Christian Pacifism
Andy's post and dwl's response reminded me of an issue I've been thinking about during my time in Wainwright and Hütter's Eschatology class. (I confess at the outset that these are only some thoughts, I'm in no way convinced.)
It seems to me like Christian pacifism stems from an overly transcendent eschatology, where the good is seen as something attainable solely in the life to come. So, martyrdom aside, the death of Christians in any conflict situation is always a negative. As the basic argument goes, all Christians should be non-violent, because Jesus endured suffering for political oppressors. Of course then (supposedly), so should we, because we must be like Jesus. However, this view comes from an eschatology that ultimately places the role of the Church in the world as one whose witness is simply, "God will save us in the end, because we believe in resurrection." That is, do what you want with us, we'll win in the end.
This seems to me a very problematic view of the role of Christians in the world. While I am sympathetic to the call for Christians to never resort to violence in situations where one set of Christians fights another set of Christians simply because they live in another nation. Simply acquiescing to evil and hoping that all will be set right in the parousia is a very poor eschatology. Jesus overthrew the people who were misusing the Temple for impure purposes using violence, why should there not be occasions for Christians to do so?
Further, unless one is a simple universalist (and I agree with Wainwright that this is in essence totalitarianism), there is a call for Christians to co-participate with God in bringing him kingdom on this earth. No, I am not a post-millenialist; I do realize this will never be accomplished here. Nevertheless, if we take seriously Jesus' claim that only those who come to the Father by him inherit the kingdom, could not any war be justified that keeps alive people who do not know him in hopes that they will come to know him? (Not even those who espouse a type of eschatology that includes an intermediate state allow for conversion after death. As Garrigou-Lagrange states, one's soul's eternal destiny is set at the moment of death; purgatory is only for those who are being saved.)
Anyhow, these are mostly ramblings, but I would like to hear some responses to this. It has been very annoying to me that the Duke party line of pacifism has not been challenged by anyone I know, whether in class or in personal conversation.
It seems to me like Christian pacifism stems from an overly transcendent eschatology, where the good is seen as something attainable solely in the life to come. So, martyrdom aside, the death of Christians in any conflict situation is always a negative. As the basic argument goes, all Christians should be non-violent, because Jesus endured suffering for political oppressors. Of course then (supposedly), so should we, because we must be like Jesus. However, this view comes from an eschatology that ultimately places the role of the Church in the world as one whose witness is simply, "God will save us in the end, because we believe in resurrection." That is, do what you want with us, we'll win in the end.
This seems to me a very problematic view of the role of Christians in the world. While I am sympathetic to the call for Christians to never resort to violence in situations where one set of Christians fights another set of Christians simply because they live in another nation. Simply acquiescing to evil and hoping that all will be set right in the parousia is a very poor eschatology. Jesus overthrew the people who were misusing the Temple for impure purposes using violence, why should there not be occasions for Christians to do so?
Further, unless one is a simple universalist (and I agree with Wainwright that this is in essence totalitarianism), there is a call for Christians to co-participate with God in bringing him kingdom on this earth. No, I am not a post-millenialist; I do realize this will never be accomplished here. Nevertheless, if we take seriously Jesus' claim that only those who come to the Father by him inherit the kingdom, could not any war be justified that keeps alive people who do not know him in hopes that they will come to know him? (Not even those who espouse a type of eschatology that includes an intermediate state allow for conversion after death. As Garrigou-Lagrange states, one's soul's eternal destiny is set at the moment of death; purgatory is only for those who are being saved.)
Anyhow, these are mostly ramblings, but I would like to hear some responses to this. It has been very annoying to me that the Duke party line of pacifism has not been challenged by anyone I know, whether in class or in personal conversation.
posted by Ben Johnson at 12:04 AM
9 Comments:
Ben,
I think you pose some excellent questions. In my experience, the Duke "party line" is not such a united front. Of course Hauerwas represents a substantial front in and of himself.
I think your characterization of Christian pacifism is fairly right on: i.e.- more willing to be killed than to kill based on Jesus' life being normative for Christian witness.
I have found the most substantial challenge to this view in a critique leveled by professors at Duke and reading H. Richard Niebuhr/ Paul Ramsey who will complicate the picture by talking about Christian responsibility to God for others. So that at certain times the community may indeed seek to protect the innocent. I do not however think an appeal to Jesus' life will get you there.
I was fortunate to take Hauerwas' class on War and I think he was good at challenging those who were not pacifists (myself) to calling them to articulate a more coherent ethic of Just War. That is the challenge of trying to figure out who is to authorize a legitimate war and for what purposes.
You'll have to parse out more the part on wars for the benefits of others souls? I got lost on that one.
I think though there should be a challenge to a reflexive move to the "sexiness" of Pacifism for those who live in gated communities (me) when they rely on police to use lethal force, and when violence is simply not a reality for them.
As for the Jesus' life motif, I honestly think a fairly cliché point of view is accurate: we should be asking, "what would Jesus have us do," rather than, "what would Jesus do." I think the former leads to an answer contrary to Jesus' life, especially upon any reading of Hebrews, even a cursory one. Jesus' life is once-for-all, and the life we live in him is participatory, yet in no way is it exactly or even qualitatively the same as his own earthly life was.
As far as wars for the benefit of others... this is definitely a secondary critique of any war theory. I would argue that any war that prevents heathen/pagan/non-Christian/whatever they may be/etc. from dying so that these people might have the option of turning to Jesus could be conceived of as a just war. Otherwise, we completely reject the mainstream Christian tradition that one's eternal destiny is set at death... I hope that is somewhat clear/more reflective of my position.
On a side note, the fact that pacifism is "sexy" now makes me want to vomit, mostly because of how novel pacifism is in human history. Another point against pacifism in my opinion. Especially because I think Troeltsch and his followers are right that history is consistent (minus their presumptory assertion that the miraculous is impossible). If one follow this, the reality of war, plus the God-ordained wars of much of the Old Testament, demand a theology that legitimates war, unless one wants to turn to some sort of Marcionism. The God of the Old Testament, of whom the Song of Moses proclaims, "the LORD is a warrior, the LORD is his name," the one who drowned the entire Egyptian army, is the same Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This should be an important point in any sort of dialogue with pacifists, in my opinion.
Ben et al,
Comments and Rejoinders (1-4 first post, 5+ second):
1) The idea that pacifism relies an overly transcendent eschatology seems to have the wrong end of things. The usual remark is that it relies on an overly realized eschatology. The point is that the kingdom is here, and that its blessedness is not deferred, and intrudes into the present age. That is, peace is now, judgment and vindication (God's not ours) is defferred (see Luke 4, where Jesus interrupts the quotation of Isaiah 61 midstream).
The argument is NOT, "We'll win in the end, so we don't fight now." That is something life the argument Volf makes in Exclusion and & Embrace: "God will, so we don't have to."
2) Likewise, the argument is NOT simply, "Jesus didn't, so we can't." It trades instead on a certain sensibility about disarming and defeating the powers. That is, by not resisting them, they are shown to be week. Or, inflected through critical theory, it is a "feminine transgression" (Lacan and Zizek). Further, martyrs are "metapolitical subjects" who "stage" the violence and conflict that the "archipolitics" of the state wish to deny. That is, they make the state show its repressive and totalitarian hand, so to speak, rather than hiding it in the guise of rights talk and a humanitarian imperative (see Cavanaugh's Torture & Eucharist).
3) Suggesting pacifism is acquiescence is totally wrong-headed. It is not a deferred hope in an eschatological resolution. MLK did not pray and wait for the kingdom to come. It is active nonviolent resistance. This characterization is just factually and historically mistaken.
4) The reading of the Temple expulsion is by no means settled. The nomination thereof as "violence" is highly contested, even among just war thinkers.
5) The evangelistic imperative for war is just plain odd: We ought to fight wars so people can hear the gospel and get saved. This invokes an incredibly fraught history of conquest and conversion. To assert this is to bifurcate material and spiritual redemption. No serious just war paradigm has ever argued the preservation of the heathen as a reason for war.
6) No matter how one inflects the interrogative, imitatio Christi is not some novel thing pacifists do apart from the tradition. The question is how this works. While Jesus is indeed once and for all, the logic of the point in the second post would make NOTHING about his life normative for Christian ethics.
7) The question of when/if eternal destiny is set has no bearing on these questions.
8) Even the Rabbis, by the time of the Mishnah rejected the wars of conquest as justificatory of present or future conflicts (see Boyarin's A Radical Jew. Additionally, the regard for such conflicts within the OT is by no means univocal.
9) Further, to make the OT argument work, you need to postulate that X nation (USAmerica) stands in a relation to YHWH God/Triune God that is identical to Israel. That is, you MUST assert that God tells X nation to kill Y persons or people directly. Otherwise, the disanalogy overwhelms the argument.
10) I am not sure pacifism is sexy. There is, perhaps, a way to make this claim as one related to so-called radical chic. I've written a bit about this. The first major piece thereupon will appear in JRE this summer. It challenges Hauerwas on this point vis a vis white supremacy and racialized violences.
11) Graham and Marston are right. Pacifism is by no means the party line among the faculty, and is certainly not the common sense position of the student body.
Marston's point can be made more forcefully: Pacifism falls prey to none of the arguments offered here. This is not to say there are no arguments to be made, or that the issue is simply setteled in general. But, these do not count as damning refutations.
12) Again, there is a mistake of fact and history with respect to pacifism's purported novelty. There are ancient traditions of nonviolence in all three Abrahamic faiths (see Asad, van Gorder, Boyarin, et al). And, I think Buddhists and certain Hindus, Confucians, and Taoists have been on about this for a few thousand years now.
and killing every canaanite woman and child...
Dwuhlizzle stole my thunder,
I think the issue of Christological pacifism must be centrally about fighting the powers, but I also think that 'the powers' are not structures of sin in society. Nonviolent resistance is not about revealing structures, but revealing Satan and Christ's power over him. That, i think, is the rub where pacifism becomes sexy. It is when people stop talking about Satan and start talking like Foucault or Derrida. Not that I think that they are wrong, but the forces which formed modernity and the modern man are not unique in their evil, they may, in fact, have little to do with Satan and much more to do with concupiscence, though the relations between those are far from clear.
Per dwl's number 4, normative understandings of scriptural passages are not future possibilities. Cleansing the Temple can be read violently and it can be read non-violently, the question is whither those readings are purposed and how faithful they fall within the regulai fidei.
Matt,
That comment was meant to be directly after yours, and I didn't mean much by it. I think your argument about Israel is correct and we can't substitute ourselves for the nation of Israel. However, my struggle with those passages is not the wars, but when Israel is reprimanded for not killing everyone in Canaan.
Isasi-Diaz. Cuba. Now there's a code. :)
When I met with Ron Sider (an evangelical pacifist) and asked him whether we ought to call the police when we hear gunshots, he said we should because the police solve problems non-violently the vast majority of the time. He pointed to things such as uniforms, cars, lights, etc. He also suggested that non-violent resistance in the urban context is a subject that needs more careful thinking and reflection and wasn't entirely comfortable answering the question out of his own sense of ignorance on the issue.
Don't you think the police are just solving problems "non-violently" because of the overwhelming threat of violence that they can wield? Does threatening violence to avoid violence count as non-violence?
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