The Divinely Inspired Satire of the Rich Man and Lazarus

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a divinely inspired satire …. It is as much the Word of God as any other portion of Scripture. It was not given for the purpose of teaching men about the ways and works of God. Its purpose was to turn the light upon the Pharisees. It is not the place to go to find what our Lord taught about death, the state of the dead, future punishment, or future bliss.”[1]

It bothered Otis Q. Sellers when writers would take a biblical passage that was about one thing to support a doctrine not at all under consideration. Nowhere was this abuse of Scripture more egregious than in the deployment of Luke 16:19-31 to support the doctrine of eternal conscious torment of the lost.

In 1941, he offered an interpretation under the title The Rich Man and Lazarus. Following his What Is the Soul? (1939), it was just as radical a break with tradition. That Lucan passage is the prooftext for the traditional church doctrine of “hell” as the destiny of the damned, a place or state of interminable suffering. It was not enough to show that “hell” in English Bibles translates a Hebrew word (sheol) and three Greek ones (hades, Gehenna, and tartaros.) It was also necessary to deprive tradition of its favorite prooftext.

In 1962 Sellers reissued his study after “the whole matter could be carefully reconsidered and rewritten.” Much church doctrine hangs on this passage: “Many preachers are no longer able to distinguish between their sermons … and the record written in the Word of God ….”[2] When Sellers decided to do for “hell” what he had just done for the soul, he began by taking Luke 16:19-31 off the table.

… it has been my happy and fruitful labor to examine with microscopic exactitude every one of the 859 passages in the sacred Scriptures that give testimony concerning the soul. Careful analysis of every one of these passages has resulted in the inescapable conclusion that the Bible teaches that man is a soul—not that he has a soul as is generally believed. That man has a soul is the Platonic theory; that man is a soul is the Biblical testimony. Furthermore, these studies have demonstrated that there is no such thing in Scripture as an immortal soul, or a never-dying soul. However, in seeking to present these findings to others I discover that with many the effort is useless, for they firmly believe that the story of the rich man and Lazarus, which does not even mention the word soul, stands in opposition to all that I have found to be true and try to teach (3).

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his Los Angeles study (early 1980s?)

Sellers denies that revelation about the state of death “was given by Christ to men who were unwilling to do His will,” that is, “the covetous and mocking Pharisees.” (5) This passage “is not a narration of actual events” (5): it doesn’t support Received Opinion about it, which reflects what those on its receiving end have been taught. “This story … makes future blessings to depend upon present poverty, and not upon one’s relationship to God through Jesus Christ” (5).

In Luke 16:19-31, Sellers writes, “we have the written record of the spoken words of the Lord Jesus …. The [King James Version] translation, with a few exceptions[3] is acceptable; therefore … we can rest assured that we have before us what our Lord said” (7). But what did He mean by what He said? Was He giving a “straightforward, matter-of-fact history of actual events that took place before” He was born “for the purpose of revealing the conditions that exist beyond death”? (7)

Their position breaks down when they face the actual reality of the poor man being carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. They know not what to do with the statements which indicate that the rich man had eyes and a tongue and that Lazarus had a finger. They cannot fit these bodily parts in with their ideas of “disembodied spirits.”

Who this rich man? No “idea of great wickedness,” Sellers observes, “is set forth …. All that we know of this man is that he was rich, that he wore expensive clothing and that he lived luxuriously ….” (8)

We do not judge a man’s character to be bad when we discover that he is rich. Neither do we judge a man as wicked because he dresses well …. Do we dare to calumniate one whom our Lord did not? …. (8)

What about the poor man? He is often

… represented as being a godly man, a devout man, a saint …. Our Lord seems to have exercised care in avoiding any such picture of this man .… His condition arouses our sympathy, but we see nothing about him that is worthy of emulation …. There is no known fact about him that suggests a righteous man or a man of faith. (9-10)

Jesus’ account of their deaths also raises questions. He tells His audience that angels carried the Lazarus into Abraham’s bosom. How are we to understand this?

[T]hose who insist on the historical reality of this passage want to inject the ideas of a “soul” or a “disembodied spirit.” But how does one carry a soul and why would a soul need to be carried? No such idea is conveyed by the words of our Lord. It was the poor man who was laid at the rich man’s gate, it was the poor man who died, and it was the poor man who was carried by the angels. (10; emphasis added)

In Scripture, “Abraham’s bosom” appears only here. If, as some speculate, it refers to a “compartment in a mythological hades where the spirits of the righteous dead are supposed to be between death and resurrection, then why is it suddenly given this name? (10)

Jesus  said the rich man was buried. Not “his body,” but he, the man, was buried.

Then we learn he’s in Hades “in torments.” Amazingly, Abraham and Lazarus are visible in the distance, the latter residing in the former’s bosom. The distance, however, is apparently a barrier to conversation.

If the rich man could see them happy, however, they could see him miserable, or at least hear him.

… [C]an anyone believe that Abraham and Lazarus were supremely happy while they looked upon a man being tormented and heard his pleadings[?] …. Can we believe that Abraham’s nature had been so changed that he could be in bliss while witnessing the sufferings of another and hearing his plea for some slight relief? (11)

Was Abraham really withholding water? Did Lazarus have a finger to dip or the rich man a tongue to cool?

The rich man cried out, not to God, but to Abraham, who “bade him remember that during his lifetime he had received his good things and that Lazarus had received his evil things, with the result that he is now comforted while the rich man is tormented.” (12) “Abraham” doesn’t elaborate.

The rich man “is not charged with idolatry, with having oppressed the poor, of being a robber of other men’s goods, of being a spoiler of orphans, or a persecutor of widows,” but only that he had “received his good things during his lifetime so he is tormented now.” (12) It’s as though their post mortem reversals of fortune were fated.

Repudiating this idea, Sellers reminds us that what we enjoy or suffer in this life has “no bearing upon the life to come. Our future is settled by our relationship to God through Jesus Christ.” But the Abraham of Jesus’ story answered the rich man by reminding him of an irrelevancy, namely, that he was rich—ironic since the Abraham of Scripture was rich in cattle, silver, and gold (Genesis 13:2)!

The story’s Abraham turns down the rich man’s request: there’s a impassable gulf between his bosom and hades: “those who desire to cross from this side to you may not be able, nor any be able to cross from your side to us.” (Luke 16:26)

The rich man tries another tack: he begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers. Jesus has the patriarch answer that Moses and the prophets contain Lazarus’s siblings all the warning they need.

No, the rich man counters: they need to see someone return from the dead.

No, Abraham retorts, that still wouldn’t be enough. There the story ends. (14)

Sellers considers the ways it’s been characterized: history, poetry, parable, and fable. (17) “There is both humor and irony,” Sellers notes, in some of Christ’s statements. “But as J. B. Phillips, the translator, has said: ‘the unvarying solemnity of language makes it almost impossible for us to realize either the irony or the humor ….’”[4] (17)

Is the story a historical narrative? After all, Jesus started off with “There was a certain rich man.” Doesn’t that settle it?

No. For one thing, there are parables that begin that way (e.g., Matthew 21:33 and Luke 18:2). For another, the Greek ἦν (ēn) need not be rendered “there was.” “Now a certain man was rich” will do.

A parable? This “will only increase our difficulties,” for then we’d have to “show what each main character, event, action, and place represents,” since that’s what a parable [παραβολή, parabolē; a “throwing alongside”] must do. This is not possible “especially when we come to the conversation between Abraham and the rich man” and his five brothers. (20)

There’s another option: satire, “a literary form or rhetorical device … wherein a suppositional story is told, the object of which is to hold up vices, follies, ideas, abuses or shortcomings to censure by means of ridicule.” (20)[5]

Jesus’ sarcastic, ironical, and satirical statements don’t express what He believed or taught, at least not directly. His statement at Luke 13:33—“For it cannot be that a prophet should perish anywhere except in Jerusalem”—is sarcastic. In fact, Sellers notes, “a prophet could perish anywhere if people turned against him. But so many prophets had been slain in Jerusalem, that our Lord infers that this city has a virtual monopoly on killing prophets.”[6] (25)

While Jesus’ satire was immediately intelligible to His contemporaries “it is not at all intelligible to the average reader today.” (27) The Pharisees enjoyed social hegemony. They were chief among Israel’s social elite, which included Sadducees, scribes, and priests:

… In the Gospels the scribes and Pharisees are constantly mentioned in the same connection … as to imply that they formed the same party …. They controlled the Sanhedrin, the priesthood, the civil courts, and all Jewish society …. They were … a generation of vipers (Matthew 3:7); they made use of calumny in dealing with those whom they opposed (Matthew 9:34); they did not hesitate to murder to accomplish their ends and maintain their power (Matthew 12:14); they rejected all signs given by the Lord then demanded a special sign be given to them (Matthew 12:38); they transgressed the commandments of God by their traditions (Matthew 15:2); they were hypocrites (Matthew 23:3); all their works were done to be seen of men (Matthew 23: 5); they devoured widow’s houses, then made long prayers in pretence (Matthew 23:14); they were lovers of money (Luke 16:14); and they rejected the commandments of God in order that they might maintain their own traditions (Mark 7:9). (29)

For comprehending Jesus’s story as satire we must note that they

adopted most of the platonic philosophy concerning the nature of man. From a mixture of Greek ideas and old Egyptian and Babylonian myths they had developed a doctrine of purgatory and of prayers for the dead. Josephus declares that the Pharisees taught that every soul is incorruptible, that only the souls of good men pass over into another body, while those of the wicked are punished with eternal suffering. They held that there is an immortal vigor in souls, and that under the earth there are rewards and punishments for those who have lived virtuously or viciously in this life. (29-30)

Christ and His cousin John challenged this picture:

When the Pharisees appeared at the baptism of John, he … branded them immediately as a “generation of vipers.” Jesus Christ called them whitewashed graves, hypocrites, serpents, children of Gehenna, thieves and murderers. (31)

To “the implacable enemies of Christ, the Pharisees .… no revelation of truth was given (John 7:16-17).” (31) They were given “not a revelation of truth about future life, of the state of the dead, of future punishment or future bliss,” but rather “an exposé of the base and warped ideas, principles, and practices of the Pharisees.” (31)

Jesus’ target was the Pharisaic system, including its “assumption of the position and rights that God had ordained for the king in Israel and a caste system. Key to their ideological hegemony was their “teaching that at death certain angels carried good men to a place which they called ‘Abraham’s bosom,’ while others were taken to a place where ‘temporary punishments’ were meted out.”

They held that poverty and hunger were God’s punishments upon men while they were upon earth, and if men accepted their punishment without complaint they would not need to pay for these sins in the future. They held that riches were a sign of God’s favor, and that poverty was evidence of His displeasure. They claimed that if they helped the poor they would be acting contrary to God. But they also taught “that if a man received evil things in this life, he would receive good things in the life to come …. intended to keep the hungry from demanding bread here and now …. Our Lord in His satire made this teaching a “two-way” street. (40-41)

The Pharisees controlled the social narrative, and woe betide anyone who threatened to upset that applecart. Knowing what was good for them, the scribes parroted it, and in doing so compromised their authority (Matthew 7:29). Jesus threw their doctrines back in their face, holding their words and deeds up to ridicule, thereby incurring “their deepest hatred.” (43)

No commands in the Word of God could be plainer than those which made it the duty of the rich in Israel to care for the poor. Even the crafty Pharisee would have difficulty in explaining away such plain statements as those found in Deuteronomy 15:7-11. So, they made these words void by a tradition that made poverty to be a virtue that carried a guarantee of great bliss in the next life. By getting the people to accept even gnawing hunger as being the will of God, they saved themselves from the unpleasant duty of untying their own purse strings. (44)

They were cornered, unable to deny credibly either the needs of the poor or their ability to meet it. Loosening their purses would weaken them financially, but their refusal would discredit them morally. And so they concocted a pie-in-the-sky fairy tale. “Thus the Pharisees protected their wealth and position by leading the people to believe that poverty was a cardinal virtue … a virtue which no Pharisee cared to possess.” (45)

When we reach “And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom,” we find Jesus taking on the Pharisaical sop thrown at the poor. But:

To keep this idea from being preposterous, men have been forced to insert here the idea of a disembodied soul or a disembodied spirit. But such things are unknown to the Word of God. There is no hint of soul or spirit in the words of our Lord. That which lived, died, and that which died was carried by the angels. Our Lord was not revealing here what happens at death. He is exposing a teaching of the Pharisees about the angels carrying the dead to a place they called Abraham’s bosom. This is a thing and a place that is unknown in the Word of God. But it was not unknown in the traditions of the Pharisees, as the Talmud and the writings of Josephus give abundant witness. (45-46; emphasis added.)

So the “rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell (hades) he lift up his eyes being in torments”:

Since no one has been able to tell us how he got out of the grave and into a place of torment, men are forced to insert here some vague idea about a soul. This statement makes no more sense than if I should say “that a certain man died, and was buried, and in the penitentiary he was found in solitary confinement” …. From Genesis 1 to Luke 16 there is no Biblical record anywhere of a man being anywhere after death except in the tomb. God’s word to Adam was: “In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread, until you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken; for you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19 (46; emphasis added.)

On the warrant of Genesis 3:19 Sellers believes that “anyone who believes that Adam is anywhere except in the dust of the earth does not believe this declaration of God.”[7]

Jesus’ imaginary “conversation” between the rich man and “Father Abraham” ends with the “twist” He put on the Pharisees’s afterlife myth (which never depicted rich men in hades begging for their thirst to be slaked). In Jesus’ table-turning account, however, notions of “Abraham’s bosom,” the rich man’s eyes and tongue, and Lazarus’ finger all served Jesus’ satirical purpose. “Abraham’s” answer to the rich man’s entreaty “is pure gibberish,” Sellers adjudges. (47) It couldn’t possibly explain

why the poor man was where he was or why the rich man was in his condition. It is completely foreign to the truth about the grace of God which alone fits a sinner for blessing in the life to come. And it denies the justice of God, since is presents a man suffering simply because in his lifetime he received good things …. (47)

The rich man implores the patriarch to dispatch Lazarus from “Abraham’s bosom” to his father’s house where his five, presumably wealthy, brothers live. Why? So Lazarus could warn them of what awaits them unless they change their ways. The Pharisees had demanded “a sign from heaven” (Matthew 16:1), but apparently the many public miracles Jesus performed were not enough.

The protagonist of Jesus’ satire presumes the same privilege, and its “Abraham” repudiates this elitist presumption: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. (47)

As to the alleged sufficiency of God’s Word, the rich man begs to differ: “And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent,” to which “Abraham” replies: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (47)

The Pharisees’ superstition lies exposed: the Word is never enough for them. “There will always be those,” Sellers writes, “will give credence to every strange portent, but refuse to give any credence to the sacred Scriptures …. There are many who would gladly listen to a ghost, but who will not listen to the Word of God.” (48)

Having put the Pharisees to silence—they never challenged Him again—Jesus would await their moves to silence Him.

Notes

[1] Otis Q. Sellers, The Rich Man and Lazarus [“Being Number Three of a Series on What Is Man, What Is His Destiny”], Word of Truth Ministry, 1962, 48. Parenthetical page references are to this edition. A pdf (not a facsimile) of the text is freely available.

[2] “Author’s Note.” For Sellers on the soul, see this blog’s 2021-2022 13-part series:  I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII and XIII.

[3] In a footnote Sellers says the “words ‘fared sumptuously every day’ need to be more accurately translated to avoid the idea of feasting or banqueting which is not in the Greek. It has been better rendered as follows: ‘who every day lived in pleasure and luxury,’ Fenton; ‘lived sumptuously every day,’ Moffitt; ‘making merry day by day, brilliantly,’ Rotherham; ‘“living luxuriously and in a magnificent style every day,’ Wuest. The word ‘beggar’ in verse 20 should be ‘poor man’; the word ‘hell’ in verse 23 should be ‘hades’; and ‘Son’ in verse 25 should be ‘Child’” (7n).

[4] I have not been able to source this quotation, but would appreciate hearing from anyone who can.

[5] Examples include Judges 9:8-15, 2 Samuel 12:1-4, and 1 Kings 18:17-41. In each case Sellers shows that it is not a parable, but a satire.

[6] Sellers appends this note: “Other examples of ironical statements from the lips of our Lord will be found in Matthew 23:32 and Mark 7:9. Of Matthew 23:32, A. T. Robertson [1863-1934] says: “The keenest irony in this command has been softened in some MSS. to the future indicative (plerosete). Fill up the measure of your fathers; crown their misdeeds by killing the prophet God has sent to you, Do at last what has long been in your hearts. The hour is come! (Bruce).” [Sellers is quoting from Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament—Matthew, 1927. Concerning Mark 7:9, Robertson again says: “One can almost see the scribes withering under this terrible arraignment. It was biting sarcasm that cut to the bone, The evident irony should prevent literal interpretation as commendation of Pharisaic pervasion of God’s Word.” 25n.

[7] “One grows weary,” Sellers adds in a footnote, “of the bold claims made by many that they believe the Bible to be the Word of God, yet refuse to believe when pointed to a specific statement made in God’s Word. They take refuge in the statement that ‘it is a matter of interpretation.’ Very well—but let them interpret this passage, without rewriting it to bring in ideas about Adam’s body, and see how they come out.” (46n)

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