CHAPTER 9: CHRISTIANS AND VIOLENCE: CONFRONTING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS
1. See Wink, The Powers That Be, 99–100.
2. Ibid., 111.
3. For a critical overview of various interpretations, see Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 319–29. Augustine’s interpretation is particularly ingenious—or insidious. He contends that, “what is here required is not a bodily action, but an inward disposition.” Against Faustus, 22.76, in O’Donovan and O’Donovan, From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, 100–1625 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 118. In this way, Jesus’ radical teachings get divorced from actual behavior, a concept that has plagued Christianity to this day. No one exposes the harm this impossible divorce has wrought in Christendom as well as Camp does in Mere Discipleship.
4. It should be noted that there are a number of issues we could raise at this point but that would take us outside the parameters of this book. For example, what of a Christian serving in a capacity where they might have to order a killing but not personally carry it out directly? What of Christians serving in a capacity where they make or supply the weapons that kill people? Indeed, what of Christians who pay taxes that fund the military that kills people? These are important questions, but I will have accomplished what I intended to accomplish with this book if I can simply help American kingdom-of-God people see the urgent need to begin asking these questions. The central problem with the American church today, I believe, is not that we haven’t agreed on an answer to these ambiguous questions. Rather, it’s that we are so steeped in nationalistic idolatry that we don’t even think of seriously asking such questions in the first place!
5. For expositions, defenses, and critiques of the “just war” theory, see Paul Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 1961); Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: University Press of America, reprint, 1983); William F. Stevenson, Christian Love and Just War: Moral Paradoxes and Political Life in St. Augustine and His Modern Interpreters (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 1987); Robert G. Clouse, ed., War: Four Christian Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, rev. ed. 1991); Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Richard J. Regan, Just War: Principles and Cases (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1996). For expositions and defenses of various pacificist positions, see J. H. Yoder, Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1971); J. H. Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, Penn.: Harold, 1971); S. Hauweras , The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1983); S. Hauweras, Against the Nations: War and the Survival in a Liberal Society (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985); Jacques Ellul, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (New York: Seabury, 1969); Arthur Weinberg and Lila Weinberg, Instead of Violence (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1963); Dale W. Brown, Biblical Pacificism: A Peace Church Perspective (Elgin, Ill.: Brethren, 1986).
6. George Zabelka, “I Was Told It Was Necessary,” [Interview] Sojourners (9/8, 1980), 14.
7. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 198. See also Hays, Moral Vision, 320–31.
8. For example, it is no longer disputable that the Nixon administration kept U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam well after the decision to evacuate was made for the purpose of preserving appearances until after the election. Thousands of U.S. soldiers as well as Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed during this interval. See Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America, 279–85. Similarly, many argue that the present war in Iraq was waged, intentionally or unintentionally, under false pretenses. We all now know that Iraq posed no “imminent threat” to the United States, as most within the United Nations insisted prior to the war.
9. For an insightful discussion on how easy it is to be deceived about the necessity or justifiability of violence, see in L. Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God, chap. 12.
10. Camp, Mere Discipleship, 148. For a discussion of various texts sometimes cited to argue that Jesus was not unequivocally against violence, see Hays, Moral Vision, 332–37.
11. The second-century pagan Celsus argued against Origen that if all people behaved as Christians (in the second century) behaved—loving their enemies, refusing to engage in violence, etc.—“the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians.” Cited by Origen, “Against Celsus,” 8.68 in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4., ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, reprint 1999 [1885]), 665. Origen rightly pointed out that if everybody acted as Jesus taught, there would be no “lawless barbarians.” Ibid., 666. It should be noted that the dialogue demonstrates that second-century Christians were generally known for their refusal to engage in violence. It should also be noted that, once Christianity acquired the power of Caesar and became “Christendom,” Church theologians used Celsus’s pagan line of reasoning to insist that Christians can’t be expected to take the New Testament’s teaching against violence seriously—at least to the point of denying there’s a “just war” exception to it. See Camp, Mere Discipleship, 37–39.
12. See W. Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 1–2.
13. Tertullian, “Apology,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 55.
About the Author
DR. GREGORY A. BOYD is the founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the founder and president of Christus Victor Ministries. He is the author or coauthor of fifteen books, including Escaping the Matrix (with Al Larson), Seeing Is Believing, and the international bestseller Letters from a Skeptic.
www.gregboyd.org
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