In his incredible book, Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf makes a very subversive and contentious argument. He claims that the Christian call to nonviolence in the face of persecution, violence, and terror requires a belief in divine vengeance. Volf argues that Christians are called to a posture of nonviolence in the face of suffering, patiently bearing the cross and offering forgiveness to those who would abuse them.
However, this posture of patient suffering is sustained through a belief in the coming retribution of God who will right all wrongs, judge the guilty, and bring about equity for the oppressed. For Volf, we are called to nonviolence, not because God is a God who refuses to judge, but rather because judgment ultimately belongs to God alone. God is the source of all human life, as such God alone has authority over human life (cf. Deut 32:39). The taking of the lives of others thus becomes a way of usurping the sovereignty of God over human life, that is why it is wrong, not simply because it is “violent.”
Here is Volf’s zinger of a quote:
“My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologian in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone (which is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. (p. 304)
Now, whatever one may think of this statement, one cannot deny that it has some measure of authority and integrity behind it. Anyone who doesn’t take a challenge like this seriously is almost certainly among those enjoying the “pleasant captivities of the liberal mind” indeed!
What I appreciate about Volf’s view is that it is difficult. It accepts no easy answers. It is easy to offer the enlightened liberal platitudes about God being perfect nonviolent love, and therefore we are called to absolute nonviolence (which, after all will really solve all the world’s problems). It is likewise easy to claim that we are victims, that our offenders are opposed to God and therefore the cause of justice in on our side and we are free to violently eliminate those who stand against us (and therefore against God). Volf takes the hard path of insisting that evil must be punished, and yet demanding that we refuse to take upon ourselves the mantle of divine perogative, suffering at the hands of evil rather than playing God ourselves.
However, that being said, the question remains, is Volf right?
I simply cannot see how divine vengeance is compatible with the love of God.
Does Volf describe what divine vengeance looks like? Seems to me that the righting of all wrongs, the making of all things new, doesn’t have to look like a blood bath. If it does, it means that we have a simplisitc view of evil, and what’s “wrong” with the world.
I really appreciate the reminder of this passage Halden. Thanks for it.
It’s one of my favourite aspects of Volf’s theology- that he gives me language to critique my own instinctive Western desire to water God’s passionate love down into something tamer and less likely to offend me.
I think Volf is spot on. What hope is there for the dispossessed and the trodden upon of today’s world if God cannot bring justice; the dying 3rd world mother and her already-dead child for example?
He is very close to NT Wright here, as I understand it. In that great modern hymn “In Christ Alone” we might want to modify the lyrics to sing instead of “Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied;” to “Till on that cross as Jesus died, The love of God was satisfied;” but we would be very foolish to discount the vast scope of God as revealed in the Bible and make him a God who cannot be angered…
I think Volf is right, because he actually accounts for the warnings of punishment, “outer darkness” etc., in the parables of Jesus. It also accounts for the language “forgive us our trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, because the Prayer implies that forgiveness is in fact necessary; for forgiveness to be necessary, does there not need to be an alternative? It also allows for greater continuity between the New Testament Jesus and the divine violence of the Old Testament. Granted, I still think there is space for C.S. Lewis’s idea that Hell’s inhabitants are in some way self-selecting and really don’t want to be in eternal communion with God (see “The Great Divorce”). Volf’s argument, or a form thereof, converted one of my professors at my Christian university to the peace position a few years ago. This professor now says “I can be a pacifist because I know God is not.”
I’m with Miller here. Vengeance is a bit of a difficult term to describe when it comes to God. So, yes, vengeance belongs to God and all that, but I reckon that the vengeance of God looks like the cross of Christ, and not like any of the violent images we have imagined. God’s vengeance looks like redemption and new creation and this, I suppose, is why God claims it as God’s own — because only God is capable of completely doing those things, and because we tend to confuse vengeance with something else.
This is how vengeance is compatible with love.
Volf is right. God is not reducible to a rational principle of nonviolence. Nonviolence is not Christian love because nonviolence is passive and Christian love is active. God is love. But the love God is is not a passivity that simply absorbs evil forever, but an activity that seeks to redeem creation, defeat evil, judge sin and bring the world to its fulfillment in the New Heavens and New Earth.
Liberal Christianity is content to reduce God to a rational principle of nonviolence and indiscriminate acceptance because it does not take sin seriously enough. As Volf points out, this is a luxury liberal Westerners may be able to afford much of the time, but it is not something most people in the world can afford. Jesus gave his life to redeem the world from sin, not because passivity in the face of evil is the definition of Christian love, but because this was the only way to enable God’s forgiveness of sinners in a way that did not make God something other than God.
There is a big trend today toward toward re-conceptualizing God in terms of what seems to us to be the highest human ideal – nonviolence. But I suspect that the reasons why nonviolence seems to us to be the highest ideal have more to do with our social location and modernity than anything else. I suggest that righteousness, as defined in Scripture as a characteristic of God, is a higher ideal than nonviolence.
Halden, have you read the chapter in Being Reconciled on Violence? You can get significant chunks of it on Google Books if you don’t have a print copy. It has been many years since I read it, but I think it might have something to offer this discussion.
From Romans:
“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’
…
For [the one in authority] is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Those pesky chapter breaks can be annoying. Note the connection between “wrath” in each passage. So, the state can carry the sword, and it can be a legitimate executor of God’s wrath in the temporal realm. And I think it is important to make a distinction between the temporal and eternal judgments here. Divine punishment is not incompatible with God’s love (contra David), because we know from our own earthly experience that punishment can be dispensed in love:
“My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”
Divine punishment? Yes. Divine love? Yes. The latter is the reason for the former, I suspect.
All that being said, I am not sure what exactly this means in the context of a war-torn region. Perhaps there is no ruling authority, or perhaps it is the authority which terrorizes you. In that case, perhaps all that is left is God’s final judgment.
Nonviolence isn’t passive.
Making peace isn’t passive. Nonviolence is.
Well this is turning into a really stimulating conversation.
I’m more curious to hear if Craig Carter is targeting Miller and I with his comments about “Liberal Christianity.” Because, you know, espousing our view on vengeance as an act of redeeming and creative love, may have little or nothing to do with this so-called “Liberal Christianity”.
Personally, I happen to take sin deathly seriously — having seen sin in all its glory in the places where I have chosen to work and live for the last ten or so years (I’ll spare you the war stories) — so let’s not be so hasty to brush aside this line of thought.
Seriously, Craig, your way of communicating on blogs often leaves me baffled. Perhaps this type of argumentation works for you when teaching undergraduate students, but it leaves a lot to be desired in this sort of forum.
Was reminded of the following when reading this post and its comments:
“One cannot forever whistle ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ in the darkness of Hiroshima, of Auschwitz, of the murder of children and the careless greed that enslaves millions with debts not their own.”
— Wright, Surprised by Hope, 180
Volf, I think, is on to something.
I agree with Dan (poserorprophet). I think that Craig, in an attempt to be rhetorically smart, makes a self-evidently false statement. Clearly nonviolence is not passive in situations in which people are subjected to violence and yet chose to endure it rather than retaliate. This is anything but passive nor should it be maligned as such.
I just think there are some shifting definitions going on here. Craig is defining “nonviolence” as the passive avoidance of violence, and as such, bad. Halden and PoP are defining it as something else, that is active. I think both sides can agree that there are in fact illicit, passive forms of nonviolence which while they may apparently eschew some sort of explicit violence are in themselves violent in virtue of their passivity. At the same time, there are also instances of people participating in what they would term “nonviolence” that are in fact taking place in wholly active pursuits.
It is the specific character of individual pursuits of “nonviolence” or “the making of peace” if you will, that determines their degree of passivity, and hence goodness. It would be useful to have a term for each of the poles here, and those terms are what is at stake, and that is somewhat more tractable of an issue that what currently seems to be at issue.
Thanks for this post.
I would agree with the statement that we do not know what ‘God’s vengeance’ means in any practical sense. Because of this, our ability to exercise some expression of that is void.
The opportunity for Christians is not to achieve the highest human ideal of non-violence (abstract much?) but rather to trust God both with what God says he will do and with the way in which he will do it.
I don’t like it when catastrophic violence is used as some excuse for universality of understandable action; it shows that we cannot stand being out of control. We must be the ones to say, “there, that is enough; this historical event has now trumped the historic events of Christ and demands my loyalty, my action, my vengeance.”
George MacDonald says it simple enough,
“Vengeance is the Lords because he alone knows what to do with it.”
Hill, I suppose my point was to question the sort of juxtaposition that was introduced between “peace making” and “nonviolence” which was made to equal “active” and “passive.” There are many instances of nonviolent response to violence that do not, in themselves make or secure peace, but they are not any less active or gospel shaped by virtue of that.
I’m with you… I was just anticipating some disagreement that might presume to be substantive that was in fact definitional.
Halden,
You have told us on this blog recently that:
1. Christianity is not a civilizational project.
2. Sectarianism is good.
3. Christians should not vote.
4. The Christian response to violence must be nonviolence.
Now you are complaining that I call your position passive. I know you think that worship is the way the church is active in this world, but I have to admit that I question why you think that Christian witness does not include an social ethical component that seeks to call Caesar to be more just than he outherwise would be. Maybe you still would say that you think it is good to do that, but I don’t see how it would fit with your statements I’ve referred to above. It seems to me that you have gone well beyond Yoder toward a stance of withdrawal. Yoder held to Anabaptist theology and pacifism, but did not think that he was therefore committed to a totally withdrawn stance.
Chris, I’m sure you’ve seen this, but this photo (http://mideastchristians.virtualactivism.net/regimages/cptpics/artgish.jpg) is what I think of when I think of nonviolence.
And, I’m not much bothered by passivity. It is, after all, the little slain lamb that sits on the throne. I can see how one might call that passive, but it’s not not not withdrawal.
Sorry–I meant Craig.
Craig, just to allow some specificity into the conversation, I did not complain that you called “my position” passive, I contested the idea that “nonviolence” is definitionally a passive thing. Taking a nonviolent posture when suffering violence is not simply passivity or inaction but takes great moral courage and resolve. They way you are eqivocating on that is not helpful.
In response to your little list, I think you are just drawing the conclusions that you want to draw (and sounding oddly neocon about what counts as “real” engagement with the world).
Must Christianity be a civilizational project for the church to be a redeeming presence in society? Of course not. Are all forms sectarianism good? I’ve never said this, only that in some distinct ways the church needs to embody a sectarian posture. To simply use the term a shield to dismiss arguments is the same move that all the critics of Yoder make and it ignores the hard work of actual engagement with thought. I’ve also never said that Christians shouldn’t vote, only questioned the claim that they must vote and have made particular observations about what voting in this current presidential election might mean. My actual position is that voting is a matter of prudential judgment. I’ve already addressed your caricature of “nonviolence” so I’ll leave it at that.
Well, Volf’s comments ring true with my experiences at boarding school. I accidently discovered Psalm 94 when I was 14 and it served as a source of nourishment and strength for the rest of my school years.
I struggle to reconcile that with Jesus’ “father forgive, for they know not what they do,” however. Perhaps the prayer for forgiveness is an implicit prayer for conversion coming about through repentence. Without the conversion, the evil still stands and so still needs to be punished.
Now I’ve posted that, I think of a prayer I pray every Friday morning in my attempt to do the liturgy of the hours. It’s a prayer for the persecutors of the church and concludes with “rechne ihnen diese Sünde nicht an” (“do not impute this sin to them”). When I think of what Christians are suffering in Iraq, I really can’t bring myself to say this. And I don’t think this is theologically right.
Perhaps Jesus’ statement on the cross really was short hand that God would bring them to repentence, rather than that they would be forgiven regardless of what they do?