What Does Matthew 5:28 Teach? (Part II)

These are my concluding thoughts on Jason Staples' approach to Matthew 5:28. Please see https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2022/02/what-does-matthew-528-teach-part-i.html to read the points I addressed in part I of my reply to his blog entry. There are points at which I agree with Staples but I don't share his overall view of the text.

Greek (Matthew 5:27-28 WH): Ἠκούσατε ὅτι ἐρρέθη Οὐ μοιχεύσεις. Ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτὴν ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτὴν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ.

While trying to explain Matthew 5:28, Staples gets into an interesting discussion about Plato's view of "lust." I concur with Staples that lust is not just about sexual desire, whether we're referring to the English use of the term or to Plato's understanding of "desire." For example, one can lust for power or for riches.

Plato uses ἐπιθυμία in the Phaedrus and in the Republic. There is more written about ἐπιθυμία than I have time to recount, so let's just review some of the material pertinent to this term. In the Republic, Socrates (possibly acting as Plato's mouthpiece) argues that humans possess tripartite souls; that is, we're supposed to have souls with three parts-- appetitive, spirited and rational. We can think of these parts hierarchically with the appetites constituting the lower level for Plato and the rational part being the highest level since ideally, it's supposed to control both the appetitive and spirited parts.

Some of the definitions that appear in LSJ for ἐπιθυμία, especially when we consider the Platonic passages, include "desire, yearning, appetite, sexual desire, lust, [the act of] longing after a thing." At times, the word may even refer to an object of desire. In any event, it is clear that Plato privileges rationality above emotions and desire: we still witness this privileging in many forms of literature today.

Some have compared the appetitive part of the soul to Freud's id because it seems to specialize in the baser desires although our appetites putatively encompass our desire for food, drink, and sex. So the appetites in Plato are not just about sex, as Staples points out, and I like his example of a musical note being played in harmony, which illustrates how the tripartite soul is supposed to work as one unit with the parts performing their respective function for the overall good of the soul.

However, where I object to Staples is with his use of Plato as a potential tool for shedding light on the Matthean text. Firstly, the Platonic tripartite soul likely has very little (if any) semantic or conceptual impact on Matthew 5:28. Secondly, the Judaic and Christian traditions make a distinction between good and bad desires: desire is not bad in se, but there are bad desires according to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As the Bible writers portray matters, a desire does not simply become bad when someone acts on it; certain desires are bad/disordered in se and if one continues to dwell on the bad/disordered desire, then that mental act itself could become sinful. Nevertheless, as long as the desire is nascent or not fertilized and strongly entrenched, we have time to eradicate the bad desire from our minds.

But what if we continue to dwell upon wrong desire, possibly coveting someone's mate or property? If we continue to cultivate and "water" wrong desire, we've come one step further to sinning physically (James 1:13-15). If we don't deaden this wrong desire, we'll subsequently fall into sin with the use of our body members (Colossians 3:5). Therefore, I want to emphasize that while thinking hateful thoughts might not be equivalent to actually murdering someone, wrong or bad desire is still sinful if we let it fester, but we can be forgiven for our harmful thoughts (Isaiah 55:6-7). Hence, while Staples wants to argue that the problem arises when someone acts on a wrong desire, I'm suggesting that bad desires are sinful (sinful thoughts) in se at a certain point, and they could lead to sinful actions.

As Staples continues in his post, he lists examples of "lust" in the Bible that markedly are neither negative nor sinful (Matthew 13:17; Luke 22:15): I agree but this just illustrates the importance of reading a term in its literary context and doing so synchronically. It is important to differentiate good and bad desires, as I mentioned earlier. Staples distinguishes desire from coveting, but I don't see where he makes the distinction between good desire and bad desire. After all, not all bad desires involve coveting, which I didn't see him address either. In other words, to "desire" having relations with someone to whom one is not married is just as bad as coveting someone's wife. Granted, sexual desire is a God-given gift from above, but it can be distorted or become disordered, then the desire become sinful. Another example is when we bear a grudge against someone to such an extent that we want to harm them physically--that is not covetousness but it's still sinful.

Finally, two issues arise regarding Matthew 5:28: I've already discussed whether the verse deals with passionate looking or with coveting (compare Acts 20:33; Romans 7:7; 13:9; 1 Timothy 3:1; Hebrews 6:11; 1 Peter 1:12). My conclusion was that while Matthew could have been referring to coveting, passion is still a viable candidate. However, if 5:28 has passionate gazing in mind, it's not talking about a momentary look; the words of Jesus probably condemn continuing to look at a woman passionately, thereby allowing the desire to become fertile and later give birth to sin. Whether the passionate looking is covetous or not might be inconsequential. On the other hand, "woman" in this verse likely refers to someone's wife (a point made by Staples).

The second issue is how we should understand the grammar of 5:28. Staples argues that the looking is not what's wrong but the intended reason for looking, namely, in order to covet the woman. I concede that the reading is a possible one though not the only viable way to read the text. Notice how the ESV handles Matthew 5:28, and Bill Mounce writes: "It is looking with intent that constitutes sin" (Greek for the Rest of Us). Compare the NRSV. Nevertheless, others like Staples treat πρὸς τὸ in 5:28 as a construction that expresses purpose. Maybe that is true. 

R.T. France proffers these comments on Matthew 5:28 (The Gospel of Matthew):

The commandment is again quoted verbatim from LXX Exod 20:14; Deut 5:18. It is concerned specifically with a man who has sexual relations with another man’s wife. The “woman” in Jesus’ declaration is thus to be understood also as another man’s wife (see p. 192, n. 46), and the looking “in order to desire her,” specifically of wanting (and planning?) sexual relations (hence my translation “wants to have sex with her” above). The focus is thus not (as some tender adolescent consciences have read it) on sexual attraction as such, but on the desire for (and perhaps the planning of) an illicit sexual liaison (cf. Exod 20:17, “you shall not covet your neighbor’s . . . wife,” where LXX uses the same verb, epithymeō).632 The famous sin of David (2 Sam 11:2-4), where such a desire led not only to adultery but also to murder, would naturally come to mind as a lurid scriptural example. The danger of looking lustfully at women is the subject of many Jewish sayings (e.g., Job 31:1, 9; Prov 6:25; Sir 9:5, 8; T. Benj. 8:2), and the idea that the desire is tantamount to the deed is hinted at in, for example, T. Reu. 5:6; T. Iss. 7:2 and explicit in the extracanonical tractate Kallah 7 (“whoever gazes intentionally at a woman is as though he had intercourse with her”); according to b. Yoma 29a it is even worse.