Thanks!
Mike C.

Thanks for your responses. In good Lucan fashion, I will ponder these things in my heart.

Fair enough about Luke 3:14. Two comments come immediately to mind:

(1) All three questions and responses in Luke 3:10-14 have to do with money/possessions, their use, and appropriate attitudes. John does not provide a comprehensive description of repentance or a comprehensive ethic but a focused one, typical of Luke’s concerns. For Luke this issue (wealth/possessions) is both a specific issue and representative of the kingdom’s demands and of our response to them. So I agree that Luke has this material here as part of the kingdom ethic to embody, but because the issue is focused, we cannot expect John/Luke to say everything possible about individuals in general, tax-/toll-collectors, or “soldiers.”

(2) Most scholars believe that the soldiers named here are not Roman soldiers but Jews in the employ of Rome or Herod, probably more like police officers or even security guards, perhpas charged to protect the toll-collectors. They are not warriors, whether Jeiwsh or Roman. They are being directed to repent from their desire for more money/provisions, which they could attain by using coercion or violence with the public. (There is a similar passage in Josephus that suggests such people could extort, intimidate, or even rape the uncooperative.) Thus, the passage does in fact, at least implicitly, counsel against violence in the form of intimidation, coercion, and perhaps more. (Remember that violence is about coercion, not just inflicting physical harm.)

Thus to conclude that this text shows that for John the Baptist, Luke, and/or God soldiering, wielding the sword, government use of appropriate force, etc. is permissible is both to miss the general reason for the presence of the text and to miss the implicit condemnation of violence and, at the same time, to find (by an argument from silence) approval of the military in a text that is probably talking about something like the equivalent of Brink’s security guards.

Also…I got so wound up on my soapbox that I completely forgot where I was! Dr. Gorman, your post is on the money! Sorry about that…You speak to the goal of human existence in a way that I need to revisit often. It is a sound conclusion: “…then nonviolence is not a matter to discuss or debate as one of so many possible topics in Christian ethics. Rather, it is at the very heart of what it means to be Christian, to be saved, to be a disciple.”

Your work is prophetically speaking to our needed vision of kenotic deployment, and it rightly forms the voice that can accurately speak to our needs in the Jesus following family. I am going to take you up on this call to tell God’s story with a “more carefully articulated … emphasis on God’s nonviolent, non-retaliatory enemy love that is the central act of the story.”

OK, I’m gonna go catch up on the rest of these goodies you all are posting too!

Mike C.

Dr. Gorman may disagree with me on this point, but on the soldier issue, my response would be this: I don’t think God is opposed to human authorities using the sword to ‘restrain’ evil in certain ways in this age, using the moral law for the unrighteous. In fact, there seems to be intentional provision for this. But we need to understand that limited ‘restraint’ of evil is the best the sword can ever do, and is more easily and often used to multiply evil instead, even by human authorities. In other words, the cause of good vs. evil will not be advanced or won with the sword. As the Church, we are called to a higher, riskier vocation than mere ‘restraint’ of evil. We’re called, as sheep to the slaughter, to overcoming it with good, in Jesus’ footsteps.

Thanks for your response. I do think (as you have gently pointed out) that my hesitations are to some degree based an argument from silence, and I understand that you do not have time to address each passage that I have flagged exegetically. Nevertheless, I would like to ask just one of my questions again, mainly because it is “the exegetical and theological question of the reason for [its] presence in the narrative.” The question I thus re-submit is “How does Luke intend for us to take John the Baptist’s advice to soldiers in Luke 3:14?” In this passage, John’s advice seems to assume that the soldiers may continue in their present line of work, only they must not abuse the power with which they have been entrusted. If this is not intended by Luke to be heard as instructional material for disciples of Christ in the same position (as his other points of advice appear to be in the subsequent narrative), what is its purpose? Why did Luke not avail himself of this golden opportunity to call Christians away from the sword? Is he trying to portray John the Baptist’s message as incomplete or insufficient? This passage more than any other gives me pause in considering the position of absolute non-violence, and I’m just not sure how to take it otherwise without doing violence to the text. If you do not have time to address this passage yourself, I am always happy to read a book! (In fact, I would be happy to be pointed toward any resources that you think deal well with the standard line of objections from the gospels which give me pause.) Thanks for your consideration.

Thanks for the reminder that we all need about the ways in which our theological models (of the atonement or anything else) can get abused; it is for this reason that they must always be articulated and re-articulated with caution and care. A violent spin on Christus Victor is no less a temptation than it is with respect to substitution. In fact, I would argue that historically it is Christus Victor that has been the real culprit in the promotion of violence, despite the recent criticism of substitutionary atonement/penal substitution and the turn toward C.V. Which is in part why I find none of the models problem-free even though they all have roots in the NT (note that I did not say “even though they are all biblical”)—though I am not hereby promoting a penal-substitution model.

My own particular emphasis on atonement is (as you know) participatory and “covenantal.” I intend to develop the latter as a full-blown theory—as much as a theory can be fully developed in a lecture or two!—in the Lund lectures at North Park in the fall of 2010. A covenantal model means that through the cross God restores us to covenantal relations with God and others through our participation in the self-giving, life-giving (very close to your language!) love of God demonstrated on the cross. This rules out, in advance, any activity that contradicts this self-giving, life-giving love.

Andrew,

Thanks for your sincere, appropriate, and time-honored questions. I don’t have the space here and now to answer all of them exegetically and theologically, but I do want to suggest that at one level they are the wrong questions. (Please forgive the apparent contradiction with sentence one!) Why? Pointing to such examples is a bit like saying, “Jesus never explicitly condemned ____ [fill in the blank with your favorite activity] so we can do it after all!” despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary in his overall message in context. Hermeneutically and theologically, it is wrongly prioritizing historical examples that may or may not relate directly to the larger theological issue and failing to prioritize what is absolutely clear in the teaching and example of Jesus, not to mention the theo-logic of the remainder of the NT. Thus these examples—whose theological significance is unclear on this issue—are turned into the hermeneutical lens that controls and thus distorts the interpretation of texts and narratives that are clear: the Sermon on the Mount, the logic of the gospel according to Paul in Romans, etc.

Furthermore, drawing conclusions about wielding the sword, etc. from these narratives in Luke-Acts independently of considering their role in Luke’s account fails to raise the exegetical and theological question of the reason for their presence in the narrative. Is it to offer a rationale for Christian participation in the military and the use of the sword, or is is something else?—perhaps to demonstrate the ability of the gospel to transform any and all? If it is the latter, then we would be misguided in our reading of such narratives to build an ethic out of them, especially if that ethic contradicted other, explicit teachings in the same evangelist’s narrative.

Is “wielding the sword” inherently wrong? That may not be the right question, especially with the word “inherently” in it. The right question might be, “Does the practice of violence cohere with or contradict the NT’s interpretation of what God has done in Christ—including his incarnation, teachings, death, resurrection, and exaltation as the definitive divine self-disclosure?”

Thanks for posting this. I have read Hays’s book and a little bit of Yoder, and I find the case that they (especially Hays) make for the centrality of non-violence very attractive. I have hesitations, however, when I look at how military figures and Roman government officials are actually portrayed in the narratives of the NT itself. The following questions spring to mind: How does Luke intend for us to take John the Baptist’s advice to soldiers in Luke 3:14? Why does Jesus not call the centurions with whom he has contact to leave military service? Why is there no mention of tension between the conversion of Sergius Paulus and his position as proconsul in Acts 13:6-12 or Cornelius and his position as a centurion in Acts 10? Although I really would like to adopt fully the non-violent/peacemaking position, these questions give me pause. Government officials and military personnel do not receive the treatment that I would expect if an absolutely non-violent ethic were the NT expectation while the present age remains. It seems to me that these examples indicate that wielding the sword is not inherently wrong, but I am certainly open to persuasion to the contrary.