CONDEMNATIONS – Bach: Cantatas 185, 24, and 177, at Trinity IV

Commentary No. 9 of The Bach Cantatas

Domenico Fetti: The Parable of the Mote and the Beam (c.1619)

Cantata 185

The Netherlands Bach Society advances that the theme of cantata 185 can be condensed to  ‘If you want to change the world, start with yourself’. This, I agree, is correct.

In this cantata, Bach returns more directly to the Biblical teachings, for which the Sunday readings are, for the epistle, Romans 8:18-23, and for the gospel, Luke 6:36-42.

The Pauline epistle avers that the crucifixion of Christ not only is the redemption of humanity lost from Eden but also the restoration by God of the glory of the Creation, when the sufferings of the present can and will be seen to have been no more than paltry.

This is quite the sweepingly universal, if unqualified and unprovable, assertion. But let that pass for now.

¹⁸ For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

²¹ Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

²² For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

²³ And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

The opening duet uses the epistle as its theme, and the succeeding alto recitative moves from this theme directly to the gospel reading, which the alto aria then comments upon.  The gospel instructs that to judge is not to condemn; for then, hypocritically, one presupposes one’s superiority over, that one is better than, the judged, and so one fails to exemplify and personify the love of God. The bass recitative, indeed, refers explicitly to the parable of the mote and the beam (i.e., a large piece of wood, not a stream of light), upon which the bass aria then comments. Das ist der Christen Kunst: / Nur Gott und sich erkennen (This is the Christian goal: to know God and oneself), and not to judge and deprecate.