Sermon on the Mount

A Simple Case for Christian Nonviolence

~ Mike Skinner ~ 6 Comments

[1] Jesus’ Direct Teaching

“Nonviolent resistance” might be a more accurate term for Jesus’ teachings: he commands a “third way” between doing nothing and responding to violence with violence, namely, returning evil with good; resisting with love.

  • Jesus clearly expects his followers to live nonviolently – rebuking them on many occasions where they stray from this expectation:
    Luke 9:51-56
    Luke 22:47-51

[2] Jesus’ Explicit Example

  • As the Incarnate God, Jesus’ nonviolent historical life is both: 

[3] Overall Narrative of the Bible – From Old Testament to the Kingdom of God

Despite the (divine and human) violence in the Old Testament, there is a promise of and clear trajectory towards a nonviolent community

  • Israel’s battles weren’t won with military prowess, but by simply obeying & trusting God
    Joshua 6:1-7
    Psalm 20:6-9
  • OT has clear promises of the Kingdom of God’s arrival calling God’s people to nonviolence
    Isaiah 2:1-5
    Micah 4:1-5

[4] The Early Church Thought It Was Obvious

  • The early church (from the time of Christ to the time of Constantine in the 4th century) was fully nonviolent. Here is a small sampling of quotes:

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD)
“We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons—our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage—and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”

Tertullian (160-225 AD)
“Shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law?”
“If one attempt to provoke you by manual violence, the admonition of the Lord is at hand: To him,‟ He says, ‘who strikes you on the face, turn the other cheek also.’ Let outrageousness be wearied out by your patience.“
“Christ, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier…”
“And shall he apply the chain and the prison and the torture and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?”
“Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?”

Hippolytus (170-236 AD)
“The catechumen or faithful who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God.”

Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD)
“We have come in accordance with the counsel of Jesus to cut down our arrogant swords of argument into plowshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting. For we no longer take swords against a nation, nor do we learn anymore to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our Lord.”

Marcellus (298 AD)
“I threw down my arms for it was not seemly that a Christian man, who renders military service to the Lord Christ, should render it by earthly injuries.” “It is not lawful for a Christian to bear arms for any earthly consideration.”

Martin of Tours (316-397)
“I am a soldier of  Christ. To fight is not permissible for me.”

Jesus the Interpreter: Divine Violence in the Old Testament

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

“We may perhaps be allowed to look forward to a new day, in which Jesus himself is acknowledged, in his own right, as a thinking, reflecting, creative and original theologian.” – NT Wright[1]

I am committed to non-violence because I am committed to Jesus.[2] As a non-violent Christian, I’m commonly asked some form of the following question: “How can you think that God is nonviolent or that his people must always act nonviolently when there are so many examples in the Old Testament of God acting violently or encouraging such behavior?”

It’s a good question and one of the biggest obstacles for most Christians when they consider adopting a non-violent ethic.[3] However, I’ve always thought that this is a question that can actually be punted to Jesus himself. That is to say, I believe a more illuminating form of the question would look like this:

How could Jesus think that God is nonviolent and expects his people to be nonviolent in light of the many Old Testament texts that seem to contradict this?

 Of course this question assumes two things:

  • First, that Jesus was familiar with the major stories & themes of the Old Testament (including those that depict God as violent and his people as acting violently in obedience to God’s commands.[4]
  • Second, that Jesus still believed & taught that God was nonviolent and likewise expected his followers to be nonviolent.[5]

If both of these assumptions are true,[6] we are faced with important questions: How did Jesus interpret these texts? What was his hermeneutical logic? And even more to the point, are Christians obligated to agree with his conclusions, even if we aren’t necessarily predisposed to agree with his interpretations?

We might not normally think of Jesus as a biblical interpreter or theologian, but we should. After all, he grew up in a religious environment surrounded by many different popular interpretations of his religious tradition. In this context, Jesus inherited, learned, formed, and communicated very specific beliefs about what God was like and what he expected of his people. In so doing, he also explicitly and forcefully rejected certain interpretations & expectations that were popular during his lifetime.

I have to imagine that Jesus was often confronted about his non-violent teachings, especially by the more revolutionary Jewish groups common during the first-century. In Matthew 5, he preemptively and explicitly rejects the Old Covenant law of retaliation in favor of a new, radical ethic of nonviolence. In Luke 6, Jesus tells his disciples to “love your enemies, and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” It’s not a stretch to picture Simon the Zealot disagreeing with Jesus’ assessment of the Father as a merciful enemy-lover. “Jesus, are you not aware that God commanded the slaughter of men, women, and children who stood against his people?” What would Jesus’ response be? Would he recant or qualify his statement? Or would he provide an alternate interpretation and assume that it is more authoritative than any other reading of the text that would lead to a different conclusion?

This problem is even more acute in an account in Luke 9 where Jesus rebukes his disciples for attempting to imitate a story from the Old Testament by calling down fire on their enemies in (cf. 2 Kings 1:9-12). I can imagine the disciples reminding Jesus of this beloved Old Testament story – what was his response? How did he read such texts and come to such different conclusions than many of his day (and our day)? I believe that these sorts of questions are some of the most important ones to be asked in any conversation about Jesus and violence.

Jason Micheli recently offered an excellent post attempting to answer a question of this nature: How did Jesus read Psalm 94 and it’s cry for vengeance against enemies while at the same time commanding and embodying a responsibility to love his enemies? Read his engaging post here: Jesus’ Enemy Loving Offensive. Jason’s attempt embodies the posture Christians should take when engaging Old Testament texts that seem to contradict Jesus’ own teachings and example.

I can’t help but think that Christians are making a fundamental mistake when we use the Old Testament to qualify or change the teachings of Christ. It strikes me as odd that we might imagine our interpretations of various Old Testament texts to be more authoritative than Christ’s. Did Jesus not know about these Old Testament texts? Did he misread them? Can we qualify correct Jesus’ teachings because we are better equipped to read the Tanakh?

My evaluation of the current conversation surrounding God & Old Testament violence is that we have lost our interpretative imagination under the weight of years of tradition and cultural influences. The Old Testament is not as clear on the issue of violence as one might think. There are plenty of ways to interpret the classic “texts of terror” in ways that lead logically to Jesus’ non-violence. Again, I suggest reading Jason Micheli’s enlightening post. Other options remain: perhaps we should acknowledge a multiplicity of voices in the Old Testament (some more peaceful, even promising a future of peace), perhaps a reading of the “texts of terror” in light of comparable ANE texts would reveal a fairly radical non-violent trajectory, or perhaps the point of the cumulative narrative of the Old Testament is that violence did not ultimately accomplish God’s Kingdom. These are just a few of the many possibilities for reading the Old Testament in a way congruous with Jesus’ life and teachings. But these are the types of readings that I believe Jesus forces us to explore.

 

[1] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 479.
[2] I find myself unable to avoid the conclusions that Jesus unequivocally commands his followers to act nonviolently and also personally modeled this nonviolent commitment with his own life. I’m also unable to ignore a theological conviction that the historic life of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is the clearest and most complete revelation of the character and will of the Triune God that humanity has ever been given. Thus I’m always a bit surprised to find that many Christians view my nonviolent stance as mistaken (at best) or heretical (at worst).
[3] I’ve found that it is, along with the violent passages in Revelation, one of the biggest obstacles for most Christians when considering a commitment to nonviolence. For the violence in Revelation, see these posts: Jesus is Cruciform, Not Octagonal (A Response to Mark Driscoll) and Interpreting the Violent Imagery in Revelation.
[4] Jesus is surrounded by Jewish groups with a violent revolutionary bent and explicitly rebukes such desires. Even more telling is that Jesus’ own theological agenda seems to be one that would fit nicely with these traditions (see the revolutionary language of his mother in her famous song), yet he interprets the revolution as a spiritual one – a battle against Satan, not Rome. Again – see N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God.
[5] Jesus is as clear as possible: see Matthew 5:38-48.
[6] (I know of few who would doubt the first and have yet to see good evidence against the second).

A Surprising Result: The Freedom Not To Believe

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

I have the immense pleasure each year of teaching the four Gospels to 14 & 15 year olds at a fairly large Christian high school. Almost all of these students have grown up in the evangelical Bible Belt and many have been immersed in a “Christian” culture through private schooling and church involvement. However, each year I find my work most identifiable with the work of an evangelist or a missionary.

I say this because for the vast majority of my students, my class is the first time they will hear of the Kingdom of God, the resurrection of the dead, and the Trinity. My students are generally only familiar with a watered-down flavor of the faith which hardily continues on in our increasingly Post-Christendom society like algae on the bottom of a fish tank. This Christianity majors on justification by grace through faith – saying the sinner’s prayer, receiving eternal assurance of salvation, and being shamed into not having sex, using drugs, or saying bad words (as an aside, they continue to regularly do all three of these things, despite the pleas of their parents and youth pastors).

As a Christian teacher, my goal is clear, public, and unmitigated: for my students to know and follow Christ. However, there are many different reactions to my teaching, some of them unexpected and disappointing. One of those reactions: unbelief. Some students come to a point where they agree with me that much of what is around them is not biblical or Christlike. Unfortunately, for some students this discovery is not accompanied by a desire to follow the Jesus revealed in the Gospels and the demands laid out in the Sermon on the Mount. (Fortunately, this has been a very rare occurrence over my four years of teaching). This creates in me a true spiritual and moral dilemma: do I keep the status-quo and maintain the commitment of “nominal Christians” or continue to proclaim the truth even if some of those previously identified as “believers” now choose to not believe.

I was reminded of this dilemma while reading Yoder’s recently released Theology of Mission. In a passage defending group conversions in communitarian cultures, he states:

“Based on anecdotes from anthropologically conscious missionaries, once a group started hearing more about Jesus – his promises and his demands, including the moral content of discipleship – the divisions in the community that were not previously there would come to the surface. They were not there before because the Jesus message was not there to provoke them. Some individuals, sometimes many, broke out of the tribal group in order to fall back into the old life, into unbelief and nonconformity to the new norms. The freedom not to believe had become real, in fact, more real than before, because before there were no other options than the traditional tribal one. The initial group decision opened the door to Christian belief. Before that decision, unbelief had been a prison; afterwards it was an option. It was the novelty of the gospel that created the freedom not to believe.”

The observations Yoder notes of certain missionary contexts reminds me of my teaching context. When a foreign group/family/community converts to Christianity, it is not unusual for individuals to begin rejecting Christ as they learn more about him. In a different but similar way, my students come to me (mass) baptized into a nominal Christianity. The introduction of the “Jesus message” – including the moral content of discipleship – now “provokes” the students, until now only exposed to a shallow Christianity, in a new way. Their a priori commitment to Christ leads to a crisis when the previously cheap Christ is challenged and exposed by the Living Christ – leading some to no longer believe. A wise man once said that the truth would set you free – and it seems that this form of unbelief is the result of a new freedom made available by the truth.

I fear my dilemma is ultimately one of truth and commitment vs. numbers and assurance. But as I read (and teach) the Gospels, it doesn’t appear that Jesus is after large numbers or is afraid of people turning their back on him when confronted with the truth. Indeed, in a haunting passage at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus predicts a time in which he will turn away from those who thought they were on his team but were not truly committed. I’ve humbly come to believe that it is better to face that crisis now, with time to think and reflect, than when one is on their knees in front Jesus himself.

What do you think?
Does this resonate with the experience of other Bible teachers?
Does the Gospel necessarily open a door for unbelief to “Nominal” Christians?

help-my-unbelief-550x299

Blessed are the Poor (If…?)

~ Mike Skinner ~ 5 Comments

The gospel is good news for the poor. Jesus emphatically proclaimed that the poor would receive the Kingdom of God (Lk 6:20). But must the poor respond properly to the message of the Gospel in order to receive this reward? Did Jesus really mean, “Blessed are the poor, if they repent and believe in the Kingdom“? (We usually interpret the parallel statement in this way, “Woe to you who are rich… unless you believe in me.) 

Or do the poor receive the Kingdom precisely (and only) because they are poor?

C.M. Hays suggests that the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 might be read in a way consistent with Jesus’ straightforward statement in Lk. 6:20:

“In this unsettling text (the parable of the rich man and Lazarus – Lk 16:19-31) poor Lazarus is said to have received eschatological rest for no other reason than that he lacked good things during his life (Lk 16:25); there is no indication in the parable that Lazarus demonstrated even a scrap of religious piety. By this reading, the eschatological blessedness of the poor may be partially a matter of theodicy: the promise of eternal happiness helps affirm the goodness of a God who allows the poor to endure a lifetime of suffering.”

Thoughts?

QOTD: Richard Hays on Reconciling the Moral Visions of OT and NT Texts

~ Jessica Parks ~ Leave a comment

From Richard B. Hays, Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (pp.336-337):

“…the New Testament’s witness is finally normative.  If irreconcilable tensions exist between the moral vision of the New Testament and that of particular Old Testament texts, the New Testament vision trumps the Old Testament.  Just as the New Testament texts render judgments superseding the Old Testament requirements of circumcision and dietary laws, just as the New Testament’s forbidding of divorce supersedes the Old Testament’s permission of it, so also Jesus’ explicit teaching and example of nonviolence reshapes our understanding of God and of the covenant community in such a way that killing enemies is no longer a justifiable option.  The sixth antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount marks the hermeneutical watershed.  As we have noted, the Old Testament distinguishes the obligation of loving the neighbor (that is, the fellow Israelite) from the response to enemies: ‘[B]ut 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.’  Once that word has been spoken to us and perfectly embodied in the story of Jesus’ life and death, we cannot appeal back to Samuel as a counterexample to Jesus.  Everything is changed by the cross and resurrection.  We now live in a situation in which we confess that ‘in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us’ (2 Cor. 5:19).  Those who have been entrusted with such a message will read the Old Testament in such a way that its portrayals of God’s mercy and eschatological restoration of the world will take precedence over its stories of justified violence.”