Tertullian: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving-kindness: ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another! One another, not everyone.
This discernment is also reflected in a famous utterance of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Jesus is telling his followers that they should treat even the Iowliest as if they were Jesus himself, so that on Judgement Day he can say to them: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave clothing, I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and ou visited me." This seeming call for boundless compassion is followed by a rarely noted qualifier. After Jesus’s followers ask in puzzlement “When was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?" Jesus answers: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of these who are members of my family [sometimes translated as “these my brothers"], you did it to me.” Brothers? Family? In common early Christian usage. that would have meant other Christians.
Of course. if Paul is the one who pioneered that usage, then maybe terms like “brothers” had a different. more truly universal. connotation back when Jesus spoke. But the book of Matthew wasn‘t written until after Paul’s time, so its language should be interpreted in that light. And in that light, this passage is so consistent with Paul’s instrumental use of the idea of brotherly love as to suggest that maybe these weren’t the words of Jesus but rather were put in his mouth to justify a strategy that, by the tme Matthew was written, had proved its value. (They don't appear in the earliest gospel, Mark, or in the possibly early, hypothetically reconstructed Q source-only in Matthew.)
Though membership in one of Paul’s churches allowed you to enjoy brotherly love, it didn't guarantee that privilege for life. Once a brother. you would be monitored, and extreme self-indulgence could lead to expulsion. The same letter to the Corinthians that bears Paul's famous ode to love contains this passage: “I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or robber. Do not even eat with such a one....Dnve out the wicked person from among you. Paul’s church had generous criteria for joining the brotherhood but strict grounds for expulsion.
THis membership policy helps explain how Chistianity could afford to accept members from all social classes. including the indigent. So long as they didn’t exploit generosity and succumb to vice, they could be rendered productive. Indeed, Christian churches seem to have been tools of social mobility. giving education to aspiring students. A second century Christian remarked, “Not only do the rich among us pursue our philosophy, but the poor enjoy instruction for free. We admit all who desire to hear.
It was a solid formula: reach out to all, and hang on to the honest and earnest. But an implication of this formula was to keep “universal love" from being truly “universal.” Love was extended beyond the brotherhood of Christians tentatively and conditionally; the fullest form of love would be dented to those who didn’t join the brotherhood and to those who joined but didn’t keep earning their membership The result was to make the early church organically cohesive As Paul put it, “we, who are many. are one body In Christ, and individually we are members one of another“
The meaning of the Hebrew Bible‘s injunction to love your neighbor as yourself had always depended on the definition of “neighbor." Paul did change that definition, but he didn’t give it infinite compass. A “neighbor" wasn’t just any “Jew or Greek.” As Peter Brown has written of the Roman Empire in the third century, “The teaching of the church defined for the Christian who was not his neighbor: the neighbor of the Christian was not necessarily his kinsman. not his fellow dweller in a quarter, not his compatriot or his fellow townsman. His neighbor was his fellow Christian.
-Robert WRight
The Evolution of God
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