Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Part 2: Nonviolence)
I began my engagement with Inhabiting the Cruciform God by highlighting some of what Michael Gorman does with justification. This time, I want to focus on non-violence, the subject of chapter 4.
I focus on this for a couple of reasons. One, no doubt, is the existential angst that is generated in yours truly from reading about non-violence in the Christian story while continuing, with my dearly beloved wife, to try to catch up to the current season of 24 (we’ve covered almost 7 seasons in the past 17 months). *ahem*
Another reason is that it seem t
o me that this argument needs a bit of a bullhorn to be heard. Even folks who are otherwise deeply influenced by the narrative dynamics in NT ethics that Richard Hays and others have pointed out are not quite ready to jump on board the pacifism train. There’s an important argument that needs to be heard here.
Even if one is not prepared to be a pacifist when confronted with every geo-political question (as I am not), the gospel narrative nonetheless undermines other ways in which the church has, and does, employ violence in its life together. That is to say, a Christian ethic that has fully imbibed the cruciform calling of the Christian life will call us to repentance for many of the ways that the church chooses to exert its power.
This applies not only to baptizing military engagements with the name of Christ (does the cross make all such baptisms heretical denials of the Christian story) but also physical, emotional, and social acts of violence in which we assert power in order to gain some measure of life for ourselves–even if it comes at the cost of another’s. Yes, what I’m saying is that most of the ways things are done in church council meetings, congregational meetings, Presbytery and Assembly and classis meetings demand repentance rather than a celebration of work done as if by the Spirit of God.
The main thrust of Gorman’s argument is that Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Christ transformed the apostle’s
understanding of the means by which God would justify His people. Paul was participating in the pursuit of justification by violent zeal that had its precedent in Phinehas and the Maccabees. Violent defense of God’s cause was the means by which he was striving to honor the identity of the people of God and live into the holy life that God desired (131-37).
This means that we must not overlook one of the fundamental elements of Paul’s conversion. He now understood that God did not justify on the basis of distributed violence, but through the absorption of violence on the cross (130). The resurrection was, itself, God’s justification, God’s vindication, of a crucified Messiah. And so, confronted with this resurrected one, Paul’s vision for a life lived in submission to God was turned on its head (138-40).
Put simply, “The experience of the resurrected crucified Jesus leads Paul to an ethic of dying rather than killing” (144).
And that, I never tire of arguing, is the fundamental reversal of the economy of the world that we find narrated in the gospel story: in a world where we are instructed (consciously and unconsciously) to pursue life for ourselves at any cost–even the life of another, the Gospel of a crucified messiah says that the true means to gain life for ourselves is to pursue life for another–even if it comes at the cost of our own.
“He now understood that God did not justify on the basis of distributed violence, but through the absorption of violence on the cross ”
Unpack please? What was ‘distributed violence”, who thought like that, and absorption of whose violence?
Paul seemed to think so before he met Jesus. He was apparently acting out the same sort of violent zeal that got Phinehas approved as righteous before God. When Phinehas stood up and interposed (by killing the bad guys!) “it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Psalm 106:30-31).
As one dragged kicking and screaming toward pacifism as a vocation of the Christian community, I have to ask what it means (really) to say, “Even if one is not prepared to be a pacifist when confronted with every geo-political question (as I am not),…”
In what sense are you confronted with geo-political realities that require you to make a decision about employing violence?
The nation states of which we are a part will undoubtedly use violence and generally have to argued into relying less upon those means. We don’t have to make a case for the use of violence. It is the default mode of all or most of the world.
Our call is to learn a different way (against many inclinations, ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’). What is at stake in our showing our supposed ‘realism’ that we think the nation state should use violence as though someone somewhere waits with bated breath for our justification or endorsement?
Ian, you ask a very good question. Part of my answer is practical/pragmatic: I have an African American friend who told me she couldn’t be a pacifist because she had to always be able to say that the American Civil War was just. One might think that a Jew reflecting on WWII would have a similar concern.
I am convinced that it is always the Christian’s task to witness to an alternative narrative, alternative story of justice and power. Moreover, I think that just war theory in practice is “justify all wars” theory.
But I’m just not prepared to say that war is always the worst evil on the table in every circumstance and should therefore be averted.
That’s a great reply, Daniel. Have you had much of a look at Glen Stassen’s (et al) ‘Just Peacemaking’ theory and practices?