Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 10
Max quoted Tertullian on non-resistance (“You wound that outrageous one more by enduring”) and Justin Martyr on remarriage (“all who by human law are twice married are…sinners”); what emotions or objections rise up when you hear those early Christian claims stated so bluntly, and what would have to change in our discipleship, church discipline, and pastoral care if we treated those topics with the same seriousness?
Another way to ask: What feelings or pushback do you have when you hear early Christians speak so strongly about non-resistance and remarriage? If we took those issues just as seriously, what would need to change in discipleship, church discipline, and pastoral care?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
The transcript doesn’t describe audience emotions, but Max’s blunt quotes naturally provoke discomfort, resistance, or fear because they remove modern “wiggle room.” If treated with the same seriousness, churches would need clearer, earlier discipleship teaching, and more consistent pastoral guidance shaped by the Sermon on the Mount and early Christian moral clarity.
- Max quotes Tertullian on non-resistance: enduring “wound[s]” the offender more, and “The blow shall receive a heavier one from the Lord,” implying trust in God’s justice rather than retaliation.
- He quotes Justin Martyr on remarriage: “all who by human law are twice married are in the eye of our Master sinners.”
- Max frames these as examples of early church “strong unity” and “obvious and straightforward” teaching.
- He connects the remarriage topic to modern church struggle: high divorce/remarriage rates and Protestant confusion over “basic…passages from Sermon on the Mount.”
- He presents early writings as a corrective “sanity check” that guides “life and doctrine,” not mere theory.