Jesus the moderate pacifist

Just over a week ago I published my first essay for my Victoria University essay on Jesus, Jesus the Pharisee. Unfortunately I had no success in attempting to have it regraded, but I still regard it as a useful piece of work for understanding the connection between Jesus and the Pharisees, and the theological parameters he committed himself to within that tradition.

The second essay I wrote for the essay was an answer to the question, Was Jesus a Pacifist? I have reproduced the essay below.



Was Jesus a Pacifist?

Come now and join the feast, from the greatest to the very least,
come now & join the feast, right here in the belly of the beast.

Cops & soldiers you can come too - lay down your guns & c'mon thru.

- Psalters, Dumpster Divers


Deep in the interior of the Wanganui hinterland a young lad by the name of Walter, known to his mates as Sandy, was working hard clearing scrub and breaking the land in for production. He’d been pulled out of school and sent to the family farm at just 15, when his Dad got “crook.” Ever since he’d been working hard to see the family business go ahead, fighting gorse, scrub and thistles every day.

And now, two years on, his thoughts and ambitions were being interrupted by another battle. World War II had begun, and many of his older friends were signing up to defend the free nations of the West against the advancing German army. Sandy was still well short of 21, the required age for overseas service, but many of his peers were declaring their age falsely and joining the troops overseas. His own fitness and his occupation meant he appeared much older than he actually was. Perhaps that was why, when he opened the mailbox one day, he was devastated to find a letter accusing him of cowardice with white feathers and an empty 303 bullet alongside.

Perhaps it was the fact Sandy was an ardent Presbyterian that didn’t count in his favour. For at that very time a certain Reverend Alan Brash was preaching pacifism at Wanganui’s central Prebyterian Church of St Andrews. Brash was part of a significant pacifist movement in the Presbyterian Church and New Zealand. He had himself been inspired by minister & founding chairman of the local League of Nations Union of New Zealand, James Gibb. Brash’s Wanganui appointment coincided with the emergence of the Christian Pacifist Society of New Zealand, founded by returned serviceman and Presbyterian-come-Methodist preacher Ormond Burton. For these men, to be Christian meant to be pacifist, and to be pacifist meant a total commitment to the abolition of war. And all of these men grounded their pacifist convictions in the words of scripture.

The manifesto of the League of Nations Union of New Zealand, which defined pacifism for Gibb and his generation, read (Barber, L.H., 1973, p12);

“To demand an immediate curtailment of armaments with a view to their ultimate abolition, to insist that our rulers shall refrain from making secret treaties or alliances with other nations…and to labour for the coming of an era of universal peace.”

J. D. Weaver, in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, defines pacifism as simply “a refusal to participate in war (2001, p879). Peter Brock similarly defines pacifism as “an unconditional renunciation of war” (1972, p3). This definition is in contrast to a definition which renounces force and coercion in all forms, and makes a distinction the issue of war and that of policing. In this essay I will explore what connection may exist between pacifism and Jesus’ teachings of non-violence. It will not explore the implications of those same teachings on the use of force and violence in the interest of policing criminal activity.


Contemporary Christian pacifism

The quote at the beginning of this essay is extracted from a song written by the Psalters. The Psalters are a popular bluegrass band belonging to Potter Street Records and affiliated to the Potter Street Community, a growing ministry to the poor and homeless of Philadelphia under the leadership of Shane Claiborne. Claiborne was featured in a 2005 Christianity Today article titled The New Monasticism, which described his community and the wider new monastic movement as “the latest wave of evangelicals who see in community life an answer to society's materialism and the church's complacency toward it.” And, as the song suggests, one of the marks of this movement is a very active pacifism (Claiborne, 2006, p95, p123). In The Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne gives credence to other notable Christian pacifists such as Tony Campolo (p269), John Howard Yoder and Walter Wink (p221), and Jim Wallis (p11).

Whether Presbyterian pacifists of the early 20th century or the neo-evangelicals and new monastics of the early 21st century, one thing Christian pacifists share in common is a conviction to be faithful disciples to the gospel teachings of Jesus, particularly those of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-8). It is this passage which contains that clear injunction; “"You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven"” (Matt 5:43-45).

For Christians such as Brash, Gibb, Burton, Campolo, Yoder, Wink & Wallis, as Claiborne expounds in The Irresistible Revolution (p179); “love your enemies means you shouldn’t kill them.” But typically these thinkers, preachers and writers ground their ethic of pacifism not merely in a few verses from the Gospel of Matthew, but in the themes of the entire life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder provides a thorough and detailed analysis of Jesus’ life and teachings, and also deals with the problem of the sanctioned violence of the Old Testament scriptures, very persuasively arguing that an ethic of pacifism is central to the ethic of Jesus, and thus necessarily of Christians.


Pacifism & Just War Theory

But despite arguments such as Yoder’s it would seem that, throughout history, the majority of those who profess to be Christian have in fact not assumed an ethic of pacifism. It has been argued that the early church was predominantly pacifist on the basis of writings of church fathers such as Tertullian, Origen & Hippolytus. However Helgeland (1985) shows that the pacifism of these writers was by no means consistent across their careers, and argues that it is impossible to determine a consensus or majority view either way for the early church.

With the advent of the Constantinian church came the emergence of the just war theory, first promoted in its Christian form by Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430). In his Magnus Opus, City of God, Augustine writes (Book I, Ch 21); “…the commandment forbidding killing was not broken by those who have waged wars on the authority of God, or those who have imposed the death-penalty on criminals when representing the authority f the State in accordance with the laws of the State, the justest and most reasonable source of power.” In his apology Against Faustus, Augustine writes with regards to the (Sermon on the Mount) injunction to turn the other cheek; “What is here required is not a bodily action, but an inward disposition. The sacred seat of virtue is the heart.” With his argument he contrasts the forcefulness of a father’s physical discipline against the softness of a molester’s caress to show it is the intention, not force, that matters most in the matter of violence.

Christian philosopher Boethius (c480 – c525) later expounds something of the rationale for a high view of punishment, even that of death (c524, p84);

“…wicked men are happier when they pay the penalty for their wickedness than when they receive no penalty at the hands of justice. I am not going to urge what may occur to any one, namely, that depraved habits are corrected by penalties, and drawn towards the right by fear of punishment, and that an example is hereby given to others to avoid all that deserves blame. But I think that the wicked who are not punished are in another way the more unhappy, without regard to the corrective quality of punishment, nor its value as an example …the wicked when punished have something good added to their lot, to wit, their punishment, which is good by reason of its quality of justice; and they also, when unpunished, have something of further evil, their very impunity, which you have allowed to be an evil, by reason of its injustice.”

These views of war and punishment retained extensive currency in the Christian world from the time of Augustine to the Reformation, and were barely challenged. Pacifism did not appear again as a mark of any particular Christian movement until the emergence of the Waldenses in southern France in the late 12th century, and then among Hussite Taborites of Bohemia in the 15th century. Both of these groups sooner or later abandoned pacifism, but a Hussite by the name of Peter Chelcicky broke with the wider Hussite movement on the issue in 1420. However by the end of the 15th century his followers no longer demanded a pacifist ethos. It was another 30 years before pacifism reemerged as central to the ethics of the Anabaptists, who have remained proud guardians of that ethic ever since. It is in this tradition that John Howard Yoder, perhaps the most influential 20th century pacifist author, stands.


Interpreting the New Testament

So, was Jesus a pacifist? If we are to take the New Testament scriptures as authoritative and canonical with regards to the historical figure of Jesus, as do the authors above, then we are left with a difficult task if we wish to come down on one side or other of the debate.

John Piper (2006), a widely influential Reformed pastor, points to the hyperbolic nature of the Sermon on the Mount in general, and like Augustine explains Jesus’ intentions as “to illustrate what our primary disposition and attitude should be.” He also notes that in the sermon Jesus is addressing individuals. He contrasts this with passages from the Epistles in which governments are described as having a God-ordained vocation as “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:3-4; 1 Peter 2:13, 14). Indeed these passages, attributed to the oft-disputing great pioneers of the church, Paul and Peter, pose a problem for those who subscribe to an all-encompassing pacifism. Can a person be both a Christian and the Emperor of Rome warding off the attacks of the barbarians, or Christian and the prime minister of Britain putting down the armies of Hitler? If a Christian is called to love his enemy and turn the other cheek, how can he at the same time bear the sword as an “agent of God’s wrath?” We can see, then, the complications of attempting to describe Jesus as a pacifist in the ideological sense of the word.

In his commentary on The Gospel according to Matthew (1985), R.T. France notes;

“…there is no warrant for applying these principles to social ethics, still less to politics. A willingness to forgo one’s personal rights, and to allow oneself to be insulted and imposed upon, is not incompatible with a firm stand for matters of principle and for the rights of others. Indeed the principle of just retribution is not so much abrogated here as bypassed, in favour of an attitude that refuses to insist on one’s rights no matter how legitimate. Jesus is not reforming the legal code, but demands an attitude that sits loose to personal rights. Verse 39b-42 are illustrations of that attitude, not rules to be legalistically applied.”

The close resemblance of the themes of Romans 12 to those of the Sermon on the Mount, in a context immediately prior to defending the state’s bearing of the sword, is a good illustration of this compatibility. France, with Augustine, Boethius and Piper, seem to quite compellingly make sense of the Sermon on the Mount in a way that is consistent with Peter and Paul’s view of state-sanctioned violence for the purpose of justice.


Interpreting discipleship

In Volume IV Part II of Church Dogmatics (1958), Karl Barth discusses the renunciation of force as one of five themes central to the Christian call to discipleship, along with the renunciation of possessions, worldly honour, family ties and religious systems of law and piety. He states, “According to the sense of the New Testament we cannot be pacifists in principle, only in practice. But we have to consider very closely whether, if we are called to discipleship, we can avoid being practical pacifists, or fail to be so” (p550). Barth observes that in all Christian call to discipleship, the demands made on the disciple come “in a highly particular way in his own particular time and situation…It is not the case that he is loosed from…the legalism of the world…only to be bound to the legalism of another generality.” Instead, Barth notes that “what the Gospel sayings about the following of His disciples really preserve are certain prominent lines along which the concrete commanding of Jesus…always moved in relation to individuals…[while not requiring] the same thing of everyone, or even of the same man in every time and situation…” (p547).

This understanding of Jesus’ discipleship ethic paints a picture of a Jesus who is very much a realist. This is a Jesus who prefers non-violence and leads with this ethic in his kingdom, and expects the same of those who follow him. Yet this is a Jesus who refrains from making pacifism a binding rule on followers, in the same way he does not expect a compulsive total rejection of possessions, honour, family or liturgical practice.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a friend of Barth’s, was a significant anti-war figure in Hitler’s Germany, and would have been considered by most a pacifist. Yet the same man joined a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and himself died trying. In the purest sense of the definition of pacifism advocated by the likes of Brash, Gibb, Weaver & Brock, Bonhoeffer’s resolution to assassinate Hitler most certainly disqualified him from the label. Yet this was the same man whose The Cost of Discipleship is considered a classic on the subject, revered by pacifist and non-pacifist alike.


Conclusion

Can we, then, answer the question, was Jesus a pacifist? I think we can safely conclude that if we can call Bonhoeffer a pacifist, despite his resolve to kill Hitler, then we can say the same of Jesus. But anyone attempting to delineate Jesus’ pacifism to the purest sense of the word will have their work cut out for them. They will need to address the way that his style of teaching & discipleship seem to have made sufficient room for theories of just war and violent state-sanctioned punishment. They must consider the cases where the earliest Christians happily welcomed Roman soldiers into their fellowship (Luke 3:7-14, 7:1-10; Acts 10). Cornelius is given significant attention in the Book of Acts as the first Gentile convert to Christianity, and is described as a “God-fearing man.” Jesus himself says of the Roman Centurion of Luke 7 “not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

Further, a war-accommodating God seems to fit more easily with a God whose nature is described as unchanging, and who is recorded as having sanctioned wars and violent punishment throughout Israel’s history. And while Jesus demonstrated and taught an ethic of nonviolence in the inauguration of his Kingdom, he retained a language of violence to describe his return and associated judgment. He refers to hell seven times in the Gospel of Matthew alone. Even the early church fathers argued Jesus’ second coming and judgment are to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. But the fact remains that his language indicates punishment, and pain. And if spiritual pain rather than physical then surely the severity is magnified. As Jesus indicates in Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

To come back to the issue we began this essay with, that of compulsory military service. It may not be possible to argue that Jesus was an ideological pacifist, and that Christian disciples should not fight in wars. But is the converse true? Is it right to demand a militarism of Christ and his followers, as was evident in James Gibb’s preaching during World War I, before his conversion to pacifism? To apply the logic of Karl Barth’s interpretation of discipleship, it is clear that Jesus will ask for an all-encompassing pacifism for many of his followers. I would conclude that a government that denies the right of a Christian to conscientious objection is certainly a government which becomes by its very nature anti-Christian. And so the likes of Gibb, Brash and Burton could be confidently said to be representing Christ at least in practice, if not in principle.


References

Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXII

Augustine, City of God, translated by Henry Bettenson (London, Penguin, 2003)

Barber, L.H., The Very Rev. James Gibb: Patriot into Pacifist (Lecture notes, 1973)

Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, IV, II (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1958)

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus, The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by W.V. Cooper (New York, Cosimo, 2007)

Brock, Peter, Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1972)

Brock, Peter, Pacifism to 1914: An Overview (Toronto, Privately printed, 1994)

Claiborne, Shane, The Irresistible Revolution (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2006)

France, R.T., The Gospel according to Matthew: an introduction and commentary (Downers Grove, Intervarsity Press, 1985)

Grant, David. 'Burton, Ormond Edward 1893 - 1974'. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 22 June 2007 URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/

Helgeland, John, Christians and the Military: The Early Experience. Philadelphia, Fortress, 1985

Hunt, Dorothy, “Interview With the Very Reverend Dr Alan Brash”. NZine, 2 July 1999, Christchurch, New Zealand. URL: http://www.nzine.co.nz/features/brash1.html

Moll, “The New Monasticism.” Christianity Today, September 2005, Carol Stream, IL.

New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (London, HarperCollins Publishers, 1989)

Piper, John, Did Jesus Teach Pacifism?, updated 23 January 2006. URL: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/2006/1450_Did_Jesus_teach_pacifism/

Psalters, Dumpster Diver’s Song.

Ross, Jean, Memoirs.

Weaver, J.D., “Pacifism”. In Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2001).

Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus. (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972)