1. Matthew 13:24-43
2. the parable flouts truths of agronomy
1. chokes out good plants that Jesus deplored in the Sower
2. guarantees a bumper crop of unwanted weed seeds to plague the next season's planting
3. doing nothing is the preferred response to evil
1. the "evil" is to be suffered, not resisted
2. since good and evil in this world commonly inhabit not only the same field but even the same individual human beings — since that is, there are no unqualified good guys any more than there are any unqualified bad guys — the only result of a truly dedicated campaign to get rid of evil will be the abolition of everybody
3. the enemy depends on the forces of goodness, insofar as he can sucker them into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced, to do his work — that is precisely why the enemy goes away after sowing the weeds: he has no need whatsoever to hang around
4. does this form the basis of a case for pacifism?
1. parable does not say resistance to evil is morally wrong, only that it is salvifically ineffective
2. those who take the sword, perish by the sword — descriptively, not prescriptively
3. Aphete [let, permit, suffer], Aphienai second meaning, when applied to debts, trespasses, sins, and so on, comes out in English as "forgive"
4. Jesus does indeed end on the note of the ultimate triumph of justice
1. God is in charge, and he will, under eschatological circumstances, get his own way
2. but in the present circumstances of the world, the mystery of the kingdom is likewise quite in charge and thoroughly capable of getting its own way
5. box scores
1. catholicity - catholicity of evil
2. mystery - Jesus attempt to assign a reason for the presence of evil
3. actual, present working of the kingdom - the wheat successfully does its proper work
4. hostility and response - inveterate Pelagianism, our tendency to think our own moral efforts are necessary to the plan of salvation — leads us to imagine that the best way for us to give the kingdom a helping hand is to take up arms as promptly as possible against the enemies of the Lord
1. only God, it says, only the Farmer in charge of the universal operation, knows how to deal successfully with evil — he wills to deal with it only by aphesis: by forgiveness, by permission, by letting it be — he still deals with it in terms of something that is a mystery to us now, namely the Resurrection
2. no matter what you do, the yeast works anyway — your responses advance your satisfaction, not its success
6. He who has ears, let him hear