War, Fate, Freedom, Remnant [5]
By Ronald E. Osborn

The New Testament witness says there is. This witness, however, does not take reason as its highest value and starting point. Rather, it declares that reason itself is defined by the life and teaching of a single person. One may, of course, reject this person’s teaching of peaceableness toward enemies. What one cannot do is deny what this teaching is. The evidence is absolute and unequivocal; all special pleading for violence must studiously refrain from sustained exegetical analysis:14

You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. . . . You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. (Matt. 5:38-48 NKJV)

The Sermon on the Mount, from which these words are taken, is presented in Matthew’s Gospel in a programmatic fashion as the new Torah, a new charter for the community of believers. Just as Moses delivered the tablets of stone from Sinai, Jesus gathers his disciples on the mountain to disclose a new covenant with Israel.

The new covenant begins with the Beatitudes (5:3-11), a counterintuitive and politically charged overturning of the world’s values and moral reasoning. God’s blessings, Jesus declares, are upon the downtrodden, the oppressed, the meek, the peacemakers. All of the accouterments of power and prestige on display in Greco-Roman society mean nothing. Education, wealth, and noble pedigree are illusory anchors. Lord Caesar and Lord Mammon are out. Reality, in God’s eyes, is ordered with a paradoxical premium upon weakness and undeserved suffering.

To embody God’s truth in a blinded world, Jesus calls for the formation of a countercultural community, "a polis on a hill" (v. 14). In the polis of Jesus, reconciliation will overcome hostility; marriage vows will be kept with lifelong fidelity; language will be honest and direct; all hatred and violence will be renounced. The emphasis throughout is not upon individual piety as a means to salvation, but upon personal and social ethics leading to restored community in the present reality.

Jesus sees his teaching as the deepest fulfillment and revelation of the Law and the prophets. He does not seek to negate the Torah but actually intensifies the Torah’s demands. The Law prohibits murder; Jesus prohibits even anger. The law prohibits adultery; Jesus prohibits even lust. When it comes to the matter of violence, however, Jesus does not simply radicalize the Torah: he decisively alters and in fact overturns it.

The lex talionis—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—is spelled out in several passages in the Hebrew Bible, but particularly in Deuteronomy 19:15-21. If in a criminal trial a witness gives a false testimony, the Law declares, that person must be severely punished in order to preserve the social order. "Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (v. 21). Political stability is the goal and fear is the mechanism by which it will be achieved.

Jesus shatters this strict geometry with a simple injunction: "Do not resist an evil person." This does not imply passive capitulation to force, but physical nonretaliation as a dynamic spiritual weapon, particularly in the political realm. The command only makes sense in the context of the prophetic community or polis Jesus has announced he is building. By exemplifying the peaceableness and conciliatory spirit of the Beatitudes, the believer confounds and shames the aggressor, creating an opportunity for the violent person to be reconciled with God. By absorbing undeserved suffering and not retaliating in kind, the disciple also destroys the evil inherent in the logic of force. Instead of an endless cycle of violence and recrimination, there is shalom, there is peace.

The assumption among believers that violence is an acceptable tactic and tool, and the willingness of the Christian community to play chaplain to our nation’s military complex, therefore discloses a crisis of mistaken identity. When Christians declare that "we" must wage war for the sake of this or that political goal, when they point to what "they" did to "us" and argue about what "our" response should be, they mistakenly identify the calling of believers with the objectives of the nation-state.

But the polis of Jesus is not merely one kind of allegiance contained within others, wheels within wheels. It is a radically different allegiance based upon goals and principles that the state may at times not tolerate or comprehend. In the final analysis, because nonviolence may result in martyrdom as it did for Jesus, it only makes sense to those who see all war in "cosmic perspective," who know that there is genuine freedom because there is also Advent hope.

The freedom of the prophetic community is not freedom from "this-worldliness." It is not liberty for the sake of personal security or individual purity. It is not motivated by narrow perfectionism or pious idealism. Rather, those who are truly free are conscious that they must live as faithful witnesses amid all of the ambiguities and anxieties of society, speaking truth to power in a fallen world and acting in ways that might actually make a difference. This means challenging the unquestioning raptures of a war-worshiping culture. This means proclaiming the principles of the Sabbath Jubilee as God’s judgment upon social and economic systems that oppress and exploit. This means fighting for peace using the weapons of peace rather than the weapons of death and fear.

The hope of nonviolent resistance to evil is not unrealistic, as history has proved. The accomplishments of Gandhi and Martin Luther King are well known, but there have been many others. During World War II, the French Huguenot village of Le Chambon Sur Lignon saved thousands of Jewish children through nonviolent noncooperation with Gestapo and Vichy authorities. The entire nation of Denmark likewise engaged in nonviolent resistance to the Nazis.

When told that Jewish refugees must wear stars, the Danes declared that they would all wear stars; they mounted strikes and protests; they refused to repair German ships in their shipyards; they ferried Jews to Sweden out of harm’s way; they hid Jews in their homes. Again, thousands of lives were saved. Nazi officials were thoroughly unnerved, bewildered, and deflated by these actions. Many were converted. Eichmann was repeatedly forced to send specialists to Denmark to try to sort out the problem since his men on the ground could "no longer be trusted." 15

These movements, however, were rooted in communities that took their Christianity seriously and were prepared to count the cost. Let us cease praying for the success of our technology and weaponry long enough to ponder: is Christianity still ready to count the cost?

Notes and References

14. It is not within the scope of this paper to consider those texts often used to evade Christ’s teaching of nonviolence. A careful analysis of these assumed "problem" passages may be found in Richard B. Hayes, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996); and John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972). I am particularly indebted to Hayes for the material presented in this section.
15. See Merton, "Danish Non-Violent Resistance to Hitler", in Passion for Peace, 150-53.