{"id":94833,"date":"2015-11-24T00:56:01","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T07:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=94833"},"modified":"2015-11-10T22:08:24","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T05:08:24","slug":"an-evangelical-struggles-with-the-obvious-new-testament-witness-to-non-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2015\/11\/an-evangelical-struggles-with-the-obvious-new-testament-witness-to-non-violence.html","title":{"rendered":"An Evangelical Struggles with the Obvious New Testament Witness to Non-Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2026in a piece that ran about a month ago asking whether Jesus would wear a sidearm.<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the many places that Evangelicalism owes a massive debt to Catholic Tradition is its blithe assumption that Just War Doctrine is easily derivable from the witness of the New Testament. That\u2019s not because Evangelicals have done their homework and studied the NT on this. It\u2019s because they (like many Catholics) have simply absorbed the developed teaching of the Church (as they have absorbed that developed teaching with respect to monogamy, the sanctity of life at conception, the Trinity, and the canon of Scripture) and simply assumed that all these things are, like Just War \u201cobvious\u201d in Scripture.<\/p>\n

In fact, none of these things are obvious and it requires a reading of Scripture through the developed Tradition to see them in Scripture. Indeed, in a number of cases, there is no shortage of Scriptural passages that appear to the eye of the Man With One Verse to mitigate strongly *against* the developed teaching of the Church. So Luther could argue that Scripture permitted polygamy. Arius could point to \u201cthe Father is greater than I\u201d to argue against the deity of Jesus. The abortion zealot can point to Numbers 5 and the trial by which suspected adulteresses were given \u201cbitter water that brings a curse\u201d and the child of adultery miscarried to \u201cprove\u201d that abortion is fine (one seldom finds similar arguments for stoning homosexuals and mouthy teens in contemporary exegeses of Scripture). This is why some Evangelicals (and Catholics) undergo a crisis of faith when somebody points out a Problem Verse (\u201cCall no man Father\u201d) and then simplistically contrasts it with something in Catholicism to declare the latter sinful. If you don\u2019t know anything about the development of the Tradition, it\u2019s easy peasy to just denounce it all.<\/p>\n

Indeed, you can always find some passage in Scripture to arrive at your fore-ordained goal. When Scripture doesn\u2019t actually say what you are pretty sure you read somewhere that it says, you can always take a bicycle pump and balloon some verse into proof for what you want, even if it says nothing of the kind. This is typically the predicament of the Evangelical who knows nothing of the Christian tradition of doctrinal development with respect to Just War and self-defense and who is just \u201cpretty sure\u201d the New Testament says what his American culture of two-fisted Christianity full of the second amendment, High Noon, John Wayne, Tom Hanks storming the beach at Normandy and all the rest of it assure him it must certainly say. Knowing nothing of how the Tradition actually develops, he has to find proof texts, or he has to have a crisis and conclude the development he thought was there isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

This is what is happening with many an advocate of violent self-defense and gun rights. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard\u2013both from Protestants and from Catholics gun enthusiasts who get all their talking points from them\u2013that Luke 22:36-38 is the NT proto-second amendment. The text reads as follows:<\/p>\n

And he said to them, \u201cWhen I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?\u201d They said, \u201cNothing.\u201d \u00b6 He said to them, \u201cBut now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. \u00b6 For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me, \u2018And he was reckoned with transgressors\u2019; for what is written about me has its fulfilment.\u201d And they said, \u201cLook, Lord, here are two swords.\u201d And he said to them, \u201cIt is enough.\u201d\u00a0(Lk 22:35\u201338).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: \u00a0The attempt to turn this into a New Testament rationale for violent self-defense is just absolutely the crappiest eisegesis ever. \u00a0It just doesn\u2019t mean that. \u00a0It is not Jesus pronouncing a blessing on swords and Glocks and\u00a0the goodness of blowing away your enemy.<\/p>\n

How do I know? \u00a0Because Peter, who seems to have thought exactly this, makes exactly that bone-headed, flat-footed literalist reading and is brought up short by Jesus himself:<\/p>\n

While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, \u201cJudas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?\u201d \u00b6 And when those who were about him saw what would follow, they said, \u201cLord, shall we strike with the sword?\u201d And one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, \u201cNo more of this!\u201d And he touched his ear and healed him.\u00a0(Lk 22:47\u201351).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, Jesus elsewhere makes crystal clear that he will have no violence used in his defense and that he himself will employ none.<\/p>\n

Then Jesus said to him, \u201cPut your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?\u00a0(Mt 26:52\u201353).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, the custom is to say that, sure, this is true for Jesus, but he still commanded Peter to have a sword, so he is obvious pronouncing a blessing on violent self-defense.<\/p>\n

Yeah\u2026 no. \u00a0The words of Jesus are quite plainly parabolic. \u00a0The sword is not the physical sword, which Jesus rebukes and warns will only lead to death by the sword, but the \u201csword of the Spirit\u201d. \u00a0Jesus is preparing his disciples for his Passion, not telling them to get out there and defend themselves with violence. \u00a0Indeed, he tells Pilate that because his kingdom is not of this world, his disciples are not out there with swords.<\/p>\n

And Peter learns the lesson. \u00a0So we very simply do not find the apostles *ever* using violence to defend themselves. \u00a0Indeed, Peter, writing to a Church undergoing (literally) fiery persecution under Nero (who lit his gardens with Christians and will kill both Peter and Paul) says not one word about self-defense or defense of loved ones by violence. \u00a0Not one word. \u00a0Instead he tells Christians to die well. \u00a0No. \u00a0Really:<\/p>\n

\nBeloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ\u2019s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. \u00b6 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? \u00b6 And
\n\u201cIf the righteous man is scarcely saved,
\nwhere will the impious and sinner appear?\u201d
\nTherefore let those who suffer according to God\u2019s will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator.\u00a0(1 Pe 4:12\u201319).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this, following Jesus\u2019 counsels to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and love enemies, continues to be the *normative* approach of Christians to persecution\u2013including violent persecution of friends and family\u2013for the next several centuries. \u00a0Pacifism is the norm. \u00a0Joining the army is regarded with disdain (why fight for a pagan Caesar who regularly murders you for being a Christian?). \u00a0And martyrs who go to their deaths, not merely without a struggle but eagerly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not until roughly the time of Augustine and the Christianization of the Empire that Christians begin to revisit there tradition and ask if there is wiggle room for the use of violence to defend the innocent and the Church slowly begin to admit that, yes, there is.<\/p>\n

But (and mark this) the Church never abandons room in its tradition for non-violence:<\/p>\n

2306 Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than this, the Church never embraces the concept of violent self-defense as anything other than a tragic concession to human sin and weakness. \u00a0It is never an ideal (however much she may hail the martial virtues that attend war), but always as testament to colossal failure \u00a0And so Just War theory is always understood to make war as hard as possible. \u00a0It is not about creating criteria by which we *get* to kill but criteria by which we might tragically *have* to kill. \u00a0The preference of the Tradition is always for life not death.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026in a piece that ran about a month ago asking whether Jesus would wear a sidearm. One of the many places that Evangelicalism owes a massive debt to Catholic Tradition is its blithe assumption that Just War Doctrine is easily derivable from the witness of the New Testament. That\u2019s not because Evangelicals have done their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[619],"class_list":["post-94833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-non-violent-resistance"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Evangelical Struggles with the Obvious New Testament Witness to Non-Violence<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...in a piece that ran about a month ago asking whether Jesus would wear a sidearm. 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