Davide's Notes

In the Introduction to his Theology of Hope, Jürgen Moltmann briefly writes about the contrary of Christian hope: the sin of despair. I think it is interesting to meditate a little bit on this inclination.

As Kierkegaard rightly said in The Sickness Unto Death, everyone is in despair (whether they know it or not), because despair is really a tension between the infinite and the finite; but, at the same time, despair is "the sin which most profoundly threatens the believer" (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 2002, p.8).

There are many possible ways to speak of despair. I shall loosely follow here what Aquinas said about it in his Summa Theologiae (hereafter cited as ST), particularly in II-II, q.20 (De desperatione).

A first question that may arise is, Is despair really a sin?

Let's start with Eph 4:17-19, where Paul exhorts the Ephesians to no longer act as the Gentiles:

^4:17Τοῦτο οὖν λέγω καὶ μαρτύρομαι ἐν κυρίῳ, μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν καθὼς καὶ τὰ ἔθνη περιπατεῖ ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν,
¹⁸ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄντες, ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ, διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὴν πώρωσιν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν,
¹⁹οἵτινες ἀπηλγηκότες ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ.

My translation:

^4:17Now this I say and testitfy in the Lord: that no longer you should walk as also the Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
¹⁸obscured in understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in themselves, due to the hardness of their heart.
¹⁹They, who have become apathetic, surrendered themselves with greediness to lust, in all sorts of unclean works.

These are very strong words. The key verb that interests us here is ἀπαλγέω, used in v.19 in the perfect tense, to indicate something that already happened, but which bears its effect up to the present: in this case, an ongoing attitude of the Gentiles. ἀπαλγέω means "cease to feel pain or grief", and in the verse above it is often translated as "to become callous", or apathetic¹. Being apathetic, or desperate (that is, without hope), is then a source of grave sins: when one is apathetic, he easily surrenders to "all sorts of unclean works".

So, we see that from despair serious sins can be originated; but is despair itself a sin?

It is indeed: nurturing false ideas into one's mind is a sin, while, on the other hand, nurturing true ideas into one's mind is good. But thinking that one can not be reached by the grace of God is a false idea. In fact, this contradicts both the concept of a free God (if God is free, in his mercy he may well decide to save a sinner), and the actual promises that God made to us. Therefore, it is a sin to live in despair, with despair intended as the belief that it would be impossible for one to be saved by God or, stated otherwise, that God's promises would not refer also to me. Actually, due to its destructive impact, and we shall say something more about this soon, despair is such a serious sin that (ST, II-II, q.14, a.2) it is placed among the sins against the Holy Spirit; and these are sins that, according to Mark 3:28-29, are "eternal", that is, unpardonable.

A similar path of reasoning applies to the opposite of despair, that is presumption, also a sin against the Holy Spirit: where desperation entails the false belief that God does not care (so to speak) about sinners, or that one cannot convert from his sins, presumption entails the false belief that, regardless of the sins one may commit, he will be saved anyway. Therefore presumption, like desperation, is also a sin.

So, despairing is a grave sin. But can one become desperate, and at the same time still be a believer? Or does despair only touch those who have no faith, or have lost theirs?

Faith is an all-encompassing attitude to life, one that shapes one's entire existence. In fact, believing is something that covers all-important universal concepts. Despair, on the other hand, is an "appetite", a particular disposition of man. Indeed, it is common experience that, while we may believe in some universal truth, when dealing with particular situations of life we fail to adhere to those truths, due a particular disposition of ours. So it is perfectly possible that a faithful person, due to a particular disposition of his (perhaps a difficult period of his life, perhaps a downcast moment), "lapses" into desperation. Therefore, it is certainly possible for a faithful to despair. Actually, as Kierkegaard said, it is common and maybe even unavoidable for all of us to despair! (unavoidable because, to use Kierkegaard's terminology, each of us has a created self, which compares itself with the uncreated God.) But there faith comes to the rescue. What is important, is that through faith we try to recover the true reasons of hope, and resist completely giving in to desperation. And this is all the more important, once we consider the destructiveness of the sin of despair.

In itself, there is no greater sin than hating God; but since per spem revocamur a malis et introducimur in bona prosequenda (ST, II-II, q.20, a.3, "through hope we are removed from evils, and we are induced to seek for good things"), conversely, not having hope at all (as in despair) induces us into repeated and most grave sins, as Paul said in Eph 4:19. In a sense, therefore, there is no greater sin than despair: despair robs man of his humanity. Despair generates - we could say - a sort of progressive environmental pollution.


These are the words that Dante puts at the entrance of Hell. The message is clear: where all hope is left out -- there, it is Hell.

At this point, an interesting question is certainly, Where does this despair come from? What is its origin? As I wrote above, despair being a disposition, or an "appetite", there may be several secondary causes to it. For example, stressful or unexpected situations, putting our faith to the test. But there is also a very common cause for despair, one that gives raise to attitudes like the tedium vitae, an attitude of laziness, boredom, slothfulness or being apathetic, that causes us to loose interest in life itself. This is what has also been called the "don't-care feeling". I shall call this cause with its Latin name, acedia. It is thinking of acedia that I decided to insert a picture of Albrecht Dürer's enigmatic engraving "Melencolia I" above².

And indeed despair does arise from acedia. In fact, hope is hope in something that is difficult, but possible to obtain. Despair, on the other hand, is the attitude that believes that it will be impossible for one to obtain the things that should be hoped for. But the more one is downcast, or filled with sloth, the more it will be difficult for him to avoid despair. This slothfulness is the contrary of the joy that the believer has all rights to have: as Aquinas puts it, homo in tristitiis constitutus non de facili aliqua magna et jucunda cogitat, sed solum tristia. (ST, II-II, q.20, a.4, "a man who is full of sorrow does not easily think of great and joyful things, but only of sad things.")

Take Qo 10:18:

בעצלתים ימך המקרה ובשׁפלות ידים ידלף הבית׃

That is, "By slothfulness (indolence, עצלה, ‛atslâh) the roof sinks in, and by idleness of the hands the house leaks."
עצלה is the feminine form of עצל, ‛âtsêl, the slothful, sluggard, about whom see e.g. Pr 13:4:

מתאוה ואין נפשׁו עצל ונפשׁ חרצים תדשׁן׃

That is, "The soul of the slothful desires, and gets nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be satisfied."³
The slothful may even have faith, that is, desire of knowing God and getting happiness, but his slothfulness renders this desire ineffective and useless; in other words, desperate.

Acedia is then something that blocks our desires, even desires of good things. In particular, acedia destroys spiritual life: where once there was joy in God, there is now nothing, or at most sorrow. What is destroyed is our creativity, our hopes, our potential of being full human beings: with acedia, we are reduced to a sense of helplessness and uselessness. In this sense, acedia is the opposite of charity.

So, how does one recover from acedia? By looking at its opposite, charity. A life lived in charity is a life where slothfulness has no place, and it is in charity, in openness to God and to our fellow human beings, that our God-given gifts are free to come out. But let's not mistake the Christian caritas for "human charity": true charity strictly depends on the intimate relation we are able to build with God; essentially, charity is friendship, but first of all friendship toward God. The more we relate to God, the more we relate to man and its meaning; the more we relate to God, the less boredom, tedium, and despair will be able to affect us. Aquinas rightly says that quanto magis cogitamus de bonis spiritualibus, tanto magis nobis placentia redduntur, ex quo cessat acedia. (ST, II-II, q.35, a.1, "The more we think about spiritual goods, the more pleasing they become to us, and from this sloth dies away.")

A few words to conclude then.

A theology of hope always starts from faith, and to faith must always return. But faith can eventually be destroyed by attitudes like slothfulness, or acedia, and despair. It is despair that brings us to an halt, that stops us from looking forward and thinking high, it is despair that carries with it that nihilistic "don't-care feeling". Despairing should not be seen as an inescapable, ultimate sickness, as an existential condemnation of man: it can and perhaps it will occur to us, but it should and can be resisted; and the way to resist and contrast it is through what could be called as the real human activity, the real charity, the source of hope, the action upon which all other actions depend: seeking to deepen our relationship with God.

It is through that, that our hope may become a truly theological, and therefore transformative, hope.

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Footnotes

¹ I have translated ἀπαλγέω as to become apathetic because this seems to render well its origin from the verb ἀλγέω, to suffer, plus the particle ἀπό, denoting separation, or cessation. The BDAG explains ἀπαλγέω as "to be so injured that one is not bothered by the implications of what one is doing, become callous, dead to feeling, without a sense of right and wrong", which fits quite nicely with the idea and consequences of hopelessness. Cmp. also Eph 2:12, where the Ephesians are described as ἐλπίδα μὴ ἔχοντες καὶ ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, that is, having no hope and without God in the world.

² Seeing Melencolia I as the personification of melancholy is a popular theory, due to the extensive research of the art historian Erwin Panovsky, but other explanations have also been proposed. For an example, see The Relativity of Albrecht Dürer, by D.R. Finkelstein. It is fair to add that melancholy, as intended by Dürer, was probably not to be conceived in a completely negative way: as the comment at http://www.wfu.edu/art/pc/pc-durer-melencolia.html says, "melancholy was a divine gift. It could be dangerous, but also capable of leading a person into greatness. It was the delicate balance between madness and genius." In the context of this post, I simply take the engraving as a powerful way to visually stress the impact of the dark component inherent in such inclinations as acedia.

³ חרץ, chârûts, is here translated as "diligent", and this is perhaps not a very clear translation; the word comes from the verb חרץ, chârats (sorry for the missing vocalization), meaning cut, sharpen, decide. Often the opposition between the sluggard and חרץ is one of slackness versus work, as, for example, in Pr 10:4, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich"; and the root of the word, sharpen, points to sharpness and activity, characteristics of the "diligent". There is possibly also a suggestion to another meaning of חרץ , i.e. gold. Let me also mention the beautiful translation of the Vulgate: vult et non vult piger anima autem operantium inpinguabitur, where that vult et non vult renders very well the inner movement of the piger, contrasted, according to the above, to the diligent/operans.

This is the fifth and final post commenting on the article The daybreak of the new creation: Christ's resurrection in recent theology by G. Hunsinger (links to post 1, post 2, post 3 and post 4). In these notes I shall briefly review the position of some theologians who stressed the importance of eschatology in the interpretation of Christ's resurrection.

Let's then begin with a quotation from Moltmann that seems to capture the gist of what is being discussed (emphasis mine):

Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 7)

This passage occurs in the first pages of Theology of Hope, where Moltmann tries to explain what Christian hope really is. "[F]aith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man." This is a restlessness based on the recognition, on the one hand, of the reality of the creatural, historical order; and, on the other hand, of the existence of promises, of a future of that reality, centered on Jesus Christ. But let's proceed in order.

For Jürgen Moltmann, one needs to focus on the key difference, or contradiction, between the events of the Cross, and of the Resurrection. The Cross brings death, the Resurrection brings eternal life. Therefore, one is forced to view resurrection as an event which is unique in kind: a "history-making event". But if resurrection is linked to eternal life, it also needs to bring about a complete reconsideration of what history is:

[resurrection] breaks the power of history and is itself the end of history (Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, p. 214)

When we discuss whether resurrection is an historical fact then, we are compelled to review our own definition of history. History "according to the world", so to speak, could well apply to the death on the cross; but resurrection, being an "apocalyptic happening" (i.e. something revelatory, and revelatory of an eschatological future grounded in God's promises) needs to be seen in other terms. Christ's resurrection makes history, rather than viceversa (emphasis original):

The raising of Christ is then to be called "historic", not because it took place in the history to which other categories of some sort provide a key, but it is to be called historic because, by pointing the way for future events, it makes history in which we can and must live. It is historic, because it discloses an eschatological future (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 167-78).

This is then a "third way" in the interpretation of the resurrection event. Let's see this in an Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis fashion:

If one takes a historical approach to history, Resurrection becomes at best an inward and subjectivist experience, one that can only be seen through the eyes of faith, leaving historicity completely aside. Is resurrection "real" then? It is, as long as one defines reality as what is real to him/herself.

If, on the other hand, one takes a "theological view of history", theology confines itself to being meaningful only to its adherents:

But the Church - including theology - is neither the religion of this or that society, nor yet is it a sect. It can neither be required to adapt itself to the view of reality which is generally binding in society at the moment, nor may it be expected to present itself as the arbitrary jargon of an exclusive group and to exist only for believers. (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 169)

This is a key statement, and it would be extremely interesting, from both the point of view of the sociologist and of the believer, to try and evaluate to what extent we find it to be true in our own society, Church vision, and experience.

So, a third way comes forward, one that sees resurrection as standing "directly within the special horizon of prophetic and apocalyptic expectations":

Thus the specialist's question as to the historical reality of the resurrection - "what can I know?" - points him on to the neighbouring questions , "what am I to do?" and "what may I hope for? What future horizon of possibilities and dangers is opened up by past history?" To put the question of the resurrection in exclusively historical terms is to alienate the texts of the Easter narrative. (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 169)

This eschatology is centered on hope, and hope is hope for a new creation. But hope in this new creation is nothing else than "hope for the future of Jesus Christ". Now, Hunsinger questions where the accent was meant to fall here: was it a hope for the future of Jesus Christ, or the future of Jesus Christ? As Hunsinger has it,

It would be one thing for Christ to be only the firstfruits of some benefit other than himself (in this case, of the new creation), but quite another for the benefits to be inseparable from his person. In that case, union and communion with Christ would be eternal life itself, and participatio Christi would involve more than participation in a future of which he was merely the first instance. (Hunsinger, art. cit., p. 175)

Does the new creation occur in Christ, or just through Christ? Here we touch upon the problem of the definition of the model of salvation of Christian theology. Hunsinger says that Moltmann does not clarify whether Christ is to be seen merely as a prototype of the new creation (the future of Jesus Christ), or rather the center (the future of Jesus Christ). How is Christ's resurrection linked to soteriology? Speaking of Jesus as the "prototype of the new creation" somewhat reminds one of exemplarist notions of salvation. But, at least in the Introduction to his Theology of Hope, Moltmann seems clear in pointing to the centrality of Jesus in Christian eschatology (emphasis original):

Christian eschatology does not speak of the future as such. It sets out from a definite reality in history and announces the future of that reality, its future possibilities and its power over the future. Christian eschatology speaks of Jesus Christ and his future. It recognizes the reality of the raising of Jesus and proclaims the future of the risen Lord. Hence the question whether all statements about the future are grounded in the person and history of Jesus Christ provides it with the touchstone by which to distinguish the spirit of eschatology from that of utopia. (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 3)

Clearly a more detailed presentation of the relationship between resurrection and the atonement is needed. But it seems here that only a future "grounded in the person and history of Jesus Christ" (and his history does include the atoning events of death and resurrection) captures what Moltmann regards as true Christian eschatology.

Finally, two quick observations: first, Moltmann "recognizes the reality of the raising of Jesus" (with the additional qualifications mentioned above); second, the future Moltmann speaks about is never a future detached from reality and history: on the contrary, "it sets out from a definite reality in history". In other words, it is really the future of this world. Thus, eschatology becomes the source of Christian orthopraxy: Christians behave in this world with the eschatological goal of transforming it, "in expectation of a divine transformation". As Richard Bauckham has it in his Preface to Theology of Hope,

The Church's ultimate hope does not exclude the more proximate hopes that enable change in the historical figure; on the contrary, it positively inspires and sustains them. (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. xiii).

This sheds some light on the nature of Christian mission, and we would do well to measure our own actions according to our understanding of the importance and relevance of Christian eschatology.

Let's now move on to briefly consider some of the views of Hans Frei.

For Frei as well, resurrection is a unique event. But Frei comments that, since by definition resurrection transcends history, history per se cannot confirm resurrection. History could at most disconfirm it. As a corollary, as long as history does not disconfirm Christ's resurrection, we should not be tied too much to the results of historical research, and faith does not depend on them. It matters relatively little then, whether we think with Wright that the historicity of the resurrection is the most probable option, or whether we think with Frei himself that historical evidence to the resurrection is too limited to generate agreement (see Frei's quote in post 4 of this series): as long as "the bones of Jesus Christ are not discovered in Palestine", so to speak, the method is safe.

Let just mention in passing here that this "weak" attitude of Frei's toward history has attracted some criticism from theologians more attached to various kinds of biblical historicism. For example, Alister McGrath wrote:

Might not Christology rest upon a mistake? How can we rest assured that there is a justifiable transition from the preaching of Jesus to the preaching about Jesus? (McGrath, An Evangelical Evaluation of Postliberalism, in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation, p. 43)

But Frei would respond that this attitude of attaching "historical reality" to the resurrection at all costs superimposes an alien framework on the biblical texts, a framework that forces the idea of "modern history" onto the biblical narrative. There is an illuminating passage related to this in one of Frei's unpublished pieces (available here):

If we say, for example, that Jesus is the Christ, or if we say simply Jesus Christ, what we mean by that is exactly the story of the enactment of his life and death and resurrection. He is not Jesus Christ apart from that story of his. It is precisely in that story that he is the Christ. [...]
But now if you go on from there and say, ‘What about the historical facts here?’ – what facts? Do we know what the facts are outside of the description? Remember what facts were for the empiricists: facts for the empiricist were always those separate occurrences, quite apart from the description, quite apart from the story itself – those separate historical, empirical occurrences which could be confirmed or disconfirmed by independent evidence. What are the facts that are being referred to here? They are facts that we cannot have apart from the story. (Frei, On Interpreting the Christian Story - The 10th Annual Greenhoe Lectureship, 1976)

And, specifically to the point being discussed in this post,

The resurrection is a fact the truth of which Christians affirm even though they have to say that the nature of it is not such that we are in a position to verify it, because even though we affirm it we do not think of it under the category of an ordinary empirical datum; it is a fact which is rendered effective to us through the story and we cannot have it without the story in which it is given to us.(Frei, ibid.)

Hunsinger then points to a curious ontological argument used by Frei to apparently "demonstrate" that Christ's resurrection could not but happen. Frei writes:

How can he who constitutes the very definition of life be conceived of as the opposite of what he defines? To think of him as dead is the equivalent of not thinking of him at all. (Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ, p. 148)

It is clear that the truth of the statement that Jesus is "he who constitutes the very definition of life" needs to accepted for the argument to work. But the truth of that statement can only be accepted by one who believes in what the gospels say about Jesus. If one doubts this premise and questions this vision of Jesus' being (for example, reading Jesus as simply a prophet), then the argument immediately fails. However, the argument could be used in a more limited way: if one does accept the gospels in believing that Jesus is indeed "life", then one is also forced to accept that Jesus could not die, i.e. one can not just take part of the gospel and leave resurrection behind. In this limited sense, according to Frei's argument, resurrection would be a necessity indeed.

For Karl Barth, as for the other theologians considered here, resurrection entails historical reality:

It is impossible to erase the bodily character of the resurrection of Jesus and his existence as the Resurrected (Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2, p. 448)

But Barth stressed transcendency in the importance of seeing resurrection as applied to the whole of Jesus' identity: resurrection means elevating the entire saving history of Jesus into eternity. Thus, Jesus who lived in this time becomes the Lord of time, always present. Jesus is then, to use Barth's own words, "the Contemporary of all human beings".

On the other hand, Barth thought little of modern critical inquiry. A famous quotation from Church Dogmatics is in order:

We must dismiss and resist to the very last any idea of the inferiority or untrustworthiness or even worthlessness of a ‘non-historical’ depiction and narration of history. This is in fact only a ridiculous and middle-class habit of the modern Western mind which is supremely phantastic in its chronic lack of imaginative phantasy, and hopes to rid itself of its complexes through suppression. This habit has really no claim to the dignity and validity which it pretends. It acts as if only ‘historical’ history were genuine history, and ‘non-historical’ false. The obvious result is to banish from the portrayal and understanding of history all immediacy of history to God on the pretext of its non-historicity, dissolving it into a bare idea! When this is done, the horizon of history necessarily becomes what it is desired to be—a highly unreal history, a more or less explicit myth, in the poor light of which the historical, what is supposed to be the only genuine history, can only seem to be an ocean of tedious inconsequence and therefore demonic chaos. We must not on any account take this course. In no way is it necessary or obligatory to maintain this rigid attitude to the ‘non-historical’ reality, conception and depiction of history. On the contrary, it is necessary and obligatory to realize the fact and manner that in genuine history the ‘history’ and the ‘non-historical’ accompany each other and belong together. (Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1)

In fact, for Barth history is really God's (and not man's own) history, and faith really consists "in an objective encounter with the Crucified and Risen One" (III/2, p. 449) rather than in assurances brought about by historians. It is this encounter that is the foundation of the belief in resurrection. In the resurrection Jesus

reveals himself as the One who was and is and will be [reconciliation of the world with God, the daybreak of the new creation, the beginning of the new world] in his life and death". (Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 145)

In other words, Jesus is savior throughout his history, and not in the resurrection only. So, resurrection might in a sense appear as played down; but, on the other hand, it is the key revelatory event:

The resurrection can give nothing new to Him who is eternal Word of the Father; but it makes visible what is proper to Him, His glory. (Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, p. 111)

Christ reconciles the world with God; but it is only through this revelatory event that is Christ's resurrection that the now reconciled world can respond to Christ and subjectively appropriate this reconciliation.

Being clearly and unacceptably detached from reality, I learned only today that there exists a "Front de Libération des Nains de Jardin" (Garden Dwarf Liberation Front), founded no less than 5 years ago or so.

This organization, in its Italian incarnation (called "Movimento Autonomo per la Liberazione delle Anime da Giardino", a name aptly stressing that the soteriological act affects the souls of the garden creatures, and not just the body), hit the news today when 4 adepts were caught by the police while trying to remove 14 garden dwarfs. According to the news report, the liberation procedure usually contemplates bringing the creatures in the woods and smashing them so that their soul could be set free.

One is easily tempted to make fun of these things. Well, sometimes temptations should not be resisted. But perhaps these actions have great theological and political significance. For, are we not all dwarfs waiting to be saved from a garden where, having been nailed to the ground to live in idleness and exposed to unclement nature, the gardener treats us with contempt and dogs dare pollute us with unclean substances?

No, we are not. But let's hope that bodies and souls: ours, and of those adhering to this and other "Liberation Fronts", be liberated nevertheless, from the meaninglessness caused by the loss of true human identity. From that, Libera nos, Domine.

In this post I shall have a look at some biblical references to Galilee; starting from these references, I shall then try to consider the symbolic relevance of Galilee. This post is a bit different from others of mine, as it will be less "academic" and more "lived" in some of its parts.

The image to the right is taken from http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CP051GOSPELMAPS.htm.

Literally, Galilee means in Hebrew a "circuit", perhaps around Kedesh Nephtali (a city that Eusebius places 20 miles from Tyre, near Paneas, i.e. Caesarea Philippi), the "city of refuge" mentioned in Jos 21:32.

Actually, Galilee was probably originally the territory of Nephtali; and Jdg 1:33 tells us that Nephtali was not able to drive out from it its former inhabitants:

Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth-anath, so they lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and of Beth-anath became subject to forced labor for them. (Jdg 1:33)

Later, by Solomon's time, Galilee also included the territory of Asher, who also settled to live together with the original (Phoenician) inhabitants of the region:

Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco, or the inhabitants of Sidon or of Ahlab or of Achzib or of Helbah or of Aphik or of Rehob, so the Asherites lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not drive them out. (Jdg 1:31-32)

Acco (modern Acre) is shown on the picture on the right as Ptolemais; it is at the north side of the bay where modern Haifa (at the south end of the bay) is built.

This is then a story of tolerance, of Jews and Gentiles living side by side, and one can't help thinking about how modern Galilee and its surroundings do not seem to live up to their history.

Galilee was given by Solomon to Hiram, king of Tyre, as a reward for Hiram's contribution to the building of the Temple (1 Kings 9:11-14). The biblical account tells us that Hiram did not like the gift though ("What kind of cities are these?"), a gift consisting, to be precise, of 20 cities. He therefore called the land "Cabul", after the name of one of those 20 cities (Cabul, modern Kabul, ca. 8 miles east of Acco); Cabul means "displeasing" (in Phoenician - cf. Josephus, Antiquities, VIII.5, "[The name Cabul,] if it be interpreted according to the language of the Phoenicians, denotes what does not please"), or "good for nothing". 2 Chr 8:2 says that "Solomon rebuilt the cities that Hiram had given to him, and settled the people of Israel in them", hinting that Hiram eventually returned the gift.

In Jesus' time, Palestine was divided (cf. Acts 9:31), into the three provinces of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. Our district was named "Galilee of the Gentiles", according to Isaiah 9:1 and Matthew 4:15, no doubt referring to the fact that it remained occupied by non-Jews inhabitants. We normally map the expression "Galilee of the Gentiles" with modern Upper Galilee.

The Gentile character of Galilee was well recognised, and despised, by the southern people of Israel: cf. for example John 1:46, "Nathanael said to him, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'" and John 7:52, "Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee". Which is wrong: Jonah is said in 2 Kings 14:25 to be from Gath-Hepher, placed by Jerome some 2 miles from Sepphoris on the Tiberias road; and Elisha is said in 1 Kings 19:16 to be from Abel-Meholah, placed by Jerome and Eusebius some miles south of Beth-shean, in lower Galilee. A witness to how prejudices and sectarian considerations often lead us into error and into forgetting our own history.

This suspicious attitude may also have been originated by the fact that at the time of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon the region was colonized with pagans, cf. Ezra 4:2, after the Israelite population had been taken captive to Assyria by King Tiglath Pileser III (cf. 2 Kings 15:29). What is sure is that the Galilean dialect sounded strange to "purer" ears, cf. Mark 14:70 and Matthew 26:73, "After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, 'Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.'".

Josephus (himself a Galilean) describes Galilee in The Wars of the Jews, III.3 and confirms that Galilee is "encompassed with so many nations of foreigners"; and that "their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle."

We may well compare this beautiful and fertile outlook with the barren uplands of Judah. Acts 12:20 tells us that the cities of Tyre and Sidon depended on "the king's [i.e., Herod's] country [i.e., Galilee] for food". This is something we can - as it has probably been - interpret in a symbolic way. The message of Jesus starts from Galilee, ends in Galilee, and thrives in Galilee much more than in and around Jerusalem. It is in Galilee that we are asked to see the "universally rich and fruitful" soil, even more than in Jerusalem; it is here that also the "most slothful takes pains in cultivation". That's not a rejection of the original call: on the contrary, Gentile lands really depend on Galilee "for food".

It must not be by chance that most of the apostles were from Galilee. Cf. the Pentecost, Acts 2:7, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?" Talmud Bab. Erubin (quoted in Gill) asserts: "the men of Judah, who were careful of their language, their law was confirmed in their hands; the men of Galilee, who were not careful of their language, their law was not confirmed in their hands." That's certainly an ironic passage, if we put it close to the Pentecost episode above!

Around 160 CE, 1 Mac 5:14ff tells us that Galilean Jews lived a difficult relationship with their Gentile neighbors: so Simon "liberated" the Galileans and took "the Jews of Galilee and Arbatta, with their wives and children, and all they possessed, and led them to Judea with great rejoicing". This "escape from Galilee" notwithstanding (an escape originated again in a "nationalistic" context), there is some abundance of Jewish sources telling us that, when the Messiah finally appears in Israel, it will do so in Galilee, not elsewhere. The following is a list of quotations taken from http://www.matsati.com/Jewish%20Rabbis%20and%20Historians%20Reveal%20the%20Messiah.doc:

• "And you Bethlehem-Ephrathah who are too little to be counted among the thousands of the house of Judah, from you in My name shall come forth the Messiah who is to be ruler in Israel and whose name has been called from eternity, from the days of old." [Targum Jonathan on Mikah 5:1 in the Tanakh]
• "The King Messiah... from where does he come forth? From the royal city of Bethlehem in Judah." [Jerusalem Talmud, Berakoth 5a]
• "The Messiah will appear in the land of Galilee." [Zohar I, Bereshith, 119a]
• "The Messiah... will arise in the land of Galilee… the Messiah shall reveal himself in the land of Galilee because in this part of the Holy Land the desolation (Babylonian exile) first began, therefore he will manifest himself there first." [Zohar III, Shemoth 7b, 8b, 220a; Otzar Midrashim, 466]

The significance of Galilee rests then also on the fact that, on the one hand, it is still Israel's land, i.e. the land of the people elected by God; but, on the other hand, it is really border land, a place where we are all forced to be confronted with "the other within us". It is a land where the importance of the road is paramount; it is a highway, a place of transit: "connected with harbors on the Phoenician seabord, with Egypt on the South, with Damascus on the Northeast, with markets of the East by the great caravan routes." In other words, connected with everybody, with the world. There's no hiding from encountering - and living with - the Gentile here. There we are put, there we sin, there we are punished, there we are finally restored: that's the full human path that God has chosen for man.

So, from Galilee one departs (Mark 1:9, "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan"), and to Galilee one has to eventually go (Mark 16:7, "But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you."; cf. also Mark 14:28, "But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee"). Jesus precedes us (Προάγει ὑμᾶς) in Galilee, as he won't be content of appearing where we stand, in the middle of our standard expectations: he calls each one of us to move. This is the mission, having both inward and outward significance. So Galilee takes on a powerful, redactional theological meaning. Marxsen may then be right when he suggests (Mark, pp. 54-116) that all references to Galilee in Mark have to be read as redactional. As a last example, take Mark 7:31: "Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis." This describes an implausible journey - as Sidon is actually north of Tyre, while the Sea of Galilee is south-east - and it makes therefore much more sense to take it theologically rather than literally. So, the stories surrounding this episode have all to be seen as happening in Gentile regions; as such, again, they show a path to mission, and a mission not certainly limited to our "fellow believers". This was indeed one of the major concerns, and one very much shared with Pauline theology, of the author of the Second Gospel. May this be a concern of ours as well.

In discussing the Brunner-Barh debate, I will in this post refer to the book "Natural Theology", comprising "Nature and Grace" by Emil Brunner and "No!" by Karl Barth, Wipf and Stock, 2002.

The heart of the debate is whether one can attain knowledge of God "naturaliter" or whether, on the other hand, the grace of God is strictly required for that.

Barth is very clear in stating that there is no way to knowledge of God by way of human reason - in other words, there is absolutely no source of authority aside from the Word of God.

For Brunner instead, natural theology is the result of the theoretical (formal) possibility for man of "being addressed" by God (his ability to hear the Word of God). The actual (material) realization of this depends on Grace - hence, Brunner maintains, the traditional doctrine of sola gratia is not endangered by this conception of natural theology.

Behind this, there are other important points lurking in the background of the discussion:

• the Lutheran concept of "ordinances". In order to not let the world fall into chaos, God originally established some "ordinances", in the form of types of organization. Among them, State and matrimony. But holding this means in a way legitimizing these ordinances as "God-appointed". Now, Brunner and Barth have their debate in 1934, the year when Hitler went to power in Germany. There is then also Barth's fear that this type of "natural theology" could pave the way to a sort of divine recognition of Hitlerian forms of organization. (including "natural ordinances" like those of German race and nation.)
  
• On the other hand, these ordinances are a core part of the ethical system of especially Reformed theology. For Brunner, this has been so "from the beginning to the time of the Enlightenment". In particular,
  

  All attempts to operate with the concepts of love or with those of "law" or "commandment" without the help of the concept of ordinances, lead either to rationalistic social constructions (liberalistic doctrines of the State and matrimony) or to an uncertain attitude toward the ordinances of society as given factors, vacillating between acknowledgment and rejection. (Nature and Grace, V)
  

  This is what prompts Brunner to write that "the theologian's attitude to theologia naturalis decides the character of his ethics." But Barth founds his ethics directly on the hearing of God's commandments. (something that can be summarized in the slogan "let the Church be the Church".) What this brings about from the ethical standpoint, or rather does not completely solve, is obviously the need of criteria to determine whether the Church is really being herself, and not a reflection of our own conceptions.
  
• Key theological concepts like "Father", "Son", "Word", "Spirit", are, according to Brunner, all derived from the formal concept of imago Dei. God is a subject, man is a subject, and the two enter into relation through analogical concepts like those above. Denying this would be tantamount to resort to theological nominalism. (we would call the Father as "Father" not because analogically we see him as like a father, but because the Scripture calls him that way.) Barth redefines this concept of analogy by replacing the analogia entis with the analogia fidei (see below).
  
• The "manner" of the proclamation of God's message is influenced by how one sees the concept of imago Dei. As Brunner has it,
  

  the possibility of speaking of God and of proclaiming his Word at all, is the fact that God has made us in his image. [...] [M]an's undestroyed formal likeness to God is the objective possibility of the revelation of God in his "Word". (ib.)
  

  This has practical implications both within and without the community of believers. It determines how the Church announces her message (the theoretical foundation of communicating the message at all, to all), and also, more in general, the attitude toward the "unbelievers". Natural theology is seen by Brunner as "the possibility of a discussion pointing toward such evidence of the existence of God as we have". Here we find a key difference in tone with Roman Catholicism (see below).
  

Having briefly reviewed how the two Reformed theologians deal with the issue of natural theology, I'll have a quick look at some related views, but in the context of Roman Catholicism. One key accusation of Barth's toward Brunner is that he gives up with the Reformation and moves toward the adoption of Roman Catholic ideas.

Vatican Council I is very explicit in stating that God can be known by man with certitude (cf. Brunner's position instead), through reason, starting from creation. The same concept is repeated verbatim by Vatican Council II and by the Cathechism of the Catholic Church.

[S]ancta mater ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse (Vaticanum I, De Fide Catholica, II.7-9 - emphasis mine)

On the other hand, revelation, a free gift of God, is given to man so that he might know what cannot be known through reason only:

Non hac tamen de causa revelatio absolute necessaria dicenda est, sed quia Deus ex infinita bonitate sua ordinavit hominem ad finem supernaturalem, ad participanda scilicet bona divina, quae humanae mentis intelligentiam omnino superant. (Vaticanum I, De Fide Catholica, II.18-21 - emphasis mine)

Brunner then keeps being a reformed theologian here, as he clearly rejects what he calls the Catholic unrefracted thelogia naturalis, detachable from a theologia revelata. (Barth deems these definitions as not representative of the Catholic viewpoint, but in the light of e.g. the quotations above, taken from Catholic magisterium, I think they make it rather clear what Brunner is referring to.)

Having said this, there is nevertheless a clear point of contact between Catholicism and Brunner in the "practical implications" part mentioned above, or what Brunner calls "the significance of theologia naturalis for theology and the Church." The Cathechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states that

In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists. (CCC, 39)

That is, the existence of a still significant ("still", i.e. sin and error notwithstanding) imago Dei is seen as a pre-requisite for the missionary task of the Church. If man had not been given a way to detect God outside formal revelation (that is, through creation), if, to use Brunner's words, such a point of contact would not exist, missionary duties would be, at least theoretically, irrelevant or useless (which is not very biblical): a path that could easily lead to individualism and discharge of human responsibility. This is, I think, an important point. I find Barth's discussion of the issue passionate, and there is much to be commended in his statements that (emphasis original)

I have the impression that my sermons reach and "interest" my audience most when I least rely on anything to "correspond" to the Word of God already "being there," when I least rely on the "possibility" of proclaiming this Word, when I least rely on my ability to "reach" people by my rethoric, when on the contrary I allow my language to be formed and shaped and adapted as much as possible by what the text seems to be saying. (No!, VI)

and this may well be even also one of my (direct or indirect) experiences. But the point that seems to be debated here is not so much the personal attitude or capacity of the man/preacher, but rather the fact that the reason why there may be after all a penetration of the gospel into the hearts of the "audience" through my limited creatural words is that man has (and certainly not through a merit of his!) the capacity to relate to God "naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis".

On the other hand, leaving aside his repeated misquotation of Brunner, as he constantly replaces Brunner's Wortmächtigkeit ("capacity for words", or more generally speech) with the fairly different Offenbarungsmächtigkeit ("capacity for revelation"), Barth seems to hit the point when he perceives an inconsistency in Brunner's position of strictly holding to the Reformed ideas of sola scriptura - sola gratia, and at the same time to a natural knowledge of God, without being able or willing to clearly state the quality or [at least] potential truth of this knowledge - differently from Roman Catholiticism, and most likely just to avoid to fall into Roman Catholicism.

For what regards the concept of analogy as treated by Brunner, compare it with the Thomistic insight that divine names

cannot be purely equivocal, for we could not then make intelligible claims about God. Nor can they be purely univocal, for God's manner of existence and his relationship to his properties are sufficiently different from ours that the words must be used in somewhat different senses. Hence, the words we use of God must be analogical, used in different but related senses. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Medieval Theories of Analogy, 6-Aquinas)

Ultimately, the legitimate use of analogical terms has its roots in the fact that the imago Dei, for Aquinas, is really sharing of God's existence by participation.

On the other side we have Barth, where the Thomistic analogia entis is substituted by the analogia fidei (divine revelation is the only source for knowledge of God): in his case, the difference in meaning of words applied to both man and God is not metaphysical, but defined by their role in the narrative context. This is an idea that will eventually be taken later to its extremes in writers such as Derrida, who will blur any definite and fixed meaning, thus completely destroying - among other things - the whole concept of analogy.

In this post I shall provide a colored synopsis of Mk 3:22-30, Mt 12:22-32, Lk 11:14-23, the so-called Beelzebul story. After the synopsis, I shall then try to identify peculiar traits in each of the accounts, with the aim to consider whether one can think that one evangelist simply used the other(s) or whether, on the other hand, it would make more sense to posit the existence of an external tradition ("Q").

First of all, let me clarify that I'll assume Markan priority as established (I won't discuss it here and I shall take it for granted).

Color code of the synopsis (RGB values shown):

Mark: red (255,0,0)
Matthew: blue (0,0,255)
Luke: yellow (255,204,0)
Matthew + Mark: purple (128,0,128)
Matthew + Luke: green (0,128,0)
Mark + Luke: orange (255,128,0)
Matthew + Mark + Luke: brown (153,51,0)

Mt 12:22-32	Mk 3:22-30	Lk 11:14-23
22 Τότε προσηνέχθη αὐτῷ δαιμονιζόμενος τυφλὸς καὶ κωφός. καὶ ἐθεράπευσεν αὐτόν, ὥστε τὸν κωφὸν λαλεῖν καὶ βλέπειν. 23 καὶ ἐξίσταντο πάντες οἱ ὄχλοι καὶ ἔλεγον, Μήτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς Δαυίδ; 24 οἱ δὲ Φαρισαῖοι ἀκούσαντες εἶπον, Οὗτος οὐκ ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια εἰ μὴ ἐν τῷ Βεελζεβοὺλ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων. 25 εἰδὼς δὲ τὰς ἐνθυμήσεις αὐτῶν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Πᾶσα βασιλεία μερισθεῖσα καθ' ἑαυτῆς ἐρημοῦται, καὶ πᾶσα πόλις ἢ οἰκία μερισθεῖσα καθ' ἑαυτῆς οὐ σταθήσεται. 26 καὶ εἰ ὁ Σατανᾶς τὸν Σατανᾶν ἐκβάλλει, ἐφ' ἑαυτὸν ἐμερίσθη· πῶς οὖν σταθήσεται ἡ βασιλεία αὐτοῦ; 27 καὶ εἰ ἐγὼ ἐν Βεελζεβοὺλ ἐκβάλλω τὰ δαιμόνια, οἱ υἱοὶ ὑμῶν ἐν τίνι ἐκβάλλουσιν; διὰ τοῦτο αὐτοὶ κριταὶ ἔσονται ὑμῶν. 28 εἰ δὲ ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ ἐγὼ ἐκβάλλω τὰ δαιμόνια, ἄρα ἔφθασεν ἐφ' ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. 29 ἢ πῶς δύναταί τις εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ καὶ τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ ἁρπάσαι, ἐὰν μὴ πρῶτον δήσῃ τὸν ἰσχυρόν; καὶ τότε τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ διαρπάσει. 30 ὁ μὴ ὢν μετ' ἐμοῦ κατ' ἐμοῦ ἐστιν, καὶ ὁ μὴ συνάγων μετ' ἐμοῦ σκορπίζει. 31 Διὰ τοῦτο λέγω ὑμῖν, πᾶσα ἁμαρτία καὶ βλασφημία ἀφεθήσεται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἡ δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος βλασφημία οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται. 32 καὶ ὃς ἐὰν εἴπῃ λόγον κατὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ· ὃς δ' ἂν εἴπῃ κατὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ ἁγίου, οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ οὔτε ἐν τούτῳ τῷ αἰῶνι οὔτε ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι.	22 καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς οἱ ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων καταβάντες ἔλεγον ὅτι Βεελζεβοὺλ ἔχει, καὶ ὅτι ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια. 23 καὶ προσκαλεσάμενος αὐτοὺς ἐν παραβολαῖς ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς, Πῶς δύναται Σατανᾶς Σατανᾶν ἐκβάλλειν; 24 καὶ ἐὰν βασιλεία ἐφ' ἑαυτὴν μερισθῇ, οὐ δύναται σταθῆναι ἡ βασιλεία ἐκείνη· 25 καὶ ἐὰν οἰκία ἐφ' ἑαυτὴν μερισθῇ, οὐ δυνήσεται ἡ οἰκία ἐκείνη σταθῆναι. 26 καὶ εἰ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἀνέστη ἐφ' ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἐμερίσθη, οὐ δύναται στῆναι ἀλλὰ τέλος ἔχει. 27 ἀλλ' οὐ δύναται οὐδεὶς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ εἰσελθὼν τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ διαρπάσαι ἐὰν μὴ πρῶτον τὸν ἰσχυρὸν δήσῃ, καὶ τότε τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ διαρπάσει. 28 Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πάντα ἀφεθήσεται τοῖς υἱοῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὰ ἁμαρτήματα καὶ αἱ βλασφημίαι ὅσα ἐὰν βλασφημήσωσιν· 29 ὃς δ' ἂν βλασφημήσῃ εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔχει ἄφεσιν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀλλὰ ἔνοχός ἐστιν αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος 30 ὅτι ἔλεγον, Πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον ἔχει.	14 Καὶ ἦν ἐκβάλλων δαιμόνιον, καὶ αὐτὸ ἦν κωφόν· ἐγένετο δὲ τοῦ δαιμονίου ἐξελθόντος ἐλάλησεν ὁ κωφός. καὶ ἐθαύμασαν οἱ ὄχλοι· 15 τινὲς δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν εἶπον, Ἐν Βεελζεβοὺλ τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια· 16 ἕτεροι δὲ πειράζοντες σημεῖον ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ἐζήτουν παρ' αὐτοῦ. 17 αὐτὸς δὲ εἰδὼς αὐτῶν τὰ διανοήματα εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Πᾶσα βασιλεία ἐφ' ἑαυτὴν διαμερισθεῖσα ἐρημοῦται, καὶ οἶκος ἐπὶ οἶκον πίπτει. 18 εἰ δὲ καὶ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐφ' ἑαυτὸν διεμερίσθη, πῶς σταθήσεται ἡ βασιλεία αὐτοῦ; ὅτι λέγετε ἐν Βεελζεβοὺλ ἐκβάλλειν με τὰ δαιμόνια. 19 εἰ δὲ ἐγὼ ἐν Βεελζεβοὺλ ἐκβάλλω τὰ δαιμόνια, οἱ υἱοὶ ὑμῶν ἐν τίνι ἐκβάλλουσιν; διὰ τοῦτο αὐτοὶ ὑμῶν κριταὶ ἔσονται. 20 εἰ δὲ ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ ἐγὼ ἐκβάλλω τὰ δαιμόνια, ἄρα ἔφθασεν ἐφ' ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. 21 ὅταν ὁ ἰσχυρὸς καθωπλισμένος φυλάσσῃ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ αὐλήν, ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἐστὶν τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ· 22 ἐπὰν δὲ ἰσχυρότερος αὐτοῦ ἐπελθὼν νικήσῃ αὐτόν, τὴν πανοπλίαν αὐτοῦ αἴρει ἐφ' ᾗ ἐπεποίθει, καὶ τὰ σκῦλα αὐτοῦ διαδίδωσιν. 23 ὁ μὴ ὢν μετ' ἐμοῦ κατ' ἐμοῦ ἐστιν, καὶ ὁ μὴ συνάγων μετ' ἐμοῦ σκορπίζει.

It is sometimes not easy to decide how atomic one has to go in coloring sentences; for example, I labeled Mk 3:25 as mostly "red" (that is, Mark only), and Mt 12:25c as mostly "blue" (that is, Matthew only), while these verse actually share a lot of commonality between them, compared to the "yellow" (Luke only) 11:17: so, another choice meant to highlight this fact (Mark and Matthew somewhat against Luke) would have been to color Mk 3:25 and Mt 12:25c with "purple" (Mark + Matthew).

These are the distinctive features of each gospel:

Matthew	Mark	Luke
Audience: Pharisees. The demon-possessed man is blind and deaf (Luke has deaf only). The audience asks: "can this be the Son of David?" Every "city" divided against itself cannot stand. (divided "house" and "kingdom" are present also in Mk and Lk.) "If I cast out demons by the spirit of God..." Blasphemy will be forgiven "to men"; words "against the son of man" will be forgiven. The Lukan parallel is found in Luke 12:10 (καὶ πᾶς ὃς ἐρεῖ λόγον εἰς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ· τῷ δὲ εἰς τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα βλασφημήσαντι οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται.) Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, "either in this age, or in the age to come".	Audience: scribes. There is no foreword to the passage, except for a typically Markan unreverential portrait of Jesus in Mark 3:21, where Jesus is said to be "out of his mind" (ἔλεγον γὰρ ὅτι ἐξέστη). Jesus "has Beelzebul". Jesus speaks to the audience "in parables". (in Mt and Lk instead Jesus "knows the thoughts" of the audience) Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven "to the children of men". Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will "never" be forgiven. Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit is guilty of "an eternal sin". This discourse was uttered by Jesus because the audience said he had "an unclean spirit". An alternative interpretation of v.30 is to see it as referring to the previous v.29 (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit): in this case the audience would have been guilty of that sin.	Audience: "some of them". (i.e. some of the people who marveled when Jesus healed the demon-possessed man, v.14.) "Others" (than the audience) were trying to tempt Jesus continuously seeking (imperfect ἐζήτουν) "a sign from heaven". Peculiar expressions "οἶκος ἐπὶ οἶκον πίπτει", perhaps expansion and consequence of the previous statement about the division of a kingdom. "If I cast out demons by the finger of God..." "The" strong man (articular), cf. the anarthrous "a strong man" of Mk and Mt. The strong man is "fully armed" (καθωπλισμένος, perfect passive participle), only here in the NT. "His goods / possessions" (τὰ ὑπάρχοντα) are safe, cf. instead "his tools" of Mk and Mt, while he continuously (φυλάσσῃ, present tense) guards his palace. When "the stronger man" (articular) comes, he takes away the full armor "in which he trusted" and distributes "the spoils" (cf. "goods" of v.21). There is no discussion on the "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" here (it is in Luke 12:10 though).

Material where Mark is not the middle term, i.e. material common to Matthew and Luke against Mark (but still not quite "double tradition"), is highlighted in the synopsis above by the green color:

• The foreword to the passage, where a demon-oppressed man is brought to Jesus. Matthew and Luke agree that he was mute; for Matthew he was also blind.
• Jesus knows the thoughts of the audience.
• By whom do "your children" cast out demons?
• Whoever is not with me is against me. (but cf. Mark 9:40, featuring the milder ὃς γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν καθ' ἡμῶν, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν, paralleled in Luke 9:50b: the account of the one casting out demons in Jesus' name.)

As with all material where Mark is not the middle term, and that is coherently part of a "triple tradition" narrative, it is difficult to think that an external source ("Q") was used. Take Matthew 12:27-28 and the almost identical Luke 11:19-20: they make good sense when read together with the previous verses, but it is more clumsy to think of a separate source containing, out of context, just the words "And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the spirit/finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

There is then the related point of the "minor agreements". These are also reflected in the "green" material; but now the focus is on the fact that these agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark, totally embedded into the common narrative sequence, seem to presuppose some dependency of Luke on Matthew or viceversa, something that by definition goes squarely against the Q theory. For example, take Matthew 12:26, Mark 3:26 and Luke 11:18 ("If Satan is divided against himself..."): this verse seems to belong to typical triple tradition material, but in Matthew and Luke we also have literal agreement on the question "πῶς [Matthew only: οὖν] σταθήσεται ἡ βασιλεία αὐτοῦ;", not found in Mark. First, how would one explain this agreement, if not by presupposing a dependence of Luke on Matthew or viceversa? Second, it is interesting that Matthew has οὖν, omitted by Luke. This conjunction makes excellent sense when in Matthew v.26 follows v.25 (where Matthew by the way exactly repeats the form σταθήσεται of v.26), to express logical consequence. But Luke omits the Matthean v.25b, substituting it for the cryptic καὶ οἶκος ἐπὶ οἶκον πίπτει: in this case, οὖν would make much less sense, and so it is also omitted. But in this case the logical consequence of the question, its raison d'etre in the narrative, is somewhat lost. It therefore seems that Luke shows a dependency on Matthew here.

Note that there is very little "orange", i.e. agreement between Mark and Luke against Matthew. On the other hand, there is a much more substantial amount of "purple", i.e. agreement between Mark and Matthew against Luke. This could point to the fact that it would not really be necessary to posit a direct influence of Mark toward Luke. All that Luke needs is basically Matthew's account.

Luke has apparently reworked the order of some sentences. For example, the "word against the son of men" and the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that cannot be forgiven" pericope has been moved to Luke 12:10. It may be noteworthy that the Ethiopic version (written between the 4th and 5th centuries) adds there the Matthean "neither in this world, nor in that which is to come".

Matthew 12:24 (the Pharisees think Jesus is casting out demons by the prince of demons) is a doublet of Matthew 9:34. (omitted by Codex Bezae)

Luke, with his mention of the ἰσχυρότερος, makes explicit what is only implicit in Mark and Matthew, i.e. a hint to the "stronger man" (Jesus) announced by John the Baptist: see Matthew 3:11, ὁ δὲ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἰσχυρότερός μού ἐστιν, Mark 1:7, Ἔρχεται ὁ ἰσχυρότερός μου ὀπίσω μου, and the same Luke in 3:16, ἔρχεται δὲ ὁ ἰσχυρότερός μου. Making explicit what is implicit is often linked to derived, rather than original, literature.

The "Son of David" expression of Matthew 12:23 seems typical of Matthew: referring to Jesus, it occurs 4 times in his gospel (9:27, 12:23, 20:30, 20:31), only once in Mark's (12:35) and never in Luke's. If one believes that this expression is part of the original account, then this is a strong hint to its Matthean origin, ruling out Q. What seems clear is that Matthew hints here to Isaiah 35:5, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped". Speaking of typical Matthean words in these initial verses, cf. also τότε in Mt 12:22 - τότε is found 89x in Matthew, 6x in Mark, and 14x in Luke.

Note the ἐφ' ᾗ ἐπεποίθει (in which he trusted) of Luke 11:22, to refer to the "full armor" of the strong man. This would seem to hint to a favorite theme of Luke's, namely that of riches and materialism. It this is so, then the expression could indicate that Luke has personally reworked part of (Matthew's) account, rather than simply relying on an external source (like Q).

Let's finally turn to Matthew 12:28 and Luke 11:20, a place where both evangelists agree verbatim, except for a single word: Matthew has "by the spirit of God", while Luke has "by the finger of God". It has been said that Luke, given his interest in the Spirit, would not have changed "spirit" to "finger"; therefore, the Lukan version would be reflecting the original (Q), while Matthew's would be an interpolation.

For what regards ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ: the "finger of God" (used by Luke in 11:20) is found in the entire Bible 4 times:

• Ex 8:19, Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.
• Ex 31:18, And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
• Dt 9:10, And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.
• Lk 11:20, But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

For what regards ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ: the "spirit of God" (used by Matthew in 12:28) is found in the entire Bible 26 times (I won't list them all here). Of these 26, twice in Matthew (3:16, at his baptism Jesus saw "the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him", and in our passage, 12:28), and zero in either Mark or Luke. (it seems on the other hand a relatively popular expression in Paul, 6x.) In the OT, Gen 41:38, Ex 31:3 and Ex 35:31 directly apply the expression to Moses, and Matthew seems fond of identifying Jesus as the new Moses. On a related note, the references in 1Sa/2Ch are also interesting: there,  the "spirit of God" descends upon the prophets. It does not seem so strange then that Matthew adopts this expression.

His interest for the spirit notwithstanding, Luke could then have changed the Matthean "spirit of God" (an expression Luke never uses) to "finger of God" to refer specifically to Exodus, to identify the imprinting of God's action. Note that this would not be the only case where Luke omits an expression pertaining to the Spirit: for example, Mark 13:11 (like the parallel Matthew 10:20) has "do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit", whereas Luke only has "Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict." (Luke 21:14-15) The position that, given his insterest in the spirit, Luke would never change the word "spirit" were it present in the text, seems a bit unfounded then.

Many more things could be said, and I hope that what has been said is not too much out of track. But with the elements that I have considered in this post, it does not seem to me really necessary to posit for the Beelzebul story the use of an external source ("Q"): it looks like the gospel narrative would perfectly work under the assumption that Mark wrote first, Matthew next (expanding and rewording the Markan account), and Luke last (relying on Matthew's and Mark's accounts). While, on the contrary, assuming that the material common to Matthew and Luke (the "green parts") was due to Q seems to bring about difficulties, rather than to provide solutions.