Was Jesus a pacifist? How has Jesus’ teaching on non-violence been assessed in Christian interpretation?

Since Jesus spoke the words “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9)1 almost two thousand years ago, many Christians have been pacifists, and many Christians have killed pacifists; each group claiming that God is on their side and peace is their aim.

This essay will assert that Jesus can be considered a pacifist, provided we are clear about precisely what that does and does not mean. ‘Pacifist’ is a problematic term. It is often rejected because it is too easily associated with passivity2. The phrase most popular two hundred years ago, ‘non-resistance’, can receive the same criticism3. Today ‘non-violence’ (or ‘non-violent action’) is often preferred, but that still has the limitation of defining itself by what it is against4. A more Biblical language is that of peacemaking, but this can imply sole concern for a peaceful end, while pacifists usually tend to be concerned with means5.

Looking at Jesus’ teachings on non-violence, and the way in which his life and death opposed violence, I will argue that Jesus was non-violent, but not passive, and that his opposition to violence took its primary form in active opposition to the ‘peace’ violently imposed by the political authorities. I will then discuss how Christians have very often turned away from Jesus’ non-violence and supported violence, particularly the violence of the political authorities. I will argue that this can be explained best by the influence of dominant ideologies on Christian opinion since the third century.

An embodiment of non-violence

aimed above all at the transformation of the present state of the world ... calls into question the popular self-understanding of [his] society ... [neither] drawn into the power struggle and identified with one side or another ... [nor] a-political ... excludes mere transient self-interest ... not for himself, but for others, that is for the poor and underprivileged ... fighting for everybody ... Seeks to turn [the adversary] from an adversary to a collaborator by winning him over ... humble ... willing ... to see some

1 Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible (Anglicized Edition)2 Wink, Walter, Jesus and Nonviolence : a Third Way (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003), 3.3 This was the word used by William Lloyd Garrison (who founded a Non-Resistance Society – Garrison, William Lloyd, ‘Non-resistance Society: Declaration of principles, 1838’ in The Pacifist Conscience (ed. Peter Mayer) (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966)), Adin Ballou (“never to resist injury with injury”, Ballou, Adin, ‘Christian non-resistance’ in The Pacifist Conscience), and Leo Tolstoy (“non-resistance to evil by force”, Tolstoy, Leo (1894). The Kingdom of God is Within You (tr. Constance Garnett). Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4602 (accessed 12/5/2011). It is drawn from a translation of Matt 5.39; “Do not resist an evildoer”. Yoder demonstrates that neither Jesus nor the above thinkers – all of whom were politically active – advocated letting evil happen without doing anything about it (Yoder, John Howard, The War of the Lamb : The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking (ed. Glen Stassen, Mark Thiessen Nation, Matt Hamsher) (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009), 222n.). A better term would perhaps be “nonretaliation” (Yoder, War, 55). But these “nonretaliators” did not just oppose retaliatory violence. Tolstoy, for instance, opposed all violence, in fact, he asserted that most violence is not primarily concerned with retaliation; resistance to evil is largely an excuse for using armies to maintain power and property distributions (Tolstoy, Leo, ‘Letter to a non-commissioned officer’ in The Pacifist Conscience, 161).4 Stanley Hauerwas insists that peaceableness must be more important in shaping Christian pacifism than a lack of violence. Hauerwas, Stanley & Milbank, John, ‘Christian Peace: A Conversation between Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank’ in Must Christianity Be Violent?: Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology (ed. Kenneth R. Chase, Robert G. Clouse) (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 210.5 Gandhi, Mohandas K., All Men Are Brothers : Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as told in his own words (ed. Krishna Kripalani) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1960), 105-109. Another issue is the great diversity within pacifist thinking; it is not one single position that can be easily lumped together. Yoder identifies no less than twenty-nine different varieties of religious pacifism (Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Explaining Christian Nonviolence: Notes for a Conversation with John Milbank’ in Must Christianity, 174).

good in him ... invites him to arrive freely at a decision ... ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation ... persuaded of the superior efficacy of love ... [and] truth ...6

This serves as a fine description of Jesus’ ministry and methods; it is actually taken from Thomas Merton’s description of non-violent resistance. We will discuss the non-violent aspects of Jesus’ life and death as well as his explicit teaching on the subject.

The simplest approach is to begin with the teachings, represented especially in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7). Jesus’ ‘minor precepts’(Matt 5:21-48), three of which deal with the subject of violence, represent a new stage of revelation (“You have heard ... But I say”)7. The Jews had always equated sin with violence, and salvation with peace8. But the law was unable to overcome the inevitability of retaliation; only limit its compounding nature, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ (Exodus 21.24). Jesus’ good news is that violence can now be fully overcome.

The medium for this to occur is the practice of enemy love. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’”, Jesus observes. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:43-44). The existence of enmity and persecution is not denied, but the enemy-lover does not allow the persecutor to set the terms of exchange9. By choosing to love regardless, she is able to break free from the never-ending cycle of retaliation.

Jesus thus goes beyond the law in counselling “do not resist an evildoer” (Matt 5:38-42). Instead, Jesus suggests ‘turning the other cheek’, ‘giving the shirt off your back’ and ‘going the extra mile’. These phrases have entered the vernacular to mean passive acquiescence or extraordinary effort in a general sense; for Jesus, they were assertive, culturally-specific acts of non-violent opposition to oppression10.

Whenever his disciples, or anyone, suggests using violence, Jesus issues a “veto”11. When a Samaritan village rejects them, James and John casually suggest casting down fire from heaven upon them, but he rebukes them; he has not come to destroy lives but to save them (Luke 9:51-55). At Jesus’ arrest, Peter chops off a slave’s ear in a clumsy attempt to defend Jesus, who promptly heals the ear and tells him “put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt 26:52)12. At one point, Jesus is called upon to endorse a capital punishment according to Jewish law. He utters another of his famous aphorisms; “let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”, which manages to non-violently change the minds of all of the would-be-executors (John 8:2-11). Neither does he condemn the woman himself, but exhorts her to reform herself.

Other aspects of Jesus’ ministry reveal his non-violence implicitly.

6 Merton, Thomas, Faith and Violence : Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 12,14,21,35.7 Yoder, War, 78.8 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (tr. Margaret Kohl) (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 128-129.9 Yoder, War, 158.10 Wink, Jesus, 14-28.11 Ellul, Jacques, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (tr. Cecelia Gaul Kings) (New York: Seabury, 1969), 129.12 This event is recorded in all four gospels, though different details are included and omitted in each one. Only John (18:10) reports the disciple as Peter; only Luke (22:51) reports Jesus healing the ear; only Matthew reports Jesus’ famous response. In Mark (14:47) Jesus does not rebuke the disciple.

Grace and forgiveness. Jesus’ emphasis on grace – unconditional access to God and to forgiveness – raises the ire of the priests whose status relied on monopolising this access (Mark 2:1-12). Jesus makes grace available to many who have been denied it by the priests – including sinners. Jesus reveals God’s divine grace, which is the epitome of not resisting evil with evil. Jesus himself forgives even those who are crucifying him (Luke 23.34), and, contrary to the vineyard parable (Matt 21:33-41)13, does not bring violent retribution after his resurrection. He also urges his followers to practice unlimited forgiveness – 70 times seven times (Matt 18:21-22) – and connects human forgiveness to that of God (18:23-35).

Conflict resolution. In Matt 5:21-26 and 18:15-22, Jesus suggests resolving conflict through personal confrontation, communication and forgiveness. He has no time for the modern legal system of states co-opting conflicts and resolving them in their impersonal and violent way14. Pacifism is seen by some Mennonites as springing from a commitment to the reconciliation Jesus outlines in Matthew 1815.

Style of leadership. Jesus is regarded by the New Testament authors as a king – “King of kings” even (Rev 17.14, 1 Tim 6:15) – but he does not promote himself as such16. Yoder points out that the temptations offered to Jesus in the desert at the beginning of his ministry were all ways of being king; through economic provision and messianic showmanship as well as the more straight-forwardly ‘political’ offer of all the kingdoms of the earth17. But the path Jesus chose does not reflect the hierarchical, self-serving and violent reality of standard kingship, which the prophet Samuel warned about (1 Sam 8), and Jesus spoke against (Mark 10:35-45). Jesus preaches a mysterious, organic kingdom of God, rather than a political-military kingdom of Jesus; his way of being king far more closely reflects the tradition of God alone as king of Israel18. He sums up the difference between his kingdom and those of this world as violence versus non-violence (John 18:36)19.

Jesus is also regarded as the Messiah, or Christ (Mark 1:1). The Messiah was expected to deliver Israel from the Romans as God had delivered Israel from Egypt at her birth. Many expected the Messiah to take a similar approach to the Zealots, who engaged in violent revolution against Rome. But he consistently refuses the temptation to be a popular Zealot Messiah-king, despite the hopes of his people, and even his closest friends (John 6:15,18:10-13 Kirwan, Michael, Discovering Girard (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004), 80.14 Christie, Nils, ‘Conflicts as Property’, The British Journal of Criminology 17/1 (1977).15 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Why Truthfulness Requires Forgiveness: A Commencement Address for Graduates of a College of the Church of the Second Chance’ in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 212n.16 Jesus never directly refers to himself as a king, and never indirectly without qualifications. In Luke 22:29-30 Jesus refers to his Father conferring a kingdom on him, but at the same time talks of conferring the kingdom and thrones to his disciples. In Matthew 21.2-6 and John 12:14-15 Jesus’ so-called triumphal entry is said to enact the prophecy from Zechariah 9:9; “your king comes to you … humble, and riding on a donkey … the foal of a donkey”. The intermediate phrase from Zechariah, “triumphant and victorious is he” is removed by the evangelists. In the passion narratives, Jesus is repeatedly mocked and accused of claiming to be a king, but when asked directly by Pilate in the synoptics he merely replies “You say so” (Matthew 27.11, Mark 15.2, Luke 23:3). The account in John is more ambivalent; “Do you ask this on your own? … My kingdom is not from this world … You say that I am a king” and draws attention to his distinction from violent worldly kingship (John 18:33-38). Twice, Jesus does not contradict other characters’ references to him being a king or having a kingdom, but both times he deflects the conversation to how the other will participate with him in the kingdom (Luke 23:42-43, John 1:49-51). In John 6:15 Jesus withdraws from a crowd who intends to “take him by force and make him king”.17 Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 30ff.18 Marshall, Chris, ‘A Prophet of God’s Justice: Reclaiming the Political Jesus’, Stimulus 14/3 (2006), 37. It seems that a thousand years after Israel’s descent into monarchy, God finally reconciles the tradition of himself as king (and his distrust of political authority) with his reluctant agreement to give Israel a king. He gives them the one ‘son of Man’ who could be trusted to reflect the reign of God in the role.19 Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 33-34.

11). Indeed, Jesus predicts the doom of the incipient Zealot movement which would culminate in the Jewish War of 66-70 C.E. and the sack of Jerusalem20. As he approaches Jerusalem, Jesus weeps that his nation has not recognised “the things that make for peace”, and will be massacred in the inevitable retaliation by the stronger power (Luke 19:41-44).

Method of promotion. Jesus wants everyone to commit to the values of the kingdom, and communal values cannot come about by violence21. Therefore, he “call[s] into being a community of voluntary commitment”22. He seeks victory “not by destroying or even humiliating the adversary, but by convincing him”23. He is not always successful – as in the case of the rich man who walked away grieving, unable to give up his wealth (Mark 10:17-31). But the “weakness of violence” is that when rulers are “unable to rouse either anxiety or terror, their violence loses its effect”24. Jesus does not rely on anxiety or terror; his gospel provokes people to ask what is true, not who is strongest25. Freedom and love, the vehicles by which Jesus sees the kingdom coming, are both completely opposite to violence. Freedom is the opposite of violence’s coercive nature26, and love is the opposite of its harmful nature27.

Death. Jesus’ death is the culmination of his forgiveness, his trust in God’s plan, and his opposition to the authorities. As such, it represents the zenith of his non-violent action. Jesus enacts his own radical teaching and does not resist his executors (John 18:36); he loves his enemies, and prays for his persecutors (Luke 23.34). Jesus’ death can also be seen as an exposé of the violence that holds societies together, against outsiders. Literary critic and philosopher René Girard describes a ‘scapegoat’ process inherent to the foundation of all societies, obscured through myth. He sees the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection as the ultimate anti-myth, exposing the truth of scapegoating and placing God on the side of its innocent victims28.

Resurrection. The resurrection vindicates the way of the cross; it shows God’s approval and completes Jesus’ non-violent victory over the powers of violence. The cross is transferred from a symbol of the empire’s control through violence to a symbol of the love that will die before using or obeying violence. The resurrection inaugurates victory of this love over death itself, and “every ruler and every authority and power” which relies on death for control (1 Cor 15:20-28)29. In light of the resurrection, “crucified agape” is neither folly nor weakness but the “wisdom and power of God” (1 Cor 1:22-25)30.

Jesus’ community of followers also bears witness to his non-violence. While the disciples are slow to accept Jesus’ non-violence (Mark 14.47), the New Testament records no acts of violence by Christians after the resurrection and Pentecost. The most quoted phrase during the first 200 years of Christian writing was “love your enemies”31. The early church saw 20 Wengst, Klaus, Pax Romana and the peace of Jesus Christ (tr. John Bowden), (London: SCM Press, 1987), 58-59.21 Ellul, 114-115.22 Yoder, Politics, 45, emphasis original.23 Merton, 12.24 Moltmann, 129.25 Yoder, War, 138.26 “...we shall be mistaken if we assume that freedom can be the product of coercion.” Yoder, War, 172. 27 “The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war.” Day, Dorothy, ‘Union Square Speech’ (1965), http://archive.vod.umd.edu/religion/day1965int.htm (accessed 19/5/2011).28 Kirwan.29 Wright, N.T., Paul : In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 69-70.30 Yoder, Politics, 114.31 Kohls, Gary G., ‘Christian Nonviolence – Heresy? Or The Peace Plan Of God?’ (2007), http://medicolegal.tripod.com/kohlscnhppg.htm (accessed 19/5/2011).

itself as enacting the ancient prophecy of ‘beating swords into ploughshares’ (Isaiah 2:4), conscientiously pursuing peace and refraining from all violence. This is part of what made them attractive to prospective followers32.

Why was Jesus non-violent?

Jesus was not merely non-violent for tactical reasons. His non-violence springs from his view of God, his view of humanity, and his view of his own task.

Jesus describes peacemakers, and those who love their enemies, as “children of God” (Matt 5:9, 5:45). A connection is drawn to God’s own “perfect” (indiscriminating)33 love, which is represented by blessing both evil and good with sun and rain (Matt 5:43-48). This indicates that a vital reason for Jesus’ non-violence was his view of God. John Howard Yoder says that the concept of a non-violent God is the foundation of Christian non-violence34. Jesus’ view of God is particularly important because he saw himself as ‘one with the Father’ and ‘making God known’ (John 1:1-19, John 17) . Jesus’ entire life and death can be seen as a revelation of his theology – his view of God as a gracious parent35.

Jesus’ ‘anthropology’ – his view of humanity – is another essential aspect to his non-violence. While Jesus was acutely aware of people’s failings, he profoundly valued the human individual, as well as communities. He “showed a striking respect for individual conscience and choice”36 and he would leave the ninety-nine for the one (Luke 15:3-7)37 rather than sacrificing the individual for the aggregate as high priest Caiaphas did (John 11:50). Jesus had a special concern for marginalised people – the poor, the sick, sinners, enemies, children. These are the most common victims of all kinds of violence; Jesus’ acceptance of the marginalised placed him against the scapegoating tendencies underlying much violence38.

Sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul claims that a capacity for non-violence is what separates humans from animals39. The idea that humanity is made ‘in the image of God’ (Gen 1:27) is presupposed throughout the Bible40. Jesus’ love and concern for people indicates that he took this concept seriously. It is very difficult to kill a person, or destroy a community, whom you genuinely regard as the image of God. It is also difficult to consider them your enemy; Jesus battled against injustice, exclusion, hypocrisy, mistruth and greed, not against people.

Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God was the other vital factor that led to his non-violence. The Kingdom was the main subject of Jesus’ teaching; he would sometimes speak 32 Moltmann, 134-135.33 Yoder, War, 146-147.34 Yoder, War, 147. There are of course ambiguities here. Alongside Jesus’ emphasis on forgiveness and God’s unconditional love, the Gospels, especially Matthew, also occasionally warn of eternal divine punishment (eg. Matt 25:46). Moreover, the Jesus of Revelation is considerably more wrathful than that of the Gospels, though he is still a slaughtered lamb. This “Christian dilemma” has never been resolved; it must be admitted that these two strands are contradictory and inconsistent (Moltmann, 334-338). However, comparing Romans 12:14-21 (love your enemies because “vengeance is mine ... says the Lord”) with Matthew 5:43-48, we see that regardless of whether God will use vengeance and violence, they are not for us. They have also not (yet?) been used by Jesus, the ultimate image and revelation of God. Those of us who hope for divine forgiveness for our own sins can only hope in the Jesus of the Gospels who “does not come to judge. He comes to raise up” (Moltmann, 338).35 Wengst, 71.36 Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 31.37 Luke’s version of this parable relates it to his concern for sinners, while Matthew’s version (Matt 18:10-14) is concerned with straying members of the Christian community.38 Kirwan.39 Ellul, 146.40 Yoder, Politics, 117.

of it as coming (Mark 1.15), and sometimes as already here (Luke 17:21). The assertion that the kingdom of God has entered into reality means that reality is fundamentally changed. It “makes possible what was impossible before”41. A new world is here, growing among the ruins of the old, where God’s eschatological promises of peace are coming true; where swords not only will be but are beaten into ploughshares. The other side of the paradox, the idea that the kingdom is not yet fully here means that God’s work of redemption is ongoing, and we can participate in it as we “strive first for the kingdom of God” (Matt 6:33). Non-violence is the joy of participating in the Kingdom; it is “not a recommendation, an ideal, that Jesus suggested we might try to live up to. Rather, nonviolence is constitutive of God’s refusal to redeem coercively.”42

Not peace but a sword?

On the other side of the ledger we have a handful of Gospel references which could be seen to condone violence; Jesus tells his disciples to buy swords (so that he can fulfil a prophecy and make a point against violence – Luke 22.36-38,49-51); the kingdom of God is being seized by force (a passage nobody seems to understand – Matt 11:12 and Luke 16:16); he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt 10:34, which we will discuss later). The sole recorded act in Jesus’ life which – at a stretch – could be perceived as violent is his use of a makeshift whip to drive out animals from the temple (John 2.15)43. If Jesus was planning on using violence, he was not very good at it; thinking two swords was enough to defend against a dawn raid, fleeing from potential army recruits (John 6:15) and giving up on his Temple occupation after only one day (Mark 11:19).

Indeed, this is one of the main reasons people have given for departing from Jesus’ ethics; he was unable to be politically effective because his lack of violence made him passive and separatist44.

However, as clearly as the gospels show us that Jesus was not violent, they tell us that he was not passive. And, indeed, he was non-passive for the same reasons he was non-violent; he revealed God as a liberator and a redeemer as well as a peacemaker, he loved people so much that he wanted to give them freedom and justice rather than just not harming them; and he ushered in the kingdom of God where justice and peace kiss (Psalm 85.10).

The peace of the Kingdom is the Jewish conception of peace, shalom; “a state of total well-being, integrated wholeness and harmony … It is the world at rest under God”45. A simple lack of violence is not enough. Contrary to Greek and Roman ideas of peace, shalom is a peace that necessarily includes justice. And this necessarily requires confronting the current state of affairs.

Jesus was confrontational. Stanley Hauerwas says that rather than avoiding conflict, “pacifists attempt to enhance conflict because they really believe in something, namely, peace”46. This was certainly true for Jesus, who was more likely to provoke conflict than to avoid it, like the murdered prophets before him (5:10-12, 23:29-39).

41 Moltmann, 102.42 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Learning from others’, The Christian Century 127/10 (2010), 32.43 Yoder, Politics, 50-5144 Yoder, War, 175.45 Marshall, Chris, ‘The Moral Vision of the Beatitudes: The Blessings of Revolution’, in Faith and Freedom: Christian Ethics in a Pluralist Culture (ed. D. Neville & P. Matthews) (Sydney: Australian Theological Forum, 2003), 30.46 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Christianity: It’s Not a Religion, It’s an Adventure’ in The Hauerwas Reader (ed. John Berkman, Michael Cartwright) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 532.

Jesus was revolutionary47. His gospel had “far more in common with the founding of a revolutionary party than with what we now think of as either ‘evangelism’ or ‘ethical teaching’”48. His clarion call was to “take up your cross” in a world where the cross was the standard punishment for insurrection49.

He took sides. Jesus showed an extraordinary acceptance of the poor, the sick, the under-privileged, the outcasts, and the sinners, for whom he showed a remarkable acceptance, while delivering harsh judgments upon the political-religious authorities. He was on the side of the oppressed, though he did not always condone their actions50. Indeed, Ellul says that one cannot be consistently non-violent unless they are “simultaneously acting as spokesman for the oppressed and attacking the unjust order with every nonviolent weapon”51.

Jesus was a liberator. As a representative of a liberating God (Exodus 20:2), the Messiah had to be. But Jesus went beyond national liberation for Israel alone, and offers a liberation for everyone enslaved by the system of oppression, including the oppressors themselves. Jesus’ kingdom accepts the poor unconditionally, and the rich through conversion; they can participate in the kingdom by turning “from violence to justice”52. Indeed, he offers liberation from violence itself53

Rather than a pacifist, perhaps a more accurate title for Jesus is a “nonviolent Zealot”54. He rejected the Zealot temptation, but it was an attractive option55. Because of Jesus’ revolutionary politics, some have even suggested that he was an violent Zealot. In the 1960s when Ellul was writing, this was a fashionable suggestion among Christians who wanted a theological justification for violent socialist and decolonising revolutions56. However, Jesus’ non-violent was far more radical and liberating than these violent revolutions. Ellul says that his political and sociological study have convinced him that “violence is an altogether superficial thing ... [which] never affects the roots of injustice – social structures, the bases of an economic system, the foundations of a society”. A “revolution ‘in depth’” must be non-violent57.

All of the above meant that Jesus the pacifist was necessarily against one form of peace – the Pax Romana – order imposed violently from above. In his book on the difference between Jesus’ and Caesar’s peace, Klaus Wengst explains how Jesus “had nothing to do with the peace of rulers but wanted to work against it”58.47 Ellul (43ff) was one of the first to declare that Jesus was revolutionary, in the 1930s. By the end of the century this was common knowledge, declared even by the Bishop of Durham (see below).48 N.T. Wright, quoted in Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 35.49 Yoder, Politics, 46.50 Ellul, 68-69.51 Ellul, 172.52 Moltmann, 102.53 Moltmann, 127.54 Yoder, War, 80.55 Yoder, War, 171.56 Ellul, 47. This seems far less popular for post-neo-liberalism and post-9/11 generations than it was a year after 1968. Ellul describes the ‘fashionable’ poor of his day – those whose causes put them against capitalism and the West; Latin Americans, African Americans, North Vietnamese, Palestinians. Unfashionable in his day were the Tibetans, and those oppressed by African and Middle Eastern governments (Ellul, 67). Today’s enthusiasm for the Tibetans, Burmese, ‘invisible children’, Rwandans, and the North African and Middle Eastern revolutions – and very little support for anti-Western terrorists – bears interesting contrast. See also Yoder’s change of tone from the 1970s, where he emphasised Jesus’ distinction from the Zealots (Yoder, Politics), to the 1990s, where he was dubbing him a ‘nonviolent Zealot’. This change in fashion illustrates a change in popular politics makes it all the more important to again re-assert Jesus’ revolutionary mission, bias for the poor and against wealth, and his death at the hands of a ‘civilised’ Western colonial empire.57 Ellul, 117-118.58 Wengst, 61.

This gives meaning to one of the passages often seen to contradict a non-violent Jesus; Matthew 10:34-39. Jesus warns “do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” and proceeds to describe rebellion against familial superiors; son against father, daughter against mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. Jesus is quoting Micah 7:6, which was traditionally interpreted as a sign of the “terrors of the end-time” when traditional morality, law and order collapse – a particularly nasty prospect for those with a stake in the status quo59. For Jesus, however, this eschatological anarchy is precisely what he wants. “The sword” in this context symbolises “the unmasking and destruction of a pseudo-peace”60.

In the modern era, political power continues to grow out of the barrel of a gun – or, more specifically, wars, prisons and police, as well as instruments of control that can be considered violent in a more general sense; economic competition, class, hierarchy and propaganda61. Indeed, the standard myth and definition of the modern state, as provided by Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber, is a rehash of the Pax Romana; peace through monopolising violence62.

Jesus saw the necessity of violence for what we now call the state, and his own kingdom was diametrically opposed to rule by violence (John 18:36). Once we allow ourselves to use anachronistic modern terminology to label Jesus, consistency demands that we classify him as an anarchist as well as a pacifist.

Though the categorisation of Jesus as an anarchist is far from mainstream, the idea of Jesus as a pacifist is reasonably well-accepted. Atheist comedian Bill Maher recently remarked that non-violence was “kind of Jesus’s trademark”63, which calls to mind a quip attributed to Gandhi; “the only people who don’t know that Jesus was nonviolent are Christians”64. But even Reinhold Niebuhr, the pre-eminent Christian anti-pacifist of the twentieth century, acknowledged that Jesus was a pacifist; claiming that “nothing is more pathetic” than the attempt to claim Jesus was violent because of the whip in the temple or the references to swords65.

So why has Jesus’ obvious non-violence not proved sufficient to convince all Christians to follow in his footsteps? A partial reason may be that Christian pacifism more commonly flows from a faith and community experience than as a response to “moral discourse in terms of rules and exceptions”66. Stanley Hauerwas goes as far as to say that “no account of Christian nonviolence can be justified by any particular biblical text or group of texts ... Rather, only a church that is nonviolent is capable of reading, for example, Romans 13.”67

59 Wengst, 61.60 Wengst, 62.61 Ellul, 84-88.62 Thomas Hobbes described the chaotic violence of the hypothetical pre-historic ‘state of nature’ and praised the state as a ‘mortal god’ that was able to engulf and control it. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (1651). http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207 (accessed 18/5/2011). Max Weber later defined a state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation’(1919). http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/lecture/politics_vocation.html (accessed 18/5/2011).63 Davis, Glenn, ‘Bill Maher: If You Celebrated Bin Laden’s Death, You’re Not Really A Christian’ (2011). http://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/bill-maher-celebrating-bin-laden-death-not-christian/ (accessed 18/5/2011).64 Dear, John, ‘The Scandal of the Church’s Support of War’ (2002). http://www.fatherjohndear.org/articles/scandal_of_the_church.html (accessed 18/5/2011).65 Niebuhr, Reinhold, ‘Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist’ in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr : Selected Essays and Addresses (ed. Robert McAfee Brown) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 106.66 Yoder, War, 117.67 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Can a Pacifist Think About War?’ in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 118.

Some Christian communities have encouraged emulating Jesus’ radical ethics, while the majority have sourced their political ethics from other biblical68 or extra-biblical sources. This question of whether Jesus’ pacifism is normative for Christians has been a far bigger controversy than whether Jesus himself was a pacifist.

Imitation or conformity?

As we have discussed, the early church was pacifist by default; the martyr Maximilian’s position – “I cannot be a soldier, I cannot do evil, because I am a Christian” – was representative for almost three hundred years69. Although this radical position was eroded gradually, the major benchmark was the conversion of “that scoundrel”70 Constantine to Christianity. Anti-Christian polemicist Celsus had already asked “what would happen if an emperor became Christian?” – the empire would collapse71. He’d assumed a Christian emperor would follow Jesus’ non-violence the way most Christians of the time did.

The first Christian emperor, however, managed to use Christianity to keep the empire together, with him at its head. The son of a Roman tetrarch (co-emperor), Constantine’s “divine vocation” was to rule the world –“the substance of the temptations overcome by Christ”72. After the death of his father he undertook a civil war to take over the empire. On the eve of an important battle, Constantine saw a vision of the cross and the words ‘in this sign, conquer’. If this was indeed a vision of Jesus, he had obviously changed a lot since his earthly career73. Constantine painted the cross on his men’s shields, marched out and won the battle, and eventually gained control of the entire empire. These were the first of many ‘Christian wars’. From this point on, Jesus’ non-violence was the minority position in the Christian church74.

Opinion was never unanimous, however. The Middle Ages brought armies of Christian warriors who left a trail of corpses from Europe to the Middle East, but also a series of ‘heretical’ pacifist Christian movements such as the Waldenses and Cathars75. In the modern era, colonisation by the ‘Christian’ nations of the rest of the world was often justified on evangelistic grounds, but colonised people also took on the introduced Christian faith as inspiration for non-violent resistance, such as the people of Parihaka in New Zealand76. Today, a ‘War on Terror’ carries on the crusade and colonial traditions with George W. Bush

68 The infamous Romans 13:1-7 passage which Hauerwas mentions is a good example; upon first glance it seems to support the Roman state and its coercive arms, though – as Hauerwas mentions – pacifists often read the passage differently. Anderson, Caleb, ‘Paul and politics’ (2009). http://calebmorgan.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/paul-and-politics-2-essays/ (accessed 19/5/2011).69 Ellul, 9ff, quote from 10.70 Tolstoy, ‘Letter’, 162.71 Bulloch, James, Pilate to Constantine (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1981), 315.72 Kee, Alistair, Constantine versus Christ : the triumph of ideology (London: SCM Press, 1982), 144-146.73 Bulloch, 313.74 At least in the sense of ‘official’ opinion. It could be argued that pacifism has been the majority position of Christians, because the majority of Christians have been women, and the majority of women have been non-violent. Hauerwas, ‘Can a Pacifist?’,122.75 Derksen, ‘Peacemaking Principles Drawn from Opposition to the Crusades, 1095-1276’, Peace Research 36/2.76 Turia, Tariana, ‘Turia – Petition to Parliament’ (2011). http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1105/S00221/turia-petition-to-parliament-parihaka-day.htm (accessed 12/5/2011).

notoriously claiming that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq77, while Ploughshares activists and Christian Peacemaker Teams oppose war non-violently in the name of Jesus78.

The history of Christian opinion on violence can essentially be placed in two categories; imitation of Christ and conforming to the world. The former strand considers that Jesus’ non-violence is normative and should be followed by Christians. The New Testament supplements the older concept of following or imitating God with the idea of following or imitating Jesus (see John 15:9,12). Yoder notes that the language of ‘imitation of Christ’ (or ‘participation in Christ’) in the New Testament applies solely and consistently to his “attitude to the powers of the world” – demonstrated in the cross, “the price of his social nonconformity”79. Imitation of Christ is necessarily non-violent as much as the cross is. This view is best represented by the Anabaptist movement from the 16th century onwards80.

The mainstream view since Constantine has been that Jesus is not normative for Christian ethics. The most radical aspects of the Sermon on the Mount do not apply to today’s Christians, because it was a temporary ethic expecting an imminent end to history, or it only applies to ancient Jewish peasants, or it’s concerned with purely ‘spiritual’ matters, or it’s an absolute that doesn’t apply to imperfect humans, or he came to die for our sins not teach ethics81.

Thus, instead of a specifically Christian ethic, Christian ethicists have usually drawn on a ‘natural theology’, which “derives its guidance from common sense and the nature of things”82. As ‘naturalisation’ – portraying the specific products of power interests as ‘natural’ and neutral – is a common form of ideological deception83, natural theology has been particularly susceptible to ideological influence. Thus, the realities of the world from which ‘common sense’ is drawn have often not been plants and birds and sheep like in Jesus’ teaching, but the rituals, values and actions of political power.

In the time of Constantine, the main architect of this theology was Bishop Eusebius of Alexandria, who – grateful for no longer being persecuted84 – praised Constantine for emulating the kingdom of heaven on earth. However, he drew his vision of the kingdom of heaven from looking at Constantine’s imperial court85. This kind of circular reasoning is evocative of the idealist and dualist philosophy of Plato86. Jesus ruled the empire of heaven 77 BBC Press Office, ‘God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers’ (2005). http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml (accessed 10/5/2011).78 ‘Christian Peacemaker Teams : Getting in the way’. http://cpt.org/ (accessed 10/5/2011). ‘Ploughshares Aotearoa’. http://ploughshares.org.nz/ (accessed 10/5/2011).79 Yoder, Politics, 95ff80 Chernus, Ira, American nonviolence : The history of an idea, ch. 2. http://spot.colorado.edu/~chernus/NonviolenceBook/Anabaptists.htm (accessed 20/5/2011), ch. 2.81 Yoder, Politics, 15ff.82 Yoder, Politics, 20. Yoder says that this epistemology is reflected in the the language of “fitting”, “adequate”, “relevant” “effective”, “realistic” and “responsible”, in Catholic concepts of the “orders of creation” and Protestant ones of “vocation” and “station”.83 “...relations of domination may be established and sustained by representing a transitory, historical state of affairs as if it were permanent, natural, outside of time ... A state of affairs which is a social and historical creation may be treated as a natural event or as the inevitable outcome of natural characteristics”, Thompson, John B., Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass Communication (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), 65-66.84 Yoder, War, 174.85 Kee 130ff.86 The increasing infiltration of Greek thought, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, into Christian theology represents a significant departure from the Semitic thought of the New Testament, which often challenged Greco-Roman philosophy and its tendency to legitimise the powers that be. Strom, Mark, Reframing Paul : conversations in grace and community (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Horsley, Richard A. (ed), Paul and empire : Religion and power in Roman imperial society (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997),

while Constantine ruled that of earth. Down here, Jesus was an a-political, a-historical figure who would never dream of challenging the empire – one whom the empire would not have killed, but supported87. Thus was Christianity transformed into a new imperial cult88. The same tendency to a ‘natural’ ethic of support for ‘the powers that be’ was shown in the second world war, when natural theologians in Germany supported Hitler89, and Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States supported the Allies. Constantine’s ‘own personal Jesus’ remains the god of Western governments to this day. This is why Barack Obama had to leave his church when his pastor betrayed faith in a God who may stand in judgment on the U.S.90

It was not only in the question of state violence that the church took its cue from the empire; it also began to replicate the “hierarchical structures and coercive instincts of the wider imperial order” in its own activity91. Before long, the church was effectively an empire itself, one which was able to “bear the name of Christ yet do the work of the devil at the same time”92.

Justification for the devil

The church has at least been reluctant to view violence positively à la Frantz Fanon (or Rambo) – though the Crusades came close. Official opinion has tended to be that violence is usually wrong, but there are exceptions; violence is sometimes necessary and/or justified. By examining the reasons given, different perspectives can be delineated.

A crusade or ‘holy war’ is a war undertaken in service of a higher ideal, whether it is claiming the holy land for God, ending all wars, or defending freedom against terror. Hauerwas observes that Americans “prefer to go to war only if that war is a crusade – that is, a war whose cause is so noble that the standard moral and political limits are set aside”93. This justification is unconvincing to those who believe that God’s intervention in history is consistent with Jesus’ non-violence.

Realism is the notion that “war should be governed by a nation-state’s political interests”94. Realism as articulated by Machiavelli is a description of “simple national selfishness”;

Anderson, Caleb (2011), ‘The Apostle Paul: Mission in the Midst of Empire’, On the Road 48.87 Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 35.88 Kee 153. Also of note is the art of this period, which began to depict Jesus as an imperial lord in the image of Constantine. Art was probably more influential on the mass of Christians than written theology. Kee 173-174.89 Eller, Vernard, Christian Anarchy : Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers (1987), ch. 5. http://www.hccentral.com/eller12/, (accessed 18/5/2011).90 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘How real is America’s faith?’, The Guardian, 16 October 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/16/faith-america-secular-britain (accessed 18/5/11).91 Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 29. James Bulloch lists the changes in the post-Constantine church, all of which can be describes as emulating the empire: bishops went from persecuted to high social standing, the development of clericalism and hierarchy, class make-up changed, indifference to poverty and inequality, Sermon on the Mount practiced by monks, not ‘regular’ Christians, concerned with the afterlife more than this world, acceptance of slavery, criminal justice and war, the building of impressive church buildings, church became respectable and conformist, distinction between Christians and non-Christians blurred, Christianity associated with Roman empire by outsiders, etc. Bulloch, 318-330.92 Marshall, ‘A Prophet’, 29.93 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Whose “Just” War? Which Peace?’ in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 140. Compare the frenzied and emotional way political conflicts are reported when the West wants to intervene, as in the Gulf, versus the detached and analytical way they are reported when the West wants to downplay its responsibility, as in Bosnia. Žižek, Slavoj, ‘Critique of Ideology, Today?’ in The Žižek Reader (ed. E. Wright) (Blackwell: Oxford, 1999), 58-59.94 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 140.

“moral considerations do not apply in interstate conflict” 95. Reinhold Niebuhr placed a Christian gloss on this by combining it with a version of natural theology. He argued that, given our sinful nature, the coercive system of democratic nation-states is the best we can hope for, and if we want to seek the “relative norms of social justice” 96 we must engage in it. This neo-Constantinian “presumption that democratic social processes are the most appropriate expression of Christian convictions”97 meant in practice that nation-states “cannot be challenged”, because violence is part of their “divinely ordained work of preservation”98.

Another category can be dubbed selective non-violence. This is a position that claims to value non-violence, but is selective in its application. Ellul says that if non-violence is partisan it is inauthentic and simply a form of propaganda. He observed a tendency to condemn Western violence and turn a blind eye to brutal acts undertaken in opposing causes99. Today this selectiveness seems more likely to manifest itself in a ‘bourgeois pacifism’ which approves of violence for internal peacekeeping in the manner of the Pax Romana; criminal punishment and policing, for example. Niebuhr understood that “if pacifists are to be consistent they ought to advocate the abolition of the whole judicial process in society”; he of course considered this inconceivable100. I have shown elsewhere that the system of punishment does not reduce crime nor establish justice, but serves to preserve the status quo101; it functions more as a realist venture undertaken by the powerful than as a righteous crusade.

Merton speaks out against this tendency to “identify “peace” with established power and legalized violence against the oppressed” while asking the poor to solve their problems non-violently102. The violence that the ‘bourgeois pacifist’ opposes is war and crime – things other people do in other parts of the world or city – while the violence of the establishment is euphemistically christened ‘force’ or ‘law and order’103. Merton recognizes that this ‘force’ inevitably favours the rich, and calls on pacifists to consider the possibility that their non-violence is “adulterated by bourgeois feelings and by an unconscious desire to preserve the status quo against violent upheaval”104. It is very convenient to criticise distant wars, and not oppose injustices closer to home and closer to our own interests, such as capitalism105. This helps explain Ellul’s warning that we cannot be consistently non-violent unless we stand radically, though non-violently, with the poor106.

The idea of a ‘just war’ entered into Christian theology after the conversion of Constantine, which created the concept of a ‘Christian empire’ and the question of how to wage a ‘Christian war’. There had been no just war reasoning in the church until this point, because 95 Yoder, War, 87,211n.96 Niebuhr, 104.97 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Democratic Policing of Christianity’ in Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 104.98 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘Why War is a Moral Necessity for America or How Realistic is Realism?’, Seminary Ridge Review 9/2 (2007), 27.99 Ellul, 16-17. Ellul saw the 1960s as a unique time; “generally in preaching submission ... the church has forgotten the other side and thus has stood with the oppressors; it lent its moral authority to armed violence or to wealth and power”. Ellul, 151.100 Niebuhr, 115.101 Anderson, Caleb, ‘Why punishment?’ (2010), http://calebmorgan.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/why-punishment/ (accessed 23/05/2011).102 Merton, 8-9.103 Ellul, 84, Yoder, War, 30.104 Merton, 21.105 Milbank in Hauerwas, Stanley and Milbank, John, ‘Christian Peace: A Conversation between Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank’, 210.106 Ellul, 172,150-156. Ellul observes that this can be a thankless position; but it was that of Martin Luther King, and Jesus himself. Ellul, 69.

it presupposes a position of power107. However, Ambrose and his student Augustine were able to source the concept from the Roman philosopher Cicero108. The just war tradition begins with the assumption that violence is usually wrong – the promoter of violence bears the burden of proof for explaining why this time is an exception109. Lists of criteria are developed to ascertain whether a war qualifies for the title of ‘just’; just cause, just methods, last resort, benefits outweigh costs, victory assured, just and stable peace achieved, etc110.

The just war tradition, in theory, could reduce the severity of violence, by excluding wars with ‘realist’ motivations, and encouraging non-violent solutions up until the point of ‘last resort’. However, the main problem with a just war is that it doesn’t exist. The nature of war makes it nearly impossible to rein it in, as the man who bombed Dresden testified111. Modern weapons and war conditions make it even harder to tone war down112. But more importantly, there are no recorded examples of governments ever refraining from an act of war because it violated just war criteria113. Yoder engaged the just war tradition for many years in order to “challenge it to work” instead of merely acting as a language abused to legitimise war114. Ultimately, he found that the just war tradition is not credible as it is unable to mount any challenge to actual war-making; it may or may not have good intentions in theory, but in the real world there has never been a ‘just war’115.

While there may be clear distinctions in the theories of what justifies war, in practice they tend to run together. ‘Just war’ and ‘crusade’ are discourses the realists who orchestrate wars use to gain support116. Assessing whether this war or that is justified on these grounds or those deflects from the real reasons for wars. In practice, “those with the biggest armies and the best technology can call any war just”117; German Christians justified the Nazi war effort because it was fighting against atheist communism118. Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of ‘just this once’ war theory; the stance that ‘violence is sometimes necessary or justified’ is responsible for the vast majority of actual violence in the world. This is why Hauerwas says that whenever appeals to just war theory are made, we are witnessing an ideological obscuring of reality119.

Theology and ideology

Indeed, all these non-biblical theoretical systems concocted to excuse violence are better classed as ideologies than theologies. Ellul defines ideology as a pseudoscientific belief that covertly justifies a prior commitment120. Slavoj Žižek sees it as any doctrine, belief or practice which “is functional with regard to some relation of social domination ... in an inherently non-transparent way.”121 The two main aspects identified here are justification of a certain state of affairs – often an unequal one – and some sense of dishonesty or misleading.

107 Yoder, War, 39.108 Kohls.109 Hauerwas, ‘Can a Pacifist?’, 125.110 Ellul, 6.111 Yoder, War, 113-114.112 Ellul, 6.113 Yoder, War, 112.114 Yoder, War, 116.115 Yoder, War, 109-116.116 Hauerwas gives the example of the Gulf war, a realist war presented as a just war and promoted in the style of a crusade. Hauerwas, ‘Can a Pacifist?’, 119.117 Hauerwas, ‘Can a Pacifist?’, 122-123.118 Merton, 70.119 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 137.120 Ellul, 77-79.121 Žižek, 61.

The ‘prior commitment’ to a ‘relation of domination’ is support for the state and the system of property rights – the means by which power is distributed in society. These mechanisms are supported by violence on the one hand, and by ideology on the other; one important role of the ideological arm is to elicit support for the violent arm122. This is why Tolstoy called Christian support of violence “a fraud, committed for the sake of those accustomed to live on the sweat and blood of other men”123. Religion can function as ideology par excellence124 when it is aligned with the state, as Christianity has been for the last 1700 years.

Very soon after Constantine’s “triumph of ideology”125, the church realised that “to deny the state the right to go to war was to condemn it to extinction”126. The Reformation popularised the concept of ‘separation of church and state’, but at the same time, Luther blessed the Augsburg Confession that declared that state-sanctioned war and punishment are not sins, but disobeying the secular state is127. Obedience is just as necessary for the state as violence – it enables organisation, inequality and violence on a massive scale. While the church has usually adopted a stance of ‘blessed are the obedient’ and a deep fear of disobedience, history reveals that “the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”128

Not all Christian violence has been undertaken by the establishment, but an a priori belief in government has been the primary reason for abandoning Jesus’ non-violence129. Indeed, until the second world war Reinhold Niebuhr had tried to reconcile patriotism and pacifism. The outbreak of war made him realise that “governments must coerce”130, and as he was not willing to oppose his nation, he was forced to abandon pacifism.

The mutual exclusivity of pacifism and the state explains why conscientious objectors meet the modern equivalent of the criterion of crucifiability. Their disobedient pacifism “calls into question the popular self-understanding of the society in which we live”131. Hauerwas’ jibe that “if you are serious ... you ought to be willing to kill people like me”132 has been true enough in other times.

The aspect of ‘dishonesty’ in the violence ideology is perhaps shown most clearly in the way that pacifism is perceived. Merton refers to a widespread “double-think”133 in American 122 “The practitioner of violence is so unsure of himself that he has to have an ideological construct that will put him at ease.” Ellul, 107-108.123 Tolstoy, ‘Letter’, 161.124 Žižek, 62-63.125 Kee (this is the subtitle of his book).126 This was acknowledged as early as the Council of Arles in 314 C.E. Ellul, 5.127 Kohl. The Confession does allow for disobedience when the commands “cannot be obeyed without sin”, but only after affirming that “without sin” Christians may be involved at all levels in all types of state violence. Kohl, emphasis added.128 Zinn, Howard, Declarations of independence: cross-examining American ideology (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), Page 128.129 Yoder, War, 180,223n, Ellul, 1ff. As examples of Christian violence against or apart from the state, Ellul lists the Anchorites of the third and fourth centuries, Thomas Müntzer, John Leyden and the Anabaptist peasant revolts in Germany, Cromwell and the Levellers, Christian tyrannicides, clergy resistance to Napoleon, and the revolutionary socialist violence which was popular among Christians in the 1960s when Ellul was writing. However, most of these have not rejected the overall notion that a state is necessary; while opposing the current regime, they have advocated or set up some alternative socialist or republican state. Ellul, 27-79. Moreover, all of the above have been against the grain of majority Christian opinion. Luther and Calvin, like most church authorities since Constantine, supported the worst of tyranny rather than condone revolution, whether violent or non-violent. Ellul, 8-9.130 Niebuhr, 109.131 Merton, 35.132 Hauerwas, ‘Explaining’, 173.133 Merton, 30.

society, whereby “non-violence is seen as somehow sinister and evil [although] violence has manifold acceptable forms”134. Violence is portrayed as a heroic attempt to save lives, while non-violence is a cowardly refusal to help. Effectively, “non-violence is violence”135.

Scholarly treatment of pacifism versus violence also betrays a clear ideological influence. Niebuhr’s 1940 essay ‘Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist’ caricatures pacifism as withdrawal and idealism, while violence is engagement and realism – but his ideology can be exposed by examining these false distinctions.

Withdrawal vs. engagement. Niebuhr assumes that we must choose between supporting government – thus war – and withdrawing from political action and social justice136; he has seemingly never heard of anarchists. Ellul says that “the idea that Christian radicalism inhibits action is utterly false”137; it calls for action of a different kind. It is worth considering which theologians and clergy were more politically active in WWII. On the one hand, André Trocmé, and Ellul himself, participated non-violently in the French resistance; Trocmé and his village saving thousands of Jews138. In New Zealand, Methodist minister Ormond Burton and other Christian pacifists refused to fight, were jailed for it, and eventually ended up protesting against prison conditions as well139. All understood with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that “[our] task is not simply to bind the wounds of the victim beneath the wheel, but also to put a spoke in the wheel itself”140.

On the other hand, Niebuhr, scoffing at pacifist ‘withdrawal’, oiled the wheels of his own state, and managed to become the most influential public theologian in America141 while still affecting “neither church nor society”142. Niebuhr was influential in the sense that he was swept up on the tide of “a rising political elite whose self-interest was commensurate with making the United States a world power”143; he was saying precisely what this elite wanted Christians to say. Niebuhr’s idea of ‘presence in the world’ is support for worldly government; Ellul says that “Christians will be sufficiently and completely present in the world if they suffer with those who suffer”144.

Idealism vs. realism. Niebuhr calls his position ‘Christian realism’, but Jacques Ellul, a pacifist and anarchist, also insists that “realism is the necessary basis of Christian thinking on society”145. Ellul’s realism from that of Machiavelli or Niebuhr in that he sees reality clearly, but is not ruled by it146. It was Hitler, after all, who said “I cannot see why man should not be just as cruel as nature”147. Ellul believes that Jesus calls us to a different standard than the nature of a fallen world.

134 Merton, 34.135 Merton, 33.136 Yoder, Politics, 110-113, Niebuhr 104.137 Ellul, 147.138 Ellsberg, Robert. All Saints : Daily reflections on saints, prophets and witnesses for our time (New York: The Cross Road Publishing Company, 2004), 157-158. Clergy also played a major role in non-violent resistance in occupied Norway. Lund, Diderich H., ‘Pacifism under the occupation’ The Pacifist Conscience, 359.139 Crane, Ernest A., I Can Do No Other: A Biography of the Rev. Ormond Burton (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986).140 Bonhoeffer in Ellsberg, 160.141 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 141.142 Ellul, 69-70.143 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 140.144 Ellul, 175.145 Ellul, 81. Hauerwas (‘Why war is’, 37) and Merton (22) also refer to themselves as realists.146 Ellul, 83.147 Ellul, 130.

Likewise, the ideology of violence is no less idealistic than faith in the way of Jesus; it is simply idealistic about different things. Niebuhr accuses pacifists of having “absorbed the Renaissance faith in the goodness of man”148, but this faith is better associated with the rise of the modern nation-state than Christian pacifism. While Ellul acknowledges the “radical evil” of fallen humanity and is sceptical about all human endeavours149, Niebuhr puts a great deal of faith in how humans can behave when they arrange themselves into democratic nation-states. In stating that “man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary”150, he assumes that the advent of democracy and its ‘checks and balances’ is sufficient to prevent injustice and “the worst forms of anti-social conduct”151. Niebuhr’s article makes no acknowledgement of the injustice wrought by his own democratic government, which he idealises so much that he is willing to kill for it152.

Advocates of violence also tend to be idealistic about the effects of their actions. Thought-experiments often assume the success of violence, though this is by no means guaranteed153. This assumption is conditioned by being part of a world superpower which is used to winning – success in violent struggles is the luxury of the strongest. Ellul’s realism demands that we acknowledge not only the ubiquity of violence, but also its results154 – which Niebuhr does not adequately do. Jacques Ellul’s five ‘laws’ of violence show a far deeper understanding of the usual effects of violence155. It is only a “fetishism of immediate results”156 that prevents us from appraising violence in the long-term.

While Zealots and realists need to win or all is lost, pacifists such as Jesus, Gandhi and King are able to have no illusions about the immediate success of their missions; unlike Che Guevara, they all predicted that they would be killed for it. Ironically, it was King’s death that made people say that ‘non-violence doesn’t work’; while Guevara’s death did not provoke the same conclusion about violence157.

Yoder emphasises that Christian pacifism is motivated not by utilitarian calculation of causes and effects, but by faithfulness to the way of the Cross. Jesus himself was “so faithful to the enemy-love of God that it cost him all his effectiveness; he gave up every handle on history”158. This represents a faith in God’s ability to guide history through resurrection159. 148 Niebuhr, 104.149 Ellul, 122.150 Hauerwas, Stanley, ‘The Democratic Policing’, 98.151 Niebuhr 109,115,116.152 Niebuhr, 117, Yoder, War, 151-153.153 Indeed, Yoder points out that violence can win for a maximum of half of combatants; there are always losers. Yoder, War, 148.154 Ellul, 93.155 Ellul, 94-107. Ellul’s laws are as follows; first, continuity; “once you start using violence, you can’t get away from it”, second, reciprocity; “violence creates ... begets and procreates violence” in a potentially endless cycle; third, sameness; on one level “all kinds of violence are the same”, and justify one another, fourth, “violence begets violence – nothing else” (99); and fifth, “the man who uses violence always tries to justify both it and himself”.156 Merton, 22.157 Yoder calls this the “King-Che discrepancy”. Yoder, War, 155.158 Yoder, Politics, 239. Of course, the idea that God works in history is vital to a Semitic worldview; but the idea that it is commensurate with human achievements and calculations of cause and effect is a product of the modern myth of progress, which secularised and humanised Jewish eschatology. Kumar, Krishnan, ‘Aspects of the Western utopian tradition’, History of the Human Sciences 16/1 (2003), p. 67.159 Yoder reads Revelation 5:12 (“The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power”) as indicating that “the relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection”. Yoder, Politics, 238. Yoder’s friend Vernard Eller reads the entire Bible as indicating that the pattern of cross and resurrection – human failure and divine salvation – is the modus operandi of God’s work in history. Eller, ch. 9.

But it can also be seen as a realism about the likelihood of success of any tactic, and the ability to discern both the success and the righteousness of our cause160. The Christian pacifist may die for his cause, but he will not make others die for it. Ellul says that “the use of violence implies total confidence on the part of the user that it is justified – and this confidence is a crime against God”161. A genuine realism has the humility to admit that its own view of good and evil may be mistaken, and, partly for this reason, will not “resist by force what I regard as evil”162.

The other main idealism of the violence ideology, which appears particularly in the just war tradition, is the naïve assumption that there are any bodies that conduct war for moral reasons. The usual example cited – in hindsight – is the fight against Hitler. But if Niebuhr’s United States, more concerned with the ‘Red threat’ than with reforming their own racist laws, had been fighting for American values, they would have joined Hitler in fighting Stalinist communism. After all, Hitler was “doing such a great job of combating un-American activities in Germany”163. Likewise, as true as it may be that the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were oppressing their people, that does not explain why the U.S. felt the need to invade them, out of all the other dictatorships in the less-mineral-rich world164. As Hauerwas put it with regard to the first Gulf war, “the presumption that the United States had to intervene because American is morally obligated to resist aggression wherever and whenever it occurs is at best an exaggeration and at worst a clear case of lying”165. The illusion that moral considerations are an important factor in acts of violence only serves to deflect us from perceiving the real reasons for violence166.

Of course, in the case of individuals and communities facing dilemmas of violence, moral decisions are more possible. If we are actively involved with the struggle for justice, we may find ourselves in a situation where – rightly or wrongly – we honestly believe that the most loving course of action requires violence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one such example. Contrary to how he is often portrayed, he does not represent an ethic of legitimised violence – let alone state violence. He did not decide in the abstract, in advance, that violence is sometimes permitted. He was a pacifist who eventually felt that his Christian freedom from violence167 was becoming “the selfish act of one who care[s] for his own innocence ... more than ... his guilty brothers”. He thus opted to “engage [him]self in the demands of necessita”168, and participated in an attempt to assassinate Hitler, trusting in God’s forgiveness. His act of love for the victims of war must be applauded, despite its dismal failure169.

Myth and counter-myth160 Yoder, War, 179ff.161 Ellul,149n.162 Tolstoy, Kingdom, emphasis added.163 Heller, Joseph, Catch-22 (New York, Simon & Schuster: 1999), 42.164 Nor does it explain why they aided and supported the same dictators in different times. Žižek cites this type war justification as an example of “lying in the guise of truth”; true statements that are nonetheless ideological in that they disguise a more relevant truth. Žižek, 61-62.165 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 148.166 Hauerwas, ‘Whose “Just” War?’, 147-148.167 Bonhoeffer “never ceased to believe that violence was inconsistent with the ideals of the gospel”. Ellsberg, 161. This exhibits the honesty Ellul asks for when he states that if we do find ourselves using violence, we should be honest that we are acting out of the order of necessity rather than the freedom of Christ. Ellul, 92.168 Wink, Jesus, 6.169 In fact, the failed assassination attempt “reinforced Hitler’s sense of divine mission at a time when it was wavering and encouraged him to carry out his genocidal programs more enthusiastically”. Boyd, Greg, ‘A Discussion With Chuck Colson and Shane Claiborne’(2008). http://gregboyd.blogspot.com/2008/02/discussion-with-chuck-colson-and-shane.html (accessed 18/5/2011).

Walter Wink depicts the spirituality of this ideology as the myth of redemptive violence; “the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence”170. This myth found its original form in the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish, to which Genesis was developed as a rebuttal. Wink points out the ubiquity of this message in entertainment media, most obviously in children’s television.

The messages of this simple story are reinforced whenever it is told. Firstly, contrary to the Biblical creation myth, violence is the original, natural and inevitable reality. The bad guys’ violence is already here; the only question is how we – the good guys – respond to it171. Secondly, we should adopt a “dogmatic adherence to violence as the only way of doing away with violence”172. Thirdly, as George W. Bush put it, “good triumphs over evil”173 – therefore those who have triumphed must be good; might is right174. Lastly, safety so won is precarious; we must always be ready to use violence again – next episode (or next war).

Wink argues that this myth – rather than Christianity – is the dominant religion of Western society. This seems plausible when we observe its similarity with Hobbes’ myth of the state, and with the story of Constantine’s ascension to the throne. If we are to be liberated from violence, we must be freed from this ideological religion by a genuine truth.

Ellul says that “the appeal to and use of violence in Christian action increase in exact proportion to the decrease in faith”175. It may be more accurate to say that it is a matter of what we place our faith in. Wink’s spiritual perspective helps us see that faith and ideology are in many ways the same thing. Both are stories we tell each other to make sense of the world. And both arise primarily from the communities that form us. If we are primarily shaped by the ideology of the state, we will accept its mythology and give it the human sacrifice it requires. If we are primarily shaped by Jesus’ gospel, we will be willing, like he was, to sacrifice ourselves before being violent to others176.

The Christian revelation is that we can be liberated from violence and participate in God’s peaceful redemption of his world through freedom and love. To ‘the wisdom of the world’ – ideology – this is foolishness, and those who are committed to this wisdom are unable to genuinely accept Jesus’ message177. Instead, they remain enslaved to the “crackpot metaphysics of militarism”178 which plays chess with human lives, justifies dropping bombs on children and supports spending trillions destroying the hungry and angry, instead of their hunger and anger. In the words of Jean Vanier, “we all have to choose between two ways of being crazy: the foolishness of the Gospel and the non-sense of the values of our world”179.

- Caleb Anderson, 24/05/2011

170 Wink, Walter. ‘Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence’ (2007). http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml (accessed 18/5/2011).171 Correspondingly, Niebuhr takes the Germans’ violence for granted, and asks only how the Allies will respond. Niebuhr, 105.172 Mills, C. Wright, ‘A Pagan Sermon to the Christian Clergy’ in The Pacifist Reader, 412.173 CNN.com Transcripts, ‘President Bush Addresses Troops in Kentucky’ (2001). http://www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0111/21/se.07.html (accessed 16/5/2011).174 It is not surprising that this myth typically surfaces in dominant societies such as Babylon, Rome and the modern West.175 Ellul, 149.176 Hauerwas, ‘Explaining’, 182.177 Kee, 155.178 Mills, 411.179 Vanier, Jean, Man and woman he made them (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985), 174

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