Becoming the Seventy-Two Disciples

A Missional Hermeneutic for approaching Sacred Scripture in the 21st-Century for the West.

The Second Vatican Council wanted to renew Catholic biblical awareness. Bishop Barron writes in the introduction of Dei Verbum in the Word on Fire Volume on the four major constitutions of the Vatican II council that this goal has largely been unrealized. So, in some sense, therefore my focus when it came to studying theology formally was Sacred Scripture. I wanted to be able to help Catholics become solid Bible readers, as I call them.

I think many novices, when it comes to interpreting Sacred Scripture, will be surprised that the first step of interpreting the sacred text is to write down your intuition of the text without any type of outside source such as a commentary or the magisterium. Michael J. Gorman refers to this process as “educated guessing.”[1] Naturally, some interpreters will be more seasoned than others when it comes to having some previous understanding of a particular book. The initial process of biblical interpretation is probably a surprise for first-time Bible readers and interpreters. It was certainly a surprise to me when I was learning this while studying theology, but after this initial step then comes what Gorman refers to as “refining” one’s interpretation by researching the tradition and scholarly commentary on the text. And so, the initial interpretation might be completely off, or the interpretation may need to be more fully developed.

So, why do exegetes interpret Sacred Scripture this way? Well, like Gorman, I believe Sacred Scripture is a living text—it continues to speak to Christians today and help form their daily lives as it did to people over 2000 years ago with some texts found in the Bible. Nonetheless, biblical texts cannot expand and contradict their literal meaning as expressed by the human authors writing in their own period. And so, it’s important to do a contextual analysis of the culture and history surrounding the biblical text. It’s also important to do both a textual and detailed analysis of the text, looking at such things as the genre or form of the book and passage. All these skills help illumine the meaning of interpreting the text in our daily lives.

Awhile back I wrote a gospel reflection titled, “The Harvest is abundant…” for my publication Missio Dei Catholic about the quoted passage in the title in Matthew 9:38 and its like text found in the Gospel of Luke 10:2, my initial interpretation of the commission of the seventy-two disciples was to call for a lay movement of proclamation and ministry. #Becomingthe72. I’ve been spending some time looking up the traditional interpretation and understanding of the commissioning of the seventy-two disciples. A good way to start doing this is to find what is called a Florilegium. A Florilegium is an anthology typically of Church Fathers. The most known one is most likely Catena Aurea—The Golden Chain—on the four gospels written by St. Thomas Aquinas. It is a wonderful anthology of Patristic Fathers' interpretations of the four gospels where Aquinas did the leg work looking up what they had written on the gospel texts.

My favorite saint, St. Augustine, has quite a bit different interpretation of the text than my initial reflection. Here is what St. Augustine says, “Now as no one doubts that the twelve Apostles foreshadowed the order of Bishops, so also we must know that these seventy-two represented the presbytery, (that is, the second-order of priests.)”[2]

St. Augustine’s interpretation of the text indicates the seventy-two disciples commissioned by Jesus are more or less the commissioning of the ministerial priesthood differing from the order of Bishops exhibited in the appointed twelve Apostles. St. Augustine’s interpretation has quite a lasting pedigree.  The great 16th century counter-reformation biblical scholar Fr. Cornelius à Lapide agrees with St. Augustine writing, “the Fathers teach that the Bishops are the successors of the Apostles, and the priests of the seventy disciples,”[3]—namely St. Augustine.

St. Augustine’s interpretation lacks both a contextual and textual analysis of the early Christian movement via one of the earliest primary sources of developing ecclesiology in the bible—First Timothy.[4] The development is beginning to shape the functions of the roles of the orders of the priesthood in which First Timothy explains the roles of the Episcopus (Bishop) and Diakonos (Deacon). The Pastoral letter of Titus (Ti. 1:5-9) does take up the qualifications of Presbyter (Priest/Elder) but, v.7 seems to indicate the author using the word Presbyter and Episcopus as synonyms in the passage.  The textual analysis shows that any teaching interpretation by “the Fathers” as written by Lapide assumes the bias and understanding of the order of priests as it existed in both St. Augustine’s and Fr. Lapide’s day.

A contextual analysis, using the Acts of the Apostles as a guide of the early Christian movement, with the formation of the Diaconate and the need for servants in Acts 6 (although the noun for Deacon is not used in Acts 6) also renders both St. Augustine’s and Lapide’s interpretation of the commissioning of the seventy-two disciples problematic. The priest existing prior to the diaconate itself within the order of priests would make the establishment of the diaconate redundant. Furthermore, laid out by the author of First Timothy, the office of the priesthood functions singularly in degrees as explained by St. Thomas Aquinas, “For in the early Church there were three orders, as Dionysius says: bishops, priest, and minister, and they were not divided into various stages, but all were of one order because of the scarcity of ministers and the newness of the Church.”[5]

So, how are bible readers and interpreters to understand the commissioning of the seventy-two disciples? Augustine’s interpretation carried enough weight throughout the history of the Church that it exists almost in its entirety in Fr. Lapide’s commentary. It’s an interpretation with the weight of tradition and history that needs to be acknowledged for its validity. In one respect, such an interpretation promotes a much-needed focus on the needed vocations in the ministerial priesthood. Nonetheless, there is another traditional interpretation of the passage that may serve the post-conciliar Church’s new reliance on the laity and mission. Pablo T. Gadenz explains, “Whereas the mission of the Twelve points to the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel, the sending out of this second group anticipates the mission to the Gentiles since seventy or seventy-two was the number of the Gentile nations (Gen 10; see Exod 1:5; Deut 32:8 NIV)”[6]

Again, examining St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Golden Chain,” Gardenz’s commentary is founded firmly in the Patristic tradition and the interpretation of the commissioning of the seventy-two Disciples agreeing with Cyril of Alexandria who writes, “God had made known by the Prophets that the preaching of the Gospel of salvation was to embrace not only Israel, but also the Gentile nations; and therefore after the twelve Apostles, there were other seventy-two also appointed by Christ, as it is said, After these things the Lord appointed other seventy-two also.”[7]

The purpose of the seventy-two disciples is simple, it is to go out into the world and bring the gospel and the kingdom of God to all peoples, a purpose rooted deeply in the Israelite Prophetic Literature. It’s a purpose that can be realized by the laity, who in some ways may be better suited for it as what Pope St. John Paul II refers to as the “re-evangelization” of the “de-Christianized” culture.[8] Michael F. Patella goes on to explain, “There is much debate on who constitutes the seventy-two. Were the Twelve selected from the seventy-two, or did they stand independent of them? Were there only seventy-two disciples, or were these seventy-two chosen from a much larger group? Were women in the line of Deborah, Hulda, Esther, Miriam, and Ruth involved, or was the mission restricted to men? These questions are difficult to answer.”[9]

It's important here to apply a living reflection of revelation to incorporate into the daily lives of bible readers how they can live out the passage of the commissioning of seventy-two by the virtue of their baptism and participate in Christ’s threefold office of priest, prophet, and king. A good recommendation by Michael J. Gorman is to look at how other cultures interpret texts of Sacred Scripture to break out of our own cultural bias. My favorite commentary for doing this is the African Bible Commentary because, too often, to be Christian in Africa, one must be willing to pay the ultimate price for believing in Christ Jesus. Tokunboh Adeyemo writes, “The story of the seventy-two is a wonderful one, involving an intensively planned campaign in a neglected area, the things that happened, the teaching that emerged, the instruction of disciples for their work, and the fact that Jesus empowered them with authority and power before they went out to preach and to heal.”[10]

The laity’s mission by virtue of our baptism is to become the seventy-two by going back to the neglected areas of the secular “de-Christianized” Western world to boldly preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Pope St. John Paul II teaches the mission of the laity in his Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, “Through their participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, “who proclaimed the kingdom of his Father by the testimony of his life and by the power of his world”(24), the lay faithful are given the ability and responsibility to accept the gospel in faith and to proclaim it in word and deed, without hesitating to courageously identify and denounce evil.”[11]

 The good news for the world is that God has not abandoned us in the chaos of the present but instead loves us so deeply that He sent His only begotten Son, who humbled Himself by taking the form of a slave, to die for us so that our sins may be forgiven and rose again so that we might inherit eternal life—the primary rallying call of the Apostles in Acts. It is up to us, the laity, to become the seventy-two—to become laborers in the vineyard for the harvest is abundant—and accept this mission of God with gratitude and optimism. The Lord chose us to live at this time in the history of the Church. Let us give Glory to God. Amen

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[1] Michael J. Gorman, Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers, Third Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 71.

[2] Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 3 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 344.

[3] Cornelius à Lapide, The Great Commentary of Cornelius À Lapide: S. Luke’s Gospel, trans. Thomas W. Mossman, Fourth Edition., vol. 4 (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908), 244.

[4] Raymond F. Collins, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: A Commentary, ed. C. Clifton Black, M. Eugene Boring, and John T. Carroll, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 78.

[5] Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Titus, and Philemon (Lander: Aquinas Institute, 2012), 282.

[6] Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, ed. Peter S. Williamson and Mary Healy, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 199.

[7] Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 3 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 344.

[8] John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988).

[9] Michael F. Patella, “The Gospel according to Luke,” in New Testament, ed. Daniel Durken, The New Collegeville Bible Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 255.

[10] Tokunboh Adeyemo, Africa Bible Commentary (Nairobi, Kenya; Grand Rapids, MI: WordAlive Publishers; Zondervan, 2006), 1251.

[11] John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988).