What is Pharisaism
September 14th, 2022 by G.
Bookslinger’s interesting comment on our last post made me realize I needed to improve my definition of a Pharisee.
What is a Pharisee?
A pharisee–pharisaism–is the mix of
Overconscientious rules maximizer.
- “Hedge about the law” “tithe anise and cumin”
- These are people who are taking the morality appropriate to principles and apply it to rules. All else being equal, you can always do more in pursuit of a principle. But rules are just rules, pay exactly 10% tithing, paying less or more is less virtuous. Pharisaism in part consists of treating rules as if they were principles.
- Some people are just deathly afraid of breaking a rule and are willing to go to great lengths to ensure they don’t.
- These both come down to a failure to understand God properly, as someone who to an extent is scrutable, i.e., whose purposes are clear enough to us that we can tell the difference between rules and principles; and someone who to an extent is relatable, i.e., he’s human enough that he isn’t going to blast you for every little accident, mistakes are recoverable.
- I have my doubts about that story you hear in Conference sometimes about the hiring test for stage coach drivers who have to drive along a narrow mountain ledge and how close can they get to the ledge? It’s a fun story, I like it and it makes a sensible enough point–but taken too seriously it smacks of Pharisaism.
Virtue signaller
- “Pray to be seen of men”
- I don’t have to explain this, virtue signallers are all around
Hypocrite
- “Woe unto thee, thou whited sepulchres” “Corban be it unto me”
- a hypocrite and a virtue signaller are both people who are ostentatiously enacting virtue for public appearances. The virtue signaller does it for status, the hypocrite does it as cover for their greed and lust. These are on a continuum, of course.
These three things are a fairly natural mix. Going beyond the mark on rules is an easier ostentatious display of virtue for public appearance than going extra on principles is. And overconscientious rules maximizers are probably easier to deceive and more susceptible to rules-based legalistic arguments.
Not all Pharisees would have had all of these traits in equal abundance. Gamaliel and Paul, for example, were probably just hedgy about rules.
Comments (3)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
September 14th, 2022 07:16:42
bruce g charlton
September 14, 2022
More deeply; I would regard Christian Pharisaism as when someone hands over responsibility for the salvation to an external authority; and therefore (whether implicitly, or explicitly) regards the publicly-verifiable aspects of religion as both essential And sufficient.
G.
September 14, 2022
Good insight. The common ground here is mistaking the map for the territory.
Virtue signallers aren’t example map for the territory people, but they are mistaking the incidents for the essentials. They conflate getting praised for being virtuous with being virtuous.
Whereas hypocrites are taking advantage of other people’s propensity to mistake the incidents for the essentials. They work at showing the incidents of virtue so that people will assume they have the essentce also.
E.C.
September 14, 2022
I’m taking an Institute class on the Parables of Jesus, and the teacher pointed out that in context of our culture and our religion, *we, as church members*, are the Pharisees. Ouch, but true.
That being said, there were some truly righteous Pharisees, who understood that the end was not the Law, but Him to whom the Law pointed – just a few. I’ve been thinking about what it really means to be a disciple and become converted, these days . . .