Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of

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How Matthew Portrays the Communication of Christ's Authority

James M. Reese
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1977; 7; 139
DOI: 10.1177/014610797700700305

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 Portrays the
How Matthew
Communication of Christ’s Authority
The ancient view of the world is often
pictured as static. In reality, the an-
cients experienced the cosmos as one
living animal of mysterious inexhausti-
ble power. Although Israel never
developed a philosophy to reflect upon
the cosmos, their belief in Yahweh as
creator produced a dynamic under-
standing of reality. Coming out of a
Jewish background, early Christian
communities looked upon the powerful
presence of the risen Jesus and his Holy
Spirit as transforming the cosmos.
From the time of Paul, who described
the Good News as &dquo;God’s power to save
everyone who believes&dquo; (Rom 1:16 ) ,
New Testament writers celebrated their
experience of salvation as a new
creation, a universal and unifying
rebirth. They were part of the es-
chatological event of the Reign of God,
the linking of persons of all nations into
a new covenant community. This Christ
event was a cosmic process that began
with the earthly Jesus and continued
with the exercise of the lordship of the
risen Christ. Matthew, traditionally call-
ed the Church Gospel, writes out of this
dynamic horizon. He locates Jesus in the
drama of salvation history in general
and in the context of the law of Moses in
particular. Above all, he is concerned to
link the earthly Jesus to the ongoing
community of believers.
Jesus-Center of History
Jack Dean Kingsbury studies
Matthew’s view of Jesus and his role in
salvation history in a paper prepared for
the Matthew Task Force. He stressed
the &dquo;element of historical movement&dquo;
found in the special formula Matthew
uses to end his great discourses as an
element of a comprehensive pattern of
his conception of salvation history.
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Kingsbury demonstrates that Matthew’s
primary interest was not to transmit a
progression of historical occurrences but
rather: (1) to introduce Jesus as Son of
God and Messiah; (2) to proclaim him as
such, and (3) to picture him in his
messianic activity (Kingsbury: 452-454).
His paper provides examples of how
Matthew &dquo;operates with temporal terms
on a second level, investing them with
eschatological significance in the
strictest sense&dquo; (Kingsbury: 468).
The careful framework Matthew con-
structs to present Jesus shows the goal
of his Gospel. He was teaching the com-
munity how the person and activity of
Jesus has transforming significance for
human history. In other words, the entire
earthly mission of Jesus was but the first
stage in his role as Immanuel. His two
references to Jesus as &dquo;God with us&dquo;
( 1: 23 and 28 : 20 ) form not a static
&dquo;inclusion&dquo; of the Gospel. Rather, they
create a dynamic tension between the
earthly work of Jesus and his the es-
chatological presence of his Church to
the world.
What was Matthew’s understanding of
the authority of Jesus in its relationship
both to the Church and to the law of
Moses? Why can he present Jesus as
both upholding the law and yet declaring
it surpassed? The complexity of
Matthew’s Gospel requires that we
approach this question in a variety of
ways: (1) by dealing with his use of the
’word authority ( exo us ia ) ; (2) by showing
how he builds up to the scene of Jesus
handing on all his authority to the
apostles, and (3) by general remarks on
Matthew’s literary techniques.
The Word ’Authority’ in Matthew
It is probably no accident that
Matthew uses the term authority ten
times, always in relation to Jesus. Mark
 uses it ten times also, seven of which are
in parallel with Matthew. In Luke the
word occurs 16 times and is not
restricted to the authority of Jesus. I
,give a brief survey of how Matthew
.
employs the term.
(1) Mt 7:29, at the end of the Sermon
on the Mount. The people were astonish-
ed &dquo;at his teaching, for he was teaching
them as one having authority and not
as&dquo; their scribes. The words in quotation
appear exactly in Mk 1:22. Lk 4:32 has a
similar scene but he shortens the phrase
to &dquo;because his speech was with
authority.&dquo;
(2) Mt 8:9, in the second of the ten
miraculous cures.The centurion says,
&dquo;Whynot (kai gar), I am a man under
authority.&dquo; Luke has the same phrase
(7:8), but the scene is not in Mk.
(3) Mt 9:6. In curing the paralytic
Jesus acts &dquo;that you may see that the
Son of man has authority or earth to
forgive sins.&dquo; The same phrase appears
in Mk 2:10 and Lk 5:24, except for
changes in the word order.
(4) Mt 9:8, added by Matthew. Only
he closes his account of this miracle
with the comment that &dquo;the crowds
feared and glorified God who gave such
authority to men.&dquo;
(5) Mt 10:1. At the start of the mis-
sion discourse, after calling his disciples
Jesus &dquo;gave them authority to cast out
unclean spirits.&dquo; The parallels (Mk 6:7
and Lk 9 :1 ) maintain the term but have
different phrasing.
The next four uses are found in the
same controversy. (6-7) Mt 21:23, twice.
In the Temple the high priests and elders
ask Jesus two questions. &dquo;By what
authority do you do this?&dquo; The exact
question occurs in Mk 11: 28 and Lk 20: 2.
Then they ask,&dquo; Who gave you this
authority?&dquo; This also occurs in Mark but
is slightly different in Luke.
(8) Mt 21:24. Jesus lays down a con-
dition for telling &dquo;by what authority I do
these things.&dquo; This phrase appears in
Mk 11:29 but not in Luke.
140
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(9) Mt 21:27. When they refuse to
answer, Jesus responds, &dquo;Nor do I tell
you by what authority I do these things.&dquo;
The same sentence is found in Mk 11:33
and Lk 20:8.
(10) Mt 28 :18. The final scene of
Matthew is the commission of the
Eleven and the transfer of &dquo;all authority
in heaven and on earth&dquo; to them. It is
unique to Matthew.
Uses Special in Matthew
The only two texts above without
parallel in another Synoptic Gospel are
Mt 9:8 and 28:18. The first usage occurs
after the cure of the paralytic. All three
gospels contain the remark that this
cure demonstrates that &dquo;the Son of man
has authority on earth to forgive sins.&dquo;
But only Matthew remarks that the
wonder of the people expressed
astonishment that God was &dquo;the giver of
such authority to men.&dquo; What Matthew
does here is to incorporate the Church’s
wonder at its great gift to forgive sins.
This miracle is part of the artificially
constructed section of ten miraculous
cures found in Mt 8:1-9:34. This unit
forms a balance to the Sermon on the
Mount. Together these picture Jesus
revealing by word and mighty deed. By
this comment linked to the display of
authority by the earthly Jesus, Matthew
calls attention to the transfer of that
authority to the Church and its continued
use to reconcile sinners. An analysis of
the narrative makes this intention clear.
Why do the crowds praise God for giv-
ing &dquo;such authority to mean. &dquo; Jesus alone
displayed the power. The comment of
Matthew focuses attention not on the
physical cure but on an ongoing ex-
pression of the authority of Jesus that
was not limited to his earthly existence.
The display of authority is exemplary.
As I commented in a previous article,
&dquo;The phrase jolts because Jesus alone
had performed the miracle. And the
shock is deliberate because it portrays
the wonder of the primitive community
at sharing in the divine saving power of
forgiving sin&dquo; (Reese: 48).
It is true that Matthew does not ex-
plicitly state the transfer of authority
until the final scene of his Gospel. Yet
the organization and dynamism of his
presentation tells readers that this
transfer is uppermost in the intention of
Matthew. He sees the function of the
earthly life of Jesus as bestowing the
transcendent authority of Jesus Im-
manuel to the believing community.
This intention accounts for the frequent
mention of the disciples of Jesus by
Matthew-64 times. It also offers a
motive for his elimination of a mission
of the disciples while Jesus is still with
them although he gives them authority
over unclean spirits ( 10 :1 ) .
Looking to Church Authority
That scene is especially interesting
because Mt 10:2 is the only place where
he calls the Twelve apostles. Matthew
begins the long instruction by saying
that Jesus &dquo;sent the Twelve forth&dquo;
( 10 : 5 ) , but at the end it is Jesus who goes
around &dquo;teaching and preaching&dquo;
( 11:1 ) . Again Matthew stresses the
Church dimension. His concern is not
how Jesus exercised his authority in the
past but that he is now making it
available through the Church. Three
other scenes point to this purpose in the
Gospel of Matthew.
(1) Mt 11: 25-27, Jesus’ thanksgiving
prayer. Luke places this at the return of
the 72 disciples from preaching (Lk
10 : 21-22 ) . Matthew introduces the con-
fession with the connecting phrase &dquo;in
that time.&dquo; As John P. Meier wrote in a
paper prepared for the Matthew Task
Force, &dquo;Of course, Vogtle is correct in
seeing Matthew’s use of exousia during
the public ministry as well as in Mt 11: 27
as influencing the conclusion of the
gospel.&dquo; (Meier: 212). Meier notes that
this scene in which Jesus refers to
receiving &dquo;all things from the Father&dquo;
141
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is not parallel with the final commission
scene. I would say that they represent
for Matthew two stages in the transfer
of Jesus’ authority. During his life Jesus
reveals it to his disciples. After his
resurrection he shares it with the
Church until the &dquo;end of the age&dquo;
(28:20).
(2) Mt 13:36-43, the explanation of the
parable of the tares. This explanation,
appearing only in Matthew, contains the
statement, &dquo;The harvesters are the
angels&dquo; ( 13 : 39 ) . Earlier in his in-
troduction to the mission discourse
Matthew identified the disciples with the
harvesters ( 9 : 3?-38 ) . This progression
led L. Legrand to note that Matthew has
universalized and &dquo;demythologized&dquo; the
harvest time. &dquo;The apostles are really
the angels who constitute the train of the
son of man&dquo; (Legrand: 8).
(3) Mt 14:1-16:20. X. Leon-Dufour
demonstrated that a &dquo;theological depth&dquo;
guided the presentation of- this section.
He even entitles it &dquo;Introducing the
Church&dquo; (L6on-Dufour: 37-49). Matthew
repeats the bestowal of authority to bind
and loose, first to Peter and then to the
disciples ( 18 :18 ) . He also reports the
promise of Jesus that they will sit on
twelve thrones judging the tribes of
Israel ( 19 : 28 ) . The repetition of the
detail of the Son of man coming in glory
in the parable of the great judgment
(25:31-46) provides another link leading
to the final transfer of authority. The
least of Jesus’ brothers are identified
with the leaders of the new community
who have offered mankind the authority
of Jesus (Michaels: 27-37).
Jesus and the Law
We must turn to investigate how
now
Matthew conceived the authority of
Jesus in relation to the divine plan as
embodied in the law of Moses. This
demands that we penetrate below the
surface structure of his Gospel and seek
to discover the organizing principle of
 the world into which Matthew in-
troduces his readers. The nature of dis-
course is to create a world, as Paul
Ricoeur has explained. &dquo;Discourse as a
work is organized into wholes of a
second order.... Understanding a text
is always something more than the sum-
mation of its partial meanings; the text
as a whole has to be considered as a
hierarchy of topics&dquo; (Ricoeur: 74).
Matthew has woven his materials into
an extremely dynamic hierarchy of
values that impose themselves upon his
readers. He engages them on the level of
words, allusions, refrains, themes,
theological insights and faith choices by
a subtle blending of literary procedures.
I refer to these as systematizing,
schematizing and synthesizing, which I
will describe briefly.
Systematizing is Matthew’s gathering
together of his didactic thrust either into
blocks of related material, such as his
great sermons, or into a repetitive
pattern of key themes in such a way that
the message of Jesus engulfs the destiny
of the reader. Schematizing is the well-
known procedure by which Matthew
eliminates concrete details and other
specific details of narratives. By so do-
ing he makes scenes into types or
models of faith encounters for disciples.
Finally, synthesizing is the counter-
balance to schematizing to prevent the
Gospel from being too cold and aloof. It
is an editorial process of informing
readers of deeper implications of the
mission of Jesus, of eliminating causes
for misunderstanding and of spelling our
implications of the message of Jesus.
Matthew uses these procedures to show
that in Jesus God was bringing salvation
history to its fulfilment and creating the
new covenant, the new age. The
authority and finding force of this new
reality is Jesus as &dquo;the founder of the es-
.
chatological people of God&dquo;
(Kingsbury: 455). The Church lives not
out of human resources but by divine
power made available in Jesus.
142
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Matthew’s Gospel as a Cult Epic
In more literary terms the Gospel of
Matthew fits into the literary genre of
epic in the sense that Elizabeth Sewell
uses the term: &dquo;a dynamic instrument
concerned with heroic achievement, ad-
vance, exploration&dquo; (Sewell: 304). As an
epic the work progresses through the in-
teraction and identification of subject,
instrument and agent (Sewell: 304).
Matthew enables believers to identify
with Jesus as the hero who brings into
focus the entire plot of salvation history
not simply in his earthly life but in his
presence to the Church as &dquo;God with
us.&dquo;
Matthew employed these literary
procedures because for him every scene
about the early Jesus has an ecclesial
dimension. Jesus as Son of God creates
the eschatological age not simply by his
earthly life but by forming members of
the end-time people of God with whom
he shares all his authority. Matthew
does not envision that authority as
something static or abstract but as
dynamic and world-changing. It is in
that context that he also understood it in
relation to the law of Moses.
The chief thrust of the Gospel is the
forward thrust of the mission of Jesus as
shaping the community of disciples. But
he indicates a backward thrust also into
Jewish tradition. Jesus did not spring up
in a vacuum. He grew up within the
Jewish tradition, loved it, assimilated it
and was shaped by it. Matthew pictures
Jesus as called to bring the great plan of
sacred history to its fulfilment. Jesus
links the newness of the eschaton with
continuity of tradition. Is his Gospel
successful in bringing fulfillment of the
law and the unique authority of Jesus
into a single trajectory?
of Jesus’ Authority
Dynamic
On the one hand, Matthew makes the
theme of the unique authority of Jesus
as integral part of his Good News. He
views the entire earthly life of Jesus as
the eschatological display of the Son of
God. The new age is begun. As Amos
Wilder comments, &dquo;In each such new
cultural setting the primal dynamic
reshaped the particular language-world
and language-vehicles to its own pur-
poses and its own defence&dquo; (Wilder:
118).
On the other hand, Matthew affirms
that the authority of Jesus does not un-
dermine the law of Moses for Jesus
declared, &dquo;I have come not to destroy
but to fulfill&dquo; (Mt 5:17). To reconcile
these two sources of authority we must
understand the dynamics of Matthew’s
Gospel. The answer is not found in any
natural evolution of human con-
sciousness. The dynamic of saving
authority comes always from Jesus as
Son and Messiah, not from the law of
Moses. What Jesus fulfills is not surface
commands but that forward thrust of the
law as reaching out towards himself and
finding its rationale in him.
In contrast to Lk 16:17, which exalts
the law as more durable than the
heavens, Matthew sees the very nature
of the law as directed toward fulfilment
(5:18). No formulation of the law of
Moses has any meaning apart from
Jesus in whom God’s will is perfected.
In Jesus the law continues to enlighten
believers as the five or six comparisons
of Mt 5:21-47 indicate. Their number
depends on whether the section on
divorce should be considered a separate
comparison.
Matthew’s editorial hand is evident in
the passage that introduces these com-
parisons ( 5 :17-20 ) . The phrase &dquo;law and
prophets&dquo; appears again in 7:12 and
22:40. Matthew’s favorite word
&dquo;justice,&dquo; which he uses seven times in-
cluding twice in the beatitudes, appears
in 5:20. The comparisons themselves
generate the dynamism that leads to his
formulation of the golden rule (? :12 ) .
Just as Matthew’s ten formula
quotations picture the life of Jesus as
143
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fulfillingthe prophets, so his beginning
the Sermon on the Mount with a series of
beatitudes pictures Jesus as achieving
the goal of the Mosaic prescriptions.
First Jesus then the Church by his
authority take the message of the law
further because they infuse it with new
insights and challenges. Jesus could sub-
mit to the law, and his followers obey it
because his wisdom infused it with new
wisdom and freeing power. Thus the law
shares in the power and mission of Jesus
and continues to cooperate with him to
bring about the &dquo;greater justice&dquo; he
demands of his followers (Mt 5:20).
Matthew thus succeeds in joining the
trajectories of salvation history and the
authority of Jesus in his portrayal of the
transformation of the human condition.
The Church’s
Authority
Hopefully this paper illustrates what I
stated earlier, that Matthew’s picture of
Jesus embraces his abiding presence to
human history as Immanuel. In that
sense we can say that the work was com-
posed to demonstrate the transfer of
Jesus’ saving authority to his Church. In
many ways J. D. Kingsbury’s affir-
mation that Matthew has no separate
&dquo;time of the church&dquo; amounts to the
same conclusion. Rather, for Matthew
the &dquo;last days are already inaugurated
by John and Jesus&dquo; (Kingsbury: 471).
These eschatological &dquo;last days&dquo; are not
rupture with the past, however, but a
fulfilment that unifies the whole of
salvation history.
In this horizon Matthew sees even the
law of Moses as a display of the
authority of Jesus. The Father has
foreseen and willed Jesus as the center
of all revelation, including the law of
Moses. That law can be understood cor-
rectly only as sharing in the authority of
Jesus, and it still upholds and proclaims
that authority. Hence, the law of Moses
is not abrogated but reinterpreted out of
the horizons of the role of Jesus Im-
manuel. Consequently it binds in terms
 of the fulness of the authority that Jesus Kingsbury, Jack Dean—1973 "The
has entrusted to &dquo;men,&dquo; that is, to his Structure of Matthew’s Gospel and His
disciples and to his Church (see Mt 9:8). Concept of Salvation History," Catholic
Matthew’s insistence that the life of Biblical Quarterly 35: 451-473.
Jesus proclaimed his loyalty to the law
of Moses is a profound way of teaching Legrand, L.—1965 "The Harvest is
the ongoing unity of salvation history. Plentiful," Scripture 17: 1-8
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deepened version&dquo; of the mystery of Léon-Dufour, Xavier—1963 "Vers l’an-
man and his moral and historical dimen- nounce de l’Eglise." Pp. 37-49 in the first
sions &dquo;provided the possibility for the volume of L’Homme devant Dieu:
Christian Gospel&dquo; (Wilder: 126). Mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac.
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promise of Israel’s law, prophets and
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that possesses all authority. Structure and Form of Matt. xxviii, 16-
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to the Church becomes, of supreme im- Meier, John P.—1975 "Salvation
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fall unwillingly under his coercive power Hardships and Righteous Gentiles. A
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Bruce Malina noted, &dquo;The relationship Reese, James M.—1973 "The Event of
of the beginning of the gospel to its con- Jesus — Power in Flesh." Pp. 40-50 in
clusion would seem to indicate that dis- Power and the Word of God (Concilium
cipleship is the purpose for which Jesus 90), ed. by F. Brockle and J.-M. Pohier.
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makes the earthly presence of Jesus Ricoeur, Paul—1974 "Philosophy and
flow toward that mission shows that Religious Language," Journal of
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Book Review evangelist, and literary criticism, which
Daniel Patte, What is Structural Ex- includes source criticism, examines the
egesis?. Fortress Press, Philadelphia temporal process through which the
1976, VI + 90 pp., paper $2.95. gospels came into existence. Now
The first three volumes in this series Daniel Patte, professor of religious
dealt respectively with form criticism, studies at Vanderbilt University, in-
redaction criticism, and literary troduces his prospective readers to
criticism. While form criticism is in- structuralism and structuralist methods
terested in the literary patterns of the inexegesis. He had previously shown an
gospels, redaction criticism endeavors application of structuralism in &dquo;An
to distinguish in a given text what Analysis of Narrative Structure and the
belongs to tradition from the work of the Good Samaritan&dquo; (Seme?’a 2, pp. 1-26).
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144