The Lord Is a Man of War(?): How the Hebrew Bible Paves the Way for Christ’s Peaceful Kingdom. Part 3 of 3

This is the final installment in a series by guest blogger Brennan T. Hughes

Brennan T. (“Bren”) Hughes, a former minister, is a musician, licensed attorney and criminal-law scholar.  He lives with his family in Kentucky Coal Country.  The author of the spiritual empowerment book, Heaven’s Muscle, Bren shares his writings, videos, and music at BrenHughes.com.  He holds a master’s degree in biblical languages from Freed-Hardeman University, a master of divinity from Lipscomb University, and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.

The Lord Is a Man of War(?): How the Hebrew Bible Paves the Way for Christ’s Peaceful Kingdom. Part 3 of 3

Later, when the nation of Israel fails to keep the covenant, God becomes an enemy, and uses wicked nations to punish Israel (Jeremiah 5:15; 21:1-10; Amos 5:14, etc.).  Never again does he call his nation to wage war in his name.  Gone is the glory.  War, in the eyes of Israel’s prophets, becomes nothing more than the misery of human futility, or else the terror of divine punishment.

Thus, as the readers of the biblical narrative leave the golden age of the United Kingdom we begin to see the prophets envisioning a future free from carnal conflict.  These are the prophecies that become applied to Jesus and his eschatological kingdom, the sublime new heaven and new earth which exists incipiently in his church.  As the prophetic book of Isaiah proclaims,

. . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation  shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. . .  For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.  For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. . .  For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered. . .           the wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food.  They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord (Isaiah 2:4; 9:5-7; 65:17, 25).

. . . And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the  heavens, and the creeping things of the ground.  And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety (Hosea 2:18).

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. . . behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey. . .  I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations. . . (Zechariah 9:9-10).

So, bound up in what becomes the messianic expectation of Israel is the idea that war will vanish from the earth.  This reign of peace extends even to the animal kingdom, as creation is restored to its prelapsarian state of wholesome, dynamic placidity.  In the ministry of Jesus, this in-breaking of the eschatological kingdom becomes a reality, albeit an initially invisible one.  Jesus wins the victory over the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15) –nonviolently—although we may not feel all of the results yet.  He has made peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20), although we still wait for the full outpouring of this peace upon the physical realm.

Through his ministry, Christ, the man of the future, has spiritually recruited his disciples into God’s post-apocalyptic peaceful realm.  If we can see the world through this theological filter, the machinations of human political, economic, and social entities become a futile pantomime.  From the kingdom perspective, carnal warfare is meaningless.  Christ’s aphorism, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52), encapsulates the futility of violence in pursuing kingdom goals.  War serves mainly the interests of the evil one (see James 4:1-7).

Thus, Christ can say to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.  But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36).

The subsequent Christian writings found in the New Testament and the early church fathers suggest that pre-Constantinian Christians were fairly united in their refusal to participate in the military.  This was not merely borne of opposition to Rome.  Instead, Christians saw themselves as belonging to God at all times.  As such, they refused to offer their bodies as tools to inflict violence.  Nor would they swear allegiance to any other kingdom.

A radical shift has occurred in the biblical narrative.  God’s warrior nation of Israel has given way to a society of peace—a society that has been spiritually raised into heaven with Christ and whose members are no longer of this earth.

Summary

What I’ve done in this blog series is this:  I have provided an overview of the history of violence in the biblical story, as read through a surface-level, literalistic, Evangelical lens.  There is no point in denying or avoiding discussion of the copious holy gore in scripture.  But no less can one deny Christ’s teachings, which, taken seriously, compel a renunciation of violence.

One point I’m trying to make is this.  Many people have difficulty accepting Christ’s radical call to nonviolence (and radical re-imaging of God) because it appears to contradict the picture of God in the Old Testament.  These posts should show that, even if you read the Old Testament literally and view it as inspired and authoritative, the Old Testament narrative itself sets up a future in which God’s people exist in a nonviolent kingdom, nourished by a God of tenderness and love.  Christ’s peaceable kingdom is not incompatible with the Hebrew warrior God, especially in light of the foundational story of Eden.  Even if you believe the Lord truly was a Man of War at times, that is not God’s true nature.  He designed Eden.  And he designed the kingdom and the church to be a return to the Eden of peace.  His prophets foretold an end of war for his people.

In other words, you can still read the Bible as an Evangelical and be a Christian pacifist because the trajectory of the Old Testament leads in that direction.  It took the arrival of Christ in the flesh to reveal to humanity God’s peaceful kingdom in its full blossoming, tender glory.

— Brennan T. Hughes