eye for eye tooth for tooth

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What is the teaching’s of the Roman Catholic Church on this scripture?

My understanding is you have the right to protect yourself, but you must also turn the other cheek.

So would it mean that when someone does you wrong you are to forgive, but also don’t seek revenge, but also don’t let down your guard either.

I was told that this means to treat others as you are treated. I don’t see this as being correct:confused:
 
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was a Jewish prescription meant to limit over-retribution. IOW, you steal a loaf of bread from someone, they shouldn’t cut off your hand. The punishment should not exceed the crime.

What Christ said was for his followers to go even further and not seek any retribution if you are wronged. Turn the other cheek, because the offender may see you not fighting back and be ashamed…and seek forgiveness or a reason for your selflessness.
 
I don’t know that there is aspecific teacing on this particular verse but I do know that it is generally used out of context.

The verse “eye for eye tooth for tooth”, when it was imposed, was actually placing a restriction on revenge. That any action taken could not exceed the wrong done. so in this sense it was an improtant forward in developing “civil” justice among the people of Isreal. It was not speaking to self defense or leaving your guard down.

For us today, we are not governed by this old sense of the Law, but by the new commandment to Love one another, to turn the other cheek, to not seek revenge at all, if forced to go one mile, to go two miles instead, if compelled to give you coa, five you cloak as well, to forgive, not seven times, but seventy x seven times.

An eye for an eye still remains a good guide in the civil justice realm, but it really has no application in the personal realm.

Peace
James
 
vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PAB.HTM

2841 This petition is so important that it is the only one to which the Lord returns and which he develops explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount.137 This crucial requirement of the covenant mystery is impossible for man. But "with God all things are possible."138
. . . as we forgive those who trespass against us

2842 This “as” is not unique in Jesus’ teaching: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”; “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful”; "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."139 It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandment by imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God. Only the Spirit by whom we live can make “ours” the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.140 Then the unity of forgiveness becomes possible and we find ourselves “forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave” us.141

2843 Thus the Lord’s words on forgiveness, the love that loves to the end,142 become a living reality. the parable of the merciless servant, which crowns the Lord’s teaching on ecclesial communion, ends with these words: "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."143 It is there, in fact, “in the depths of the heart,” that everything is bound and loosed. It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia_en.html

Christ emphasizes so insistently the need to forgive others that when Peter asked Him how many times he should forgive his neighbor He answered with the symbolic number of "seventy times seven,"131 meaning that he must be able to forgive everyone every time. It is obvious that such a generous requirement of forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirements of justice. Properly understood, justice constitutes, so to speak, the goal of forgiveness. In no passage of the Gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence towards evil, towards scandals, towards injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness.
 
JRKH said:
I don’t know that there is aspecific teacing on this particular verse but I do know that it is generally used out of context.

The verse “eye for eye tooth for tooth”, when it was imposed, was actually placing a restriction on revenge. That any action taken could not exceed the wrong done. so in this sense it was an improtant forward in developing “civil” justice among the people of Isreal. It was not speaking to self defense or leaving your guard down.

For us today, we are not governed by this old sense of the Law, but by the new commandment to Love one another, to turn the other cheek, to not seek revenge at all, if forced to go one mile, to go two miles instead, if compelled to give you coa, five you cloak as well, to forgive, not seven times, but seventy x seven times.

An eye for an eye still remains a good guide in the civil justice realm, but it really has no application in the personal realm.

Peace
James
Click to expand...
So anotherwards this is not a teaching of the Church? We no longer go by the old law?
 
rinnie said:
So anotherwards this is not a teaching of the Church? We no longer go by the old law?
Click to expand...
This is basically correct.
We go by the teachings fo the new convenent as presented to us by Christ’s Church. We do not automtically go by Mosaic Law.
This is not to say that there are not good aspects, principles and so forth contained in the “Old Law” or mosaid Law, but we are no longer bound by it.

Peace
James
 
JRKH said:
This is basically correct.
We go by the teachings fo the new convenent as presented to us by Christ’s Church. We do not automtically go by Mosaic Law.
This is not to say that there are not good aspects, principles and so forth contained in the “Old Law” or mosaid Law, but we are no longer bound by it.

Peace
James
Click to expand...
thanks buddy this makes sense to me now.
 
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