Editorial April 6, 1981 Issue

The Pilate assumption

NATHAN A. TALBOT

The moment must have been tense, even dramatic. Christ Jesus didn't respond to his interrogator. Pilate pressed him: "Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?" With unshaken confidence Jesus answered, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above."^{John 19:10, 11.}

One can hardly read of such episodes leading to the crucifixion without being deeply touched. Pilate's assumption that he could determine Jesus' fate; Jesus' certainty that God alone was controlling his destiny: these two views have implications way beyond that significant event when those two men faced each other.

The Pilate assumption challenges us even today. And it threatened people long before Jesus' time. What Pilate said symbolized a basic mortal fallacy: the belief that people, places, events, can exercise final control over our lives. Moses, in preparing to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, must have felt the arrogance of the Pilate assumption in the confrontation with Pharaoh; Elijah felt it with Jezebel; the three young Hebrews with King Nebuchadnezzar and his fiery furnace.

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