles of home and never evinced any interest in natural philosophy. They were all seekers after wisdom; Christ had it to give. They lived in complete detachment from society and were tolerated by rulers and governments as harmless dreamers; his organizing activities alarmed Roman and Jewish authorities. They emancipated themselves from family and friends; he lived intimately with them all his days. They performed interesting experiments and theatrical tricks to delight and impress the multitude; his miracles were all useful ones, never meant to be eye-catching. They attended the schools of others and sought to sit at the feet of great teachers; he spoke as one having authority. They did everything to attract the largest possible following; he forbade his disciples to do what would make them popular.

They gained or lost students as disciples chose to follow or leave them; he chose his own disciples and bound them to him by bonds and covenants. They all (as Professor Jaeger has shown) gave political counsel and advice, seeking official advisory positions and corresponding widely with government officials by mail; he gave no such advice and wrote no such letters. The only proper place for them to deliver their discourses was in the theater, the official assembly place; he always avoided holding forth in such places. They cultivated peculiarities of dress and appearance; his disciples were criticized for not doing so. We could go on and on, but the point is clear: Christ was in all essentials the very opposite to the men with whom he is classed. In a word, he was a true prophet, and they were not: if they sometimes resembled him, it was because of their own efforts to make a noise like true prophets.

The great difference was that they were only looking for what Christ had. They spoke as scribes and pharisees, hypocrites; he as one having authority. There is all the difference in the world between the two. Amid a host of likeminded seekers—many of them devout and honest men—one alone was not a seeker.

The yearning for such a world and the faith in its existence, or even the mere possibility of its existence, has always offered an alternative to the heavy-handed warrior’s solution to the problem of survival in a hostile world.

Pilgrims, like all nomads, have a deep distrust of anything that might tie them down or hamper their freedom of movement.175 The city especially, designed to make man forget the marginal and nomadic nature of life on earth and hence lose sight of the distant Celestial City, is to the pious pilgrim an object of loathing and suspicion.176 Not only do the early Jews and Christians think of themselves as das wandernde Gottesvolk (the wandering people of God),177 and not only does the dogmatic constitution of the church (1964) adopt for Roman Catholics the surprising title of “The Wayfaring Church,”178 but obsession with the idea of life as a pilgrimage is no less conspicuous in Islam, the religions of the Far East, and classical antiquity—was there ever a more Passionate Pilgrim than Pindar? How do the pilgrim bands make out with the jealous, suspicious, and insecure lords of the earth?

In rendering to Caesar what was Caesar’s (cf. Matthew 22:21 [Matt. 10:20]), the early Christian was not recognizing divine sovereignty but buying his way out; a sharp distinction was made between paying Caesar tax-money that was his (and there is no question of excessive taxation since what Caesar owns is nothing less than the orbis terrarum itself), and giving him the homage of a pinch of incense. The latter act was an acknowledgment of divinity, and a good Christian died sooner than make the concession, while the former was merely a recognition of ownership. The early Christians were urged to “make . . . friends of the mammon of unrighteousness” (Luke 16:9 [Luke 9:17]) as the best way to be rid of him, paying quickly and gladly whatever fees the masters of the earth imposed on them.179 Then they went their way, resolutely refusing to own lands or houses of their own which, they felt, would encumber them with worldly obligations and vitiate their status as strangers and pilgrims.