Monday, June 27, 2022

Ruth Anne Reese on Jude 5 and Jesus as the one who destroys unbelievers

  

While associating the memory of Jesus with saving is not difficult, it is perhaps more surprising to see Jesus represented as the one who destroys those who do not believe a second time. After all, in the memory of the Gospels, Jesus is often associated with saving but is seldom associated with destruction. We see at least one exception to this in Luke 13 where Jesus tells the crowd, ‘Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish (απολεισθε)’. But, in general, Jesus is not heavily associated with απολλυμι in the Gospels. Nevertheless, in Jude 5 we find the Beloved being called to remember Jesus, the deliverance of a people from Egypt and the destruction of that people after they demonstrate their lack of faith a second time by failing to enter into the land of promise to which God has brought them. Here the melding of two collective memories—the memory of the exodus and the memory of Jesus—creates a new memory in which Jesus saves those who trust him and subsequently destroys those who do not. Jude has already described the Others as a group that denies the master and Lord Jesus Christ, and here he describes the date of those who failed to believe. (Ruth Anne Reese, “Remember ‘Jesus Saved a People out of Egypt,’” in Muted Voices of the New Testament: Readings in the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews, ed. Katherine M. Hockey, Madison N. Pierce and Francis Watson [Library of New Testament Studies 587; London: T&T Clark, 2017], 96)