How Far Should We Take This Whole "Love Our Enemies" Bit?
Out of respect for Mr. Siemon, I am relocating Scott's questions to a new post. That way the homosexual hermeneutics conversation can take place in one spot, and the pacifist/just war conversation in another. Below is Scott's post to Mark:
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Hey Mark,
In your class right now. Asked the question about Jesus’ teaching requiring pacifism. Appreciate your thoughts.
Not sure if you have time to enter a discussion I’m having in my head, but if you do there are two of them.
The first revolves around safety vs. ethics. Should we corporately love our neighbor/enemy (i.e. abstain from bombing them) even if they have harsh and violent intentions toward us and will carry them out if we don’t stop them?
The second; does instituting a more peaceful society/culture through violence justify that violence? (i.e. positive democracy is more peaceful than negative totalitarianism).
Again, I’m sure you’re crazy busy, but these are just some thoughts swimming in the ocean of my brain right now.
Thanks so much for your passion and integrity.
Scott
80 Comments:
Scott,
Mark is away this week and will not be able to post. I'm sure he'll try to respond when he gets back. Those are some pretty good questions, I must say!
6:22 PM
(1) In regard to safety vs. Ethics you wrote, "Should we corporately love our neighbor/enemy (i.e. abstain from bombing them) even if they have harsh and violent intentions toward us and will carry them out if we don’t stop them?"
I have a couple of questions. Who do you mean by "we"? If you mean the Church, then I say we should always love our neighbor/enemy which means a lot more than not killing them. Jesus didn't just not fight back when he was crucified he forgave. If you mean "them" as in the people who do not worship Jesus than I say we, the church, do not have the right to anything less than love. Love in a way that will sometimes be painful, even deadly. Jesus’ definition of love is sacrifice not romance. Should we not take him seriously?
If you mean America, then I would argue that your political allegiance is in the wrong place. American foreign policy is blatantly non-Christian, imperialistic, and looks more like 1st century Rome than any nation has in a long time. America usurps the throne of God when it assumes it has the right to kill. I would also like to point out that Jesus did not advocate democracy, he advocated theocracy. We, the Church, live in the kingdom of God, not America.
There are plenty of ways to justify violence until you come face to face with a crucified Messiah. This brings me to my next question, what do you mean by "safe"? Is it safe for you to lose you soul in order to protect your possessions? Is it "safe" for you (or me for that matter) to disobey Jesus in order to protect what we cannot keep? God said he would protect us even beyond the grave, what if we actually believed him, and proved it with our peaceful deaths?
(2) You asked, "does instituting a more peaceful society/culture through violence justify that violence? (i.e. positive democracy is more peaceful than negative totalitarianism)."
According to Jesus, NO. If it is just for people to use violence in order to bring peace then why would Jesus not just kill Caesar, call down 12 legions of angels so we could go ahead and live in the Kingdom of God? If we pick up Satan's weapons to try and do God's work we betray God.
In regard to "positive democracy" I wonder how positive is democracy for our souls? Now I don't want to advocate totalitarianism either, but I wonder what it is that makes us think democracy is automatically positive. Is it really good to give everyone the “right” to be God?
These are good questions and require more thoughts. But I would definitely recommend picking up Stanley Hauerwas' "The Peaceable Kingdom." Also, I'm no Mark Moore, but I would love to dialogue with you on this further. You can get me at tyler.a.stewart@gmail.com
2:57 PM
I like Tyler's question, What do you mean by "we?" If in fact you mean the citizens of the Kingdom of God, then we should love our enemy. Loving your enemy and thus following the teachings and example of Jesus is better than a prolonged life.
If you mean the United States than I agree with Tyler's political alligiance answer as well. BUT, as far as the United States is concerned, I feel it makes sense for them to slay those who threaten their lives. The United States has no hope past this life-- of coarse they are going to protect themselves at all costs. You cannot blame an earthly kingdom for acting like an earthly kingdom. Thank God we belong to a different Kingdom with better promises.
3:31 PM
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Scott,
First, Jay is certainly right to point out how the vision the United States has of the world in large part determines its politics, and thus that it cannot be blamed "for acting like an earthly kingdom." Although, I would suggest (and I'm sure Jay would agree), that there is a real sense in which the United States will be judged for its sins, rather harshly I think. And to the extent that when we say "we" we mean "we citizens of the United States," I'd say we have a share in its condemnation. But that's just an initial aside.
What I want to do is to elaborate a little on something both Tyler and Jay brought to our attention. They both raised the question, as mentioned above, "What do you mean by 'we'?" I want to stress how important that question is, particularly when it comes to ethical questions.
In democratic regimes such as ours we are trained to test our moral reasoning against what is often called the criterion of universalizability. (That's a big word used by people who need to feel like non-intellectuals depend for their survival on the work of academic theorists.) What that basically means is that, if we're going to do anything we would like to call "moral," what we ought to do must be the same act that everyone, everywhere, in like circumstances, ought to do. In other words, if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for everybody.
Armed with this criterion, the question of nonviolence in extreme circumstances (such as, say, World War II) cannot help but look more than a little obscene. If what I'm supposed to do can only be what I'm supposed to do so long as it's what everyone else is supposed to do, pacifism clearly has its difficulties.
But one of the problems with the criterion of universalizability is that it abstracts the moral agent (i.e. you) from any and every community or tradition from which he derives his moral notions and thus his moral convictions. In order for a moral act to be universalizable, an agent must come to it apart from all particularities such as allegiances, desires, passions, religious beliefs, etc. In other words, everything that makes you you must be discounted if the act you decide upon is going to be a moral act, i.e., an act that everyone, everywhere, in like circumstances, ought to perform.
Of course, what this way of thinking about ethics doesn't acknowledge is that it itself belongs to a tradition, the tradition normally called "political liberalism" (which, in America, would include conservatism). So in the guise of "universalizability" or "neutrality," the tradition called liberalism tells us to see our traditions as impediments to proper moral deliberation.
A second but related problem with this (by now conventional) way of doing ethics is that it makes every ethical question a question about ethical decisions. We are trained to begin with the question, "What is the ethical thing to do here?" without asking the prior question of identity, i.e., "What kind of person am I?" or "What kind of person do I wish to be?"
We can see how the two problems are related. The first problem is characterized by the demand that every action must be universalizable if it is to be called "moral." The second problem is characterized by insisting that the first step in ethics involves making an "ethical" decision. In both instances, the question of our particular communties, traditions, convictions, and thus our very idenity, is overlooked, if not explicitly derided. Liberalism thus fails to account for the (I think) rather obvious fact that our moral notions (i.e. our ideas about what constitute good and bad actions) are framed for us by our communities, traditions, and religions, and specifically by the stories they tell us about the world.
Long story short, it does more justice to our nature as humans to recognize that the communities we come from, and the stories they tell there, are prior to our moral notions themselves. For instance, a Mennonite family defrauded by a con artist, without much deliberation, would know to pray for the con artist, whereas the good American citizen would know to sue. To both the Mennonite and the good American citizen, each of their respective reactions represents "common sense." (Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with acting on common sense, so long as it is recognized that common sense is not common to everybody but only to those among whom it is common.)
Thus the first question of ethics is not "What should I do?" (although that is a question that may arise later), but rather "Who am I?" or "What kind of person do I wish to be?" As Iris Murdoch puts it, "We act in the world that we see." The worlds of Posterity and Eschatology are two very different worlds. Thus, the question is not, "What would happen if everyone behaved this way?" but "What would happen if no one did?"
Having said all that, the short answer to your question is that Christians are not here to transform the world or to make sure it is being run properly. Christians are here to witness to the new world just around the corner. Of course, in order to witness properly to such a world sometimes Christians are going to have to die, but the new world just around the corner makes that all right. That is the first task of Christians. Thus we can see how Christians, properly trained to see the world, might not even think of some ethical questions as questions at all. While the utilitarian asks how ethical positions like pacifism can be moral in a world full of Hitlers and Husseins, the Christian responds that the world is not run by such men but by God, the same God who put the church in a world full of Hitlers and Husseins in order to demonstrate what a world without Hitlers and Husseins might look like.
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12:57 AM
This is a perennial debate with lots of mines in the field. That makes it important that we speak with humility as well as clarity. I shall attempt both.
(1) Props to both Tyler and Thom for framing the question of 'we' properly. 'We' must mean 'the church' and must not be conflated with the United States Governme
nt (God&Nation) nor reduced simply to 'I' or even 'an individual Christian.' So the question becomes, 'What is the role of the church in an already violent world?'
(2) Put this way there are two clear answers: witness and suffering. We bear witness to the suffering Christ and God's vindication of him through the resurrection. We also imitate Jesus, taking up our own cross and suffering with and for those who are oppressed. While these two tasks of being church do not exaust our social responsibility, they do bracket out a number of other actions: violent speech against our enemies, hoarding of wealth which has elicited much hatred from the rest of the world (the US has 5% of the world population and consumes 40% of its resources). It must mean being peacemakers to be called sons of God (and yes, this must go beyond evangelization of the naked soul). It means modeling an alternative society of egalitarian care, weeping over the death of enemies, and repenting for corporate sins.
(3) What does all this say about public policy of war? Shall I be so arrogant as to assert Papal decrees or Presidential pardons? My expertise, if I can call it that, is in Biblical exegesis. And I'm well aware that scholars on both sides of this issue argue from specific Biblical texts in ways that seem to me fair and balanced. The Scriptures don't really tell us how secural governments should operate, but they are chrystal clear about being the church. All that to say, as a part of the church, when I am closest to imitating Jesus, I find it most difficult to support violent action against other individuals, sovereign nations, or even rogue terrorist groups. Must they be stopped? Yes!!! Let me reiterate, Yes! That is precisely why I think passivism is a better option (though I'm not ready to say an absolute option). Let's take for example 9/11. We responded with decisive violence and determinative force in two countries (and counting). Has it been effective? Have we eliminated the Taliban or Hezbilah? Are our borders safer? Do we have more or fewer international allies? Is our economy improved? The questions could go on. I'm suggesting that our course of action has been counter-productive for us as a nation (although many Iraqi's would celebrate their own liberation--yet I doubt our motives were so altruistic). This is not to diminish one iota the sacrifice and dedication of our soldiers. It is to ask if such a violent course of action was the most productive for our nation (notice I've moved ahead from merely talking about the church). Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003, offers many challenging examples along this line--of the greater effectiveness, lower financial cost, and much fewer lives lost using pacifism.
(4) What I'm arguing, in short, is that if you mean 'we' as the church, then non-violence is the only option. If you mean 'we' as the United States, non-violence may well be the most effective option and is seldom explored to its potential. If you mean 'we' as 'I, the individual Christian' then most of the questions thus far have been hypothetical since 'I' will probably not ever encounter a terrorist personally or be forced to shoot a burglar who threatens my wife (two common examples against pacifism). Would I take vengeance (or even self-preservation or protection of others) into my own hands of leave it up to God? This is the most difficult of all the pacifistic conundrums. But isn't that dodging the immanent issue? How do you treat your neighbor who encroaches on your property line, or the driver who forces her way in, or the youth at church who play music too loudly. I suspect that we will never think clearly about national pacifism as long as we perpetuate a culture that encourages us to practice a thousand small acts of personal aggression under the guise of being effective, independent, or driven. Not until we are faithful in little will be faithful in much.
(5) Finally, for me it comes down to the issue of faith. Do I really believe in a God who intervenes in world affairs in the present time? Oh, sure, we can believe in a God who created the world long ago, as well as one who will consumate the ages with the coming of Jesus in the distant future. But in most contemporary matters, Christians are Deists, not Theists. Until we come to faith in the immanent God who has the hairs of our head numbered, who is more interested in justice than we are, who is more able to control global affaris, it is doubtful that we (the church) can even have this discussion.
2:20 PM
Very interesting debate. We are struggling with these issues over at Two Cities. Mark, is it possible to achieve your item number one in a democracy such as ours? It seems as if we are somewhere in between these two extremes.
You said: "(1) 'We' must mean 'the church' and must not be conflated with the United States Government (God&Nation) nor reduced simply to 'I' or even 'an individual Christian.'"
I agree that we must not conflate God and Nation and commit idolatry by making Christ and America one and the same (or even referring to the US as his favorite nation--which is historically been our sin). But is there a middle way somewhere in between considering the nation as God on the one hand and rejecting the nation as completely evil on the other? Is it acceptable to say that America, or any political body for that matter, produces good things in the world that help preserve and serve God's creation? If so, then our call to love our neighbor seems a bit tricky amidst our government structures. As Christians in a democratic society our submission to government seems to put us in a place where our relationship to government is heavily participatory and forces us to make choices about how to use creational goods.
11:33 PM
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Matt,
Great comments. Mostly I agree, but I think you've gone amiss on just a couple of points:
"But is there a middle way somewhere in between considering the nation as God on the one hand and rejecting the nation as completely evil on the other?"
No one here has framed the situation this way. That America is "completely evil on the other" side is not at all the position taken by anyone here. Thus, since this is not the way I think this situation is actually framed, I do not think "middle ground" between these two options is what we're looking for.
You said: "As Christians in a democratic society our submission to government seems to put us in a place where our relationship to government is heavily participatory and forces us to make choices about how to use creational goods."
While I agree that our democratic society gives us more options regarding our use of creational goods, I do not think it is democracy that forces us to make choices about our use of such goods. Our real options come from God, whether through democracy, through some other structural means, or through pure providence.
Regarding your first claim, however, that "as Christians in a democratic society our submission to government seems to put us in a place where our relationship to government is heavily participatory," I think this is a very American way to frame the situation. That is not to call it "evil," but I do not think this is realistic.
First, I see no reason why submission to government in a democratic context necessitates that we participate democracy's way. God first and finally delineates the politics of the Church, the shape and form of that politics. Thus our participation for the good of society likely will not look much like participation from the perspective of a democratic regime, but that does not mean it is not participation.
Since God delineates the politics of the Church, and not any nation or nation-state, it seems clear that the first task of the Church in society is to be the Church--to do what only the Church can do. As Hauerwas often says, "the church's first task is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world." In other words, the Church is best participating in society when the Church cares so well for the useless members of society that the poverty of the world's resources is openly displayed. This usually produces one of two effects: the world persecutes the church (fair enough), or the world imitates the church.
The Church would be doing America a great deal of good if the churches in America decided not to let any more Christians go to the middle-east as soldiers armed to the teeth, but in their place to send money, food, and nonviolent peacemakers/gospel proclaimers prepared to train new converts how to love their oppressors. If we would do this, and do this visibly, America would no doubt be put to shame. All their missiles and bullets could not accomplish what grain, water, and an antiquated myth about a suffering carpenter could. If the Church would do its job, i.e., be the Church, America would be forced either to change its course of action or to allow its imperialism to be exposed before a watching world.
That is the kind of participation required of Christians in society, democratic or otherwise. Any other form of participation is either gratuitous or idolatrous, but usually a mixture of both; it certainly isn't necessary in order for us to fulfill our obligation to "submit to the authorities."
I do, however, agree with you that America is capable of doing good. But remember that until the United States acknowledges the lordship of Christ, i.e., never, the Church must proclaim the coming judgment by shaming America with kindness to her enemies.
No doubt if we do that well enough we'll be called, at the very least, unpatriotic, ungrateful idealists.
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1:35 AM
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Matt,
I like your blog. I especially like the post, "Just Me and Jesus." Thanks for your presence here.
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2:49 PM
First: Why are the pacifists at Ozark the most verbally violent of all the students? Those
who haven't yet been convinced to join the ranks of the pacifists are met with scorn or are
argued into conversion. Some say to love your enemies, namely Iraqi insurgents, but love
towards their actual, physical neighbors in the dorms or in the classroom is often lacking.
Also, the on-campus pacifists look to many like what might be called a clique, or an elitist
petry dish of incestuous amplification.
Second: "...God delineates the politics of the Church, and not any nation or
nation-state..." I disagree. The Old Testament clearly includes God delineating the politics
of a nation-state. Granted, it was a theocracy, not a democracy, and we may be unable to
apply any of those delineations to nations and nation-states today. Nevertheless, God has
gotten involved in politics, has advocated war, has commanded the slaughter of innocent
people by human agents, and yet he is without sin and so were the human agents when they
followed his commands. I'm not saying that the Old Testament justifies America invading
Iraq; it should, however, inform our ethic if our ethic is to be biblical. Much of the
anabaptist viewpoint seems to gloss over a few thousand years of God's interaction with man.
Third: "I wonder what it is that makes us think democracy is automatically positive. Is it
really good to give everyone the “right” to be God?" Well, God did. I don't think that
democracy is automatically positive and it can certainly be very negative and evil, a fact
we can witness every day in the U.S. or in India. Free will is from God; it is not
"fleshly," it is part of the imago dei. God does not override free will, even when one
initially submits to his reign. A side point, but an important one I think.
Fourth: "Mennonite family defrauded by a con artist, without much deliberation, would know
to pray for the con artist, whereas the good American citizen would know to sue." This is a
false dilemma. There is a third horn: call the police and allow the God-ordained government
to enforce its laws and protect its citizens. Paul appealed to Caesar and it wasn't a civil
case. Let justice roll. Suing would indeed be seeking revenge. One can prosecute a criminal
without wanting revenge, though. It is the government's duty to provide justice. God did not
reserve vengeance for himself in some abstract or eschatological sense only; he also created
a legal system that included a kinsman-redeemer, whose job it was to seek out the murderer
and kill him. I know my common sense is different than a mennonites, but I think orthopraxy
can include helping the government prosecute the guy who defrauded me and while praying for
him to meet Jesus in jail.
Fifth: "...we will never think clearly about national pacifism as long as we perpetuate a
culture that encourages us to practice a thousand small acts of personal aggression under
the guise of being effective, independent, or driven. Not until we are faithful in little
will be faithful in much." I agree with this one. I actually mostly like the
anabaptist/pacifist position. I think that the hypothetical, extreme scenario questions are
legitimate questions, though. I agree with Thom that the universizability criterion means
that we can make the application of a principle look ludicrous by bringing up hypothetical,
extreme scenarios. Our doing (existence) flows from our being (essence), so we shouldn't
pick our philosophies based on universizability but we should ask instead, "who am I?" I see
the point. That doesn't change the fact that Christians, both anabaptist and liberal, are
put into extreme situations all the time. Will I come in contact with a terrorist? Probably
not. Of all the people that I know, going all over the world for the kingdom, some might.
Will I have to choose to protect my family or stand passively by while my family is injured
by some malicious person? I hope not. If I do have to choose, though, I ought to be able to
make a choice that is consistent with the philosophy I espouse. I may not be able to tell
you what I would do, since I haven't been in that situation, or what you ought to do, since
we all have different "common sense" and are from different communities with different
values and different stories. I ought to be able to offer an opinion on how my philosophy
will look when applied to a hypothetical situation without apologizing though, shouldn't I?
Maybe pacifism isn't universizable; maybe there are situations when a pacifist must use
force. Should I trust that God is in control instead of taking things into my own hands?
Yes. But I take a lot of stuff into my own hands because I trust God and because I know his
general will. I chose to go to India not because God overcame my free will and whisked me
away, but because it was in line with his general will and seemed the wisest choice, given
all the alternatives. If we rescue someone from pain without aiming for revenge, or if we
believe that judges and juries and police officers ought to keep child molesters locked up
and ought to arrest their molesting by force if necessary, it is not inconsistent with God's
will as revealed in scripture. It might be inconsistent with pacifism, though.
I think the nonviolent way of life is good and biblical. But I think the biblical worldview
has more to say than just nonviolence, and I think we can be both American and Christian,
just as Paul was both Roman citizen and Christian when Rome was a bit more imperialistic and
violent than America is. I don't think that the status quo of American Christianity is
healthy or good, though, and we need to stand up and disagree and be radical examples, and
live consistently with our philosophy. I am missional, a new word I learned a few months ago
which means that I am both trying to change the world and trying to help new Christians know
Jesus better and become more like him. I can rescue child prostitutes (which may
occasionally require physical action when dealing with pimps and madams) and honor God at
the same time, and I can also evangelize the lost and have no hope in the world becoming a
better place without people submitting to the reign of Christ.
Sorry my thoughts are not well-organized. I would do a better job if I had more time to
organize this...like a few weeks. It's rambling, but I think I expressed one or two thoughts
that I wanted to express.
If I made any of you angry, please act nonviolently towards me! I love you.
12:49 PM
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Thank you for your thoughts, Jason. I will only respond to two of your points.
(1) I wish to clarify something I said that apparently was open to misreading.
"Since God delineates the politics of the Church, and not any nation or nation-state, it seems clear that the first task of the Church in society is to be the Church--to do what only the Church can do."
You read that as my saying that God only delineates the politics of the church and that God does not delineate the politics of the nation-state. What I meant is that God, and not any nation-state, delineates the politics of the church.
Whether and to what extent (or what it would almount to to say that) God delineates the politics of a nation-state is a different question, and one I think we would have a hard time answering, particularly because (apart from OT Israel) the question isn't really all that intelligible.
(2) I do apologize on behalf of all OCC pacifists for any violence found in us. Part of the reason I am so vocal about my being a pacifist is because I know I'm so violent, and making my pacifism public is a strategy to try to get people to help expose where my violence lies.
However, being a pacifist does not require that one be timid about one's convictions. Pacifism is not passivism. I would not be a pacifist if I thought Christians had a choice about it.
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1:07 PM
Jason,
Good to hear from you. I pray that things are going great for you guys in India. My roommate Tony C. is now preaching at Conway and says that things are going wonderful. Allow me to comment on a few of the things you have said.
I have so much that I need to work on, and I will be the first one to admit that. (you particularly might remember how bad I am at returning books back on time!) But honestly, I just don't think your first sentence is true. You might be thinking of a couple and then labeling the rest of us. (I am about 96 percent a pacifist. I agree with you that the hypothetical questions are very legitimate and many times not answered adequately.) I am thinking of other pacifist Ozark students who are so NON VERBALLY VIOLENT you wont even know they are a pacifist. I “converted” to a pacifistic understanding of the Christian life within the past year as I spent much of the year studying Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God. The reason I will talk with people about these issues is the same reason I talk with people about missions. I just believe that the Great Commission is not just a suggestion for an elite group of believers but should be embraced by everyone who says, “Jesus is Lord.” Not just by saying, “Yes, Andy. It is a good idea.” But actively being a part of fulfilling it. My studies led me have a similar view of pacifism. I embrace and talk about it because I just believe that Jesus’ teaching implies it. “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “my kingdom is not of this world, if it were my disciples would be pulling out their swords and be killln’ these fools” aren’t pithy sayings or spiritualistic maxims, but real ways of living. I talk with people about missions because I think the bible really does speak to this issue, and the church should listen. I talk with people about pacifism because I think the bible really does speak to this issue, and the church should listen. (This is actually one of my first times of publicly declaring my borderline pacifism.) I could be wrong, and I know that. I could overemphasize pacifism just as I could overemphasize missions. But I would rather error on the side of trying too hard to convince people that missions matters than letting them continue not even caring. Likewise, I would rather error on the side of trying too hard to convince people to love their enemy rather than kill them than to let them keep believing that the best institution for peace is the Army rather than the church. I think you label of an “elitist petry dish of incestuous amplification” could be said of any group that has like ideals, “missions people” for example. Ahhh, now I am both!! We do need to work on that.
Thom dealt with you second point. I like the point you made on your third point. It is not necessarily a good thing, but I guess it is not necessarily an evil thing either.
I am not exactly what to do with your fourth point. I still have much thinking to do. I am not sure if Paul’s appeal to Caesar can be likened to calling the police. I remember DeWelt suggesting that this was a strategy by Paul to declare the gospel in places where he had not, using whatever means possible for the salvation of as many possible.
You say that the nonviolent way is good and biblical. Do you also mean that the violent way is evil and unbiblical?
I agree that the Bible has more to say than just non-violence. I think it has a lot more to say than just non-violence. That is why I will not make a big deal of my pacifism at school. My fellow pacifist friends will probably not like that. I know I have referenced missions a lot, but allow me one more example. Instead of shoving missions down peoples throats, I prefer to help them understand God better and to pursue intimacy with him, and when they do that they can not help but come to an understanding of God’s desire for all people. I will likely take the same approach with pacifism. Will there still be tricky questions? Sure. But I think this is the better approach.
Can I be American and Christian at the same time? Like Paul, if being an American citizen is going to help me advance the kingdom of you better believe it. I think Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship not because he held allegiance to Rome, but because he was using whatever means possible to win as many as possible.
I am not sure how much sense I have made here, but if anything else it has been good for me to think through these issues. But now I have blogged for too long! I have a sermon to write.
Grace and peace, friends.
5:15 PM
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Capitalistic democracy is not free will.
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5:34 PM
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ARod,
I DO like the fact that you aren't as vocal about your pacifism. John Yoder was almost embarrassed to have Hauerwas as a convert because Yoder thought his pacifism was not just a way of living, but a way of speaking. Hauerwas has been dubbed by many "the pacifist I'd most like at my side during a bar fight." In that sense, you are closer to Yoder and I to Hauerwas. That means you have seniority.
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5:38 PM
Jason-
When I read your comment about the violence of Ozarkian-pacifists I was shamed. I can think of the violence I have done with my words. There are certainly ways to qualify it, and if I have learned anything from Hauerwas its that truth doesn’t require violence. So in the many ways that I am not true to truth, I repent. With that sincerely said, and heard, I wish to say just a few things, hopefully truthfully.
When I wrote, “I wonder how positive is democracy for our souls? Now I don't want to advocate totalitarianism either, but I wonder what it is that makes us think democracy is automatically positive. Is it really good to give everyone the “right” to be God?”
To which, you responded, “Well, God did.” This is simply not true. God never gave people the “right” to be God, in fact it is that assumption that put us to death. Your conflation of democracy and freewill is wrong. You brought up a great point in your critique, however, the concept of witness. Witness is crucial regardless of contexts and will likely vary depending on the context in which God places us. What I was trying to do is challenge the belief that democracy is good, as America, President Bush and the constitution of the United States all consider true.
I think that there are some serious questions to ask regarding the OT war as worship and Jesus’ ministry. But lets also not look at some examples in the OT and say, “See, violence is just.” Certainly, God is just. Therefore, whatever he does is just. But the way he has revealed truth is through a cross that requires some serious consideration. It’s good to hear from you Jason, and I welcome more thoughts. I would like to know how pacifists (like myself ought to) respond to the OT questions you brought up. Thom, maybe you could inform me. Either way, I will try and do some reading to better understand whether or not this is a good question. Love you all.
10:17 PM
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Tyler,
That book I gave you, The Original Revolution, has at least one chapter devoted to discussing the significance of OT warfare for a Christian pacifist position. Yoder is nuanced, excruciatingly critical, yet radical as usual. My own thoughts on the matter are loosely as follows:
As I see it, Israel's wars before Saul were actually more like ritual sacrifices than anything we would now call a "just war." Moreover, the successful wars were miraculous wars, every one of them. Through them YHWH sought to train Israel to be a people relying on him. Jesus' nonviolent politics is just the continuation and intensification of the same kind of absolute trust in YHWH those early wars (before Israel's kings and standing armies) were meant to develop in Israel.
I think that to use the OT wars in support of a "just war" position is silly. (I hope that didn't sound violent.) Would we since Christ really call a man of God the man who slaughters hundreds of non-Jews by virtue of their being non-Jews, taking their foreskins as trophies? That's the kind of warrior the OT hoorahs. Yet that is not the kind of war we're trying to advocate when we appeal to the OT for support.
We don't want to fight religious wars, wars of worship. We want to fight "just wars," an invention of Augustine with some help from the Stoics. We don't want to bring glory to God in battle. We want to protect the innocent from the evil ones. We want to protect liberty from tyranny. We do not want to call the blood of our enemy the victory of God. We want to call it a necessary evil. Something has changed since the old covenant. The OT wars were about the fact that the very identity of YHWH was tied together with the fate of Israel. When Israel won it was the victory of God.
In the new covenant we have a cross and a resurrection, and neither one without the other. And that is the final victory of YHWH.
I admit that I can no longer comprehend how this theology is not grasped by so many Christians. I am at a loss to think of how one can be a Christian and not a pacifist. I am not denying the sincere faith of millions of non-pacifist Christians, nor am I denying their salvation. I am simply baffled by it, and even more troubling is the fact that for so long I was blind to what I now see. By the grace of God we all go.
The early Church had no problem seeing the implications of Jesus' cross and resurrection. It is the cross and resurrection of Jesus that enabled Christian fathers not to attempt to shed the blood of their enemies in defense of their own children. It is the cross and resurrection of Jesus that enabled children to become martyrs and saints.
The thought of losing my family to pointless, murderous evil troubles me. But what troubles me more is the fact that so many Christians are more ready to kill than to be killed. Aanna Greer once suggested to me that it would be an awesome thing if one day my family and I were allowed to die simply because we refused to defend ourselves. If such a testimony is necessary to help some of my dear friends better understand the nature of Christian discipleship, I would that my family could die a thousand deaths. I wish it were enough to point to the martyrs and saints before us. To me it is enough to point to the life and death of Jesus. His life and death is now shorthand for everything I believe and everything I preach. When someone asks me why I am a pacifist my first response is always, "Because I'm a Christian." I see no other way. My heart aches to be more like Jesus... as does the heart of my friend Jason Fry. I pray that in our quest to be more like Jesus, we become more like one another.
Jason and Andy both want to point out, pace Mark Moore, that the extreme situations, despite their being rare situations, are real situations nonetheless, the kind we ought to talk about. I agree. I love to talk about them, and I have spent hours on end talking with Andy about just those kinds of situations. Yoder wrote a whole book on those situations (What Would You Do?). Despite the fact that those situations are rare, and despite the fact that those situations are more often than not used in an emotion-driven appeal designed to make pacifists look inhuman (I am not at all accusing Jason of such an appeal), they are real situations nonetheless. But the simplicity of the question is a facade. The actual situation is always going to be more complex than the question wants to allow.
Yet Mark's point in diverting our attention away from such questions is not to avoid the reality of such situations. I think Mark's point, and I know my point, is that by focusing on the ordinary everyday situations as opportunities for developing the nonviolent, peacemaking character of Christ, we are more apt to become the kind of people who in a time of crisis are capable of turning an aggressor's violence into an opportunity for love, peace, and testimony. By focusing now on the violence that so grips our lives in so many ordinary ways, and by attempting to counteract that ordinary violence in extraordinary ways, we become the kind of people capable of living "out of control" in a violent world. For to be a disciple of Jesus is to be one who knows that justice is out of our own hands and in the hands of God alone.
In that light, I suggest to Jason, whom I admire and respect, that if he wishes to save children from prostitution rings he be willing to trust God for his and his family's protection, and not his own strength. I also ask humbly that he bear in mind that his and his family's protection is not an end in itself but a means to the advancement of the kingdom, a kingdom of course toward which his and his family's martyrdom is also a means. Finally, I ask that Jason pray for me and my family, that God would truly have his way with us, whatever that means. I am so far from peace. All the more reason why I must be a pacifist, at least in principle first.
Peace.
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4:31 AM
I must say that in you guys' responses to what I said, I found tons to agree with, lots to ponder, and only a few things that I couldn't heartily agree with, without some kind of nuance.
I apologize if I seemed to rope all the pacifists together in my critique of the behavior of some at OCC. You guys are right: we're all striving to trust God and to allow him to change us into the people he wants us to be, and we all fail sometimes. As the guy behind the library desk who liked to have discussions, I know I often failed to honor Christ with my attitudes and words, and I apologize for those times. I also know that my experiences with the pacifist group was over a year ago, when those who had adopted the pacifist view hadn't had as much time for the viewpoint to sink in. So I'm sure the few people who offended my sensibilities and to whom I ascribed representation of the group have become more consistent in the application of their ideals. I also want to stress that I'm striving to be a pacifist in my thoughts and actions too. I just think that there are some questions left open or not answered sufficiently by the pacifists I've talked to in order for me to agree that this point of view coheres. I do believe that the critiques of my critiques are well said and well thought out, and I only want to respond (beyond what I've written above) a little bit.
First, "Yet Mark's point in diverting our attention away from such questions is not to avoid the reality of such situations. I think Mark's point, and I know my point, is that by focusing on the ordinary everyday situations as opportunities for developing the nonviolent, peacemaking character of Christ, we are more apt to become the kind of people who in a time of crisis are capable of turning an aggressor's violence into an opportunity for love, peace, and testimony. By focusing now on the violence that so grips our lives in so many ordinary ways, and by attempting to counteract that ordinary violence in extraordinary ways, we become the kind of people capable of living "out of control" in a violent world. For to be a disciple of Jesus is to be one who knows that justice is out of our own hands and in the hands of God alone." Amen. I totally agree with this point. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I don't agree with it, because it's such an important point. I don't claim to know what someone should do in those specific, rare circumstances, but I think I would tell people asking me the same thing Thom is saying: allow God to develop the right character in you now, so that if you do ever have to react in one of those rare, terrible situations, whatever you do will be out of that well-developed, godly character and thus will honor God. Existence, even in a horrible dilemma, proceeds from essence. I also don't think that Mark was blowing off the rare circumstances question, but was seeking to answer it in a similar way. I do think that, in a local ministry of some kind with non-Bible-college people, the rare circumstances question is bound to come up, and the answers we give better be carefully weighed, because it is better for a millstone to be tied around our neck and for us to be cast into the sea than to mislead one of these little ones. There are potentially serious consequences to these ideas, even if those consequences are unlikely.
I also think that God placed the desire in men, and to a lesser extent women, to protect the family with which they've been blessed. We males are stewards not just of material things but of lives as well. I don't want to make the same mistake as the average secular situational ethicist, but I think that in some of those rare circumstances, reacting pacifistically/non-violently would be the right answer and would honor God the most. I think, though, that in other of those rare circumstances, reacting with force might actually be the right choice, even for someone who has developed a nonviolent character. I do believe it is better to err on the side of nonviolence, which in itself is pretty radical, relative to what most American Christian men seem to believe. Of course, the proper degree of radicalness has nothing to do with the status quo, but with corresponding to the will of God.
On the "just war" idea, I agree that we cannot use the O.T. to justify America attacking Iraq, or to justify any country attacking another. I do think the fact that God was willing to slaughter children, unarmed women, and even armed men, through human agents, is has bigger implications than Thom has specified. Like it or not, the wars that God told Israel to fight were just wars. There is a such thing. Whether there can be such a thing now is another question, but during one era of history, for one nation, there was such a thing. I don't think it's possible for wars fought by nations today to be "just" in the same sense that wars fought by Israel were "just." I don't think that we would hoorah the same kind of heros hoorahed in the O.T. Although, certain gung ho former-soldier former-R.A.s I know might...Those of us who have never been in the military wouldn't. I agree that what some call "just wars" today are different than the religious wars of the O.T. God wasn't *just* trying to get Israel to trust him, though. He was also trying to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, including women and children in some cases. One reason this kind of war isn't possible anymore is that there is no theocracy now. America isn't God's chosen nation. Our armed forces aren't marching out to destroy those who have chosen to stand against the One True God, knowing full well that it would mean war to do so. They're marching out to destroy those who have chosen to stand against Western Culture through violence. I do not equate the two. Since there is no theocracy, then I expect no political nation to hold to Christian values. If any nation did, it would cease to exist as a nation, once it was conquered by some foreign regime and became the slaves of some dictator. I expect America to operate with worldy wisdom and to protect itself. The standard to which I hold it is lowered, since I don't expect it to behave in a Christlike manner. I think this is the point at which I start to differ from you guys. I think you also recognize that America won't live up to the Christian ideal, but don't think there is any other ideal up to which it ought to strive. I do. It's the one that protects the innocent and provides justice through force, if necessary. When it fails to live up to this ideal, which it often does, then I am disappointed. When it fails to live up to Christ's ideal for the Church, then you are disappointed. I do think that the idea that Mark mentioned above, of countries having a greater positive impact towards the cause of peace through nonviolent means, is intriguing. I do think that most nations, including America, have been too quick to resort to violence. I think that sometimes nations need to step up and take a stand, though, when there is massive injustice, like when America fought against the Nazis. Unfortunately, justice is not the only motivation, nor the main motivation, of most countries fighting in wars. So, I call a war "just" or not based on this lower standard. I haven't read Augustine's just war idea or any other Christians just war ideas. Maybe I ought to read them and their dissenters. I don't know...
One more thing: I don't think that I conflate democracy with free will. I do think, though, that God gave people freedom of choice. The freedom to be masters of their own destiny or to trust Him for their destiny, and thus the "'right' to be God", the right to seek their own glory, the fulfillment of their own will. If a nation wants to base its system on the choice of the people, that's great. I don't think that democracy is perfect, I just think it's the best of the man-made systems. The God-made system is the Church, and the nation-state can't function in the same way the Church does, because that would require every individual in the nation to be a Christ-follower. So, I know that democracy is often evil, and capitalism is often evil, it's just that they're the best secular systems available. I do believe in compassionate democracy or capitalism with a heart or whatever you want to call it. I think that democracy is something the Bible is silent about, as are most things political. I think that God is the higher authority, and that God's people are shown confronting secular governments in the interest of morality and justice, and are shown using the secular systems to suit the purposes of God, which is what we the Church ought to be doing with this democracy. To vote or not is a matter of conscience, not a litmus test of who really is following God's will for political involvement. To vote selfishly or nationalistically is wrong, though. Anyway, I'm rambling again. I don't conflate democracy and free will. I just think that democracy allows people to exercise their free will in more arenas, and is the best man-made system of government, and we Christians can do something with it! I don't think I could agree with Thomas Jefferson or John Knox's political philosophy all the way, but I do think that more can be done for the Gospel because of the playing field levelled by democracy and capitalism, on a broader, far-reaching scale, than has ever been possible before now. Capitalism and democracy are great for the spread of the Good News. Maybe I should say this: democracy and capitalism is good for the breadth of the Church, although despotism, atheistic communism, and sha'ria (sp?) are and have been good for the depth of the Church.
I feel like I'm opening more topics than I'm trying to comment on, so please forgive me for that. Sorry if I seem scatterbrained, too. Peace out!
3:35 PM
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Great comments, Jason. We have much we agree on. I have a few extensive comments to make in response to your post, but I do not have the time just now. I'll get on this as soon as possible.
Peace.
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5:32 PM
[This post is inexcusably long. If desired, it can be accessed in PDF format at http://thomerica.com/essays/fry-stark.pdf]
Jason, I think this conversation is just starting to get interesting. I’m glad to be having it, and I’m really glad to be having it with you. Forgive me if this response is a little lengthy. If it is, it is not to overwhelm you into submission (as some of my lengthier posts have at times been interpreted) but rather to articulate nuances and to try to speak with (at least what I consider to be) clarity. Moreover, if I respond to you extensively, that should be taken as a sign of respect. You are infinitely worth “my” time.
You have indeed opened several cans of worms, in response to which I intend to open several cans of whoop-ass — pacifistically. (The last sentence served no end other than that of bad humor.) Mostly because I am not a very skilled writer, I will try to respond to your comments in a piecemeal fashion. It’s just a little easier and quicker that way. The downside of this method is there may appear to be no real logical progression to my thoughts (not that I have ever been accused of being logical). There might, in other words, be redundancy. Again, that is not an attempt to pound you into submission to my views. It is just the unfortunate consequence of my not being a sufficiently disciplined thinker/writer. (For me, thinking and writing are often not separable activities.) At any rate: on with it.
You said: “Will I have to choose to protect my family or stand passively by while my family is injured by some malicious person?”
I say: Of course neither of us knows exactly what the situation is we’re talking about, but I do not think these are ever your only two choices. There are numerous tactics that people without power (without power whether by circumstance or by determination) can adopt in an attempt to avert violence. The options are not just “kill or be killed”; nor even “fight or suffer.” (And of course the real question for Christians is not whether or not we suffer, but whether or not we are capable of suffering without regret.) But in a potentially violent situation there are dozens of tactics available, if we are properly trained to see them and to put them into effect when the time comes. Praying out loud, random humor, unexpected service, prophetic preaching, singing hymns, reasoning, quoting scripture, “going the second mile,” etc. These are just a few general ideas of tactics I could use in an attempt to avert violence. One of my last resorts would be to attempt to direct the violence away from my family and toward myself in the hope that the violence done against me would satisfy. Of course, it may not satisfy. But I don’t expect to be in control in such a situation. Hope is all I would have.
Secondly, the way you’ve framed the question above assumes that I will be capable of protecting my family by means of force. More likely than not, I will not be capable, particularly if our attacker is armed. I could try to wrestle the weapon from him, but that could backfire on me very easily. I just don’t think that would be a smart move, in principle. My wife or child could get shot in the process, and I might have averted that if I had tried another less agitating tactic.
But, the real question is, at least for Erica and me, what is it that I’m meant to protect my family from? While the desire to protect them from physical harm is certainly one that burns strong inside me, as a Christian I know that my job as a husband and a father is to direct my family toward the character of God and to protect them from evil. The “evil” from which I protect my family, however, is not first an external evil but an internal one. A large part of my job is to keep my family from the evil assumption that their own survival is more important than their witness. In fact, it is my job to raise a family capable of seeing that sometimes truthful Christian witness requires suffering. While I certainly would not stand idly by and watch my family suffer, both I and my family will be prepared to limit our defenses to those that do not involve doing violence to our enemies. As Nate Saint said to Steve Saint in The End of the Spear, “We can’t shoot them. They’re not ready for heaven yet.” Yoder makes the exact same point in What Would You Do? when he says, “In order to keep one out of heaven who ultimately wants to end up there anyway, I would consign another to an eternity in hell.” (That’s a quote from memory, so it’s not exact.) I will point out that although this is not the argument I typically use to “seal the deal,” as it were, it is the one that is most significant to Erica. When she watched End of the Spear, that’s the line she thought best represented why Christians (male, female, old, young) refuse to defend themselves by force against force.
Yet the End of the Spear analogy is not exact to our own situation. I am not a “missionary.” If an attacker came into our home for the express purpose of doing violence, that is not the same scenario. But by making the distinction between martyrdom and murder the distinction between whether we are in harm’s way by our own choice or by our attacker’s, we relinquish the very power that Jesus gave to those who are capable of hearing the Sermon on the Mount. The power of our witness is in our determination to be a people of peace even at the expense of our lives. Whether we are martyrs or victims is up to us, not our attacker. By choosing not to secure our own survival by violence, we choose to be witnesses of God’s inbreaking kingdom. That’s what the tactics of the Sermon on the Mount are all about. Our oppressors would dominate us by force, but we have the power to subvert the situation by giving ourselves over to our oppressors. No longer is our fate in their hands. By being willing to suffer loss, and death, we take our fate into our own hands by giving it over to God. If I die at the hand of a murderer, I will have been a martyr, not a victim. I will do my best to make sure that my attacker knows that I freely give him my life, in living or in dying.
Another objection to the analogy is that the natives that killed the missionaries did so because they thought they were defending themselves. An attacker that breaks into my home is clearly not motivated by “self-defense.” Granted. But still I cannot pretend to know what motivates a man to come into my home and do violence to my family. It could be any number of things. It’s possible that he is a hired gun. It’s possible that his family is held captive somewhere and will be killed unless he kills mine. It’s possible that he is a man with a history of violence whom God has been hounding; in a last ditch attempt to silence the voice of God he has come into my home in order to “cross the line” into darkness once and for all. By raping and killing my family he thinks he will run beyond God’s reach. If that is the case, it turns out that whether or not he is beyond God’s reach is entirely up to me. I can try to stop him to the point of lethal force and put him permanently “beyond God’s reach,” or I can try to show him that in his efforts to run from God he has come straight to God’s house, where God has been patiently waiting for him with a message of redemption and power. Of course, he may not be running from God at all. He may just be out to do the worst evil possible for no reason at all other than to do the worst evil possible. But I am in no position to know that.
“But how can society be run this way?” That’s a common rejoinder. Yet it’s a red herring. The politics of the church (and thus for all Christians) is not the politics of the world. On this we already agree. And while I agree with you that not all justice is of the eschatological sort, I think scripture makes it fairly plain that the only justice Christians need concern themselves with is justice of the eschatological sort. I think this is clear precisely because the church’s very reason for being on this old earth is to be the vanguard of the new one. The state’s justice is necessary for the old order. But it is not for Christians. State justice is instituted by God for the maintenance of societies without the Holy Spirit. State justice is not the justice Christians use, because we do not live in the same time as the state. By virtue of our connection to the church of Christ we are caught up in a new aeon. Our job is to witness to what life will be like when God’s reign is revealed. In such a world, there will be no violence, therefore no violence will be found in us. (I’m not just making this stuff up, by the way. This is the way the church talked for almost three centuries before she came under the patronage and influence of Rome. But Rome did not completely silence her. Faithful voices have been heard throughout the centuries.)
Of course, this is what it means to be “in the world but not of it.” We live in a different time. We are not nonviolent because we are nonpolitical. We are nonviolent because from the vantage point of our time we know that true politics is not sustained by violence but by love and truth. Christian pacifism is politics proper. But despite the fact that we do in fact live in another time (which is still properly called time), we are comingled here with a different time. We live both in a time where nonviolence reigns and in a time where violence reigns. But since we Christians are constituted by the former time, we must be willing to suffer. Our willingness to suffer is, moreover, not just a willingness to suffer physical harm and death, but a willingness to suffer oppression, fraud, deception, theft, usury, and every form of evil. We suffer this because Christ suffered this, and Christ suffered this because that is how God’s character determines that the kingdom will come.
While governments, and “rights,” and laws, and such help the earth to stay in orbit, Christians neither have nor need any of these. All we have is witness. We have the “right” to witness to the God found most fully in a crucified Galilean. That is why we subordinate ourselves to the powers of this world, i.e., to “divinely instituted governments,” as it were. Not because such governments secure justice for us but precisely because such governments are not capable of taking justice away from us. Our subordination to the powers, in other words, is the Christian form of rebellion against them. We can submit to them, even such powers as Rome, in the same way that Christ could submit to Pilate: not because Pilate is doing what he should be doing, but because Pilate’s power is not enough to erase the truth of who Jesus and his disciples are. Deceit is the power of Rome, but truth is the power of the resurrection.
(I do not think, Jason, that I am saying much of anything you don’t already know and believe. I am just attempting to spell out what I think are the right implications of what you and I both already know to be true.)
You said: “I do think that, in a local ministry of some kind with non-Bible-college people, the rare circumstances question is bound to come up, and the answers we give better be carefully weighed, because it is better for a millstone to be tied around our neck and for us to be cast into the sea than to mislead one of these little ones. There are potentially serious consequences to these ideas, even if those consequences are unlikely.”
I say: True that. And the door swings both ways. But I will say that just because a “non-Bible-college” person has an honest question doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily going to give her the kind of answer she thinks she’s looking for. Part of what it means to be a disciple is to learn to ask the right questions. I see my task in ministry as facilitating the “renewal of the mind” that Paul talks about. In no way do I wish to belittle the genuineness of anyone’s struggle for the truth. But I think sometimes I will do more harm by allowing them to frame the question in terms that are not exactly Christian. “Kill or be killed?” is not a Christian question.
You said: “I also think that God placed the desire in men, and to a lesser extent in women, to protect the family with which they’ve been blessed. We males are stewards not just of material things but of lives as well.”
I say: I’ve already spelled out a little bit above why I think “protecting” my family is more than just securing their physical safety. While that is something I want and something I will certainly try to achieve within the means that I think are mine as a disciple of Jesus, I also want to protect them from the idolatry of survivalism cloaked in justice language. Christians of the first two-and-a-half centuries were all pretty well agreed that being a Christian was dangerous business for the whole family. While I’m sure fathers and mothers did their best to die in place of their children, or at least to die first, they certainly saw it as inconsistent with being Christian to fight for their children’s safety. We must also remember how thoroughly Christianity challenged the whole family-unit system. Children would have been considered the property of the church first, of biological parents second. (Dobson’s project only makes sense in a bourgeois society, and it has more affinities with Bertrand Russell’s doctrine of the family than with that of Jesus.) I agree that we are stewards of lives, but for me that means we are stewards of witnesses. My children will grow up knowing that their lives may one day be required of them for “no good reason.” In other words, I will not teach them to distinguish between martyrdom and murder as far as Christian deaths are concerned.
I agree that the protective instinct is to a certain extent from God, but our natural instincts have been to a large extent corrupted. My protective instincts are more often selfishly motivated than otherwise. And I think it is my innate protective instinct that makes Jesus’ description of enemy-love so counterintuitive.
You said: “I think that in some of those rare circumstances, reacting pacifistically/non-violently would be the right answer and would honor God the most. I think, though, that in other of those rare circumstances, reacting with force might actually be the right choice, even for someone who has developed a nonviolent character.”
I ask: How and when would you decide which was which?
You said: “Of course, the proper degree of radicalness has nothing to do with the status quo, but with corresponding to the will of God.”
I say: That’s absolutely right. And often the will of God only seems radical to us because we accept the status quo. When we make the will of God the status quo the will of God ceases to seem so radical. A good American should read this conversation and conclude that I’m a depraved religious fanatic. (I’m actually advocating not killing a man even when killing him would prevent him from killing my kids!) But such radical nonviolence is not inhuman where it is part-and-parcel of everyday life. That’s why the Amish and the Mennonites are so good at it. They’re not nonpolitical. Rather they exemplify politics proper. They are witnesses, and to witness is the first and last political responsibility of the church.
You said: “I do think the fact that God was willing to slaughter children, unarmed women, and even armed men, through human agents, has bigger implications than Thom has specified.”
I say: You’re right. I haven’t specified the bigger implications. I think I know what they are though. First, of course, it tells us that Christian pacifism is not based on the assumption that violence is inherently evil. Violence may or may not be inherently evil, but that question does not determine whether or not Christians are to be nonviolent. But the real implications this has are what I have already spelled out in an earlier post. The “holy wars” of the OT were meant to train Israel to rely on God. Women, children, livestock, vegetation, all the stuff God told Israel to destroy wherever they went—those are the spoils of war. To destroy the spoils of war is counterintuitive, especially to a relatively young and weak nation. To take the spoils of war is not only the victor’s right but is the victor’s means of becoming the victor again. That is how nations grow, prosper, become superpowers. But not so Israel. Israel will be sustained by the hand of YHWH and by his hand alone. That is like the theme of the OT. (That Israel’s armies sometimes did take a spoil does not disprove my argument. A lot of stuff went on that wasn’t kosher, but God didn’t punish Israel every time for every offense. Note, however, that God did punish Saul for taking a spoil after he had specifically told him not to.)
You said: “Like it or not, the wars that God told Israel to fight were just wars. There is such a thing.”
I say: The notion of a “just war” didn’t exist until the fifth century A.D. The OT wars were cultic wars. They were done either as worship (paradigmatically David) or for selfish purposes (paradigmatically Saul). If you mean that the wars weren’t sinful on account of the fact that they were commanded by God, I think that’s a really simplistic and tenuous stance to take. We tend to think that God could never be the cause of evil, so whatever he commands us to do cannot be evil. We fail to treat the scriptures as a narrative with a progression leading toward a climax. God dealt with Israel in a way that pedagogically brought them toward the truth of his character found in Jesus. Jesus could have fought a holy war, and he could’ve kicked some unholy ass, but he didn’t. And the reason he didn’t is not because his kingdom is “spiritual not physical” but because it was time for the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help him God).
You said: “God wasn’t *just* trying to get Israel to trust him, though. He was also trying to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, including women and children in some cases.”
I say: Umm... I think you haven’t expressed your thought as clearly as you could have, because it sounds like you’re saying that God wanted hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children, dead as an end in itself. I know this isn’t what you mean to say, but you come real close to saying it. If you mean to say that Israel’s armies acted as a divine conduit through which God wrought punishment on evildoers, that’s one thing. But the point of doing that is not just to punish evildoers but to protect Israel from becoming evildoers themselves, i.e., from being defiled by pagan idolatry. The result of Israel’s not killing everyone they were told to kill was that idolatry spread into her camps. Not killing millions of people resulted in Israel’s not knowing how to trust God. If Israel had obeyed God and (1) not taken spoil, and (2) not left survivors behind, Israel would have had to depend on YHWH rather than (1) pagan wealth, and (2) pagan gods. The whole thing was about shaping Israel’s identity so that she would be capable of moving toward the character of God. It’s a progressive movement back to the imago dei (which is not “free will,” or “rationality,” but diversity in harmony: “let US make MAN [plural] in OUR image”). Jesus is the culmination of that movement. Jesus IS Israel as Israel ought to have been, and Matthew goes to great pains to show that, particularly in his first seven chapters.
You said: “Since there is no theocracy, then I expect no political nation to hold to Christian values. If any nation did, it would cease to exist as a nation, once it was conquered by some foreign regime and became the slaves of some dictator.”
I say: First, whatever it would mean for a nation to hold Christian values, it does not follow necessarily from such an event that the nation would be overrun by a dictatorship. God moves the nations. Of course, such an event is not going to happen anyway. No nation will ever adopt “Christian values” and allow those values to determine its political methodology. But that does not mean the church should not continue to call nations to repentance and to a recognition of the universal lordship of Christ. That no nation will ever completely adopt the politics of Jesus does not mean that the church should hold the nations to a different standard. We are an eschatological people with an eschatological message proclaimed in an eschatological voice. To the extent that a nation does not acknowledge the lordship of, specifically, Jesus Christ, that nation is in a state of rebellion against God. It is our job as the church to make that state of rebellion intelligible to the world by manifesting the politics made possible by the recognition of Jesus’ lordship.
You said: “I expect America to operate with worldly wisdom and to protect itself. The standard to which I hold it is lowered, since I don’t expect it to behave in a Christ-like manner. I think this is the point at which I start to differ from you guys.”
I say: Yes, in a sense. While with you I expect America to operate with worldly wisdom, that does not for me necessitate holding America to a different standard than I hold the church.
You said: “I think you also recognize that America won’t live up to the Christian ideal, but don’t think there is any other ideal up to which it ought to strive.”
I say: No. There is an ideal up to which it ought to strive. It ought to strive to the recognition of the lordship of Christ and by way of extension to the adoption of the politics of Jesus.
You said: “I do [think it ought to strive to another ideal]. It’s the one that protects the innocent and provides justice through force, if necessary. When it fails to live up to this ideal, which it often does, then I am disappointed. When it fails to live up to Christ’s ideal for the Church, then you are disappointed.”
I say: While I agree that force is sometimes necessary for the world, it is never acceptable. When it fails to live up to this ideal (of securing justice by force), which it often does, then I am doubly-disappointed. That does not mean, however, that I have nothing to say to America other than “repent and be baptized.” The church can help the state to live up to its own best ideals, but only if the church recognizes that in doing so it is not advocating those ideals. The church’s critique of the state’s failures-by-its-own-standards is a pedagogical tactic the church uses to bring the state closer to the only standard—that of submission to the lordship of Christ and the politics of his kingdom.
You said: “I do think that the idea that Mark mentioned above, of countries having a greater positive impact towards the cause of peace through nonviolent means, is intriguing. I do think that most nations, including America, have been too quick to resort to violence.”
I say: The world is run on lies and violence, so nonviolent tactics will never be taken seriously by the ones who need most to take it seriously (i.e. the superpowers). But if America did take the politics of Jesus seriously, as a nation, much more good would be accomplished than the little good accomplished by its imperialistic wars. If America had taken a third of the money it spent on the war in Afghanistan and spent that on medical aid and food for the Afghani people, America would have made powerful friends both inside and outside Afghanistan. If America had put an end to the activities of the C.I.A. that were part of the cause of September 11, America would have relieved pressure, and made powerful friends. If America had withdrawn its longstanding military presence from the middle-east it would have made powerful friends. If the Taliban attacked America after America had taken these three steps, America would have had the help of powerful friends. Instead, America insisted that it didn’t need powerful friends, that democracy and liberty were powerful enough to defeat terrorism. And now America’s imperialism is openly exposed to the world. America accomplished very little good, but only proved the Taliban’s point. I am not advocating the horrible actions of terrorists. It is only that I am not equating the denunciation of terrorism with the support of American revenge. Nonviolent tactics on America’s part would have made the world a very different place than it is today. Such tactics work. Even when they fail they work because nonviolence exposes the evil of the violent. When both sides are firing, all we have is partisanship.
Tyler said: “I wonder what it is that makes us think democracy is automatically positive. Is it really good to give everyone the ‘right’ to be God?”
You said: “Well, God did. I don’t think that democracy is automatically positive and it can certainly be very negative and evil, a fact we can witness every day in the U.S. or in India. Free will is from God; it is not ‘fleshly,’ it is part of the imago dei. God does not override free will, even when one initially submits to his reign. A side point, but an important one I think.”
I say: Here’s where we get into a wholly different yet significant discussion. Tyler has (I think rightly) metaphorically equated liberal democracy and its partner capitalism with the attempt to “be God.” But, Jason, you made a mistake, I think, by carrying that metaphor of “being God” over to free will. In doing so, whether you realize it or not, you’ve given us an account of free will that is informed by capitalism. Liberal democracy advocates pure choice. The only virtue in a liberal democracy is the virtue of liberty, which when translated means the virtue of writing our own histories. Liberty is not just the freedom to choose what constitutes good and what constitutes evil (i.e. religious freedom), liberty is the freedom to choose evil so long as it does not infringe on anyone else’s “right” to choose either good or evil. “Free will” according to capitalism is the right to pursue happiness, where happiness means capital. Choices, choices, choices. The only evil in a capitalistic democracy is the evil of not having choices. To be “determined” by our past, by our histories, by our traditions, is to be enslaved. To be free is to have no history but the history we chose when we had no history. This may not be what you mean when you speak of God’s gift of free will, but this is what Tyler meant by democracy giving everyone the “right” to be God.
However, you said: “I don’t think that I conflate democracy with free will. I do think, though, that God gave people freedom of choice. The freedom to be masters of their own destiny or to trust Him for their destiny, and thus the ‘“right” to be God,’ the right to seek their own glory, the fulfillment of their own will. If a nation wants to base its system on the choice of the people, that’s great. I don’t think that democracy is perfect; I just think it’s the best of the man-made systems.”
I say: I think this is a distorted account of free will. Free will is not the freedom to choose to do either good or evil. People with free will are not people with “the freedom to be masters of their own destiny or to trust him [God] for their destiny.” This may seem like semantics to you, but semantics is the stuff of theology: Free will is the ability to choose the good. The ability to choose the good is a sign of a will that is free. The ability to choose evil is a corruption of free will. That I can in fact choose to do evil is evidence that my will is not in fact free. But when I am so connected to God that my activity becomes less and less my own and more and more God’s activity through me, I have freedom. To be capable of doing evil is not to be free but to be a slave to evil. To be sure, as Bob Dylan says, “now it could be the devil, it could be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” Either way we’re a slave to something, but only slavery to God amounts to freedom. Now I came to see free will this way with the help of Aquinas and Calvin before I realized that Paul had already beaten them to the punch. For Christians, the gift of free will is nothing less than the gift of discipleship to Jesus through the church, for it is only in the slow and arduous process of conforming our will to the will of God that our will really becomes free. Liberal democracy (and liberal here is not the opposite of “conservative,” it describes the whole American system) and its partner capitalism is actually antithetical to the Christian understanding of free will. According to liberal democracy, to be free is to be free from having our lives determined by external authorities. But according to Christianity to be free is precisely to come under such authority, and not just under the authority of Christ but under the authority of Christ as manifested in the church. To be free is to become a person incapable of doing violence to another. According to Christianity, freedom is not something you can fight others to maintain. Freedom is a skill that is acquired as we learn to surrender our lives to the authority of the church.
I know you probably agree with most of this, Jason. But my point is that liberal democracy actually distorts and corrupts a properly Christian account of freedom. A totalitarian actually is in some ways closer to a Christian account of freedom than is a democratic state, not because authority is totalitarian (real authority isn’t), but because in totalitarian states authority is taken seriously and the good of the group is prized above the good of the individual. I am not advocating totalitarian states; I am just arguing that democracy is not the “best of the man-made systems.” While I agree that a democracy is generally preferable to totalitarianism, I can’t quite pinpoint why I agree. There are pros and cons to both, and I think the cons to democracy are more dangerous because they are often invisible. While totalitarianism tends to repress or physically oppress Christians, democracy threatens to make Christianity over into its own image.
You said: “I think that democracy is something the Bible is silent about, as are most things political.”
I say: The Bible is the most political book I know, and Jesus is the most political political-figure ever. Your definition of politics is too narrow, and too worldly, if you really do mean to say that the Bible is silent about most things political. Politics is everything that has to do with how people are ordered together toward a good end or ends. The lie of imperial politics is that anything that doesn’t have to do with “force” is nonpolitical. We have bought into this lie hook, line, and sinker. That is why pacifism is often characterized by liberals (most explicitly and influentially by Reinhold Niebuhr) as the right ideal but politically an irresponsible one. But as Augustine rightly displayed, the final end of true politics is the worship of the God of Jesus as the one true God. That is why the church is here: to display true politics and to expose the lie that lies beneath the surface of all earthly politics—the lie that says freedom can and must be secured by force.
You said: “I think that God is the higher authority, and that God’s people are shown confronting secular governments in the interest of morality and justice, and are shown using the secular systems to suit the purposes of God, which is what we the Church ought to be doing with this democracy.”
I ask: Where are God’s people shown using the secular systems to suit the purposes of God? Let’s talk about that some more. What exactly do you mean, and how would you qualify that kind of participation? Moreover, what makes you say that “using the secular systems to suit the purposes of God . . . is what we the Church ought to be doing with this democracy.” What resources does America have to offer us that we don’t have simply by virtue of our being the church? How is the kingdom better advanced through the American system than through the Indian one, or the Chinese one, or whatever? Finally, what would it even mean to advance the kingdom “using the secular systems”?
You said: “Capitalism and democracy are great for the spread of the Good News. Maybe I should say this: democracy and capitalism is good for the breadth of the Church, although despotism, atheistic communism, and sha'ria (sp?) are and have been good for the depth of the Church.”
I say: Just for the sake of continuing to use your own language, “breadth” without “depth” is no breadth at all. Freedom of speech is a sham in America. All it means is America won’t kill us or imprison us for preaching the gospel. It doesn’t mean America won’t do its best (from the very beginning) to change the gospel into something it can stomach. That, by and large, is what has happened in our churches. It happened in Rome, too, when Christianity became the sponsored religion. It’s what Kierkegaard prophesied against. Patron states cannot stomach the gospel. They must alter the content of the gospel or face their own dissolution. For them it really is kill or be killed. In his 2000 presidential election campaign, George W. Bush told America that his favorite political philosopher is Jesus.
12:53 AM
Wow. Thom, thank you for your extensive reply to what I said. I found agreement with almost everything you said. You're right that on several points I was not as clear as I could have been and so perhaps I need to clarify a few of those.
I also echo you, Thom, in apologizing for a piecemeal approach to writing this. I feel like there are a kazillion things I could try to say all at once, but saying them one at a time is going to be challenging, especially if I want to remember any of the points that seemed so important when I was reading what you wrote. So, having said all that, I will try to clarify one or two things and may not get to much more, since I have to go play cricket with some college students in a little while (part of my enculturation process).
Firstly, working backward I guess, I want to comment on what I meant by "depth" and "breadth" of the Church. I was certainly very ambiguous there; sorry. I agree that Western Culture, with liberal democracy and the twisting of the gospel into something palatable to modern, secular sensibilities is dangerous to the spiritual well-being of the Church in the West and all over the world. We can testify to it's danger by looking at what the Church has become over the last 200 years or so in the U.S. Democratic Western Culture may be even be a bigger threat to the spiritual well-being of the Church than antiChristian or pseudoChristian totalitarian regimes have been, since the danger from the latter is easier to spot by those who know the Lord, while a lot of people who love the Lord and could agree with us on all the "primary truths" of doctrine have acquiesced to the lies of modernism, materialism, and nationalism in the Western world. I never felt this more strongly than on the Sunday before July 4th, when my church sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, God Bless America, My Country Tis of Thee, etc. I tried to step on their toes with my anti-nationalism, pro-worldwide-Church themed sermons, but my efforts availed little, it seemed. I guess it is like the antidemocratic, Marxist or fascist systems assaulted the Church frontally, and so the Church saw them coming, whereas liberal democratic capitalism, or capitalistic liberal democracy, or whatever it's called, crept in and subverted the Truth by more subtle means. Okay, so we can probably agree on all that...My breadth and depth comment was that, first of all was to point out that the frontal assault helped to produce what might be considered a "deeper" Christianity, since Christians really had to count the cost when aligning oneself with Christ could result in the murder, torture, and imprisonment of one's self, family, friends, etc. The underground Church, while we shouldn't put it on a pedestal and think it has reached perfection, is not where one usually finds nominal Christians or trivial arguments over church policies and decisions about the color of carpet in the auditorium. Christians under oppressive regimes rely more fully on Christ. So, that's the depth. The breadth that has resulted from liberal democracy and capitalism, which I usually call Westernism (I know I use the term inaccurately; sorry) is the sort of "fullness of time" idea, which many Bible scholars say refers to how A) God's revelation to Israel had progressed to the point where Jesus could be born and fulfill the role of Messiah, and B) at the same time the Roman Empire had unified a huge section of the world and a huge population of people so that the Gospel could move quickly from one ethne to another once it started to spread, and this was strategically important to the beginning of the Church. I think that, due to the spread and influence of Western culture, we are now at the beginning of another era with a lot of potential strategic importance. Capitalism has opened doors to cultures and people groups that were difficult to reach up until now. The mindsets of young people in many formerly closeminded places have changed, so that they are now willing to listen to and consider new ideas about existence, purpose, destiny, and values. And the country with the most economic influence in the world is America, which also has quite a few Christians willing to Go. We Christians need to take advantage of globalization by using it to spread the Gospel. It is easier now for us to get entry visas to Eastern and Middle Eastern countries, if our coming seems to have some economic benefit for the country in question. It is also easier now for Christians all over the world to network and unify their efforts, both evangelistic and edification efforts. So, that's what I meant by the breadth. I recommend "The World Is Flat" by Friedman, in which you may find plenty to disagree with, but which spurs a missional person's thinking to "how can we take advantage of globalization for the sake of the Kingdom?" I think getting into formerly-inaccessible locales with a work visa to train engineers or teach English or create wastewater management systems so you can develop relationships that could one day result in a church-planting movement among a least-reached people group are just a few of the ideas missional Christians have been coming up with in answer to this question.
One point where I vehemently disagree with you, and where you probably suspected I would vehemently disagree with you, is on the nature of free will. I don't think that Paul, Aquinas, and Calvin agree. I don't accept what is commonly called "Total Depravity" as true. So I don't think that when Christ says he "makes you free, you will be free indeed" means that when you no longer can freely choose to sin because the Holy Spirit has sanctified you to the point where the choice of evil or good is an illusion, since you always choose good now and can't choose evil, and so you're freed from the slavery to sin in that sense. I think that, no matter our degree of sanctification, every time we are presented a choice of good or evil, it is a real choice we will make. We will not, at least on this side of the parousia, cease to be able to choose evil. I also don't think that the Holy Spirit must first regenerate our depraved souls before we are able to choose good over evil, or specifically to choose following Christ over rejecting Christ when first we hear the Gospel. I believe our choice to submit to His Lordship is a free one, since we were not totally depraved in the first place. When Christ says we are free, and when Paul writes about freedom in Christ, I think they are, in part, talking about being freed from facing the consequences of our sin, the wrath of God, and so freed from punishment like a pardoned criminal; freedom as a feeling of peace and joy when the burden of striving for your own salvation based on your works is lifted; and freedom from the power of our sin over us, of impersonal evil over us, and of personal evil (the devil and demons) over us, since Christ our advocate answers every accusation, both those from our flesh, from the world, and from the Evil One, with a resounding "Not Guilty". We are not "freed" from the ability to choose evil. That would redefine "free." Yes, we also become slaves of God, but the slavery metaphor isn't about the inability to resist God's will, it's about serving him continually and submitting to him in a way that looks like the master-slave relationship as the Christians in the first century understood it. I know that there are two doctrinal systems at war here, Calvinism vs. Arminianism (actually a very specific branch of Arminianism which, to my knowledge, has no name, but which I've started calling Stone-Campbellism), and we both have presuppositions that we bring to our study of scripture, and so we both believe that our point of view is best supported by those scriptures that seem to make perfect sense to both of us and yet which we interpret differently. I doubt that I convince you that Calvinism doesn't correspond to reality. I do think, however, that this is a good basis for questioning Calvinism: if depravity, a result of the Fall, is what enables us to choose to rebel against God and binds us from being able to consciously choose to follow God's will, how did Adam and Eve, who had not yet fallen, fall? If their choice of rebellion was the cause of their Fall, and yet they were "free" as described in your essay above, how did they make that choice? Were they a blank slate, neither depraved or undepraved, able to choose good or evil freely, and the only two beings ever able to do so, since after the Fall we are either slaves to sin or slaves to God, or what? I think that if we are restored to the pre-Fall state by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit when we submit to Christ, then that means our ability to choose good or evil from that point forward was the same as Adam and Eve's ability to choose good or evil before they chose. Calvinism breaks down for many other reasons, I think, most of them exegetical, but systematically I think Total Depravity falls apart at Genesis 3. Therefore, your definition of "freedom in Christ" does too, since it's the reversal of Total Depravity (Total Regeneration? I don't know what it's called; you're the first person I've read who brought out this aspect of the Calvinistic doctrine of sanctification).
Well, I have other things I'd like to comment on, and I know that both of the above subjects are a little off-track from the original discussion, especially the second one, but I have to go look like an idiot on the cricket pitch.
I love you Thom, and the rest of you too. Oh, and Thom, if I'm not a Calvinist, it's probably because God predestined me not to be, so you can take it up with him (there's my bad humor for this session).
4:52 AM
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Great comments, Jason. But your long diatribe against calvinism wasn't necessary. I didn't claim to be a calvinist nor did I espouse total depravity. I'll renarrate what I said about free will in response to your good response when I have the time. Thanks for taking the time to read my humble thoughts.
Wish I could be there to stump you. I MISS CRICKET!
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9:03 AM
You almost certainly would have stumped me. I suck at cricket and I miss baseball. I sucked at baseball too, but it sure was fun to watch from the stands while I ate nachos, which I also miss.
I realize that concluding you were a Calvinist based on your comments above was premature. If you're not, then I applaud you on choosing not to be. If you are, then praise God that he made you a Calvinist. Ha.
I don't understand, however, how you can advocate a doctrine of free will such as you stated above, which might be called "total sanctity" or "total generation" or something with "total" and then a big word after it, and not also hold to total depravity. So, there's my first question, I guess. If you're not a Calvinist, how do you believe in "total sanctity" where one loses the ability to choose to do evil (or where one is liberated from the ability to choose to do evil) yet reject that one was unable to choose to do good before the sanctification process began?
My second point/question/issue would be this: even if you do reject total depravity and thus reject at least four points of Calvinism's five points, and you still hold to the "total sanctity" doctrine, then I think my argument still stands from Genesis 3 that total sanctity would not preclude the ability to freely choose evil. I suppose that the answer you might give to my objection is that since Adam and Even did not have the knowledge of good and evil before they sinned, they did not freely choose evil, they freely chose to distrust and disobey God ignorant of the fact that this was an evil choice. I think, though, that Adam and Eve freely chose to distrust and disobey God, even if they did not know that this was "evil" and that to trust and obey was "good". In their innocence, they still freely chose to sin, which is what the doctrine of total sanctity seems to say becomes impossible for the person who has grown into the image of Christ.
I think another doctrinal consequence of your definition of free will and of total sanctity is that Jesus' temptations were not truly tempting. He, having never sinned and thus having total sanctification from the beginning, would not have been able to freely choose to sin, if free will when totally sanctified means you are liberated from the ability to choose good or evil and are only capable of choosing good. I think that verses like Hebrews 4:15, "Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin!" (CEV) seem to indicate that Jesus' temptations were just as real as our temptations. If you think that the intended audience of Hebrews and the author of Hebrews all had reached the point of total sanctity, and so Jesus' and these believers' experiences were similar in that none of them were able to freely choose to disobey God, then that might leave the doctrine of total sanctity standing as plausible. It seems, though, with all of the exhortations throughout the rest of Hebrews, when the author tells the audience to do good and not evil and to throw off the sin that easily entangles (if they had not yet thrown off the sin, then they had not yet reached total sanctity), that the audience, if not the author too, had not all reached total sanctity yet, and so their experience of temptation was still a free choice between evil and good. Therefore, if Christ experienced temptation in every way as the audience of Hebrews also experienced temptation, then Christ's temptations were actually tempting, and he must have had the ability to give in to them, so that his choice not to give in was a free choice to do good on each occasion. If Christ, who never needed regeneration, still had the choice to do evil, then how can any human be liberated from the ability to freely choose through the process of sanctification? If it is possible for a human other than Jesus to be totally sanctified in their earthly lifetime, then they would only attain the level of holiness parallel to Christ, at most, not beyond the level of Christ's holiness.
There are my two thoughts. Sorry I'm being Mr. Verbose. I guess I really am ready for grad school, at least in it's one aspect of higher page count expectations on what one writes (the deeper level of research required is another story).
Happy Sunday! If anyone happens to see that a Cardinals game is on while flipping channels today, stop and watch a few pitches for me. Thanks! Big Gulps.
1:16 PM
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Working on a reply to the calvinism confusion right now. I am getting married on Saturday. The two previous sentences are not logically related.
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11:33 PM
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Jason, I will begin by saying that we are (and were) in complete agreement about the felicity of your “breadth and depth” metaphor. I understood what you meant, but I just wanted to tease out one angle you hadn’t discussed, namely, that for all its benefits capitalism still does ample harm to the non-capitalist world, and ample harm to the gospel in capitalist societies. Paul never made the mistake of conflating the benefits of Roman rule with the desirability of Roman rule. When two hundred and fifty years later the church began to conflate the two, not just nominalism but out-and-out violence ensued. In less than one hundred years the church went from forbidding its members from being Roman soldiers to requiring that all Roman soldiers be baptized as Christians (sword-arm out of the water, of course). This is the kind of subversive effect that conflating the efficacy of a politics with the morality of a politics can have on the gospel. I don’t want my missional friends to make the same mistake. That’s all. I think we agree entirely here. Moving on from capitalism to calvinism.
First, I should never have mentioned the name of John Calvin, because I think that if I hadn’t mentioned him you wouldn’t have mistaken what I said for anything like calvinism. I like Calvin for his emphasis on sanctification, but I like anyone who emphasizes sanctification. That doesn’t make me a calvinist. I did say that I learned to see free will as freedom to choose the good from Aquinas and Calvin before I recognized it in Paul, but that was somewhat misleading. What I actually learned to do is to reinterpret one aspect of Calvin’s thought through a Thomistic filter: Aquinas taught me to see choosing evil as a corruption of free will, and to see freedom as progressively growing in our capacity to allow God to act through us, and from that realization I began to see Calvin’s point on total depravity in a different light. It may be a light too bright for Calvin himself, but I don’t particularly care whether Calvin likes my reading of him or not. What matters to me is whether or not my reading of Calvin helps me to see the world better than I did before. (Replace “Calvin” in the former sentence with any name and the statement stands.) What I began to see, calvinistic or not, is that Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (whether or not it’s true; I don’t think it is) is a good reminder to the Arminians that when we act in accordance with God’s will we are acting in the power of God’s grace. That doesn’t mean that I can only act in accordance with God’s will when and if God wills that I act in accordance with his will. I’m willing to bet that God wills that I always act in accordance with his will. What Aquinas helped me to see in Calvin is that the more good we do the less autonomous we are, which is to say, when I act in accordance with God’s will it is, in the words of Paul, “not I but the grace of God in me.” To be free, then, is not to act in accordance with my own will (sheer choice) but to be acted upon, indeed, to be acted through by the grace of God.
The confusion occurred when you took my saying that freedom is the inability to choose evil as an affirmation of the calvinistic doctrine that sinfulness is the inability to choose good. But the one does not follow from the other. One can be true and the other false. In fact, I think one is true and the other false. My saying that freedom is not freedom to choose qua choice, but freedom to choose the good is meant to be a corrective to the common view of free will from within the Arminian perspective. The ability to do good is necessary if I am ever to grow in freedom. I must be capable of choosing the good (without compulsion) if I am ever to become free, the highest level of freedom being the tested and proven inability to do evil. I said that freedom is a skill that is acquired. By that I meant to point to the truth that freedom is not a static state but a complex process, a process one might call sanctification. The process of being sanctified is the process of becoming more and more free. To say that I must be sanctified before I become free is like saying that I must become free before I can be free. To become free is to allow the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to help us to increase in good activities by becoming aware how infused all of our good activity is by the grace of God. For good deeds done without the knowledge of grace are but sad deeds in good form. So, while I must be capable of choosing the good even in my depravity in order for sanctification to sustain any intelligibility at all, I must also recognize that every good act I choose to perform I only choose because of the grace of God in me. That is why love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control are called the fruit of the Spirit.
You said: “When Christ sa