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Striving for a Just Peace without the Myth of Redemptive Violence

Written by Bill McLellan and Dr. J. Nelson Jennings : September 16, 2008

The gospel of Jesus Christ is so central to the Christian faith that no other alleged “gospel” can ever be acceptable. No other person, agenda, or story can compete with the gospel of Jesus for saving the world from our rebellion and just punishment. The good news that Jesus lives, reigns, and saves is a specifically religious proclamation, but the gospel permeates and affects Christian belief in all areas of life, public and private.

It is tempting to rest our Christian hopes for realizing God’s kingdom on a particular political ideology or strategy. In other words, while seeking to fulfill our responsibility to be engaged politically, Christians can unwittingly come to trust in a political, kingdom-promising “gospel” that proclaims how the world’s salvation from wrong, evil, and its cursed condition can be achieved. While being faithfully politically engaged, corporately and individually Christians can become co-opted into being politically confined within a particular party or agenda.

One way to correct that temptation is to stay ever mindful of the Christian Church’s fundamentally international identity. Central to the good news of Jesus is the truth that all kinds of people belong to his people: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). No aspect of Christians’ multifaceted identities is deeper than that of being “one in Christ Jesus” – whereby our Jewish-Greek national-ethnic loyalties are trumped by our transnational Christian unity. Christians of all nationalities should have their politics informed by the viewpoints of others around the world, thus checking the ever-present sinkhole into nationalistic provincialism that affects all people everywhere.

The same story that inspired Roman imperialism is the false gospel we are concerned about today; it is what theologian Walter Wink has called the “myth of redemptive violence.” Expressed in the ancient Babylonian creation story called the Enuma Elish, this myth says that the universe and human beings are the leftovers of a bloody war among the gods. Creation itself is a violent process, and history is naturally the violent struggle to bring order into the realm of chaos. Like the Babylonian Empire before it and many others since, the Roman Empire spread with this violent but glorious message of hope for humanity. The Roman Caesars claimed to be gods and saviors of the ancient world because their military conquests brought the good news of Roman order into the realm of barbarian chaos. Paradise lay within the boarders of the Pax Romana, or the Roman Peace, while the war between good and evil continued to rage along the frontiers.

Christian mission has to pursue contextualization while avoiding syncretism. On the one hand, contextualization is the retelling of the Christian story in the language of a particular culture’s false gospel; for example, saying that Jesus is Lord instead of Caesar or saying that God is defeating evil through the cross rather than through human war. Syncretism, on the other hand, holds on to the original false gospel while adding a gloss of Christian language and symbols on top.

Writing in the early 1800s during the development of German nationalism, G. F. Hegel used Christian language to express ideas that were patently un-Christian. He fashioned his philosophy of history after the Creation-Fall-Redemption structure of the Christian story while completely identifying God with the historical process itself. As a variation on the myth of redemptive violence, Hegel identified violent struggle between competing political ideologies as the driving force in human progress. When we hear academics today call liberal democracy the “end of history,” or when we hear politicians say that the United States has a “calling from history” or that “the war on terror is the defining ideological struggle of our generation,” Hegel is the quiet elephant sitting in the corner.

One major challenge for Christians in the United States today (especially theologically conservative evangelicals like the authors of this article) arises from the fact that two of many Americans’ most valued political ideologies also tell violent grand narratives, Social Progressivism and Neo-Conservatism. The older one, Social Progressivism, developed in competition with Communism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The newer one, Neo-Conservatism, grew out of Liberal Anti-Communism in the 1970s during a resurgence of interest in Hegel’s philosophy of history. Each of these political ideologies envisions a utopian future brought into the present by efficient violence and skillful use of less violent, but still coercive, soft power.

Over the past few years and across the U. S. political spectrum, clever speech writers and political consultants have decided to use Christian language to communicate their secular ideologies. One political party has begun trying to use “the language of faith” to win back religious voters. The other major party, which has been contextualizing its political vision into Christian language for several decades now, has recently included in its rationale for two wars religious rhetoric claiming that “History” or “Providence” (depending on the audience) has called our nation to vanquish evil. Our president and his speechwriters have taken words from the Bible about Jesus and applied them to American idealism: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.” Neo-conservative intellectuals and policy makers are talking about a Pax Americana and arguing that the U.S. military is “the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.” They believe that violent American power, wisely directed at establishing democratic governments sympathetic to the interests of a globalized free market, has the best chance of bringing order to a barbaric and chaotic world of terror.

Sincere, Bible-believing Christians often will disagree about particular political issues, including how most effectively the United States should fight hostile terrorism in a post-9/11 world. Even so, when narrowly focused narratives about the political process morph into all-encompassing stories about human development and restoration, they have gone too far. Grand political ideologies about the violent unfolding of human history are false gospels, plain and simple.

We see two ways that these false gospels have sometimes become synchronized with American Christianity. In some communities, political ideology is brought into the church and completely melted with Christian language and theology into a single thought system. But syncretism also happens when political ideology gets artificially sealed off from the rest of our theology and assigned to the task of political, social, and material salvation. We must beware our tendencies to keep Jesus as our spiritual savior while making the glorious violence of the U.S. military our hope for a better world. The only way to confront this compartmentalized form of syncretism is to do what Paul does in his letter to the Colossians: announce that Jesus is Lord Redeemer of all areas of life, including all powers and authorities, and that his victory over the forces of evil happened on the cross and in his resurrection.

In general, conservative evangelicals in the U. S. are behind when it comes to identifying and publicly denouncing the myth of redemptive violence in our culture’s political ideologies. Why have we been so slow? We have been slow because this terminology first developed among liberal theologians like Walter Wink in the early Nineties. We have been slow because much of the impetus for denouncing the myth of redemptive violence has come from the Sojourner’s movement and from others who identify themselves as theologically evangelical and conservative but politically progressive, a scary label for many of us. We have been slow because the helpful concepts criticizing the redemptive violence myth have been inappropriately used to criticize God’s violent judgment upon sin and the sacrificial atonement Jesus offered to his Father on the cross. Finally, our natural alliance with U. S. socio-economic-political power (domestically as well as internationally) might cause us to lose a great deal in terms of our socio-economic-political comforts if we criticize the ideology that helps to underpin that power.

Because we think in terms of redemptive history and believe that Jesus is Lord over all of life, we should be the first Christians to protest when violent political ideologies are expressed with the language and structure of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation. We should be the first to protest when politicians use biblical language about Jesus to describe American ideals spreading violently around the world. And we should be the first to distinguish carefully between the judgment of God, which is appropriately violent, and eschatological progress in this age between the two advents of Christ, which has nothing to do with the violent advance of benevolent empires or political ideologies. In the Bible, violence is punishment, not progress.

Embracing God’s mission around the world means opposing false gospels that compete against Jesus’ way of bringing God’s reign to earth. Like all human beings, Christians will always have hopes for the future, political and otherwise, and we might communicate those hopes in the form of stories. But we shouldn’t pair Jesus up with a political ideology and teach that each is sovereign over their respective realms. Some of us might continue to identifying ourselves as progressive or conservative on Election Day, but without a syncretistic gospel, we might not accuse Christians from another political persuasion of working for the Enemy.

A just peace is a goal toward which all Christians can gladly aspire. We will disagree on how to move toward that goal, especially regarding political-military issues. Surely, though, we can agree that espousing military violence as the primary means by which a just peace will be achieved is a false gospel. Jesus reigns, and he is returning. May that gospel shape the contours of our hopes and dreams for God’s redemption of his world.

Author Bio:: Bill McLellan is a senior at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO.

Dr. J. Nelson Jennings is a professor of world mission at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO.




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Viewing 11 Comments

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    It truly is a strange thing to see a literally crusading mentality emerge among some Christians in our own time.
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    What was ignored by this author is that the heart and soul of much of what is considered traditional Christian theology is a theology of redemptive violence. The liturgy and hymnody of the Christian churches, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant are filled with images of a violent and vengeful God wrecking havoc and inflicting misery on everyone from the myth of the Garden/Fall, to the great redemptive story of the Exodus - filled with the blood and suffering of the enemies of the Jews both the guilty and the innocent, to the obscenity of a god demanding the torture and death of his only son to satisfy the 'debt' owed by sinners.

    Each and every one of these stories individually and collectively reinforce the concept that redemption is only available by some kind of violence perpetrated either by God or God's agents. This is part and parcel of the problem of the sanctification of violence and part of the reason, I do not doubt, that of all western nations surveyed recently the USA was one of the nations where only 53% of the respondents thought that all torture ought to be outlawed; you cannot outlaw redemptive methods - torture.

    If torture is salvific, as was glorified in the monstrous movie, The Passion of the Christ, then why not allow it? The USA which claims the largest percentage of Christian identified people of any western nation and has the largest number of regular church goers is also the one where state sponsored murder called capital punishment is supported by the majority of the population.

    The major metaphor of salvation for most Christians is the shedding of the blood of Jesus which washes the sinner clean - think of all those hymns about being 'washed in the blood', 'power in the blood' and all of the other horrific images of salvation by torture, murder and death. And then you ask why this is such a violent country? Christianity as it is preached to millions of people every Sunday of the year is a major contributor to the problem not the solution.

    Christians need to reject salvation by violence as blasphemous against the God whose other name is Love and understand the Cross in a different light. The Cross is the instrument of the power of God only in the resurrection story. That is when the God of Love rejects the evil of mankind's murder of Jesus, summarized in his torture and death at the hands of the Empire the the Religious elite and affirms the salvific power of love in the face of hatred, murder and slaughter.

    It is not the Cross that is God's will but the Resurrection of the Faithful One and his glorification at God's right hand that is God's final and triumphant will - the triumph of love, compassion, justice and mercy in the face of the worst mankind can do - inflict suffering and death on its victims.
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    Bill and Nelson,

    You use the term of Just Peace, suppose that means that you also embrace the false doctrine of Just War as well. Jesus calls His own to be ambassadors of His Kingdom and to conduct themselves according to the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, thus being heralds of Christ, living outside of human violence as we demonstrate confidence in His promises and the future hope set befor us. Those who take up the sword and sent their young into carnal warfare are not demonstrating the faith of committed disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. The crucifiction of Christ was a result of the world's rejection of His message and very being. His resurection is God's declaration that carnal warfare cannot succeed against the Kingdom and Kingship of His Dear Son. We are to follow in the footsteps of the Messiah, lining up with His teachings and His example. This is the vital message that the followers of Christ need to hear and embrace in this hour.
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    Bill here. I appreciate the feedback on our essay. I would have to say that while I consider myself a pacifist and do not believe in the possibility of a just war for any reason, I have spent just about all of my ecclesiastical life with people who do, and they're not all bad. There is a lot of room for collaboration between serious adherents to just war theory and pacifists, as Yoder tried to show in "When War is Unjust." One such area of collaboration is opposing imperialism justified with Christian language, the creation-fall-redemption structure of the Christian gospel, and an appeal to the myth of redemptive violence. So many of my just-war friends get just as excited about this problem.

    As to the existence of a myth of redemptive violence present in Scripture and orthodox Christianity...
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    Mr Jennings and Mr McClellan:

    Both of you state that you're theologically conservatives. How much difficult is "lobbying" for pacifism with conservative christians? Is there something we could call "christian-conservative pacifism"?
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    In response to Mountainguy, I'd say it's hard among theological conservatives even to oppose specific wars as unjust , not to mention opposing Hegelian ideology that promotes war as the driving force in making this world a better place. For those who don't have any room in their "gospel" about Jesus for social transformation (it's all about getting into heaven when you die), then there doesn't seem to be anything anti-Christian about looking to war for our social salvation on earth. I'd say that's a very anti-Christian thing to do, because Jesus came to bring God's peaceful rule into the very same world we live in. All of this makes us fit rather uncomfortably among much of the theologically conservative world when it comes to talking about war, even though only Bill here fully identifies with the pacifist label.

    What makes us more theologically conservative--and this might answer some of Isomer's thoughtful critique--is our commitment to accepting all of Scripture as God's word, even though it contains so much violence. Here we have two of the best most recent pacifists on our side, Yoder and Hauerwas, though we might want to emphasize the substitutionary character of Christ's atonement more than they have (they do too). God is love and desires all people be saved, and yet he avenges the innocent sometimes violently. For some, this works as the perfect justification for war. But I think that it actually weakens the argument for Christian pacifism to drive too hard a wedge between Jesus and the God who punishes wickedness and brings justice to the oppressed. Jesus actually brings us what we hope to get from war without it; but he was the same God incarnate who previously destroyed the world in the flood (however one might interpret that narrative from a scientific perspective). A crucial point about divine violence in the Bible comes out of that story: God's killing of almost all humans accomplished nothing to move forward his plan for the world. People were still just as wicked. He would have to hang up his bow in the clouds and embark on another course of action, redeeming humanity.

    So violence in the Bible moves its redemptive narrative backwards, while only love can move it forward. Why God chose to allow and even command these setbacks so frequently is a mystery to me I wish I could resolve, but it seems clear that with Jesus something new did begin to happen: with the arrival of God's king bringing with him God's rule, the story of redemption started to move full steam ahead. War, or politically motivated violence, was no longer a viable option for the corporate people of God (definitely!) and probably not for individual Christians either (representing my own opinion).
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    I have to say, I find the photo attached to our article distracting and unnecessary. Yeah, it's edgy, but it exploits an actual tragic event for maybe a few extra readers. I'm sure it was put there with the very best of intentions. I hope I'm not being too much of a pansy!
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    I didn't look closely to the image until you pointed it out, Bill. I'm not sure it has much to do with redemptive violence - presumably those alluded to were not looking for any kind of redemption. It didn't bother me, maybe it should have.

    Regarding your other points. First, I find the notion that conservatives 'accept all Scripture as God's word' disingenuous. There are bits which cannot be from God - eg words of Satan.

    On punishment: however evil and bad you have been, nothing deserves an eternal (ie never-ending) punishment. It cannot be just as the punishment simply bears no relation to the crime. And if there is no parole, it is also pretty pointless. Nobody gets any better in an eternal hell, there is no hope of any improvement.

    On God's plan: if God is omnipresent, omnipotent and outside of time, how can he have been surprised at the results of his actions and/or have acted in a way that he knew would not produce the desired results?

    From my point of view, the God who demands a vengeful sacrifice is not the God of Love and Justice. If our atonement theories make it sound like that, they are wrong. Equally, the God who encourages the faithful to take part in acts of barbarity and war cannot be the God we see in Christ the Prince of Peace who calls all who follow to lay down their lives not to lay down other's lives to protect our own standard of living.
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    Thanks Joet. There are certainly a lot of falsehoods in the book of Job, too, aren't there? So as interpreters, we have the high task of trying to discern what the message of Scripture actually is. That means taking it book by book, rather than word for word. In a book like Job, with so much falsehood and then so much figurative language on top of that, I would still want to argue that as a package it is still canonical for us; it's God's word. That gets even harder with Joshua--I feel you there.

    As for the traditionally orthodox teaching on eternal punnishment, I can identify with your concerns. The subject doesn't come up in this paper. I guess it could be said, as you wrote, that the violence of hell is not redemptive and so it would not be evidence for a "myth of redemptive violence" in Scripture. Personally, I have argued against the traditional view on hell, opting instead for an annihilationist perspective like John Stott, another evangelical who is conservative on scripture but also a pacifist. By the way, this position I've taken means I must search for ministry positions outside my current denomination, so if you hear of anything...

    Scripture describes God as being all knowing and all powerful but also genuinely saddened at human violence in Genesis 6. I don't have it figured out, but I also don't limit that divine saddness to simply figurative language. As you say, he is outside of history, but he is also inside of history, getting bounced around with humanity, acting and reacting and moving things toward his intended conclusion.

    As far as the vengeful sacrifice thing goes, there are several ways that the Bible describes the atonement, and they're not all violent. Jesus is our example, our champion and conquerer, our purification, our sacrifice and substitution. The Old and New Testaments borrowed from but then transformed the concepts of propitiation present in the cultures around them. Christianity, and Hebrew religion before it, do not teach that an angry God demands payment but a loving, merciful Jesus steps in the way and takes the violence upon himself.

    After the liberation of the Exodus, in his covenant with Moses, the God of Israel promised to deliver his people from imperialistic oppression if they remained faithful but to allow them to fall into the hands of their enemies if they did not. That is what happened in the exile, and that is the state Israel still felt they at least partially were in when Jesus showed up. By dying as a victim of injustice at the hands of the Romans and Israel's corrupt leadership, Jesus took the punnishment promised in the Mosaic covenant--not direct divine violence, but temporary divine abandonment to human imperialistic violence--so that he could win for Israel the right to full liberation (and conquer death along with the one who held power over people through the fear of death). That liberation, he taught, would not come by killing Greeks and Romans or feeling morally superior to them, but by loving them and bringing them into the people of God free of charge.
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    I would love to read a more detailed examination of the myth of redemptive violence viz. propitiation and substitutionary atonement. I've been thinking through this lately and found my generally conservative theology at odds with my commitment to non-violence.
    Thanks for the article though, and your comments as well, Bill.
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    Denny Weaver's done some work on this (check out his book "the Nonviolent Atonement"). You can also read Green and Baker's "Recovering the Scandal of the Cross."
 

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