Here’s a quote from C.S. Lewis I recently ran across:
As to ‘caring for’ the Sermon on the Mount, if ‘caring for’ here means ‘liking’ or enjoying, I suppose no one ‘cares for’ it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledgehammer?
I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of a man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure.
Less colorfully but no less accurately, R.T. France has written:
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be admired but to be obeyed.
But it cannot be obeyed if it is not first understood. Building off of an observation that Dallas Willard’s interpretation of the Beatitudes is “highly implausible”—such that “no contemporary NT scholar . . . agrees with his overall synthesis”—Craig Blomberg writes:
This illustration is just one of many that demonstrate the frequent disconnect between popular religious authors or preachers and defensible biblical scholarship on the Sermon on the Mount. Precisely because of its perennial popularity, and not merely among Christians, it has been subjected to a greater number of distinct approaches to interpretation than any other comparably-sized portion of scripture.
Even if you don’t agree with every single one of his exegetical conclusions, it’s worth reading Blomberg’s essay—written from an already-but-not-yet interpretive grid—on “The Most Often Abused Verses in the Sermon on the Mount: And How to Treat Them Right,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 46/3 (Summer 2004): 1-17.
