The Whitewashing of Tombs
By Dave Doveton, Anglican Mainstream.
At the height of the Covid pandemic, as an assisting priest in an urban parish, I was responsible for leading several funerals of congregants who had died of the Covid virus. There were very strict Department of Health regulations in place regarding how the coffin was to be interred – undertakers and their assistants appeared in protective clothing like figures out of an apocalypse, spraying clouds of sanitiser everywhere. When it came to the interment, I had to stand several meters away from the grave to say the committal and final prayers.
The health regulations were wise precautions to prevent possible contamination from a corpse, for it was still unclear how contagious the virus was. At the time, I was reminded of the Biblical prohibition which forbade contact with a dead body.
In the Gospels, Jesus alludes to the purity laws when addressing the Pharisees and scribes who were teachers of the law, but his concern is not of a physical or ritual contamination, but a spiritual one.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also appear outwardly righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”[i]
Jesus had very harsh things to say to the religious leaders of the day – the elites, typified by this devastating insult, “whitewashed tombs full of dead people’s bones”. To have contact with a grave or a dead body brought serious defilement, and here he is accusing them of being the most serious cause of defilement themselves.
The basis of Jesus’ critique was the hypocrisy of the leaders – appealing to purity laws, yet they themselves being the ones that were ‘unclean’, and leading people astray by their teaching. Matthew records Jesus’ warning that they were making their followers “twice a child of hell”[ii]. On the surface, they appeared to be orthodox upholders of the TORAH, God’s law and teaching, but they gave lip service to belief. They professed belief but betrayed their profession of faith and their vows to uphold the truth of God’s word, rather acting as gatekeepers to a religious establishment.
“Woe to you… For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”[iii]
Luke has this equally insulting declamation by Jesus, “Woe to you (Pharisees)! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”[iv]
The Lukan saying conveys the idea that there is nothing about these leaders that might warn their followers they will be led to destruction by the very people they trust. Their influence will be defiling, just as contact with a grave would defile a person according to the ritual purity laws.
In our day, Anglican leaders profess the faith, clergy and bishops promise to uphold the faith, and laity look up to them trusting that they are people of integrity who take their ordination promises seriously. Yet, when openly advocating for issues such as same sex blessings, which are contrary to God’s word, they do not see a problem. On several occasions, I have heard the accusation of error met with the response, “this is an ethical issue (human sexuality), it is not a foundational matter – after all the creeds say nothing about it.” The Archbishop of Canterbury has come out personally in denying biblical teaching on human sexuality[v], also having made this defence of revisionist leaders in 2022 to the Lambeth Conference,
“They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature.”[vi]
This is basically saying “we are not disobeying scripture or denying Christ by taking this stand” Consequently, the crowds rest a little easier, having been pacified by this assurance. Yet, is heresy really a type of unbelief? How can a person happily say they are an orthodox Christian, yet hold to a heretical position on one or two issues? Even Gene Robinson called himself an ‘evangelical’, effectively evacuating the word of all real meaning.
Heresy and Unbelief
St Thomas Aquinas held that heresy was NOT a type of unbelief. He pointed to Jerome’s comment on Galatians 5:19, “The works of the flesh are manifest…” Heresy is derived from the Greek hairesis meaning ‘choice’.
Now heresy would seem not to pertain to the understanding, but rather to the appetitive power; for Jerome says on Gal. 5:19: [*Cf. Decretals xxiv, qu. iii, cap. 27] “The works of the flesh are manifest: Heresy is derived from a Greek word meaning choice, whereby a man makes choice of that school which he deems best.” But choice is an act of the appetitive power, as stated above (FS, Question [13], Article [1]). Therefore heresy is not a species of unbelief.[vii]
Heresy is the consequence of a choice to achieve or maintain temporal profit of some sort (power, status, money, or popularity). It is thus associated not with intellectual error and unbelief, but with the vice of pride and covetousness. Choice is an act of the appetitive power; therefore, it is not unbelief. So, it is entirely possible to believe the major portion of Christian doctrine but be heretical on one point.
Foolish confidence
People tend to be trusting of leaders who exhibit confidence and assurance that their position is the right one – that they are on the right side of history, that they will win the argument, that they are the professionals and the experts in Biblical interpretation. There are strong psychological factors in the social landscape of the church and leaders often (sometimes unwittingly – I don’t ascribe malevolent motives at all here) take advantage of these dynamics. When bishops and clergy lull their people into a false sense of security, the people become complacent, and abandon responsibility to hold their leaders to account. They can also become fatalistic, believing that it is impossible to change the trajectory of the church once a novelty that goes against scripture and tradition has been accepted.
However, the confidence of leaders who are in error is ultimately a misplaced confidence – the Bible terms it ‘foolish confidence’. The Hebrew word used to express this idea is kesel, used in a figurative sense. It is used four times – twice in Job; once in Psalm 49:13 to refer to those who are unfaithful to the covenant; and lastly in Ecclesiastes, “I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly (kesel)….”[viii]
Here the writer uses the term when trying to understand the folly (foolish confidence) of humankind. He concludes, “God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”[ix] He thus associates foolish confidence with those who are not content to remain in faithfulness to upholding God’s standards, but rebel.
Peter warns his hearers against teachers who prove to be those that once knew the way of righteousness, but they turn their backs on the sacred command[x]. One mark of those who begin to propagate heretical doctrines is their tendency to accept aselgeia, or sexual impurity. This is also clearly asserted in 2 Timothy 3:6-8; Jude 4-16 and Revelation 2:20, and supports Aquinas’s teaching.
Whitewashing gives a clean and sanitary appearance to what is in the end dark, and deathly. In the same manner leaders who wear the mantle of authority in the church, sworn to uphold the doctrines of the Church maintain an appearance of orthodoxy. Just as the Pharisees who were respected as intellectual guardians of the religious establishment with no hint of moral decay.
However, trusting and unsuspecting followers are betrayed by those who should be leading them to repentance and life.
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[i] Matthew 23:27
[ii] Matthew 23:15
[iii] Matthew 23:13
[iv] Luke 11:44
[v] https://christianconcern.com/comment/archbishop-abandons-doctrine-to-approve-of-same-sex-intimacy/
[vi] https://anglican.ink/2022/08/02/justin-welbys-opening-statement-to-the-bishops-at-lambeth-2022-on-the-call-on-human-dignity
[vii] Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Of Heresy, Article 1.
[viii] Ecclesiastes 7:25
[ix] Ecclesiastes 7:29
[x] 2Peter 2:20,21.
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