‘Be Angry But Do Not Sin’ (Ephesians 4:26a): Sin and the Emotions in the New Testament with Special Reference to Anger

Introduction

The conference theme of ‘Sin and Christian Ethics’ invites reflection from Scripture, not least because, whatever ‘sin’ is, Scripture has a lot to say about it. But it is being recognised increasingly that Scripture also has a lot to say about the emotions – or what in the classic tradition are referred to as the passions (τα πάθη). ¹ Given, therefore, the scholarly and pastoral interest in emotions, ² the aim of this essay is to explore the relation between sin and the emotions, in particular, the emotion of anger.

That the juxtaposition of sin and anger is not an artificial exercise is suggested by the moral tradition formalised by Gregory the Great in the sixth century, which identifies anger as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But if we go behind Gregory to the Bible, there is the remarkable fact that the very first use of ‘sin’ language occurs with reference to the emotion of anger, an emotion writ large on the protagonist’s face. I refer to the anger of Cain: ‘The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it”’ (Gen. 4:5-6). So the juxtaposition of anger and sin occurs at the very beginning of the biblical narrative, with anger’s disastrous consequences being elaborated in the disorder of broken or degraded relationships.

In this study, my aim is to contribute to a moral theology of the emotions – at least in so far as that theology is informed by inquiry into early Christian cognition, character formation and community maintenance in their wider cultural context and against a scriptural backdrop. The kinds of pertinent questions are: What kind of emotional dispositions and regimes were encouraged (or discouraged) in early Christianity, and why? What role did emotional formation play in the shaping of Christian identity, both individual and communal? And, for the present study, why is anger (Greek: ὀργή, θυμός, and related terms) given particular disciplinary attention?

Of course, a moral theology of anger presupposes an understanding of what ‘anger’ is: and here, we quickly get into conversations between universalists and constructivists – that is, between those who hold that anger is an emotion grounded in biological evolution and common to the human species across time and space, and those who hold that anger is an emotion the meaning and expression of which is culture-specific. ³ In my judgment, the polarisation is unhelpful. Since emotions like anger are an embodied response to a stimulus of some kind, there is a clear psycho-physiological aspect. At the same time, since emotions like anger are learned and shaped in social interaction – are, in fact, a form of cognition and judgment ⁴ – there is a clear socio-cultural aspect. So what anger is is part of a larger theological-anthropological consideration about what it means to be human, including what it means to be human in relation. For starters, my suggestion is that anger – at the human level, at least – is a kind of embodied cognitive-evaluative energy provoked by, and responding to, a perception of hurt or danger or wrong arising in social interaction, especially in relations that presuppose reciprocity.

While there are a number of New Testament texts pertinent to a moral theology of anger, ⁵ the emphatic paraenēsis in Ephesians is particularly noteworthy. The relevant passage is Eph. 4:25-32 (NRSV):

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but [lit. and] do not sin [ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε]; do not let the sun go down on your anger [ἐπὶ [τῷ] παρoργισμῷ ὑμῶν], and do not make room for the devil… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander [πᾶσα πικρία καὶ θυμὸς καὶ ὀργὴ καὶ κραυγὴ καὶ βλασφημία], together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. ⁶

My central thesis is that the teaching here about anger has to be situated in relation to the moral-theological vision of Ephesians as a whole, central to which is the revelation of the mystery (μυστήριoν) of creation-renewing salvation in Christ bringing personal transformation in the context of the eschatological coming together as one of Jews and Gentiles in the Church. As elaborations of this transformation, instruction and exhortation are given on the virtues and vices. The virtues are qualities of character and personal practice which build up and sustain the unity of the Church in love and peace. The vices are qualities of character and personal practice that destroy that unity. Among the vices, particular attention is given to speech and related behaviours, including anger. It is apparent, however, that anger is not a sin in itself. Anger becomes sinful, I suggest, if it undermines the eschatological identity and oneness of the Church. The accent, then, is on sin as a contradiction of Christian identity under God and a threat to Christian sociality, with the appropriate control and discipline – indeed, ‘discipling’ – of the passions, including anger, as a necessary corollary.

Anger in Biblical and Jewish Tradition

That the admonition, ‘Be angry but do not sin’ in Eph. 4:26 is a direct quotation of the Septuagint of Psalm 4:4 (MT and LXX 4:5), points us to the likely formative influence on the author of the Epistle of the moral traditions of the Bible and Early Judaism. Salient features of this tradition – having to do with the character of God on the one hand, and with what it means to be human on the other – are as follows. ⁷

Anger among the Passions in Greco-Roman Philosophy

As well as inheriting biblical and early Jewish traditions about anger, the paraenēsis of Ephesians and early Christian moralists generally should be compared with the teaching of the Greek and Roman moralists. The passions in general are a recurring topos of philosophical-moral discourse in antiquity. Given the diverse and competing schools of philosophy, with their respective cosmologies, anthropologies, ethics and politics, accounts of the passions are complex, nuanced, and often polemical. ¹⁸ At the risk of over-simplification, however, the fundamental logic has to do with the relation of that part of the soul constituted by the passions (τα πάθη) to the quest for happiness (εὐδαιμoνία). Given that happiness is attained by living according to nature (φύσις), and that knowledge of how to live according to nature comes through reason (λόγoς), it follows that whatever in the person hinders or threatens to overthrow reason has to be brought under control, cured, even extirpated.

The astonishingly sophisticated attention given to the emotions from Homer, ¹⁹ Plato and Aristotle onwards, arises from the widely shared anxiety that the passions have the potential to overthrow reason and to plunge the wise man (sic) ²⁰ into shameful folly and unmanliness, even madness. And not just the wise man. For if the passions put the integrity of the wise individual at risk, they also endanger the integrity – the oneness – of the city (πόλις) and its building-blocks, including the household (oἶκoς). It is understandable, therefore, that the ancient moralists should give more attention to anger than to any other emotion. ²¹ As the most violent of the emotions, anger was recognised as potentially destructive of individuals, marriages, friendships, households and the city-state.

The analysis is nuanced, however. Aristotle (384–323 BC), for example, distinguishes good emotions from bad, and therefore good anger from bad, according to their appropriateness to the situation. What is important is one’s disposition. Thus, in the Nicomachean Ethics, the virtuous person is the one whose disposition towards anger is the mean (μέσoν) between an excess of anger and a deficiency:

The man who gets angry at the right things and with the right people, and also in the right way and at the right time and for the right length of time, is commended; so this person will be patient, inasmuch as patience is commendable, because a patient person tends to be unperturbed and not carried away by his feelings, but indignant only in the way and on the grounds and for the length of time that his principle [logos] prescribes… The deficiency…is blamed, because those who do not get angry at things that ought to make them angry are considered to be foolish, and so are those who do not get angry in the right way or at the right time or with the right people. Such a person seems to be deficient in perceptivity and sensitivity, and (because he does not get angry) incapable of defending himself; and to put up with insults to oneself, and overlook those done to one’s friends, is regarded as servile. The excess occurs in respect of all the circumstances: with the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, more than is right, too quickly, and for too long a time; but of course these conditions do not all attach to the same subject. This could not be, because evil destroys itself, and if it is unmitigated, becomes intolerable. ²²

Several things are clear from this account. First, Aristotle makes anger a serious subject of reflection in a context of moral formation (παιδεία). It is not a subject that can be passed over. Second, the passion itself is part of human nature and therefore morally neutral. What is important is displaying the level of anger that is appropriate to the situation – that is, being angry ‘in the manner, at the things, and for the length of time that reason dictates’. ²³ Third, practised on the basis of ‘principle’ or ‘reason’ (λόγoς), anger is commendable. Fourth, what is not commendable is either a deficiency of anger, for its associations with cowardice and servility, or an excess, for its associations with rashness, lack of self-control and destructiveness.

The concern with emotional excess and consequent loss of rational control is very evident also in Plutarch (45—c.125 AD), in his work, On Rage:

All human actions that are done in a rage must be blind and senseless and entirely miss the mark. It is not possible to act with calculation [λoγισμoῦ] when acting in a rage, and anything done without calculation is unskilful and distorted. A man ought, then, to make reason [λóγoν] his guide and so set his hand to life’s tasks, either pushing aside his feelings of wrath whenever they assail him, or finding a way past, just as pilots avoid the waves that bear down upon them. Certainly there is not less cause for fear, but when a wave of rage comes rolling head on against a man, he may capsize and utterly destroy both himself and his whole family if he does not steer his way cleverly through it. Not that success can be had without pains and training; otherwise men meet with utter disaster. Those men do best who accept anger [θυμὸν] as virtue’s ally, making use of it in so far as it is helpful in war and indeed in politics, but endeavouring to discharge and expel from their souls its abundance and excess, which we call rage or asperity or quick temper [oργή τε καί πικρία καί ὀξυθυμία], disorders that are most unbecoming to manly hearts. Now what training for this can a grown man practise? It would seem to me to be the most effective method if we were to undertake our preliminary practice well in advance and rid ourselves beforehand of the greatest part of our temper, for example when dealing with our slaves and in our relations with our wives. The man who is good-tempered at home will be much more so in his public life, having been made in his house and by his household such as to be the physician of his own soul. ²⁴

Plutarch’s writings on anger, display, like Aristotle’s, a sophisticated understanding. First, the overriding concern is with anger exercised to excess; and to make the point, a distinction is made between ‘rage’ (ὀργή) and ‘anger’ (θυμός). Second, its consequence is action which ‘misses the mark’, is contrary to reason, and brings disaster of the kind dramatised by the metaphor of the imperilled boat on stormy waters. Third, anger (θυμός), expunged of excess, can play a positive role in war and politics as the ally of virtue. As such, it can contribute significantly to success and progress in public life. Fourth, the exercise of the right kind of anger requires training and practice; and the best starting-place for that is in the private domain, in relations with one’s intimates – one’s slaves and one’s wife. Anger control at home prepares the citizen for virtuous anger in public service.

Most significant from the Latin tradition is the lengthy ²⁵ treatise De Ira (‘On Anger’) of the Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), probably written in 41 AD, in the wake of Caligula’s violent rule and with a view to influencing Claudius following his accession. ²⁶ Here, over against the Aristotelian view that anger can be appropriate and justified in certain contexts, the Stoic ideal is the extirpation of anger on the grounds that it is not ‘natural’, that it is a kind of madness, that it is the bitter rival of reason for rule of the soul, and that it threatens the cultivation of humanitas both in the individual and in society. Typical is the following:

But the really great mind, the mind that has taken the true measure of itself, fails to revenge injury only because it fails to perceive it. As missiles rebound from a hard surface, and the man who strikes solid objects is hurt by the impact, so no injury whatever can cause a truly great mind to be aware of it, since the injury is more fragile than that at which it is aimed. How much more glorious it is for the mind, impervious, as it were, to any missile, to repel all insults and injuries! Revenge is the confession of a hurt; no mind is truly great that bends before injury. The man who has offended you is either stronger or weaker than you: if he is weaker, spare him; if he is stronger, spare yourself.

There is no surer proof of greatness than to be in a state where nothing can possibly happen to disturb you… [T]he lofty mind is always calm, at rest in a quiet haven; crushing down all that engenders anger, it is restrained, commands respect, and is properly ordered. In an angry man you will find none of these things. For who that surrenders to anger and rage does not straightway cast behind him all sense of shame? Who that storms in wild fury and assails another does not cast aside whatever he had in him that commands respect? Who that is enraged maintains the full number or the order of his duties? Who restrains his tongue? Who controls any part of his body? Who is able to rule the self that he has set loose? (De Ira III.5.8–6.3)

According to Martha Nussbaum, the De Ira is a ‘therapeutic argument’ whose goal is to controvert notions commonly associated with the social obligations and appropriate passions of a Roman public man. ²⁷ Included among such notions are the idea that anger is useful as a motivating force, that it is right for a good man to get angry at damages done to himself and his intimates, that anger has as a benefit the pleasure of returning pain for pain, and that one ought to get angry at people who do bad things. ²⁸ In line with Stoic philosophy, what Seneca offers as a remedy is an education in the ways of ‘detachment’ (ἀπάθεια), of how to live immune from externals and the throes of Fortune in public and private life. Such detachment requires, not just the moderation of the passions, but their extirpation, including that of anger (cf. De Ira III.42.1).

Interesting, bearing in mind what was said earlier about how anger (or rage) in the biblical and Jewish tradition turns kings into tyrants, is Seneca’s appeal (in the final part of his treatise) to noteworthy exempla of kings and leaders from times past whose ruinous anger is a warning (cf. De Ira III.16-21), as well as exempla of kings and leaders whose refusal to be moved by anger offer models to be imitated (cf. De Ira III.22-25).

‘Be angry but do not sin’ (Eph. 4:26a)

I turn, finally, to the instruction on anger in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Among other things, Ephesians is an identity-defining and identity-consolidating letter. The first part (1:3–3:21), which takes the form of an extended thanksgiving to God, is intended to remind the implied readers of who they are in Christ. The second part (4:1–6:20), consisting of an extended moral exhortation, is a summons to be who they are – ‘to lead a life worthy of the calling to which [they] have been called’ (4:1). Addressed primarily to Gentile converts (cf. 2:11; 3:1, 6; 4:17) whose understanding of who they are and how they are to live is under-developed (cf. 1:17-19; 3:16-19), Ephesians is ‘an attempt to reinforce its implied readers’ identities as those who have received a salvation which makes them members of the Church and to underscore the necessity of their distinctive role and conduct in the Church and in the world’. ²⁹

Particularly noteworthy in the identity-defining first part is the emphasis on boundary transcendence in Christ. This has a ‘vertical’ dimension. Thus, speaking in terms of a Christology of heavenly exaltation and a markedly realized eschatology – with death, resurrection and exaltation already (in some sense) a reality for believers – the author testifies that God ‘raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ (2:6; cf. 1:3). In terms of identity formation, this affirmation offers a radical expansion, re-location and elevation of the addressees’ sense of who they are, such that previous, divisive and destructive patterns of self-definition become otiose.

But this boundary-transcending identity also has a ‘horizontal’ dimension (cf. 2:11-22). The new identity in Christ brings people previously separated by race, religion and habitual enmity into a new eschatological unity which is the Church, Christ’s ‘body’ (1:22-23). Oneness with the exalted, heavenly Christ is generative of oneness between believers. The distance of alienation has given way to the proximity of mutual belonging. Relations of violence have given way to those of peace. Defensive walls keeping warring parties separate have been broken down. A new constitution has been instituted, making possible the creation of ‘one new humanity [ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπoν] in place of two’ (2:15). Strangers and aliens have become fellow-citizens (συμπoλῖται) with the saints and members of a single household – no less a household than the household of God (oἰκεῖoι τoῦ θεoῦ, 2.19), understood also as ‘a holy temple in the Lord’ (2:21), and God’s ‘dwelling place’ (2:22).

Reminiscent of the ‘oneness’ language of John 17 and Galatians 3:28, the ‘oneness’ language of Ephesians is astonishing in its plenitude. Even as the author turns to the more explicit paraenetic, second part of the letter, with its emphasis on achieving the communal goal of ‘making every effort to maintain the unity [ἑνότητα] of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (4:3), the grounding in a theological, ecclesiological, liturgical and experiential conception of oneness is reiterated: ‘one body…one Spirit…one hope…one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all’ (4:4-5). Corresponding with this emphasis on oneness are the repeated exhortations to certain virtues – in particular, the oneness-enabling virtues of peace, love, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and mutual submission.

Little wonder, then, that attention is given to the vices and desires that put the oneness, the integrity, of the Christian society at risk. High on the list of concerns is anger, together with degraded speech of various kinds. What builds unity is ‘speaking the truth in love’ (4:15), along with exalted speech such as the singing of ‘psalms and hymns and spiritual songs’ (5:19), and the offering of prayers of thanksgiving to God (5:20). What destroys unity, and is therefore a form of social pollution (cf. 4:27), is unresolved anger, ‘evil talk’, and ‘all bitterness and wrath [θυμός] and anger [ὀργή] and wrangling and slander, together with all malice’ (4:31; cf. 5:3-5). ³⁰

It seems legitimate to conclude that the author of Ephesians will have been profoundly sympathetic to those traditions of biblical, early Jewish and Greco-Roman wisdom that were ambivalent about the emotions in general, and anger in particular, for the danger they posed both to the integrity of the individual and the oneness of society. Certainly, in the two-part admonition, ‘Be angry but [lit. and] do not sin’, there is a recognition that anger may play a positive role in personal and social life, ³¹ an ethic congruent both with the biblical notion of ‘righteous anger’, and with the Aristotelian ideal of dispositions appropriate to the circumstances. ³²

Overall, however, and reflecting the apocalyptic moral-theological dualism of the letter – with its rhetoric distinguishing ‘then’ from ‘now’, ‘them’ from ‘us’, ‘darkness’ from ‘light’, and ‘folly’ from ‘wisdom’ (cf. 2:1-10, 11-22; 4:17-24; 5:8-14) – anger and related emotions are characterised negatively: they are to be ‘put away [ἀρθη′τω]’ (4:31). Here we are closer, perhaps, to the Stoic ethic of the extirpation of the passions, at least so far as anger is concerned.

But perhaps not. Certainly, the rationale in Ephesians is decidedly different. If for the Stoic, it is a matter of what facilitates ‘detachment’, and offers the wise man a shield against the throes of Fortune in public and private life, for Ephesians, the control of anger (and the emotions generally) is a matter of how believers in their common life can contribute to the peace of the Church, the unity of which is both a mark of its holiness as God’s temple-household, and a witness to the nations of the eschatological uniting of all things in Christ. ³³

Conclusion

Given that emotions are a form of embodied cognition, as well as a function of our genes, it follows that they are shaped – and capable of being shaped – in the context of human sociality over time. In this process, the worldviews, traditions, habits, morals, dispositions and practices that constitute a culture play a significant role. From the point of view of moral theology, the Church as the Body of Christ in the power of the Spirit is the Christian’s primary culture; and it is both emotion-shaped and emotion-shaping. On this basis, the cultural-ecclesial practice of reading Ephesians, ³⁴ including what it says about the emotions, makes sense. With reference, not least, to anger, I conclude with the following observations.

First, the emotions in general and anger in particular are set within a profound, apocalyptic vision of divine redemption understood as the eschatological re-unification of the whole cosmos in Christ. The emotions, therefore, are grounded in, and necessarily shaped by, a salvific narrative of divine grace that unites heavenly and earthly realities previously alienated by sin. Such a grounding offers the potential for the emotions, as a form of cognition, to be in alignment with, and an expression of, the truth (cf. Eph. 1:13; 4:25; 5:9; 6:14). As with divine wrath and prophetic anger, there is no necessary declension between anger and truth.

Second, the Church is understood as the polity, the place and the people where the cosmic re-unification achieved by Christ in his death, resurrection and exaltation is being inaugurated in history (cf. 1:19-23; 3:9-10, 21; 5:32). This implies that the primary goal of emotional dispositions, disciplines and practices is the realisation and celebration, in the Spirit, of what it means to be the Church. How anger is practised is therefore an ecclesial concern with missional implications.

Third, initiation into this (eschatological and ecclesiological) way of seeing, feeling and behaving – not least because of its striking novelty at so many levels – entails a process of learning, and learning in community. Ephesians conveys a pedagogical imperative with considerable emphasis. Old ways, old feelings, have to be unlearned; new ways and desires learned. This helps to explain the focus on ‘truth’ (1:13), on ‘word-related’ gifts including the gift of teaching (4:11, 21), on learning (4:20), and on edifying (rather than degraded) speech (4:15). Related to this, a Christian emotional habitus is not represented as the preserve of an aristocratic (or other kind of) élite, let alone a male élite, or an adults-only élite: it is for the Church as a whole.

Finally, significant in this moral learning is instruction, indebted to both biblical and philosophical traditions, regarding the virtues and vices, or what is conducive to holiness and what is not. Here, and directly related to the underlying redemptive vision of cosmic re-unification in Christ, with the Church’s calling to grow towards that re-unification, the virtues are constituted by what builds and sustains unity, and the vices are what destroy it. In so far as anger is an emotion with the potential to put the integrity of the individual and the unity of the Church at risk, it is to be disciplined. Hence, ‘do not let the sun go down on your anger’ (4:26b). More importantly, it is to be discipled according to the imitatio dei: ‘[B]e kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love’ (4:32–5:1). Significantly, the last word on the emotions in Ephesians has to do, not with anger, but with love (cf. 6:23-24).