September 4, 2025 • 57 mins
Why did Jesus enjoin us not to swear oaths? Zack Johnson shares what he learned from his personal experience with oaths of loyalty to Ecuador and the United States before he knew the significance of this prohibition. He challenges us to avoid oath-taking in all areas of life.
John Calvin’s explication of the third commandment
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The first time I took an oath was actually in
order to receive a high school diploma.
I'm a dual citizen with Ecuador, so I was wearing
an Ecuadorian flag sash,
and I was holding the flag,
and each one of my Ecuadorian classmates bent one
knee, took the flag in their hand, kissed it.
I was the final person to get back. I bent the
(00:21):
knee. There's a group of military men holding
intimidating rifles with bayonets,
watching all the citizens do that. I took the
oath. Whatever Jesus is trying to teach on oaths,
he lays out, I think, very clearly in the book of
Matthew, and then James says above all that we
should be paying attention to what this means.
And then also, Jesus isn't only prohibiting
(00:42):
something, he's then telling us how to live.
He says, "Let your yes be yes and your no no."
And so Jesus is really trying to teach us, "Hey,
your words matter. What you commit to matters."
And I hope that when you see the words "swear,"
your Christian instinct is to evaluate what's
being asked of you against Jesus' teachings
rather than just sort of
glance over it and ignore it.
(01:08):
Our guest today is Zach Johnson. He's serving at
Sattler College, and our topic is concerning
taking oaths and what Jesus said about not taking
oaths and how that applies to us.
And that's a personal issue for Zach as well.
(01:28):
So Zach, could you begin just a brief
introduction and why you care about this topic?
It might seem narrow to some of us.
Yeah, it's great to be here, Marlin. Thanks so
much for hosting me. The first time I took an
oath was actually in order to
receive a high school diploma.
So I was a missionary kid in Quito, Ecuador, and
(01:53):
if you travel around the world, there are a
series of things that people set up, oath taking
being one of them or some sort of where we took
an oath was in the they called the pledge to the
flag in order to even receive an
official diploma from high school.
So the first time I took an oath, I was wearing
I'm a dual citizen with Ecuador. So I was wearing
(02:15):
an Ecuadorian flag sash, and I was holding the
flag and each one of my Ecuadorian classmates
bent one knee, took the flag in their hand,
kissed it and said, "I swear" to an oath that had
been read aloud before the ceremony.
And I was as the final, for some reason, I was
the flag bearer. I could tell you more about
(02:36):
that. I was the final person to get back. I bent
the knee. There's a group of military men holding
intimidating rifles with bayonets,
watching all the citizens do that.
I took the oath, didn't really, I'm just gonna
say, didn't think anything of it. It was just a
ceremony that happened. Our high school did it.
(02:57):
We were a Christian, used to be a boarding
school, very evangelical in nature.
Six months later, I joined the US military, went
to the Air Force Academy, and then took another
oath of allegiance to the US Constitution. And
then in order to get a security clearance, then
had to renounce my citizenship to Ecuador.
(03:22):
And didn't really think anything of it, but I've
taken a series of oaths in my academic life and
then professional life that I'll just say I'd
never thought about and nobody really made a big
deal. And it wasn't until a little bit later
after I had encountered a church here in Boston
called "Followers of the Way" that they sort of
(03:42):
illuminated this idea that, hey, there's a group
of people who take the
teachings on those very seriously.
And so that's sort of my introductions to oaths
was my journey from Ecuador as a missionary kid
into the Air Force and then out of the Air Force.
And then when I did that, I became a
(04:03):
conscientious objector. And the last straw for me
was actually a teaching on oaths.
So I'm very, very passionate about why I chose
not to stay in the Air Force, even though it was
acceptable to me. It was always, I'll say my
heart's intent was to follow Christ. And it
(04:24):
wasn't until later on in my life that somebody
just opened the door and said, hey, there's this
teaching on oaths, violence, loving your enemies.
And so the oath, the oath was actually the last
straw for me that was sort of the issue on why I
decided I couldn't stay in the military and serve
out a government fashion. And so the oath is a,
it's a very important thing for me because it was
(04:46):
sort of a critical, a
critical juncture in my life.
And I thought about it a lot, prayed about it a
lot, read about it a lot. And it continues to
have implications for the guys that I talk to
and actually women in the military who sort of
bump into me or something
I've written or something.
And so I talked to a lot of people about it.
(05:07):
The oath was the final juncture that led you to
leave the military. I'm curious because you
mentioned you had to renounce the, your
citizenship to Ecuador. Looking back on that now,
does that count as breaking the
oath that in the high school ceremony?
Yeah, I mean, I beg God for mercy that I, I feel
(05:31):
that my decision to take one oath and then six
months later to take another oath. And when you
compare the two set of words, I would say they're
mutually exclusive with each other.
And so you can't, but this, this just goes to show
that I don't think one person can have complete
allegiance to two things simultaneously that are
(05:52):
in conflict with each other.
A great case being, can you be a Ecuadorian soldier
and a US soldier simultaneously? The answer to
that is no. The US military knows that. So it's
not an, it's a very obvious thing to me.
But yeah, I would say it was a breaking of the
original pledge to the
(06:13):
Ecuadorian flag that I took.
Yeah. So on this, on this topic of oaths, what I
know there's two passages in the New Testament
that address it directly. I'll just go ahead and
read them and then let you
make the comments you wish.
The first one from Matthew 5:33 to 37, "Jesus
(06:35):
says, again, you have heard that it was said to
those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but
shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all,
either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or
by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by
(06:55):
Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
And do not take an oath by your head, for you
cannot make one hair white or black. Let whatever
you say be simply yes or no.
Anything more than this comes from evil."
And then from the letter of James, very short.
(07:15):
"But above all my brothers, do not swear, either
by heaven or by earth, or by any other oath, but
let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that
you may not fall under condemnation."
Yeah, so these are the two primary passages when
you when you look at, hey, let's talk about why
(07:36):
not to swear oaths. There's a few other passages
that are worth looking at, but
we won't have the time to do that.
And then really interesting to track the history
of oaths through the Old Testament and into the
New Testament to kind of
do case studies on on oaths.
And I would I would make there's a lot of great
examples of oaths gone wrong in the Bible, too.
(08:00):
And so I actually think it's really interesting.
But just to interlock these two, these two
teachings, a lot of people, when they when they
look at the book of James, you'll find striking
connections to the Sermon on the Mount.
And a lot of people say that James is almost, you
could say, a commentary on the Sermon on the
Mount, making the argument that
(08:21):
James is the half brother of Jesus.
And then he would have heard Jesus give the
sermon. However, many number of times, I'm not
going to try to make that argument.
And then I always like to say in any book, when
you get to these "above all" moments, we should be
saying, all right, somehow, James is saying that
this is one of the one of the most important
(08:43):
things I'm going to say in my
short little my short little book here.
James has five chapters and he
says, above all, don't swear.
And so whatever Jesus is trying to teach on
oaths, he lays out, I think, very clearly in the
book of Matthew. And then when you look at how
important it is, I would say that because it's
(09:04):
there so so clearly in Matthew that and then
James says, above all, that we should be paying
attention to what this means.
There are three general camps of interpreting the
oath passage here. One is the where I fall into.
It's just that we should take Jesus's words very
literally and take them very seriously.
(09:27):
And whenever we're in any circumstance that even
smells like an oath, our instincts should go up
and we should say, hey, Jesus taught something about this
I should be paying attention to what he was
prohibiting there. And then also, Jesus isn't
only prohibiting something. He's then telling us
how to live. He says, let
(09:47):
your yes be yes and your no no.
And so Jesus is really trying to teach us, hey,
your words matter, what you commit to matters.
And so that's my camp, the
literal prohibition on oaths.
And I can get into a little bit of, I think we'll
get into a hey, what's an oath and what isn't an
oath. And then there's this other camp.
And Marlin, you actually pointed me to this. I
(10:08):
hadn't read it through it a little bit. But John
Calvin wrote a lot on oath taking.
And there's a there's a sermon by John MacArthur
that I bumped into about oaths as
well that I think represents this well.
Is that some oaths are OK and some oaths are not OK. And
it's kind of the one of the lines that I remind
(10:30):
myself is do not do not swear
at all means swear sometimes.
So that's sort of the second camp.
I'm poking fun of it a little bit.
And I think you really have to do some
justification there. But that camp, they're still
looking at the teaching and
trying to apply it in everyday life.
(10:51):
And they're saying that, hey, really, Jesus was
talking about some sort of Jewish abuse of oaths
that was happening, but it's not completely
relevant to us, i.e., government oaths, the oaths
in courtrooms, things of that nature.
And then the third camp is like it doesn't matter
completely. It doesn't matter for our context,
(11:12):
sort of for the another point in time.
And I did want to say that between those first I
think those first two interpretations are
probably where the audience falls
between and is most familiar with.
I think they care and I think they want to know.
And I really think that just like
hermeneutically, what's going to define where you
(11:32):
land on this is some sort of idea of
how you view the Old
Testament and how we interact with it.
People in my camp view the Sermon on the Mount as
a like a perfection of the Old Testament.
And the Old Testament was almost like a
babysitter or I like to say a pedagogos in Greek,
(11:53):
that it was an incomplete set of laws.
And then Jesus came and gave us an illuminated, a
new reality that we needed that the Messiah would bring.
And the other set sort of doesn't view the Sermon
on the Mount that way and sort of likes to treat
the new and Old Testaments holistically that they
can't be incompatible with each
other, which I don't think they are.
But this would be a great example of one where
(12:15):
it's like, well, hey, there are people taking
oaths in the Old Testament, so it can't mean that
Jesus is prohibiting oaths.
So it's just a different treatment of how you
view the Old Testament, and I am a huge fan of
what I laid out as Sermon on the Mount as
Constitution for being a Christian.
And so that's – I just wanted to frame. That's
(12:36):
kind of how I think about the
Sermon on the Mount in general.
Yeah, and we're going to have to dive into that a
little bit more. I'm curious on the third camp,
saying it doesn't matter – I mean, do you bump
into a lot of people saying that explicitly, or
is it more like why bother thinking about it, or
(12:59):
is there an explicit argument that –
I would – I'm not trying to – I put –
there's a certain set of passages in the New
Testament that make no
sense, like in our context.
And a lot of people, if it doesn't make direct
application, they might not
take the time to think about it.
I would – like, there's a category of like
(13:20):
don't eat food, strangled food.
Like, a lot of people that I've run into are not
thinking about that when they run into this
teaching in the New Testament.
They're like, this sounds like nothing I know of
doesn't really apply to me. So I think it's more
of that camp that since it seems so foreign, that
it's one of those like non-apply teachings that
(13:40):
must have been only to a specific audience.
So I think it's more of that type than – rather
than like blatantly ignoring
things. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, even from my own
standpoint, I think a lot of others, like the
closest that I've ever actually come to
encountering the question, am I going to swear an
(14:00):
oath or not, is like a driver's license form that
has the word swear on it.
I've never been in the situations that you
described at the opening of the episode, and
there's probably a lot of other people who just
never had anything that
forced them to think much about it.
Yeah, I mean, the examples that I'll give – so
(14:22):
obviously, there's the
political and military examples.
And this is where I give a talk on voting as it
relates to oath taking as well, where if you're a
voter, you will endorse that Christian will go
– the president, a lot of the US presidents are
(14:43):
at least pay homage to Christianity to some in
some way, shape or form.
They'll go take an oath on a Bible every time you
vote. So if you vote, you're actually, in my
mind, you're actually condoning the act of taking
an oath on a Christian Bible.
We can talk more about that.
So politically in the voting sphere, I think
people should think about it more. And then I was
(15:05):
just called into jury duty
earlier this week, ironically.
And I give, for those of you who interact with
that sort of interaction, you'll interact with
oaths in the courthouse, in
the legal system, on jury duties.
And then usually, there's some way, shape or
swear verbiage in a lot of legal contracts that
(15:28):
you'll see for driver's license,
for loans, for – I have to do it.
I have to actually circumvent oath taking to get
a little parking pass in my neighborhood that
says I live where I say I live.
And so it's kind of – it's written in there,
and that's where I do want to make a distinction
that there is definitely a difference between
(15:51):
being able to say that something's true and an
oath, and I think it's
helpful to make that distinction.
But then at the same time, yeah, we'll make that
distinction. But I think we'll encounter it in
one way, shape or form, and I hope that when you
see the word swear, or that your Christian
(16:12):
instinct is to evaluate what's being asked of you
against Jesus's teachings, rather than just sort
of glance over it and ignore it.
So how do you circumvent it? Like is it a paper
form and you can literally cross out a word and
write in something else, or out
of curiosity on the parking pass?
Yeah, so which – so the parking pass, I'm sure
(16:34):
they're annoyed by us, but we will – you can
apply online. We'll print it out, cross out the
word, initial it, say something else, and then
sign it and mail it in, and you get that option.
So that's a sort of convention. Even on legal
documents, that's what I do. But then, so even
religiously now, you see that oath-taking is no
(17:00):
longer required in the legal system, and they're
starting to take out the
oath-like language that appeals to God.
I don't know if you've heard some of the
presidents still at the end of an oath, or a lot
of the military oaths,
you say, "So help me, God."
And then at the beginning, there's a – you can
(17:20):
either swear or affirm, and you can kind of
choose which word you're comfortable with.
And in those circumstances, I just think that,
hey, it's already being half-circumvented for
you. Don't- ignore the exact fraction.
Then the Christians' duty is to evaluate the
words themselves, and then that kicks into the
(17:42):
second part of Jesus' teaching, "Let your yes be
yes and your no be no," and then it's up to you
to evaluate, "Hey, what am I agreeing to?"
And if there's some sort of thing that you
shouldn't agree to, you
shouldn't say those words.
And that's sort of like my plea for a lot of
(18:02):
people is the oaths that people say are, I would
say, impossible to fulfill as dutiful Christians.
And I just think people should
be thinking a lot more about it.
I hear you bringing it back from just a point
about language, or is it an oath to, well, don't
(18:24):
say things if you can't actually commit to them,
the things we kind of glibly sign.
Just for me, for example, in the military, with
the reason that I decided not to, I was a second
lieutenant, and every time you go up a rank, you
take another oath of office, hence
(18:45):
the officer line in the military.
And there's a line in there, "I will protect the
Constitution of the U.S. against
all enemies, foreign and domestic."
And then there's this line, there's this thing
that you're agreeing to, that I take this
obligation freely without
any purpose of mental evasion.
(19:06):
Basically, whatever enemy comes, I'm going to
defend it no matter what, and there's nothing
stopping me from fulfilling that duty.
When I actually talk to a lot of Christians about
why it's acceptable, they actually repeat back to
me, they're like, actually, I should be in here
because I'm a Christian, and if there's ever
(19:28):
anything that goes awry, people like me should be
a stop, like a stop gap between unchristian
behavior and the government.
But then I like to say to them, then you
shouldn't be saying yes to those words, because
realistically, you have every intention to break
that oath, given that it goes against your
allegiance to Christ, which is not what the
(19:49):
country is asking of you.
And so I like to sort of play a little bit of
devil's advocate with people there on why we
shouldn't be committing to do something in all
circumstances when realistically we're like, no,
I'm actually trying to be the
moral conscience of the country, etc.
So there's certain things around oaths, and
(20:12):
hopefully we can get into defining them, but then
you have to at least look at what you're saying
yes and no to, and then that's where I think it
cannot be an oath, but you shouldn't agree to a
set of words that you disagree with and might
compromise some behavior on
another conviction that you have.
(20:32):
Well said, and let's go from there into that
question. Yeah, how do you define an oath?
Yeah, so there's a couple of lexicons, but I like
to I like to define an oath generally with three
components that you typically see in oath
language. And like I said, there are there are-
oaths come in various shapes and sizes.
(20:54):
So this stuff, these components are more
generalities. But the three components are one,
some sort of attestation of truth.
So you're saying something. The
second one is that you invoke the name of a
higher power, energy,
(21:15):
object, person, relationship, etc.
So you say something and then you're saying and
then you invoke it and you're saying, hey, I'm
saying this on behalf or under the cover of this
thing. So you read it there.
Jesus is actually saying, don't take any of
(21:35):
oaths- don't take him by heaven, by Jerusalem, by
this, by that, by the earth. But he's he's
listing the things you shouldn't take oaths by.
So you're invoking something. And then the third,
which is really interesting, is actually an
invoke is an invitation to punishment by the by
the thing you invoke, given that you don't
fulfill the set of words that you attest to.
(21:57):
So those I think those are the interlocking
components that generally make up oath language,
one, some sort of attestation of truth or
commitment that you're going to do something.
It could be a promise, could be a set of words. Two,
bringing in another name that sort of
gives you top cover the name of God.
(22:17):
Some people have seen it in pop
culture. You like swear by your mother, like I by
my mother's name or by my dead grandfather.
I promise you this is true. And then the third is
an invitation of punishment of what happens to
you if you don't fulfill the oath.
So those I think I think that's a it's a helpful
(22:38):
way to think about what is an oath and what isn't
an oath. There's some really classic pushbacks on
Hey, like I've gotten married and
taken wedding vows. And people-
And then I get that they're similar in nature,
like as a wedding vow and oath. And I would just
argue by nature of the definition that I just
(22:59):
gave with those three interlocking parts
that there's very different things
between an oath and then making a commitment to
somebody that you're going
to try your best to fulfill.
And you're allowed to do that. It's just the
invoking that God is a higher power and trying to
set up these two standards of truth
that I think the world operates on.
(23:20):
There's like normal standard of truth. And then
there's oath power truth, which gets you in
trouble if you lie under that, then- that there's
meaningful differences between the two.
And you see that in actually the
news every day where let's say that you're a
congressional witness. Do you know, are you
(23:40):
familiar what as a witness, what happens to you?
You get put under oath.
And if you lie under oath, it's more significant
than if you lie while you're not under oath. And
so it's a very interesting system that the world
has set up to kind of, I would say,
creates these two platforms of truth.
One is sort of normal life where you're almost
(24:01):
expected not to have to tell the truth. And then
there's this like, well, unless you're under
oath, then you have to tell the truth.
And if you don't, then you can get actually
convicted of different types of, of like perjury
and things like that, or giving false testimony
under oath, which I think
Jesus is trying to warn against.
But yeah, those are that's
(24:22):
my general definition there.
Yeah. Can we poke on some
examples a little bit? Yeah, absolutely.
The one that feels most classic to me of getting
all your components together is something like
Jezebel in the Old Testament. Elijah has killed
the prophets on Mount Carmel and Queen Jezebel's
(24:42):
like, you know, may the gods do so to do this to
me and more also if I don't, if
I don't kill you by the morning.
Yeah, that clearly brings it in. Then you jump to
the other extreme. So I had to fill out paperwork
to get a sales tax exemption
for Anabaptist Perspectives.
(25:03):
And on the form it says something like, I declare
under penalty of perjury. So we go to the
dictionary and look up perjury.
It would say it's lying under oath.
But there was nothing. The only thing my
signature did was
acknowledge that I'd get punished.
Yeah, this is where this is still where I'm
(25:25):
lenient. I'm more lenient on contract language
because- Were you filling it out with a pen?
Or do you remember if it was online
or not? That actually was on paper.
So this is where and people still look at me
sideways when I do this. But when I see those
(25:46):
statements, you're allowed to as a signer cross
things out and make notes
and they still accept it.
So whenever I still look for oath type language
and I'll cross it out and I just say, I don't
take oaths, but I'm telling you this is true.
And I've never had a problem with that kind of
(26:06):
behavior where I know it's kind of playing. It
kind of seems like a funny game to play.
But I think it is important to just push back and
say I don't take oaths, but I
can still participate in society.
I have a really funny example with my
conscientious objector trial. There was a
(26:27):
military lawyer called a Jag who
brought my witnesses to the stand.
And he put a bunch of people under oath to tell
the truth in my own trial, like my friends, my
fellow military officers.
But when it came to me and another brother in the
church who was giving testimony,
he knew we wouldn't take oaths.
So he came up with something different. He's
(26:47):
like, are you going to tell me
the truth? And we just said yes.
And I view that as not an oath, just a
confirmation of I'm truthful.
And so I do think that you're still allowed to
participate in the processes around you. However,
it's still worth it to clarify with people that
you don't take oath and you're not invoking God.
(27:11):
And even like in that language, you're allowed to
say like, I'm not taking an oath here. I'm just
telling you this is true. That's fine.
Like that's not unacceptable
to me. Does that make sense?
Yeah, even in that, I'm sure you do that in some
of those wordings that say I swear generically and
even under something like penalty of perjury, you
(27:32):
would want to put a
handwritten note on if you could.
Yeah, and you're allowed to do that. I mean,
there's nothing stopping you from doing that. And
this is where I just I still
think that God will be merciful.
Like if you miss a word in a contract and you
didn't like, I don't think you can be tricked
into taking a oath that you didn't know.
(27:53):
And that's where I think some of those things
that I'm much more lenient on like, hey, this is
not that big of a deal. However, if you're being
marched in front of a general and you're throwing
up your right hand and there's flags out like you
should be thinking, this is definitely an oath.
This is like has oath environment written all
(28:15):
over it. So there's categorical differences
between some of the different types of oaths
you'll take or will be asked to take.
Yeah, and I just point out historically, like at
least in English and American law, there's
provisions there because from what I could tell,
the Quakers took this very
seriously and wouldn't take oaths.
(28:36):
And eventually people decided to accommodate it.
Yeah, and I think I actually think the US is a
very with people like with our convictions, the
Quakers did a ton of work to at least make it
normal to push back against even the use of
violence, the use of violence and oath taking to
(28:57):
try to create some separation of
church and state. The Quakers did a lot of
groundwork where people are kind of familiar with
refusing to take oaths and they'll kind of look
at you and be like, oh, that
guy must be a Quaker or something.
But it's still familiar, whereas other places
it's less familiar. So I do think the Quakers did
some work with similar convictions before us.
(29:20):
Back to the wedding example for
just a little bit and the wedding vows.
If there's language in there like, do you do this
before God and these witnesses or something like
that, does that in your mind bring up more of
(29:43):
those elements of an oath?
I mean, it makes it seem more like an oath. But
to me, when you're making a commitment of
marriage, honestly, what for me separates it is
that, how do I say this?
(30:05):
There's not a meaningful difference in the way
that you behave afterwards based on what you say.
Like this is where I think marriage is a unique
category in its own because I think I personally
think it's a sacrament where
there is a one-flesh union occurring.
(30:28):
I think the Bible says that there's something
really happening at a marriage and I think it's
almost a category in its own that even the New
Testament says, Hey, marvel not a man and a
woman shall become one flesh.
And this is how God designed it. And there are
consequences there, but I
don't think that that is the same.
(30:51):
But actually, it's really interesting because
marriage has, I think, spiritual
and legal ramifications, right?
To people. And I think there are spiritual
realities. However, I don't think that you're
really inviting punishment into the marriage.
(31:15):
And I think that you could make the same set of
vows without the language of before God and these
witnesses. I just think they're similar. They're
almost the same, but you're not swearing.
You're not using the language that Jesus is
warning against. So I know I'm going to kind of
take the scapegoat, the cop-out answer, and
(31:37):
saying, "Hey, there are similarities, but I do
think they're different.
And this is the ultimate cop-out. Jesus taught
not to swear, but he didn't teach not to get
married. So at the end of the day, we know that
there's meaningful differences between the two.
And some of it's a little mysterious. I can't
(31:59):
nail all of it on the head, but
I think it's fair to say that.
And then on the other end of things, I like to
remind people that this is relevant to my story,
that the oath seems inconsequential to people.
But when I wanted to leave the military, it was
(32:20):
very, very, very clear that the
government had a claim on my life.
And if I left, I owed this amount of money or
federal prison because I had taken that oath. And
so it seems inconsequential, but legally, it has
pretty drastic consequences down the line that
some people aren't familiar with.
(32:43):
I wasn't familiar with it. So I think vows – I
think there's some sort of
difference between vows and oaths.
I am not super prepared to flesh out all the
meaningful differences, but I'd like – I'd at
least like to say that they're different.
Yeah, no, that's helpful. Again, there you're
(33:04):
stepping back from the language a little bit and
saying what's going on here,
what's the reality of getting married?
Slightly off from our main thread, but I did an
interview with a New Testament scholar, Matthew
Bates, and he talks about
baptism as an oath of allegiance.
(33:27):
And I asked him a little bit about that in the
interview. But one of the things I was thinking
is, whoa, yes, if you're getting baptized as an
adult, you know what you're doing.
While this is giving total allegiance, it doesn't
matter what you say or what you don't say, it has
(33:47):
this consequence of allegiance like these
countries are asking for.
We mentioned a couple times John Calvin or John
MacArthur and what you said is that second
position on oaths as – well, Jesus is saying
there's some oaths you shouldn't take.
(34:10):
I'd like to look at that a little bit. I'm
quoting a few things from John Calvin because
he's such a classic, at least for a lot of
thinkers today as well. He's a classic.
Please quote him. I think you should, yeah.
And so just a few pieces. This is actually from
(34:34):
his commentary on the Ten Commandments, I
believe, or the Sermon on the Mount.
He takes the Sermon on the Mount as kind of
explicating the Ten Commandments. He defines an
oath as calling God to
witness that what we say is true.
So I'm noticing there right away that it doesn't
have quite all the three
(34:54):
components that you mentioned.
So he argues that it's basically invoking God to
confirm what we're saying. We should only swear
by God, not by an idol or a king.
But then he goes and makes commentary about
(35:15):
Anabaptists who rejected
oaths from the beginning.
He says they inconsiderately make a stumbling
stone of Christ, setting him
in opposition to the Father.
And he's talking about the way we read the Sermon
on the Mount. He admits that it's kind of
(35:35):
difficult to understand what Jesus is saying.
But then he keeps going there, explicates that
argument from the Old Testament.
But then he also brings in the claim and says,
well, Paul was a disciple of Jesus and he swore
and gives some examples there.
(35:59):
So I think you indicated a little bit about how
you'd respond to that position, but I'd invite
you to say more and you can reference MacArthur's
sermon or Calvin or whatever.
Yeah, so I actually did another podcast
specifically on the early – it was kind of like
a 500th year remembrance of
(36:20):
some of the Anabaptist ideas.
And I researched a little
bit on views of oath taking.
And what I found was you're right there, the
early Anabaptist leaders blatantly rejected oath
taking across the – I mean, Michael Sattler,
Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel,
(36:41):
George Blaurock, Menno Simons.
So you are right in saying that there is already
the Reformation with Calvin and then the radical
Reformation with the Anabaptists there.
And I actually think it's super illuminating to
say, hey, there is a debate there
(37:03):
between the Anabaptists and Calvin.
Like, what should our
instinct be to solve this debate?
And this is where my position is, is that you
should even – like, there's history before the
Reformation and we should be tracing it, trying
to trace it to what was happening before them.
And this is where I think the early Christian
witness plays a huge role in why I've leaned
(37:27):
towards the prohibition of oaths over the
acceptance of oaths that I think the reformed
world has sort of begun to teach.
And I like to – I sort of like to just say that
there's – this is a little bit – comes back
to how I treat this influences how I treat a
(37:48):
bunch of other things in the New Testament.
So oaths in my mind, it's tied to other things
and there's a sermon on the Mount, like divorce
and remarriage, the use of violence, ad infinitum
on some of the sermon on the Mount issues.
But I don't know if you've
heard me talk about this before.
(38:09):
I picked this up from some of my discipleship
that in general there are three
categories of churches or traditions.
There are tradition zero churches, which
basically acknowledge that the Scripture is the
ultimate authority, but it's not the only
authority that we should be able to appeal to
(38:30):
church history, actually,
as an additional layer of authority, interpretive
authority on the Scriptures.
And so I think that it's most compelling –
that's the most compelling
category to be in at college.
And then there's tradition one – there's
tradition one churches, which basically say, hey,
(38:54):
there's a Scripture as an authority,
but there's also the authority of man that we can
layer onto this, where you can add
additional layers of requirements.
I like to bring – you can think of a lot of
examples I like to bring up because the Catholic
Church is so dominant, like vows of celibacy for
(39:16):
priests, all sorts of ideas where they've
appealed to this sort of man-made authority.
And then there's tradition zero – sorry, I got
my – tradition one,
tradition two is when you add it.
Tradition zero is when you kind of
say, hey, I'm alone with Scriptures.
I get to be the interpretive power of what this
(39:38):
says based on where I am.
And I would say that John Calvin and the
reformers' treatment of that leans more towards
being alone with Scripture than appealing to the
early Christian witness.
And that's just where I would really, really
recommend just people briefly taking a swath of
(40:01):
what was happening in the
first 300 years of Christianity.
And there's a book I recommend all the time
called Caesar and the Lamb that where Christians
are dying left and right on
the refusal to take oaths.
And people are just telling them,
like, it's not that big of a deal.
Just like say this thing and
(40:21):
serve in the Roman government.
And if not, you'll die.
And they're like, I'd rather die.
And so I think that with Calvin and the
Anabaptists, I think the Anabaptists are much
closer to that tradition
one, tradition one authority.
John Calvin says that they're tradition two.
He's saying that they're
putting the stumbling block.
You get what's happening there.
(40:43):
And but honestly, I think that it's a more
historically faithful interpretation.
And I would I would just push people to say that
the acceptance of oath is a novel
interpretation of Jesus's teaching.
And it's changed over time.
That would be my my compelling argument to say,
hey, the best way to figure this out is with
(41:04):
church history and to look
at how it's changed over time.
And the closer it is to
Christ, the more we should trust it.
So I tell the story of the first
documented conscientious objector.
There's a story of Maximilian where he's just
I've read it in a couple of podcasts before.
It's just he's the Roman guy is just pleading
(41:27):
with him like, please, just take that.
I don't want to hurt you.
Take the take this duty.
Take this seal.
He doesn't even have to.
He kind of says he doesn't have to serve.
And Maximilian says, no, I'm a Christian.
I won't do that.
Ends up getting his head cut
off and his dad is watching.
And I just think that that's much more the way
that early Christians interacted
with Jesus' set of teachings.
(41:48):
And yeah, all that being
said, lots of things to look up.
But the early Anabaptists, I would say, were
consistent with really being taking that like
that, that first stance on
the not allowing oath taking.
And that's why they were so in addition to
baptism, like you brought up Matthew Bates,
(42:10):
baptism and citizenship were so tied together at
that point in time that to try to untie them was
like very dangerous to people holding power.
So the early Anabapts were challenging a
lot of the status quos on how the church would use
its relationship with the
state to maintain influence.
And oaths were a part of that, I would argue.
(42:35):
I'm on the same page, especially when it comes to
the relationship of the sermon of
the Mount and the Old Testament.
And as you mentioned earlier, I don't feel that
same need that Calvin or somebody in that
theological stream does to harmonize everything
in the Old Testament perfectly there.
(42:57):
And I think what about some of these examples
that people bring up from the New Testament?
Paul saying, look, God is my witness when I say
this or things like that.
Or there's another one I came across when Jesus
(43:18):
at his trial, the high priest says,
I adjure you and asks the question.
Some people have argued, see
Jesus accepted being put under oath.
Yeah, I mean, my- so those two.
So the Paul example is hard for me because I feel
(43:44):
like people use it as a gotcha moment, but I
don't think it's a gotcha moment.
So when you look at Paul and what he's trying to
do, he's trying to you remember the road to
Damascus where Paul is approached by Christ and
arguably Christ, why are you persecuting me?
(44:07):
And there's a certain number of people who are
able to appeal to Christ as a witness.
I would say it's the people who who spent time
with him while he was on Earth, the disciples,
their disciples, people who interacted that when
they write the New Testament, they're saying,
(44:29):
hey, I was with Christ and this is what he said.
There's that category of people.
I would put Paul in that unique camp of people
who able to say, hey, Christ
approached me and said this.
And I think that that's what Paul is trying to do
with his writings and his audience there,
that he's trying to
(44:50):
unify the Jews and the Gentiles.
That's one of his huge ministries.
And I know that it's not the completely
satisfying answer, but out of all people who are
able to call to say that Christ was there for
this, I think Paul is one of those people.
And this is where I this is
(45:11):
another pet peeve of mine.
Other people who claim to say, hey, Christ told
me this or God told me this.
I'm all that's a that's a hobby horse of mine is
when people use language like that.
This is very tangential to oaths.
I think people should be very, very, very careful
to claim our like to claim that they're speaking
(45:35):
for God or something like
that in our day and age.
But Paul is one of the few people that can.
And then Jesus with Pilate there, I would just
try to simply say that I think there's we could
get into the Greek on what is it
that is that the right translation?
Adjure. Does that mean that that's sort of he had
(45:56):
been put under oath and at some point in time
like he raised his hand in front of Pilate or
some court and said that he
was going to like say the truth.
But I think that Jesus is
witness is much more silence than anything.
And I don't think that there
is that oath taking moment.
Yeah, anyway, that's my my general argument is if
(46:19):
it would have been an oath,
Jesus would have refused it.
And I think it's maybe that's
like the slight escape.
But I agree. It's not like an airtight.
It's not an airtight issue.
There's a lot of different angles to approach it.
I'm still most convinced by the position I'm
(46:40):
taking on it, despite the fact that there's a
couple of answers there or a couple of examples,
counter examples of like, what about this?
What about this? But I don't think they're
compelling enough to say just to
bring it back to the very beginning.
Why did Jesus spend this time
teaching about not swearing?
And then why does James say above all on it?
If it really I guess my answer is my question
(47:04):
back is like, so why did he
teach on it in the first place?
And why does James reiterate it? And why do the
early Christians lose their lives for it?
If it wasn't supposed to be interpreted the way
that we're interpreting it.
And I'm sure some people might pitch to you
the Rome is different than the USA
type arguments and stuff like that.
(47:25):
So there's a lot there's I've
encountered those arguments, too.
Yeah, no, I'm not going to buy the argument that
America is different from Rome
when it comes to making oaths. Both-
They make the same kinds of claims and the same
kinds of, you know, totalizing claims and paint
themselves as this huge force for
(47:45):
good in the world and all of that that just
Have a lot of parallels. But the passages from
Paul, where he talks about calling God his
witness or God is my witness.
I don't have them. I wish I had it in front of me
here, but as I thought about
them, it seems more to me like-
(48:08):
Like he's trying to impress on the people he's
talking to that he's saying this in all
seriousness or whatever than just
something that Jesus told him that.
Yeah, and this is where my wife and I were
actually talking about this, preparing for this.
There's another phrase that Jesus uses.
(48:30):
And I need to look at the language. Jesus
sometimes says verily, verily, I say to you.
And then in the Greek, that's
the Greek. That's amḗn, amen.
Yeah, amḗn, amḗn, [indistinct] which is.
And so the other like deescalating
moment for those two is to say, hey, this is
(48:52):
they're actually trying to draw attention to a
certain phrase they're going to say within a
larger moment of teaching
kind of like the above all.
And I don't I think Jesus, it's more compelling
than Paul where sometimes you get it like
you're in a conversation you tune out and you got
to bring people's attention
(49:13):
back to what you're saying.
I think that there's actually an argument there
with Jesus and like, why does he have to say
truly, truly? I say to you, like, what's that?
What's that? What's he doing there?
I actually think he's trying to contrast a belief
that they have and he knows that they
believe something. But he's saying
truly, truly. I say it's another way.
(49:35):
Something like that. Paul, Paul, I'll just admit
it's a little bit harder and I don't have like a
slam dunk. I actually haven't come across a slam
dunk like, oh, this is why this is how I fit
Paul's language here within the oath taking.
I will say it doesn't seem like he's- it doesn't
(49:56):
seem like he's inviting punishment or going
against what Jesus is
saying there, like swearing.
But I still I'd still avoid
language like that myself.
Still feels like pushing it.
Yeah, it's pushing the
limits for me. That's right.
It's interesting the Schleitheim confession,
(50:19):
which is before Calvin very early in the
Anabaptist movement that has an article against
taking oaths and they address
this objection a little bit.
"Others say if it is then wrong to use God for
truth, then the apostles
Peter and Paul also swore.
(50:39):
Answer. Peter and Paul only testify to that which
God promised Abraham, whom we long after have
received. But when one testifies, one testifies
concerning that which is
present, whether it be good or evil."
And it seems to me what they're trying to do is
to say while they're talking about the present,
(51:01):
they're not making any commitments for the future
about what they're going
to do or not going to do.
Right. And they're just they're not making a
commitment or anything along those lines.
Yeah, I'm compelled. I mean, I think it's a good argument.
And I find it interesting that it was published
(51:22):
and available before John Calvin wrote. It
obviously didn't convince him,
but this was an earlier confession.
But even Sattler, I pulled something up on him.
When the Anabaptists were being martyred, he
also, he then takes Jesus' teaching and he says,
(51:46):
I mean, I'll just read something. "At his trial,
Sattler defended the Anabaptists refusal to take
any oath by citing Matthew, Matthew five there
justifying their stance with Matthew five as the
law of Christ for Christians.
And this be a simple, truthful yes or no should
suffice for a Christian and invoking oaths was a
practice of old law that Christ had superseded.
(52:07):
Yeah, I like that that "Christ's teaching
supersedes." It's sort of like the proverbial
trump card that you get to pull out.
And it seems pretty simple, but yeah.
Yeah, very good. Thank you.
Anything else you'd like to close with?
(52:29):
I mean, not necessarily. I know that this is an
odd. It's an odd. I think people
are like, why is this such a big deal?
It's a weird thing to sort of have a hobby horse
about. And when I get asked to talk about it, I
feel like I'm there's not too many people who
like to talk about it passionately.
(52:50):
But I do think that at the end of the day, Jesus
and God weigh our words heavier than we do. I
think that's if you read the New
Testament, I always am struck by.
There's a few passages I read. I'm like, I kind
of want to zip my mouth. I want to have a zipper
on my mouth sometimes and be very careful that we
(53:14):
think we should be very careful to open that in a lot of different scenarios.
Especially with gossip, especially with teaching
truth or leading others away from truth. And I do
think that this is another category of when we
are using words just to be very careful and
diligent, slow to speak, and consider what we're committing to.
(53:37):
And I think that that in itself is a good
principle to draw away from oath taking is just
to say, hey, we're called to be a people who
weigh our words before we use
them. And I'm a very talkative person.
So I'm sort of pointing at myself here is
that words matter and the above all matter. And
(53:58):
so this isn't an inconsequential teaching. And it
really does change sort of your stance on this
will limit you into what types
of activities you're partaking in.
And I think in a really good way, not taking
oaths precludes you from serving in certain
positions. And that's where I think that Jesus
(54:18):
was more of a genius than
we might give him credit for.
And I don't know how much foreknowledge Jesus had
of the future and which systems would require
oaths to participate in it. But I do think that
he he did have foresight to warn his believers
that, hey, I'm going to give you this teaching
(54:40):
and stick to it and it will keep you on the straight and narrow.
And I do think that that oath taking is part of
that set of teachings, building your house on the
rock, not on the sand. So not to not to dismiss
it as inconsequential because it's in the
set of teachings that we sing about.
We teach our kids about, you know, building your
(55:00):
house on the rock and just not to write it off
too quickly, even though it might not touch.
your everyday life and also
not to be scared. I think that's like a huge a
huge part of what I'm trying to say. I don't want
to be like a hey, you should fear every time you
sign your name. Even this
is another example. Sorry.
(55:21):
We won't get into this, but I'm actually haven't
settled this yet. When you click the box after
like buying a software package, that's like 10 pages long
and you click that box. It says, I've read and understand this
Man, that one actually really gets me still. Are
you allowed to click that box? If you didn't read
(55:43):
the 10 pages, you should get back to me on that
one. But I don't think that we need to fear like God is
somebody on the gotcha moments on on some of the legal contracts.
I'm also trying not to take like a fear mongering
stance and really just trying to reiterate just
kind of having it in your toolkit of Jesus's
(56:05):
teachings and not not letting it slip over time
and even to preach on it every once in a while in
churches. I think is really good.
I don't know. Our church tries to recycle some of our important doctrines
every once in a while. So our children don't forget.
I think about that all the time like, hey, I've
gone through this stuff. How do I- I know my sons
(56:25):
probably won't and so how do we keep these things
alive and I don't know the all the answers to
that, but at least recycling studying history is a
great way to do it having podcasts talking about it.
So thanks for the invitation.
Yeah, thank you, Zach. And that was precisely
part of our thought process is that this is
something that, you know, seems can seem obscure
(56:48):
or whatever doesn't get talked about a lot and we wanted
to address it. So thank you for joining us for that.
Absolutely. And then if you're wanting to
read, I do think you'll be inspired by the early
Christian witness of martyrdom for this teaching
itself. Just to reiterate that some people did literally
(57:10):
lose their heads to adhere to this teaching.
And I think that that should also paint some sort
of meaning for how important it was, even though
that we don't face the same consequences.
Thank you to our audience for joining us for this
podcast. If you enjoyed this discussion on oaths
(57:30):
and some of that story, we did get a little more
of his story in a previous podcast Exiting the Air Force
which we will link below. You can follow us there.
The first time I took an oath was actually in
order to receive a high school diploma.
I'm a dual citizen with Ecuador, so I was wearing
an Ecuadorian flag sash,
and I was holding the flag,
and each one of my Ecuadorian classmates bent one
knee, took the flag in their hand, kissed it.
I was the final person to get back. I bent the
(00:21):
knee. There's a group of military men holding
intimidating rifles with bayonets,
watching all the citizens do that. I took the
oath. Whatever Jesus is trying to teach on oaths,
he lays out, I think, very clearly in the book of
Matthew, and then James says above all that we
should be paying attention to what this means.
And then also, Jesus isn't only prohibiting
(00:42):
something, he's then telling us how to live.
He says, "Let your yes be yes and your no no."
And so Jesus is really trying to teach us, "Hey,
your words matter. What you commit to matters."
And I hope that when you see the words "swear,"
your Christian instinct is to evaluate what's
being asked of you against Jesus' teachings
rather than just sort of
glance over it and ignore it.
(01:08):
Our guest today is Zach Johnson. He's serving at
Sattler College, and our topic is concerning
taking oaths and what Jesus said about not taking
oaths and how that applies to us.
And that's a personal issue for Zach as well.
(01:28):
So Zach, could you begin just a brief
introduction and why you care about this topic?
It might seem narrow to some of us.
Yeah, it's great to be here, Marlin. Thanks so
much for hosting me. The first time I took an
oath was actually in order to
receive a high school diploma.
So I was a missionary kid in Quito, Ecuador, and
(01:53):
if you travel around the world, there are a
series of things that people set up, oath taking
being one of them or some sort of where we took
an oath was in the they called the pledge to the
flag in order to even receive an
official diploma from high school.
So the first time I took an oath, I was wearing
I'm a dual citizen with Ecuador. So I was wearing
(02:15):
an Ecuadorian flag sash, and I was holding the
flag and each one of my Ecuadorian classmates
bent one knee, took the flag in their hand,
kissed it and said, "I swear" to an oath that had
been read aloud before the ceremony.
And I was as the final, for some reason, I was
the flag bearer. I could tell you more about
(02:36):
that. I was the final person to get back. I bent
the knee. There's a group of military men holding
intimidating rifles with bayonets,
watching all the citizens do that.
I took the oath, didn't really, I'm just gonna
say, didn't think anything of it. It was just a
ceremony that happened. Our high school did it.
(02:57):
We were a Christian, used to be a boarding
school, very evangelical in nature.
Six months later, I joined the US military, went
to the Air Force Academy, and then took another
oath of allegiance to the US Constitution. And
then in order to get a security clearance, then
had to renounce my citizenship to Ecuador.
(03:22):
And didn't really think anything of it, but I've
taken a series of oaths in my academic life and
then professional life that I'll just say I'd
never thought about and nobody really made a big
deal. And it wasn't until a little bit later
after I had encountered a church here in Boston
called "Followers of the Way" that they sort of
(03:42):
illuminated this idea that, hey, there's a group
of people who take the
teachings on those very seriously.
And so that's sort of my introductions to oaths
was my journey from Ecuador as a missionary kid
into the Air Force and then out of the Air Force.
And then when I did that, I became a
(04:03):
conscientious objector. And the last straw for me
was actually a teaching on oaths.
So I'm very, very passionate about why I chose
not to stay in the Air Force, even though it was
acceptable to me. It was always, I'll say my
heart's intent was to follow Christ. And it
(04:24):
wasn't until later on in my life that somebody
just opened the door and said, hey, there's this
teaching on oaths, violence, loving your enemies.
And so the oath, the oath was actually the last
straw for me that was sort of the issue on why I
decided I couldn't stay in the military and serve
out a government fashion. And so the oath is a,
it's a very important thing for me because it was
(04:46):
sort of a critical, a
critical juncture in my life.
And I thought about it a lot, prayed about it a
lot, read about it a lot. And it continues to
have implications for the guys that I talk to
and actually women in the military who sort of
bump into me or something
I've written or something.
And so I talked to a lot of people about it.
(05:07):
The oath was the final juncture that led you to
leave the military. I'm curious because you
mentioned you had to renounce the, your
citizenship to Ecuador. Looking back on that now,
does that count as breaking the
oath that in the high school ceremony?
Yeah, I mean, I beg God for mercy that I, I feel
(05:31):
that my decision to take one oath and then six
months later to take another oath. And when you
compare the two set of words, I would say they're
mutually exclusive with each other.
And so you can't, but this, this just goes to show
that I don't think one person can have complete
allegiance to two things simultaneously that are
(05:52):
in conflict with each other.
A great case being, can you be a Ecuadorian soldier
and a US soldier simultaneously? The answer to
that is no. The US military knows that. So it's
not an, it's a very obvious thing to me.
But yeah, I would say it was a breaking of the
original pledge to the
(06:13):
Ecuadorian flag that I took.
Yeah. So on this, on this topic of oaths, what I
know there's two passages in the New Testament
that address it directly. I'll just go ahead and
read them and then let you
make the comments you wish.
The first one from Matthew 5:33 to 37, "Jesus
(06:35):
says, again, you have heard that it was said to
those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but
shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all,
either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or
by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by
(06:55):
Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
And do not take an oath by your head, for you
cannot make one hair white or black. Let whatever
you say be simply yes or no.
Anything more than this comes from evil."
And then from the letter of James, very short.
(07:15):
"But above all my brothers, do not swear, either
by heaven or by earth, or by any other oath, but
let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that
you may not fall under condemnation."
Yeah, so these are the two primary passages when
you when you look at, hey, let's talk about why
(07:36):
not to swear oaths. There's a few other passages
that are worth looking at, but
we won't have the time to do that.
And then really interesting to track the history
of oaths through the Old Testament and into the
New Testament to kind of
do case studies on on oaths.
And I would I would make there's a lot of great
examples of oaths gone wrong in the Bible, too.
(08:00):
And so I actually think it's really interesting.
But just to interlock these two, these two
teachings, a lot of people, when they when they
look at the book of James, you'll find striking
connections to the Sermon on the Mount.
And a lot of people say that James is almost, you
could say, a commentary on the Sermon on the
Mount, making the argument that
(08:21):
James is the half brother of Jesus.
And then he would have heard Jesus give the
sermon. However, many number of times, I'm not
going to try to make that argument.
And then I always like to say in any book, when
you get to these "above all" moments, we should be
saying, all right, somehow, James is saying that
this is one of the one of the most important
(08:43):
things I'm going to say in my
short little my short little book here.
James has five chapters and he
says, above all, don't swear.
And so whatever Jesus is trying to teach on
oaths, he lays out, I think, very clearly in the
book of Matthew. And then when you look at how
important it is, I would say that because it's
(09:04):
there so so clearly in Matthew that and then
James says, above all, that we should be paying
attention to what this means.
There are three general camps of interpreting the
oath passage here. One is the where I fall into.
It's just that we should take Jesus's words very
literally and take them very seriously.
(09:27):
And whenever we're in any circumstance that even
smells like an oath, our instincts should go up
and we should say, hey, Jesus taught something about this
I should be paying attention to what he was
prohibiting there. And then also, Jesus isn't
only prohibiting something. He's then telling us
how to live. He says, let
(09:47):
your yes be yes and your no no.
And so Jesus is really trying to teach us, hey,
your words matter, what you commit to matters.
And so that's my camp, the
literal prohibition on oaths.
And I can get into a little bit of, I think we'll
get into a hey, what's an oath and what isn't an
oath. And then there's this other camp.
And Marlin, you actually pointed me to this. I
(10:08):
hadn't read it through it a little bit. But John
Calvin wrote a lot on oath taking.
And there's a there's a sermon by John MacArthur
that I bumped into about oaths as
well that I think represents this well.
Is that some oaths are OK and some oaths are not OK. And
it's kind of the one of the lines that I remind
(10:30):
myself is do not do not swear
at all means swear sometimes.
So that's sort of the second camp.
I'm poking fun of it a little bit.
And I think you really have to do some
justification there. But that camp, they're still
looking at the teaching and
trying to apply it in everyday life.
(10:51):
And they're saying that, hey, really, Jesus was
talking about some sort of Jewish abuse of oaths
that was happening, but it's not completely
relevant to us, i.e., government oaths, the oaths
in courtrooms, things of that nature.
And then the third camp is like it doesn't matter
completely. It doesn't matter for our context,
(11:12):
sort of for the another point in time.
And I did want to say that between those first I
think those first two interpretations are
probably where the audience falls
between and is most familiar with.
I think they care and I think they want to know.
And I really think that just like
hermeneutically, what's going to define where you
(11:32):
land on this is some sort of idea of
how you view the Old
Testament and how we interact with it.
People in my camp view the Sermon on the Mount as
a like a perfection of the Old Testament.
And the Old Testament was almost like a
babysitter or I like to say a pedagogos in Greek,
(11:53):
that it was an incomplete set of laws.
And then Jesus came and gave us an illuminated, a
new reality that we needed that the Messiah would bring.
And the other set sort of doesn't view the Sermon
on the Mount that way and sort of likes to treat
the new and Old Testaments holistically that they
can't be incompatible with each
other, which I don't think they are.
But this would be a great example of one where
(12:15):
it's like, well, hey, there are people taking
oaths in the Old Testament, so it can't mean that
Jesus is prohibiting oaths.
So it's just a different treatment of how you
view the Old Testament, and I am a huge fan of
what I laid out as Sermon on the Mount as
Constitution for being a Christian.
And so that's – I just wanted to frame. That's
(12:36):
kind of how I think about the
Sermon on the Mount in general.
Yeah, and we're going to have to dive into that a
little bit more. I'm curious on the third camp,
saying it doesn't matter – I mean, do you bump
into a lot of people saying that explicitly, or
is it more like why bother thinking about it, or
(12:59):
is there an explicit argument that –
I would – I'm not trying to – I put –
there's a certain set of passages in the New
Testament that make no
sense, like in our context.
And a lot of people, if it doesn't make direct
application, they might not
take the time to think about it.
I would – like, there's a category of like
(13:20):
don't eat food, strangled food.
Like, a lot of people that I've run into are not
thinking about that when they run into this
teaching in the New Testament.
They're like, this sounds like nothing I know of
doesn't really apply to me. So I think it's more
of that camp that since it seems so foreign, that
it's one of those like non-apply teachings that
(13:40):
must have been only to a specific audience.
So I think it's more of that type than – rather
than like blatantly ignoring
things. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, even from my own
standpoint, I think a lot of others, like the
closest that I've ever actually come to
encountering the question, am I going to swear an
(14:00):
oath or not, is like a driver's license form that
has the word swear on it.
I've never been in the situations that you
described at the opening of the episode, and
there's probably a lot of other people who just
never had anything that
forced them to think much about it.
Yeah, I mean, the examples that I'll give – so
(14:22):
obviously, there's the
political and military examples.
And this is where I give a talk on voting as it
relates to oath taking as well, where if you're a
voter, you will endorse that Christian will go
– the president, a lot of the US presidents are
(14:43):
at least pay homage to Christianity to some in
some way, shape or form.
They'll go take an oath on a Bible every time you
vote. So if you vote, you're actually, in my
mind, you're actually condoning the act of taking
an oath on a Christian Bible.
We can talk more about that.
So politically in the voting sphere, I think
people should think about it more. And then I was
(15:05):
just called into jury duty
earlier this week, ironically.
And I give, for those of you who interact with
that sort of interaction, you'll interact with
oaths in the courthouse, in
the legal system, on jury duties.
And then usually, there's some way, shape or
swear verbiage in a lot of legal contracts that
(15:28):
you'll see for driver's license,
for loans, for – I have to do it.
I have to actually circumvent oath taking to get
a little parking pass in my neighborhood that
says I live where I say I live.
And so it's kind of – it's written in there,
and that's where I do want to make a distinction
that there is definitely a difference between
(15:51):
being able to say that something's true and an
oath, and I think it's
helpful to make that distinction.
But then at the same time, yeah, we'll make that
distinction. But I think we'll encounter it in
one way, shape or form, and I hope that when you
see the word swear, or that your Christian
(16:12):
instinct is to evaluate what's being asked of you
against Jesus's teachings, rather than just sort
of glance over it and ignore it.
So how do you circumvent it? Like is it a paper
form and you can literally cross out a word and
write in something else, or out
of curiosity on the parking pass?
Yeah, so which – so the parking pass, I'm sure
(16:34):
they're annoyed by us, but we will – you can
apply online. We'll print it out, cross out the
word, initial it, say something else, and then
sign it and mail it in, and you get that option.
So that's a sort of convention. Even on legal
documents, that's what I do. But then, so even
religiously now, you see that oath-taking is no
(17:00):
longer required in the legal system, and they're
starting to take out the
oath-like language that appeals to God.
I don't know if you've heard some of the
presidents still at the end of an oath, or a lot
of the military oaths,
you say, "So help me, God."
And then at the beginning, there's a – you can
(17:20):
either swear or affirm, and you can kind of
choose which word you're comfortable with.
And in those circumstances, I just think that,
hey, it's already being half-circumvented for
you. Don't- ignore the exact fraction.
Then the Christians' duty is to evaluate the
words themselves, and then that kicks into the
(17:42):
second part of Jesus' teaching, "Let your yes be
yes and your no be no," and then it's up to you
to evaluate, "Hey, what am I agreeing to?"
And if there's some sort of thing that you
shouldn't agree to, you
shouldn't say those words.
And that's sort of like my plea for a lot of
(18:02):
people is the oaths that people say are, I would
say, impossible to fulfill as dutiful Christians.
And I just think people should
be thinking a lot more about it.
I hear you bringing it back from just a point
about language, or is it an oath to, well, don't
(18:24):
say things if you can't actually commit to them,
the things we kind of glibly sign.
Just for me, for example, in the military, with
the reason that I decided not to, I was a second
lieutenant, and every time you go up a rank, you
take another oath of office, hence
(18:45):
the officer line in the military.
And there's a line in there, "I will protect the
Constitution of the U.S. against
all enemies, foreign and domestic."
And then there's this line, there's this thing
that you're agreeing to, that I take this
obligation freely without
any purpose of mental evasion.
(19:06):
Basically, whatever enemy comes, I'm going to
defend it no matter what, and there's nothing
stopping me from fulfilling that duty.
When I actually talk to a lot of Christians about
why it's acceptable, they actually repeat back to
me, they're like, actually, I should be in here
because I'm a Christian, and if there's ever
(19:28):
anything that goes awry, people like me should be
a stop, like a stop gap between unchristian
behavior and the government.
But then I like to say to them, then you
shouldn't be saying yes to those words, because
realistically, you have every intention to break
that oath, given that it goes against your
allegiance to Christ, which is not what the
(19:49):
country is asking of you.
And so I like to sort of play a little bit of
devil's advocate with people there on why we
shouldn't be committing to do something in all
circumstances when realistically we're like, no,
I'm actually trying to be the
moral conscience of the country, etc.
So there's certain things around oaths, and
(20:12):
hopefully we can get into defining them, but then
you have to at least look at what you're saying
yes and no to, and then that's where I think it
cannot be an oath, but you shouldn't agree to a
set of words that you disagree with and might
compromise some behavior on
another conviction that you have.
(20:32):
Well said, and let's go from there into that
question. Yeah, how do you define an oath?
Yeah, so there's a couple of lexicons, but I like
to I like to define an oath generally with three
components that you typically see in oath
language. And like I said, there are there are-
oaths come in various shapes and sizes.
(20:54):
So this stuff, these components are more
generalities. But the three components are one,
some sort of attestation of truth.
So you're saying something. The
second one is that you invoke the name of a
higher power, energy,
(21:15):
object, person, relationship, etc.
So you say something and then you're saying and
then you invoke it and you're saying, hey, I'm
saying this on behalf or under the cover of this
thing. So you read it there.
Jesus is actually saying, don't take any of
(21:35):
oaths- don't take him by heaven, by Jerusalem, by
this, by that, by the earth. But he's he's
listing the things you shouldn't take oaths by.
So you're invoking something. And then the third,
which is really interesting, is actually an
invoke is an invitation to punishment by the by
the thing you invoke, given that you don't
fulfill the set of words that you attest to.
(21:57):
So those I think those are the interlocking
components that generally make up oath language,
one, some sort of attestation of truth or
commitment that you're going to do something.
It could be a promise, could be a set of words. Two,
bringing in another name that sort of
gives you top cover the name of God.
(22:17):
Some people have seen it in pop
culture. You like swear by your mother, like I by
my mother's name or by my dead grandfather.
I promise you this is true. And then the third is
an invitation of punishment of what happens to
you if you don't fulfill the oath.
So those I think I think that's a it's a helpful
(22:38):
way to think about what is an oath and what isn't
an oath. There's some really classic pushbacks on
Hey, like I've gotten married and
taken wedding vows. And people-
And then I get that they're similar in nature,
like as a wedding vow and oath. And I would just
argue by nature of the definition that I just
(22:59):
gave with those three interlocking parts
that there's very different things
between an oath and then making a commitment to
somebody that you're going
to try your best to fulfill.
And you're allowed to do that. It's just the
invoking that God is a higher power and trying to
set up these two standards of truth
that I think the world operates on.
(23:20):
There's like normal standard of truth. And then
there's oath power truth, which gets you in
trouble if you lie under that, then- that there's
meaningful differences between the two.
And you see that in actually the
news every day where let's say that you're a
congressional witness. Do you know, are you
(23:40):
familiar what as a witness, what happens to you?
You get put under oath.
And if you lie under oath, it's more significant
than if you lie while you're not under oath. And
so it's a very interesting system that the world
has set up to kind of, I would say,
creates these two platforms of truth.
One is sort of normal life where you're almost
(24:01):
expected not to have to tell the truth. And then
there's this like, well, unless you're under
oath, then you have to tell the truth.
And if you don't, then you can get actually
convicted of different types of, of like perjury
and things like that, or giving false testimony
under oath, which I think
Jesus is trying to warn against.
But yeah, those are that's
(24:22):
my general definition there.
Yeah. Can we poke on some
examples a little bit? Yeah, absolutely.
The one that feels most classic to me of getting
all your components together is something like
Jezebel in the Old Testament. Elijah has killed
the prophets on Mount Carmel and Queen Jezebel's
(24:42):
like, you know, may the gods do so to do this to
me and more also if I don't, if
I don't kill you by the morning.
Yeah, that clearly brings it in. Then you jump to
the other extreme. So I had to fill out paperwork
to get a sales tax exemption
for Anabaptist Perspectives.
(25:03):
And on the form it says something like, I declare
under penalty of perjury. So we go to the
dictionary and look up perjury.
It would say it's lying under oath.
But there was nothing. The only thing my
signature did was
acknowledge that I'd get punished.
Yeah, this is where this is still where I'm
(25:25):
lenient. I'm more lenient on contract language
because- Were you filling it out with a pen?
Or do you remember if it was online
or not? That actually was on paper.
So this is where and people still look at me
sideways when I do this. But when I see those
(25:46):
statements, you're allowed to as a signer cross
things out and make notes
and they still accept it.
So whenever I still look for oath type language
and I'll cross it out and I just say, I don't
take oaths, but I'm telling you this is true.
And I've never had a problem with that kind of
(26:06):
behavior where I know it's kind of playing. It
kind of seems like a funny game to play.
But I think it is important to just push back and
say I don't take oaths, but I
can still participate in society.
I have a really funny example with my
conscientious objector trial. There was a
(26:27):
military lawyer called a Jag who
brought my witnesses to the stand.
And he put a bunch of people under oath to tell
the truth in my own trial, like my friends, my
fellow military officers.
But when it came to me and another brother in the
church who was giving testimony,
he knew we wouldn't take oaths.
So he came up with something different. He's
(26:47):
like, are you going to tell me
the truth? And we just said yes.
And I view that as not an oath, just a
confirmation of I'm truthful.
And so I do think that you're still allowed to
participate in the processes around you. However,
it's still worth it to clarify with people that
you don't take oath and you're not invoking God.
(27:11):
And even like in that language, you're allowed to
say like, I'm not taking an oath here. I'm just
telling you this is true. That's fine.
Like that's not unacceptable
to me. Does that make sense?
Yeah, even in that, I'm sure you do that in some
of those wordings that say I swear generically and
even under something like penalty of perjury, you
(27:32):
would want to put a
handwritten note on if you could.
Yeah, and you're allowed to do that. I mean,
there's nothing stopping you from doing that. And
this is where I just I still
think that God will be merciful.
Like if you miss a word in a contract and you
didn't like, I don't think you can be tricked
into taking a oath that you didn't know.
(27:53):
And that's where I think some of those things
that I'm much more lenient on like, hey, this is
not that big of a deal. However, if you're being
marched in front of a general and you're throwing
up your right hand and there's flags out like you
should be thinking, this is definitely an oath.
This is like has oath environment written all
(28:15):
over it. So there's categorical differences
between some of the different types of oaths
you'll take or will be asked to take.
Yeah, and I just point out historically, like at
least in English and American law, there's
provisions there because from what I could tell,
the Quakers took this very
seriously and wouldn't take oaths.
(28:36):
And eventually people decided to accommodate it.
Yeah, and I think I actually think the US is a
very with people like with our convictions, the
Quakers did a ton of work to at least make it
normal to push back against even the use of
violence, the use of violence and oath taking to
(28:57):
try to create some separation of
church and state. The Quakers did a lot of
groundwork where people are kind of familiar with
refusing to take oaths and they'll kind of look
at you and be like, oh, that
guy must be a Quaker or something.
But it's still familiar, whereas other places
it's less familiar. So I do think the Quakers did
some work with similar convictions before us.
(29:20):
Back to the wedding example for
just a little bit and the wedding vows.
If there's language in there like, do you do this
before God and these witnesses or something like
that, does that in your mind bring up more of
(29:43):
those elements of an oath?
I mean, it makes it seem more like an oath. But
to me, when you're making a commitment of
marriage, honestly, what for me separates it is
that, how do I say this?
(30:05):
There's not a meaningful difference in the way
that you behave afterwards based on what you say.
Like this is where I think marriage is a unique
category in its own because I think I personally
think it's a sacrament where
there is a one-flesh union occurring.
(30:28):
I think the Bible says that there's something
really happening at a marriage and I think it's
almost a category in its own that even the New
Testament says, Hey, marvel not a man and a
woman shall become one flesh.
And this is how God designed it. And there are
consequences there, but I
don't think that that is the same.
(30:51):
But actually, it's really interesting because
marriage has, I think, spiritual
and legal ramifications, right?
To people. And I think there are spiritual
realities. However, I don't think that you're
really inviting punishment into the marriage.
(31:15):
And I think that you could make the same set of
vows without the language of before God and these
witnesses. I just think they're similar. They're
almost the same, but you're not swearing.
You're not using the language that Jesus is
warning against. So I know I'm going to kind of
take the scapegoat, the cop-out answer, and
(31:37):
saying, "Hey, there are similarities, but I do
think they're different.
And this is the ultimate cop-out. Jesus taught
not to swear, but he didn't teach not to get
married. So at the end of the day, we know that
there's meaningful differences between the two.
And some of it's a little mysterious. I can't
(31:59):
nail all of it on the head, but
I think it's fair to say that.
And then on the other end of things, I like to
remind people that this is relevant to my story,
that the oath seems inconsequential to people.
But when I wanted to leave the military, it was
(32:20):
very, very, very clear that the
government had a claim on my life.
And if I left, I owed this amount of money or
federal prison because I had taken that oath. And
so it seems inconsequential, but legally, it has
pretty drastic consequences down the line that
some people aren't familiar with.
(32:43):
I wasn't familiar with it. So I think vows – I
think there's some sort of
difference between vows and oaths.
I am not super prepared to flesh out all the
meaningful differences, but I'd like – I'd at
least like to say that they're different.
Yeah, no, that's helpful. Again, there you're
(33:04):
stepping back from the language a little bit and
saying what's going on here,
what's the reality of getting married?
Slightly off from our main thread, but I did an
interview with a New Testament scholar, Matthew
Bates, and he talks about
baptism as an oath of allegiance.
(33:27):
And I asked him a little bit about that in the
interview. But one of the things I was thinking
is, whoa, yes, if you're getting baptized as an
adult, you know what you're doing.
While this is giving total allegiance, it doesn't
matter what you say or what you don't say, it has
(33:47):
this consequence of allegiance like these
countries are asking for.
We mentioned a couple times John Calvin or John
MacArthur and what you said is that second
position on oaths as – well, Jesus is saying
there's some oaths you shouldn't take.
(34:10):
I'd like to look at that a little bit. I'm
quoting a few things from John Calvin because
he's such a classic, at least for a lot of
thinkers today as well. He's a classic.
Please quote him. I think you should, yeah.
And so just a few pieces. This is actually from
(34:34):
his commentary on the Ten Commandments, I
believe, or the Sermon on the Mount.
He takes the Sermon on the Mount as kind of
explicating the Ten Commandments. He defines an
oath as calling God to
witness that what we say is true.
So I'm noticing there right away that it doesn't
have quite all the three
(34:54):
components that you mentioned.
So he argues that it's basically invoking God to
confirm what we're saying. We should only swear
by God, not by an idol or a king.
But then he goes and makes commentary about
(35:15):
Anabaptists who rejected
oaths from the beginning.
He says they inconsiderately make a stumbling
stone of Christ, setting him
in opposition to the Father.
And he's talking about the way we read the Sermon
on the Mount. He admits that it's kind of
(35:35):
difficult to understand what Jesus is saying.
But then he keeps going there, explicates that
argument from the Old Testament.
But then he also brings in the claim and says,
well, Paul was a disciple of Jesus and he swore
and gives some examples there.
(35:59):
So I think you indicated a little bit about how
you'd respond to that position, but I'd invite
you to say more and you can reference MacArthur's
sermon or Calvin or whatever.
Yeah, so I actually did another podcast
specifically on the early – it was kind of like
a 500th year remembrance of
(36:20):
some of the Anabaptist ideas.
And I researched a little
bit on views of oath taking.
And what I found was you're right there, the
early Anabaptist leaders blatantly rejected oath
taking across the – I mean, Michael Sattler,
Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel,
(36:41):
George Blaurock, Menno Simons.
So you are right in saying that there is already
the Reformation with Calvin and then the radical
Reformation with the Anabaptists there.
And I actually think it's super illuminating to
say, hey, there is a debate there
(37:03):
between the Anabaptists and Calvin.
Like, what should our
instinct be to solve this debate?
And this is where my position is, is that you
should even – like, there's history before the
Reformation and we should be tracing it, trying
to trace it to what was happening before them.
And this is where I think the early Christian
witness plays a huge role in why I've leaned
(37:27):
towards the prohibition of oaths over the
acceptance of oaths that I think the reformed
world has sort of begun to teach.
And I like to – I sort of like to just say that
there's – this is a little bit – comes back
to how I treat this influences how I treat a
(37:48):
bunch of other things in the New Testament.
So oaths in my mind, it's tied to other things
and there's a sermon on the Mount, like divorce
and remarriage, the use of violence, ad infinitum
on some of the sermon on the Mount issues.
But I don't know if you've
heard me talk about this before.
(38:09):
I picked this up from some of my discipleship
that in general there are three
categories of churches or traditions.
There are tradition zero churches, which
basically acknowledge that the Scripture is the
ultimate authority, but it's not the only
authority that we should be able to appeal to
(38:30):
church history, actually,
as an additional layer of authority, interpretive
authority on the Scriptures.
And so I think that it's most compelling –
that's the most compelling
category to be in at college.
And then there's tradition one – there's
tradition one churches, which basically say, hey,
(38:54):
there's a Scripture as an authority,
but there's also the authority of man that we can
layer onto this, where you can add
additional layers of requirements.
I like to bring – you can think of a lot of
examples I like to bring up because the Catholic
Church is so dominant, like vows of celibacy for
(39:16):
priests, all sorts of ideas where they've
appealed to this sort of man-made authority.
And then there's tradition zero – sorry, I got
my – tradition one,
tradition two is when you add it.
Tradition zero is when you kind of
say, hey, I'm alone with Scriptures.
I get to be the interpretive power of what this
(39:38):
says based on where I am.
And I would say that John Calvin and the
reformers' treatment of that leans more towards
being alone with Scripture than appealing to the
early Christian witness.
And that's just where I would really, really
recommend just people briefly taking a swath of
(40:01):
what was happening in the
first 300 years of Christianity.
And there's a book I recommend all the time
called Caesar and the Lamb that where Christians
are dying left and right on
the refusal to take oaths.
And people are just telling them,
like, it's not that big of a deal.
Just like say this thing and
(40:21):
serve in the Roman government.
And if not, you'll die.
And they're like, I'd rather die.
And so I think that with Calvin and the
Anabaptists, I think the Anabaptists are much
closer to that tradition
one, tradition one authority.
John Calvin says that they're tradition two.
He's saying that they're
putting the stumbling block.
You get what's happening there.
(40:43):
And but honestly, I think that it's a more
historically faithful interpretation.
And I would I would just push people to say that
the acceptance of oath is a novel
interpretation of Jesus's teaching.
And it's changed over time.
That would be my my compelling argument to say,
hey, the best way to figure this out is with
(41:04):
church history and to look
at how it's changed over time.
And the closer it is to
Christ, the more we should trust it.
So I tell the story of the first
documented conscientious objector.
There's a story of Maximilian where he's just
I've read it in a couple of podcasts before.
It's just he's the Roman guy is just pleading
(41:27):
with him like, please, just take that.
I don't want to hurt you.
Take the take this duty.
Take this seal.
He doesn't even have to.
He kind of says he doesn't have to serve.
And Maximilian says, no, I'm a Christian.
I won't do that.
Ends up getting his head cut
off and his dad is watching.
And I just think that that's much more the way
that early Christians interacted
with Jesus' set of teachings.
(41:48):
And yeah, all that being
said, lots of things to look up.
But the early Anabaptists, I would say, were
consistent with really being taking that like
that, that first stance on
the not allowing oath taking.
And that's why they were so in addition to
baptism, like you brought up Matthew Bates,
(42:10):
baptism and citizenship were so tied together at
that point in time that to try to untie them was
like very dangerous to people holding power.
So the early Anabapts were challenging a
lot of the status quos on how the church would use
its relationship with the
state to maintain influence.
And oaths were a part of that, I would argue.
(42:35):
I'm on the same page, especially when it comes to
the relationship of the sermon of
the Mount and the Old Testament.
And as you mentioned earlier, I don't feel that
same need that Calvin or somebody in that
theological stream does to harmonize everything
in the Old Testament perfectly there.
(42:57):
And I think what about some of these examples
that people bring up from the New Testament?
Paul saying, look, God is my witness when I say
this or things like that.
Or there's another one I came across when Jesus
(43:18):
at his trial, the high priest says,
I adjure you and asks the question.
Some people have argued, see
Jesus accepted being put under oath.
Yeah, I mean, my- so those two.
So the Paul example is hard for me because I feel
(43:44):
like people use it as a gotcha moment, but I
don't think it's a gotcha moment.
So when you look at Paul and what he's trying to
do, he's trying to you remember the road to
Damascus where Paul is approached by Christ and
arguably Christ, why are you persecuting me?
(44:07):
And there's a certain number of people who are
able to appeal to Christ as a witness.
I would say it's the people who who spent time
with him while he was on Earth, the disciples,
their disciples, people who interacted that when
they write the New Testament, they're saying,
(44:29):
hey, I was with Christ and this is what he said.
There's that category of people.
I would put Paul in that unique camp of people
who able to say, hey, Christ
approached me and said this.
And I think that that's what Paul is trying to do
with his writings and his audience there,
that he's trying to
(44:50):
unify the Jews and the Gentiles.
That's one of his huge ministries.
And I know that it's not the completely
satisfying answer, but out of all people who are
able to call to say that Christ was there for
this, I think Paul is one of those people.
And this is where I this is
(45:11):
another pet peeve of mine.
Other people who claim to say, hey, Christ told
me this or God told me this.
I'm all that's a that's a hobby horse of mine is
when people use language like that.
This is very tangential to oaths.
I think people should be very, very, very careful
to claim our like to claim that they're speaking
(45:35):
for God or something like
that in our day and age.
But Paul is one of the few people that can.
And then Jesus with Pilate there, I would just
try to simply say that I think there's we could
get into the Greek on what is it
that is that the right translation?
Adjure. Does that mean that that's sort of he had
(45:56):
been put under oath and at some point in time
like he raised his hand in front of Pilate or
some court and said that he
was going to like say the truth.
But I think that Jesus is
witness is much more silence than anything.
And I don't think that there
is that oath taking moment.
Yeah, anyway, that's my my general argument is if
(46:19):
it would have been an oath,
Jesus would have refused it.
And I think it's maybe that's
like the slight escape.
But I agree. It's not like an airtight.
It's not an airtight issue.
There's a lot of different angles to approach it.
I'm still most convinced by the position I'm
(46:40):
taking on it, despite the fact that there's a
couple of answers there or a couple of examples,
counter examples of like, what about this?
What about this? But I don't think they're
compelling enough to say just to
bring it back to the very beginning.
Why did Jesus spend this time
teaching about not swearing?
And then why does James say above all on it?
If it really I guess my answer is my question
(47:04):
back is like, so why did he
teach on it in the first place?
And why does James reiterate it? And why do the
early Christians lose their lives for it?
If it wasn't supposed to be interpreted the way
that we're interpreting it.
And I'm sure some people might pitch to you
the Rome is different than the USA
type arguments and stuff like that.
(47:25):
So there's a lot there's I've
encountered those arguments, too.
Yeah, no, I'm not going to buy the argument that
America is different from Rome
when it comes to making oaths. Both-
They make the same kinds of claims and the same
kinds of, you know, totalizing claims and paint
themselves as this huge force for
(47:45):
good in the world and all of that that just
Have a lot of parallels. But the passages from
Paul, where he talks about calling God his
witness or God is my witness.
I don't have them. I wish I had it in front of me
here, but as I thought about
them, it seems more to me like-
(48:08):
Like he's trying to impress on the people he's
talking to that he's saying this in all
seriousness or whatever than just
something that Jesus told him that.
Yeah, and this is where my wife and I were
actually talking about this, preparing for this.
There's another phrase that Jesus uses.
(48:30):
And I need to look at the language. Jesus
sometimes says verily, verily, I say to you.
And then in the Greek, that's
the Greek. That's amḗn, amen.
Yeah, amḗn, amḗn, [indistinct] which is.
And so the other like deescalating
moment for those two is to say, hey, this is
(48:52):
they're actually trying to draw attention to a
certain phrase they're going to say within a
larger moment of teaching
kind of like the above all.
And I don't I think Jesus, it's more compelling
than Paul where sometimes you get it like
you're in a conversation you tune out and you got
to bring people's attention
(49:13):
back to what you're saying.
I think that there's actually an argument there
with Jesus and like, why does he have to say
truly, truly? I say to you, like, what's that?
What's that? What's he doing there?
I actually think he's trying to contrast a belief
that they have and he knows that they
believe something. But he's saying
truly, truly. I say it's another way.
(49:35):
Something like that. Paul, Paul, I'll just admit
it's a little bit harder and I don't have like a
slam dunk. I actually haven't come across a slam
dunk like, oh, this is why this is how I fit
Paul's language here within the oath taking.
I will say it doesn't seem like he's- it doesn't
(49:56):
seem like he's inviting punishment or going
against what Jesus is
saying there, like swearing.
But I still I'd still avoid
language like that myself.
Still feels like pushing it.
Yeah, it's pushing the
limits for me. That's right.
It's interesting the Schleitheim confession,
(50:19):
which is before Calvin very early in the
Anabaptist movement that has an article against
taking oaths and they address
this objection a little bit.
"Others say if it is then wrong to use God for
truth, then the apostles
Peter and Paul also swore.
(50:39):
Answer. Peter and Paul only testify to that which
God promised Abraham, whom we long after have
received. But when one testifies, one testifies
concerning that which is
present, whether it be good or evil."
And it seems to me what they're trying to do is
to say while they're talking about the present,
(51:01):
they're not making any commitments for the future
about what they're going
to do or not going to do.
Right. And they're just they're not making a
commitment or anything along those lines.
Yeah, I'm compelled. I mean, I think it's a good argument.
And I find it interesting that it was published
(51:22):
and available before John Calvin wrote. It
obviously didn't convince him,
but this was an earlier confession.
But even Sattler, I pulled something up on him.
When the Anabaptists were being martyred, he
also, he then takes Jesus' teaching and he says,
(51:46):
I mean, I'll just read something. "At his trial,
Sattler defended the Anabaptists refusal to take
any oath by citing Matthew, Matthew five there
justifying their stance with Matthew five as the
law of Christ for Christians.
And this be a simple, truthful yes or no should
suffice for a Christian and invoking oaths was a
practice of old law that Christ had superseded.
(52:07):
Yeah, I like that that "Christ's teaching
supersedes." It's sort of like the proverbial
trump card that you get to pull out.
And it seems pretty simple, but yeah.
Yeah, very good. Thank you.
Anything else you'd like to close with?
(52:29):
I mean, not necessarily. I know that this is an
odd. It's an odd. I think people
are like, why is this such a big deal?
It's a weird thing to sort of have a hobby horse
about. And when I get asked to talk about it, I
feel like I'm there's not too many people who
like to talk about it passionately.
(52:50):
But I do think that at the end of the day, Jesus
and God weigh our words heavier than we do. I
think that's if you read the New
Testament, I always am struck by.
There's a few passages I read. I'm like, I kind
of want to zip my mouth. I want to have a zipper
on my mouth sometimes and be very careful that we
(53:14):
think we should be very careful to open that in a lot of different scenarios.
Especially with gossip, especially with teaching
truth or leading others away from truth. And I do
think that this is another category of when we
are using words just to be very careful and
diligent, slow to speak, and consider what we're committing to.
(53:37):
And I think that that in itself is a good
principle to draw away from oath taking is just
to say, hey, we're called to be a people who
weigh our words before we use
them. And I'm a very talkative person.
So I'm sort of pointing at myself here is
that words matter and the above all matter. And
(53:58):
so this isn't an inconsequential teaching. And it
really does change sort of your stance on this
will limit you into what types
of activities you're partaking in.
And I think in a really good way, not taking
oaths precludes you from serving in certain
positions. And that's where I think that Jesus
(54:18):
was more of a genius than
we might give him credit for.
And I don't know how much foreknowledge Jesus had
of the future and which systems would require
oaths to participate in it. But I do think that
he he did have foresight to warn his believers
that, hey, I'm going to give you this teaching
(54:40):
and stick to it and it will keep you on the straight and narrow.
And I do think that that oath taking is part of
that set of teachings, building your house on the
rock, not on the sand. So not to not to dismiss
it as inconsequential because it's in the
set of teachings that we sing about.
We teach our kids about, you know, building your
(55:00):
house on the rock and just not to write it off
too quickly, even though it might not touch.
your everyday life and also
not to be scared. I think that's like a huge a
huge part of what I'm trying to say. I don't want
to be like a hey, you should fear every time you
sign your name. Even this
is another example. Sorry.
(55:21):
We won't get into this, but I'm actually haven't
settled this yet. When you click the box after
like buying a software package, that's like 10 pages long
and you click that box. It says, I've read and understand this
Man, that one actually really gets me still. Are
you allowed to click that box? If you didn't read
(55:43):
the 10 pages, you should get back to me on that
one. But I don't think that we need to fear like God is
somebody on the gotcha moments on on some of the legal contracts.
I'm also trying not to take like a fear mongering
stance and really just trying to reiterate just
kind of having it in your toolkit of Jesus's
(56:05):
teachings and not not letting it slip over time
and even to preach on it every once in a while in
churches. I think is really good.
I don't know. Our church tries to recycle some of our important doctrines
every once in a while. So our children don't forget.
I think about that all the time like, hey, I've
gone through this stuff. How do I- I know my sons
(56:25):
probably won't and so how do we keep these things
alive and I don't know the all the answers to
that, but at least recycling studying history is a
great way to do it having podcasts talking about it.
So thanks for the invitation.
Yeah, thank you, Zach. And that was precisely
part of our thought process is that this is
something that, you know, seems can seem obscure
(56:48):
or whatever doesn't get talked about a lot and we wanted
to address it. So thank you for joining us for that.
Absolutely. And then if you're wanting to
read, I do think you'll be inspired by the early
Christian witness of martyrdom for this teaching
itself. Just to reiterate that some people did literally
(57:10):
lose their heads to adhere to this teaching.
And I think that that should also paint some sort
of meaning for how important it was, even though
that we don't face the same consequences.
Thank you to our audience for joining us for this
podcast. If you enjoyed this discussion on oaths
(57:30):
and some of that story, we did get a little more
of his story in a previous podcast Exiting the Air Force
which we will link below. You can follow us there.
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