Ron Sider, in If Jesus is Lord , examines the Sermon on the Mount and its implications for violence, war, and pacifism.
I consider Jesus’ teachings to be the most significant location for this entire discussion. If a kind of non-violence or pacifism can be found here … and if Jesus is Lord, the discussion is over. If not, the claims for pacifism are all but defeated.
Accepting Jesus’s gospel of the kingdom requires a fundamental reorienting of one’s thinking and acting. Jesus’s teaching shows his followers how they must allow their thought and behavior to be transformed in order to live in the new messianic time that has arrived in Jesus’s life and work.
Are the teachings of Jesus, esp in 5:21-48, corrections of misunderstandings or are they something else? Do they actually go beyond, back to, or go beyond the OT in a different way than, say those with whom he is in tension here?
In his commentary on Matthew, Craig Blomberg says that in the six antitheses of Matthew 5:21-48, Jesus “contravenes the letter of several of the Old Testament laws.”
As R. T. France notes, if Matthew 5:17-20 means that the rules of the Old Testament law must be followed “as they were before Jesus came,” Matthew would “here be contradicting the whole tenor of the NT by declaring that, for instance, the sacrificial and food laws of the OT are still binding on Jesus’s disciples.”
In other words, the messianic kingdom breaking into history in Jesus involves a new time that brings a new understanding of the Old Testament and transcends it in some sense.
But in transcending the statements is Jesus making a typical move that was made in Judaism at the time? Didn’t the Pharisees transcend the law? (Yes)
The non-resistance passages, where the term resist refers to violent resistance, are discussed at length, followed by some kind of tension with Moses in Deut 19:21, which is quoted after Jesus’ words:
Matt. 5:38 “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. 40 If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. 41 If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. 42 Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow (NLT).
Deut 19:21: You must show no pity for the guilty! Your rule should be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
He then turns to…
On Love Your Enemies:
Also striking is the fact that Matthew 5:38-48 is probably the most frequently cited biblical text when one collects all the statements about killing from the early Christian writers before the time of Constantine. Ten writers in at least twenty-eight different places cite or refer to this passage and note that Christians love their enemies and turn the other cheek. In nine instances, they link this passage from Jesus with a statement that Christians are peaceable, ignorant of war, or opposed to attacking others. Sometimes they explicitly link Jesus’s saying to a rejection of killing and war. In every single instance where pre-Constantinian Christian writers mention the topic of killing, they say that Christians do not do that, whether in abortion, capital punishment, or war. And Jesus’s statement about loving enemies is one of the reasons cited.
How have many Christians dealt with these passages? Sider’s summary statements:
Jesus came to die.
Jesus’s message is spiritual, not social.
Jesus taught an interim ethic.
Jesus’s radical ethics is for a special class of Christians.
Jesus’s radical ethics calls us to repentance, not discipleship.
Jesus’s ethics is for some future eschatological kingdom, not the present.
Jesus’s command not to kill enemies applies to private not public roles.
Responding to this last view, which I hear all the time (and which some of our readers are right now saying to themselves), Sider says:
Careful consideration of this widely used argument is essential. I believe this argument: (1) ignores the historical context of Jesus’s teaching; (2) contradicts what seems to be the most obvious meaning of the text; (3) relies on pragmatism to set Jesus aside; (4) historically, has sometimes led to very bad consequences; and (5) ignores the first three centuries of Christian teaching about killing.
Summary:
The most natural interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount seems to confirm that Christians in the first three centuries were right in thinking that Jesus intended to teach his followers never to kill.
“…love your enemy…” - the real question: what does it mean to love one’s enemy?
(A question akin to asking, “Who is my neighbor?”. Often used to justify one’s self.)
I often go to what you said, Scot, in your commentary of the Sermon on the Mount. Loving someone means you are for, with, and unto that person. If you violate someone, you cannot be for them. You cannot be with someone if push them away (or separated by boarders). You cannot care for a person’s future wellbeing (unto) if they are dead!
Yes, Jesus' teaching goes beyond the OT. He is the "one like Moses" sent to revise and transcend The Law of the OT. Of course, he is also saying he came to "fulfill the Law." In my understanding his teaching is a refinement, filling out of the Law, clarifying its original intention, pointing the way on the trajectory it lead.
However, the examples Jesus gives of how you are to behave are examples of personal response, not that of governing officials. He doesn't say that no one should be responsible for maintaining social order through the discipline Paul refers to as God's agent for wrath through wielding the sword.
It is true that some early Christian writers extend Jesus' teaching to the rejection of participation in warfare. But not all, and it is remarkable, and I think significant that Roman soldiers who become believers in and followers of Christ are not recorded in Acts as having been told to stop being soldiers. That seems to me to be a barrier to acceptance of complete Christian pacifism. There seems to be a realistic acceptance of the need for the threat of counter violence exercised by those whose job is part of governments, at least.
The only reasonable way for Christians to recognize that Jesus' commands to not retaliate violently have a valid place in discipleship is the one Ron Sider has as number 7: Jesus’s command not to kill enemies applies to private not public roles. I don't think his arguments against the non-pacifist view are valid, and every one of them except possibly the 5th and last one can easily be refuted, mostly by simple negations or counterpoints. Even the first three centuries of Christian belief and practice can reasonably be relativized because of the idolatry involved and the obvious fact that the purposes of Roman rule were in no way compatible with the purposes of the proclamation and living out of the gospel. That, of course, changed dramatically when Christianity was made legal and then in so many ways tragically made the only valid religion in the Roman domain.
It is not just pragmatism by which Jesus' teaching has been interpreted as dealing primarily with personal matters. It seems to me that realism suggests that Christianity would not have proliferated as extensively as it has without the aid of worldly governments. Islam would have conquered all of Christendom, for instance. Then much later Communism would have prevailed if it weren't for Christians willing to oppose it violently. Is it possible to interpret the evidence of the early church as unanimously against Christian participation in the violence of government? Yes. Is it also possible that Jesus never said or implied that it was always sinful to participate in government violence and killing? Yes. Given that ambiguity I've concluded that we should not consider Christian participation in governmental use of force to be necessarily sinful. I suppose there are churches that do disfellowship disciples who are members of police or armed forces, but I think they may be sinning if they do.
PS: I was a convinced Christian pacifist for about 45 years, but have recently revised my thinking because of the lack of explicit New Testament teaching against participation in official armed opposition to injustice, and the obvious examples of God having commanded that very thing in the OT (hence implying that it is not always sinful). Stopping the proliferation of violent evil and oppression (genocide!) just can't always be wrong.