Scholarship which presses Matthew 10 for the sake of a high Christology focuses on a tiny sapling and misses the entire forest

 

 Seen here:

For example, one case that Pitre makes is that scholars are almost unanimous in their belief in the historical plausibility of Jesus’ demand that His disciples love Him more than their parents [Matthew 10:37]. But many scholars also agree that in a first-century Jewish context, the love of parents is second only to the love of God. Pitre thus persuasively argues that we must logically conclude that Jesus of Nazareth makes a demand of His followers that only the God of Israel can make. He quotes Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who says, “For, I now realize, only God can demand of me what Jesus is asking… In the end the master, Jesus, makes a demand that only God makes.”

This point of view comes from the introspective conscience of the West, not from the text.

The Jesus of Matthew 10 does not imagine our existence, that we would be born to live and worship him. The entire narrative is about the sending out of the Twelve and the imminent end of the world and about their role in it. Jesus actually elevates the disciples as fellow itinerant prophets. He does not demand their worship.

The Matthew 10 narrative is the eschatological prophet sending out his disciples to evangelize Israel, which they will not complete before the end of the world comes, the climax of which is the coming of the Son of man:

But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord.

The impending judgment of the world demands a kind of repentance which turns away from all conventions of family, work, and life. It is not simply a question of loving parents more than their master, but also of sons and daughters.  The narrative describes a climactic descent into social chaos involving the persecution of Jesus' true and few followers by their very own kin:

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. ... He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward;    

This is not about Christology, but about eschatology and the cost of discipleship. The price is intensely personal.

There is hardly a more vivid repudiation of the idea of the Christian family anywhere in the gospels, let alone of a high Christology, except in Luke:

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. ... So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. 

-- Luke 14:26f., 33 

Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves

 

 Have you mark'd a partridge quake,

Viewing the tow'ring falcon nigh?

She cuddles low behind the brake;

Nor would she stay, nor dares she fly.

-- Matthew Prior

Jesus' gospel was about something good coming to you now, not about you going somewhere good later

 

The Gospel Is About Going to Heaven When You Die

Mitch East, Mere Orthodoxy 

 

 

Jesus taught no one to pray "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take", but

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 

 

-- Matthew 6:9f.

 

Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

 

-- Mark 1:14f.

 

 

The enthusiasts for Paul's other gospel, a private revelation of his individual ecstatic religious experience, for that is what it is (Galatians 1), know this truth, they simply subordinate it to Paul the fox, putting the disciple above his master (Matthew 10:24; Luke 6:40).

And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. 

 

-- Ezekiel 13:1ff.

 

Paul is the jackal of Zion, the scavenger of the failed Jesus movement scattered by the crucifixion.

 

For this our heart has become sick, for these things our eyes have grown dim, for Mount Zion which lies desolate; jackals prowl over it. 

 

-- Lamentations 5:17f. 

The climate apocalypse predicted by high school dropout Greta Thunberg has failed, just like the religious apocalypse predicted by the Gospels

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  For his part Jesus at least stuck to his guns to the bitter end, though even he kept adjusting the timeline incrementally forward. It was his followers who did most of the covering up for him. In deleting her tweet prediction back in March of this year, Greta resembles them.

The deletion of the prediction, and of ~54 other such predictions, is the subject of some well-deserved derision here and here.

The merriment aside, it is safe to say that faith in the ever-coming, ever-delayed climate apocalypse will continue despite all being lost, now that we have reached the five-year-point of no return.

More and more the climate hysterics look like the already/not yet Kingdom of God enthusiasts among the world's Christians. The latter have their cake and eat it too as their answer to the problem of Jesus' expected in-breaking of the kingdom before the end of the mission of The Twelve in Matthew 10. As no Christian will concede that Jesus was mistaken about this, no climate fanatic will concede that their predictions have been false.

Like Christians in every age since, climate ideologues in academe, in organizations, and in the press routinely conflate instances of extreme weather with climate as signs of the predicted imminent catastrophe. The steady drumbeat of boy crying wolf is meant to whip up expectation and devotion, and above all money, which give the movement coherence and hope as the coming end is delayed again and again and again. You might even say that the Christian apocalyptic delusion, embedded into the very thinking of the West over the long centuries, prepared the way for the victory of the Climate delusion.

It is a useful meditation in how the original "apocalyptic" message of Jesus really wasn't apocalyptic at all, predicting signs and wonders in the heavens above and in the earth below. It only became so in the hands of the Gospel authors after its failure. As Vincent Taylor matter-of-factly pointed out decades ago, the Gospels were primarily composed in response to the delay of the parousia. The Gospels make Jesus predict a second coming, but its delay too was no less of problem than the failure of the first coming.

Jesus' original message was truly, dare we say merely, thorough-goingly eschatological, as Albert Schweitzer had said over 100 years ago. It was not apocalyptic.

Jesus said there would be no sign of the coming of the Son of Man (Mark 8:12). He would come quickly, like a thief in the night, leading the reaper angels who would pluck out from the world everything which offendeth. Two would be in a field, one would be taken and the other left. Two in a bed, one taken, one left. The taken would be bundled up together and burned. The kingdom of God would descend from heaven above. Its heavenly temple would descend and crush its earthly counterpart. The Twelve would rule over the Twelve Tribes of Israel as God made his will done on earth as it is in heaven. Everything in Jesus' generation would continue briefly just as it is, as in the days of Noah, people buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, and then Bam!

All would be calm and normal before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

This message is still embedded in the Gospel data, but its timeline and details were all recast in specifically apocalyptic terms of a second coming, the delay of which the Gospels are meant to address as a cope. Apocalyptic and eschatology have been hopelessly conflated ever since, with Christians forever preoccupied with the signs of the times.

People who marvel at how Christianity ever achieved its status as a universal religion which has endured through the ages and commanded the assent of billions over two millennia despite the on-going delay of the parousia rarely reflect on the power fanaticism has to delude thoroughly, and on a grand scale.

They have the climate hysteria now before their very eyes. They are actually living it. And yet they cannot see it.

The climate delusion has reached astounding proportions since its laughable prophet Al Gore, divinity school dropout (what a coincidence, right?), first began his climate ministry in 1993. The whole world is feeling its grip, banking on so-called green electricity when its capacity to generate enough of it to replace fossil fuel and nuclear sources is nothing but a pipe-dream.

And to think America almost made him president.

Nothing good has come out of Carthage, Tennessee.

Sohrab Ahmari learns something valuable from Catholic historian Henri Daniel-Rops: Rome lent Christianity inspiration to be a world religion

 The ­universalist—in the sense of world-spanning—religion of this new church was from the ­beginning suited to and even prefigured by the political universalism of the Roman Empire. Roman-ness, this history teaches, is of the essence of ­Christianity. ... Roman reality structured the Christian mind and lent it the same universalist impulse. ...

Christian life in the centuries prior to the Constan­tinian conversion was already developing authoritative structures, and at a relentless pace. Such structures are always necessary for governance, spiritual and temporal. The general tendency of these structures was expansion, away from the margins and into the center of human affairs. 

More.

 

 

Certain partisans will object strenuously to the idea that pagan Rome lent the universalist impulse to Christianity, but they will be wrong.

They are already unwilling to accept that the aims of the historical Jesus were more modest, who insisted he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10), whose twelve disciples were to judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the imminently coming eschatological kingdom of God (Matthew 19) in Jerusalem. To it many in Israel were called, but only few were chosen.

The germ of the universal religion idea certainly came from elsewhere, from the likes of St. Paul the Roman citizen and his intellectual and spiritual kin who, inspired by Isaiah the prophet among others, thought God's aim was to have mercy on all the nations (Romans 11).

For his part, Paul combined in himself two streams with a single and much more ambitious agenda. The Hellenistic Jew of the proselytizing Pharisee variety not coincidentally was still the enthusiastic missionary despite a crisis of conversion, but with a now much wider field of opportunity. And the Roman citizen by birth who was at liberty to travel and study in Jerusalem became himself an itinerant teacher, exploiting his favored position both at the margins and finally at the center of the empire.

My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. ... In fact, my visit to you has been delayed so long because I have been preaching in these places. But now I have finished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of waiting, I am eager to visit you. I am planning to go to Spain, and when I do, I will stop off in Rome. And after I have enjoyed your fellowship for a little while, you can provide for my journey. But before I come, I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believers there.

-- Romans 15:20ff. 

Ahmari chalks it all up to the divine will. The evidence chalks it up to the civis romanus and Pharisee.

Progressive Walter Brueggemann offers not one text in the Bible which offers "a counter-position" friendly to homosexuality, let alone to bestiality, incest, or transgenderism

Because there aren't any.

 

 

 

 

The reason the Bible seems to speak “in one voice” concerning matters that pertain to LGBTQ persons is that the loud voices most often cite only one set of texts, to the determined disregard of the texts that offer a counter-position. ... The Bible contains all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love, mercy and justice. ... And where the Bible contradicts that news, as in the texts of rigor, these texts are to be seen as “beyond the pale” of gospel attentiveness.

More.

For Brueggemann all the following simply have to go, along with Romans 1:23ff. itself, because they are the enemy of the easy, welcoming gospel (which would strike St. Paul as quite the odious lie), even though there isn't any evidence that early Christianity reversed its antipathy for any of these perversions.

Make no mistake. There is no reason why the prohibitions against bestiality, incest, and transgenderism should stay when those against homosexuality must go.

Brueggemann should be made to answer that: 

 

Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.

-- Exodus 22:19

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 

-- Leviticus 18:22

And the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:11

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- Leviticus 20:13

And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.

-- Leviticus 20:15

And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 

-- Leviticus 20:16 

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

-- Deuteronomy 22:5

Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife; because he uncovereth his father's skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:20

Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:21

Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:22

Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.

-- Deuteronomy 27:23

 

Brueggemann ignores a bunch of texts himself which contradict his cherished catch-all counter-idea that "The Gospel, unlike the Bible, is unambiguous about God’s deep love for all peoples."

For Brueggemann it couldn't possibly be that Jesus was an eschatological prophet to Israel only (Matthew 10, 15), bringing good news to its lost sheep who were impoverished by the rich who have their reward (Luke 7), who preached impending divine judgment of his generation (Luke 11) and never imagined a future church but rather the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God out of heaven wherein The Twelve would sit on twelve thrones judging the new Israel (Matthew 19, Luke 22).

There's plenty of contradictory evidence against Brueggemann's easy gospel of "welcome", he just ignores it.

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. 

 

-- Matthew 7:13f.

Brueggemann ignores all the evidence because he has a different agenda, about a kingdom that is "never fully here" but is only becoming.

Perhaps the most succinct example of that ignorance is summed up in his twisted claim that "The burden of discipleship to Jesus is easy". The burden of Jesus is in fact quite specifically light because the disciple has no possessions weighing him down, impeding his escape through the narrow gate, and no social obligations of work and family either, all of which were renounced because they hold one back. 

No man can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that is his.

-- Luke 14:33

No one knows this Jesus anymore, not Paul himself, not today's church, and especially not Walter Brueggemann. 

On the pre-existence of the soul

 

No man in his wits can seriously think that his own soul hath existed from all eternity.

-- Richard Bentley

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 

-- Matthew 10:28

The soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil.

-- Plato, Republic, X, 621c

If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.

-- Second Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

-- Jeremiah 1:5

St. Francis of Assisi, child of privilege, is one of the few ever to take Matthew 10 seriously, but his followers watered that down, as they always do

St. Francis c. 1228

 Friars resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls,

 and exorcise the beds, and cross the walls.

 -- John Dryden

A sermon Francis heard in 1209 on Mt 10:9 made such an impression on him that he decided to devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Evangelical precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance.

That Jesus conceived of the coming eschatological kingdom as a Jewish kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is the simplest explanation of the evidence

There are but two survivals of the explicitly Jewish conception of the coming kingdom in the Gospels, without any thought of inclusion of Gentiles, in Matthew 19 and Luke 22.

But the choice of twelve disciples by Jesus as a function of this explicitly Jewish conception of the imminently coming kingdom as a kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is also evidence. If the former nearly was expunged from the record, the tradition of the twelve survived because they did.

Those elements, the future Jewish kingdom and its twelve Jewish judges, are consistent with other surviving evidence of Jesus' original Jewish Gospel, for example with the charge in Matthew 10 and 15 not to go into the way of the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as well as with the scattered derogatory references to Gentiles, for example as dogs.  

Needless to say, a future Gentile kingdom would have required more judges than the twelve, and a Gospel to the Gentiles worked out to go with it. The latter was the innovation of Paul, not coincidentally a missionary Pharisee. The former never existed but for him.

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. 

-- Matthew 19:28f.

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

-- Luke 22:28ff.

That this conception of a future Jewish kingdom was there from the beginning explains the many instances of the disciples' fascination with who would be greatest in that kingdom which survive.

Those discourses need not be historical in all their particulars. The failure of the Jewish kingdom to appear necessitated rationalization of the conception involved under and for the new circumstances. Hence the emphasis upon selfless servanthood in the light of the reinterpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 

-- Matthew 18:1

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

-- Matthew 23:11

And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.

-- Mark 9:33f. 

Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

-- Luke 9:46

Luke says the dispute among the twelve persisted even to the Last Supper, which is remarkably self-absorbed of them given the supposed gravity of the moment. It also suggests the lectures by Jesus all along didn't do them much good. It's almost as if the fact of the incipient nativism were a pretext for Luke's narrative invention. And then there's the irony that even in correcting the disciples' preoccupation with themselves, Luke still makes Jesus contrast the proper behavior with the improper behavior in terms of Jew vs. Gentile. 

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.  

-- Luke 22:24ff.

But ye shall not be so.

It is easier to explain the more inclusive conception of the kingdom of God with Gentiles as a development from this original narrower one without Gentiles than the other way around. 

The narrower conception died hard, especially for example in the person of Peter, whom Paul accused of lingering hypocrisy about it in Galatians 2.

Luke, on the other hand, paints Peter in a more sympathetic light, in Acts 10, 11, and 15, showing how God himself miraculously intervened to change Peter's opinion about Gentiles.

But that Peter persisted in the nativism so long is the point. He didn't invent it. He got it from someone and stuck with it the whole time almost up until the moment he disappears from Luke's narrative never to be heard from again.

John's pre-crucifixion Jesus leaves an opening for Gentile Christian self-identity, Matthew's denies the possibility of it

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 10:5f.

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 15:24

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

-- John 10:16

Jesus believed only a few in Israel would be saved, Paul believed all Israel would be, along with many Gentiles

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. ... For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

-- Romans 11:25ff., 32

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ... Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

-- Matthew 7:6, 13f.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Matthew 10:5f., 18, 23

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

For many are called, but few are chosen.

-- Matthew 22:14

Both things cannot be true.

Scott Redd simply assumes that Jesus loved the immigrant, refusing to mine the uncomfortable evidence to the contrary

Immigration and the Kingdom of God:

 

[W]e do best when we remember how Jesus loved the poor, the needy, the immigrant, while never forgetting that His work always pointed us further to another goal: a world without borders, where every tear is wiped away (Revelation 21:5). That’s where we are going too, but we are not there yet.

Matthew 2:6 knows no such world without borders, only a Christ who shall rule over Israel:

And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. 

^{Matthew 10:5ff. has Jesus explicitly telling his disciples not to evangelize the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel:}

^{These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.}

^{Matthew 15:24ff. tells us Jesus called the Gentiles dogs, to whom he was not sent and who should not be preferred over the children of Israel:}

^{But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she [a woman of Canaan] and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.}

 

^{Matthew 19:28 conceives of the kingdom to come as the kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel, not as some new, all-inclusive redefined Israel with the Gentiles grafted in:}

^{And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.}

Finding yourself is no way to go through life, son

 

 

He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

-- Matthew 10:39

 

A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.  

-- Proverbs 18:2

Protestantism's missionary gospel of inclusive brotherhood has been self-annulling

From the review of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, here:

As Hollinger notes, by the end of World War II, commentators such as Congregationalist leader Buell Gallagher were observing that the “gospel of inclusive brotherhood” that missionaries preached abroad had begun to return home like a boomerang to “smite the imperialism of white nations, as well as to confound the churches.” Many missionaries and their families who had been assigned a key role in converting the benighted darker races to Western ways had instead gained abroad an appreciation for cultural diversity and had come back to the United States to challenge “cultural imperialism and arrogant paternalism” and play a leading role in contesting white Protestant hegemony. Hollinger charts the intriguing flight of this boomerang. ... As he sees it, their greatest importance in the 20th century is to be found in the effects of a contradictory, potentially self-annulling belief system. 

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. -- Matthew 10:5ff.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

Jesus was no "internationalist": His affirmation of neighbor love conformed to the narrow scope imagined in Leviticus

Leviticus explicitly defines the neighbor as one of "the children of thy people", thus excluding outsiders (who are enslaveable in perpetuity):

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD. -- Leviticus 19:18

Jesus believed similarly, including about Samaritans (contra Luke 10:36):

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. -- Matthew 10:5f.

This is in keeping also with the narrow scope of Jesus' conception of enemy love:

For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; And a man's enemies will be those of his own household. -- Matthew 10:35f.

For son dishonors father,
Daughter rises against her mother,
Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
A man's enemies are the men of his own household. -- Micah 7:6

He came to throw fire on the earth, and the sword and division, but not peace!

You either follow the Synoptic Tradition, or John (14:27, 16:33), it cannot be both.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

-- Matthew 10:34 (οὐκ ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰρήνην ἀλλὰ μάχαιραν)

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:

-- Luke 12:51

An alt-right Jesus, but for Jews only: The rest of us are dogs, whites included

Contra Connor Grubaugh, assistant editor of First Things, here:

Christianity in its original and most animating form is fundamentally incompatible with the Faustian ethic and race-based mythos of the alt-right, just as it is incompatible with the equivocations of liberalism. Orthodoxy is its own mythos—a true one.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 10:5f.

I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

The vignette in Acts 10 and 11 proves that the earliest church had assumed on the basis of this original message of Jesus that repentance unto life had not been granted "also to the Gentiles" (Acts 11:18).

Moreover Jesus himself had criticized the missionary zeal of the Pharisees in the outside world:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

-- Matthew 23:15

Rather than speak of the impossibility of "alt-right Christianity", it seems more like an absolute necessity, however much that makes the faith an anachronism which has precious little to say to our time. The original message of Jesus is thoroughly "race-based", for Jews only.

Or is all this "scripture" to be relegated to the junk heap of history as nothing more than the evil work of Paul's opponents, the Circumcision, tampering with the Word of God?

Racism angers Jesus Racist, Ethnic Nationalist God-King of the Jews?

Ideologue Russell Moore thinks so, puttin' on his blinders, in WaPo predictably:

"[T]he picture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how relatively calm he is. ... Jesus spoke gently with those on the outside of the people of God. ... The religious leaders and those keeping the worship of God from the nations had something in common: Both were seeking to keep people away from the kingdom of God, people they didn’t feel were worthy of it. ... [E]thnic nationalism is not just a deviant social movement. It is the same old idolatry of the flesh, the human being seeking to deify his own flesh and blood as God." 

If only it were that simple.

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

-- Matthew 10:5ff.

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 15:24

Don't give what is sacred to dogs. Don't throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

-- Matthew 7:6

But he answered and said [to the woman of Canaan], It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:26

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . ..

-- Matthew 6:7f.

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

-- John 10:33

Perhaps Jesus' worst legacy is the trail of "heroic" but really mentally ill "self-sacrificial" suicides he encouraged, starting with Paul

He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. -- Matthew 10:39

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. -- Matthew 16:25

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. -- Mark 8:35

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. -- Luke 9:24

Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. -- Luke 17:33

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. -- John 12:25 (!)

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. -- Philippians 1:21

The durable Great Commission and the transitory Not So Great Commission: Pick one

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them . . . teaching them . . . and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

-- Mt. 28:19f.

Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. . . . for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Mt. 10:5ff., 23