Daniel: I've heard a testimony of a women who was being assaulted, with the intent of rape. During the assault (I'm afraid the specific details of the situation were left out) she was asking God how she should respond to this situation. God told her to tell the assailant, "Your mother loves you." She did, then he stopped, broke down and curled up in a corner weeping. God is pretty amazing, and I understand this is an isolated incident.

Tom: It is indeed.

Daniel: The point is that there are alternatives to immediate violence that work.

Tom: That "sometimes" work, yes.

Daniel: You could say, "Well it doesn't work all the time...."

Tom: Was that a case of foreknowledge? ;o)

Daniel: "...so she ought to be able to use violence to resist if necessary." But I think there is something lacking in that response, because violence won't necessarily work all the time either.

Tom: Right.

Daniel: Do we use a combination of both?

Tom: Maybe I should be clearer about my own sense. I think we ought to live in and thus be led by the Spirit on a moment by moment basis and not assume that either talking to the assailant or wrestling him to the ground will uniformly be the right way to go. That is, most ideally our choices ought to flow from an ongoing living and conscious dependency upon the Spirit’s guidance and not a particular “policy” that determines ahead of time what we’re to do in this or that situation. We tend to turn to a “policy” posture of one or the other to compensate for our failure to live in and be led by the Spirit.

And I can conceive of the Spirit leading somebody in either direction—to talk to my wife’s assailant or to wrestle him to the floor. So perhaps it IS a combination of both, as you ask. The Spirit may lead us to say the right thing—as in the case you describe—because that’s the least violent and most loving (given all the factors and probabilities unique to THAT case) course of action available. But I can equally conceive of the Spirit (given all the factors and probabilities unique to a DIFFERENT case) leading Joe to wrestle the assailant to the ground or bonk him over the head with the kitchen chair because THAT is the best course of action available.

So just to be clear, I'm not for violence or non-violence as 'policies'. I’m for being led on a moment by moment basis by the Spirit as the right policy. I’m not arguing that WE ought to assume that whichever of the possible responses WE feel is best to adopt (violence or not) is the one we ought to go with. That's to assume we know the relevant factors well enough to judge, which we don't. I’m suggesting we ought to be ready and willing to hear whatever, leaving open the possibility of hearing the Spirit say “tell your wife's assailant that you want to have a cup of coffee with him” or “bash him over the head with a chair.” YOU, I think, want to say God would/could never lead us to do the latter.

At the same time, I know the fulfilled “life of the Kingdom” expresses life as God intends it to be and as it shall be in the eschaton. There won’t be any assailants then and we won’t have to make such decisions. Until then, however, how do we manage the deeply conflicted situations we find ourselves in? Do we simply live “as if” we were in that eschaton anyhow? That I suppose is the pacifist's argument. I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem that even God does that right now though. Even God has to make choices which are most loving given the conflicted fallen world we’re in but which are less than ideal choices to instantiate states of affairs that are best now but which won’t have any place in the eschaton. God's doing things now that won't have any place in the eschaton. I'm just thinking out loud.

I’m wondering if pacifism AS A POLICY or RULE is in a sense an over-realized eschatology. But I don’t want to willy nilly advocate violence per se either. There is ONE thing we can do that is constant through both this present conflicted fallen context in which we live and in the fulfilled Kingdom, and that’s listening to and obeying the Spirit. That much I’m comfortable saying with confidence.

Daniel: Those who believe violence is a perfectly acceptable response to that situation don't say it's a useless response because it doesn't work in every circumstance. Why, then, should we throw out prayerful, creative, loving responses just because they don't work in every circumstance? I don't think we can find a specific action that can be universally applied to reconcile every violent act committed.

Tom: Right. I wouldn’t throw out any possibility. I’m advocating a real dependency and sensitivity to the Spirit’s voice for each situation. Talking to my wife’s assailant may be the most loving, least violent, best bet I have for resolving the situation. But it might not be. It might be that wrestling him to the floor is the most loving, least violent, best bet I have for resolving the situation.

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Tom: Does the life of the Kingdom really bar Joe from wrestling the assailant's hands from his wife's throat or crashing a kitchen chair over his head to knock him out?

Daniel: I studied for a year in England, and one of the teachers at my school told me, “Yea, I was a pacifist. Then I met my wife and realized that I'd kill anyone who touched her.”

Tom: So your answer is: Yes, the life of the Kingdom bars Joe from wrestling his wife’s assailant to the floor.

I’m thinking there are more options than just ‘pacifism’ and ‘your teacher’s view’! His attitude can’t express the only alternative to pacifism.

Daniel: As you can probably tell, this is something that I struggle with.

Tom: I do too, Dan. Really I do. I’m anything but certain of myself when it comes to this stuff.

Pax,

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/5/2009 5:33:16 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/5/2009 8:45:45 AM (GMT-6)

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry.  Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.  Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.

    On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.  And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.' "

     The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

     When evening came, Jesus and his disciples  went out of the city.

     In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.  Peter remembered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

    "Have faith in God," Jesus answered.  "Truly  I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you.  Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

And we don't even need to talk about the Holy Spirit of Jesus killin' Ananias and Sapphira..now do we?

Post Edited (One Love) : 2/9/2009 7:11:58 PM (GMT-6)

D: Hey, at least Greg's consistent. He does the same kind of thing with natural evil regarding animal death and suffering. Remember WHY he's a vegetarian, now. If it were up to God, there'd be all bunnies and butterflies, etc with no flesh rending fangs and talons. Remember all that?

Tom: Oh yeah. I remember. Greg IS consistent. But that sets the difficulties with his view in clearer relief. In order to maintain his consistency he has to do adopt an understanding of textual inspiration compatible with Israel’s kings AND PROPHETS speaking and commanding falsely in God's name. And let’s not pass this by too quickly. It's not that they get it right sometimes but wrong other times. Some times we have God speaking and commanding things in texts that are supposedly seamless, contain portions (the violent parts) that are to be understood as fallen human projections onto God and portions (the non-violent parts) that are God speaking.

D: And we don't even need to talk about the Holy Spirit of Jesus killin' Ananias and Sapphira now do we?

Tom: Mmwwahahahahaha! Exactly. It’s NOT just an OT problem, though it’s more prevalent there. Jesus curses the tree, Peter pops a cap in Ananias and Sapphira via the Spirit, and what about Paul? Filled with the Spirit, he strikes Elymas the Sorcerer blind in Cyprus. WTF?

At the very least we can say that where Christians engage in violence they're "led by the Spirit." One could also argue that the sorts of violence they're involved in are of the 'miraculous' sort. They're not executable via merely human means. God has to show up and deliver the decisive blow. One could argue that this would leave me free to, via the Spirit, levitate my wife's assailant or curse him into blindness or something, but not wrestle him to the ground. But given God's empowerment of the State to punish evildoers, I can't say God is in principle opposed to violence.

----------------------- 

Daniel: I don't believe I ever implied that the violence/force entailed in the first covenant is inconsistent with the benevolence of the Father. I'm saying that the violence/force used in the first covenant is inconsistent with the statues, instructions, and teachings of the new covenant. I'm not saying God has changed. I'm stating that the new covenant is NOT the old covenant. I don't believe I have once condemned the use of violence in the OT…

Tom: I was thinking you held to Greg’s view. But you and Greg must hold to vastly different understandings of pacifism, the Kingdom, and what it is Jesus’ non-violence reveals about God. Greg’s view is that Jesus reveals/embodies the character of God. So Greg HAS to condemn violence in the OT. He can’t separate violence and non-violence on the level of covenant, accommodation, and expediency and say violence was a wise and helpful means of relating and accomplishing God’s purposes in the OT but not in the Kingdom. Because Greg sees non-violence as definitive of the being and character of God as revealed in Christ, he has to square the OT picture of God to this. God has to have the same (pacifist) character in both covenants. Hence Greg’s project to sanitize the OT portrayal of God from any involvement in commanding or condoning violence. I appreciate him because I think that’s the only way to consistently hold to pacifism and base it in the character of God as love.

Greg’s difficulty (one I don’t know that he’s dealt with publically at least), are those NT occasions on which God a) empowers Christians in violent behavior, using them as means of mediating the judgment of God upon persons, and b) God’s empowering the State in punishing evil doers. Greg does talk about the latter, but I don’t think he’s ever faced the forcer. You can’t get around the former.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/10/2009 1:24:36 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Daniel M) : 2/10/2009 2:33:25 PM (GMT-6)

Daniel: He argues that in the OT the point was that "God would fight for us." In the OT narratives, that included destruction of cities/violence. I don't know if the inclusion of violence is a reflection on the character of God or a reflection of just how far man has fallen. But, Yoder suggests that all along the 'point' was that God would protect us, that He, and He alone is enough to sustain and defend us. Israel rebelled against this. Most notably when David counted his army. David missed the point, or couldn't swallow the implications of it. Which is, we don't trust our safety to the illusion of the power of the sword, or chariots.

Tom: I haven’t read Yoder. Perhaps I should. My reading list is really long and it doesn’t include him. But just going on what you’ve described, I’d say that seems like a pretty unlikely understanding of the OT.

The problem is that the texts on many occasions describe God as commanding the use of the sword in the OT. God doesn’t always say, “Hey, don't do anything. Stand and behold the salvation of your God,” and then send out angels to do the slaughtering for him while Israel stands by and watches. Some—no, most—of the time God has Israel do the slaughtering for him.

I don't doubt that Israel at times looked to the sword alone and not to God (David’s example). Fine. But that’s hardly characteristic of Israel’s battles. If we’re just talking about what the texts say, there were also occasions in which Israel entrusted their swords to God at God’s command, believing themselves to be obeying God in picking up the sword and trusting God to give them victory in battle (which he did, so say the texts). All this is if we take the texts at face value, viz., if we understand them to truthfully describe God as the author of the commands to pick up the sword.

You have to start with the texts. I haven’t read Yoder. But I’ve read the OT lots and know it’s just not the case that the texts claim that whenever Israel picks up the sword in the OT it’s because they’ve stopped trusting in God to defend them and have begun to trust in their swords instead. To read the OT that way you have to believe certain things about God and violence on grounds other than the OT texts and then read the texts through that theology. But you cannot disassociate God from violence on the basis of the OT texts themselves. No way. No theology of the OT that doesn’t acknowledge this much is honest (in my opinion).

If we acknowledge this much and then argue that we ought to interpret the OT through a pacifism grounded in a particular reading of the NT so that all of Israel’s use of the sword is a failure to trust God, cool. But let’s say that’s what we’re doing. If that’s what Yoder does, fine. But this is a tough sell. You have to falsify the fundamental claims of the biblical authors and/or the prophets who communicated these “words” from God directing Israel to pick up the sword. You have to say God wasn’t the author of those messages. The biblical authors either fabricated the narrative of God’s involvement to embellish/justify their history after the fact (one view) OR you say those prophets (all of them, Moses included) really did speak as the texts describe. They just never heard from God what they thought they heard.

Lovin' it,
T

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/10/2009 5:02:27 PM (GMT-6)

Nail on the head, Tom/Asher. Any argument that rules out force or compulsion absolutely is an apriori view. It can never be made to square plausibly with any scriptural approach. It requires arbitrary maneuvers apart from apriori belief.

But back to the comments about Greg and his view on natural evil. One thing about natural evil and "becoming" is this. "Becoming" God-ward supposedly requires maturing past the age of an infant (unless the whole age-of-accountability hypotheses is bogus). Yet, natural evil assures that thousands upon thousands of infants will die without maturing to any meaningful psychological capacity for God-ward "becoming," SEEMINGLY. This seems to require us to posit a separate plan of "becoming" for some proportion of the human race that could not have avoided dying as infants or fetuses because of natural evil. For it is very difficult to find an explanation as to how ALL of the human race could have managed to survive all natural evils beyond infanthood.

But this "separate" plan would not be like the post-mortem "plan" of matured unbelievers. Their "alternate" plan was brought about by their own mature volition. And infants that die of volitional actions are also only deprived of the this-worldly mode of "becoming" by volition. Not so for the infants that die of natural evil. They seem to have been intentionally accounted for by God in an alternate plan of "becoming."

So I can feel Greg's dilemma. Maybe he thinks it a more plausible generalization to posit that God meant for all humans that were to be conceived IN THIS MATERIAL WORLD to "become" in the this-worldly mode. And that would imply that the seeming impossibility of that state of affairs, due to natural evil, was due to something that went awry from God's original intent. IOW, it seems, as I have argued heretofore, that there are real difficulties with finding plausible generalizations for everything. Every mega-explanation seems to contain one or more features that just seem implausible or which require seemingly ad-hoc hypothesizing.

So though I don't agree with Greg, I feel his pain.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 2/10/2009 9:32:31 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Daniel M) : 2/10/2009 9:42:51 PM (GMT-6)

Much clearer Daniel. Thanks. Let me see if I can summarize it rightly.

You concede God commands (many times, though not always) the use of violence and the sword in the OT. On the other hand God commands exclusive non-violence in the NT. Violence and non-violence were both means by which God acts ‘for’ (loosely speaking, in the event God’s angels do the killing) or ‘through’ (in the event God has Israel take up the sword) his people under the terms of the OT. And the point of God’s using his people as instruments of violence (or acting violently directly on their behalf) was to teach them that “God can be trusted to defend his people.” THAT is the relevant contextual variable that distinguishes OUR involvement in violence in the OT as opposed to our non-involvement in violence in the NT. That seems to be your (and Yoder’s) point. Under the terms of the new covenant only non-violence may be the means by which God acts ‘through’ people, though GOD, in the NT, may act directly via the Spirit in violent ways (as he does in taking A & S’s livves in Acts 3 and blinding Elymas, etc.).

This NT policy regarding our non-involvement in violence in the NT doesn’t reflect a change in the character of God at all. Both violence and non-violence per se are compatible with God’s character. Whether God commands us to violence or non-violence depends upon the contexts relevant to each covenant and is unrelated to the character of God.

So while GOD may independently kill (or mame or blind) people in both testaments, the actions of God’s PEOPLE are conditioned upon terms of covenants. They may engage violently or non-violently in the OT but only non-violently in the NT. But in both testaments God may (and does) do direct violence. (What really is different, after all, between Annanias & Sapphira and Uzzah?)

On top of all this, however, we have this singular, self-sacrificial, non-violent act of God in the NT, the Cross that God embraces on the whole world’s behalf. This says NOTHING whatsoever over and against violence regarding God’s character.

SO: Violence and non-violence per se are both consistent with God’s character. God engages in violence in both testaments. But in the OT the context allows us to be instruments of his violence while in the NT the context disallows us to be instruments of his violence. And the reason for allowing his people to take up the sword in the OT was to teach Israel that God can be trusted to defend them. The NT context, on the other hand, restricts us to emulating the self-sacrificial love of God incarnate (NOT because such love is non-violent; the same God of love who dies for us in the NT also acts violently on our behalf in BOTH testaments).

Under the terms of the NT, then, we are to emulate God as God acts in Christ and not God as God acts outside of Christ (in, say, killing A&S or in empowering Paul to speak forth God's word that blinds Elymas).

Fine tune it for me if I’m not getting it.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/11/2009 3:59:43 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/11/2009 5:56:36 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 2/11/2009 6:30:19 AM (GMT-6)