The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence

Abraham's Personal Faith, Moses' Social Vision, Jesus' Fulfillment, and God's Work Today

Friesen

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271899
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Old Testament Roots of Nonviolence brings together a number of issues, showing how they fit together in one exciting story. These issues are:1. War and Peace2. The Great Commission (being missional)3. Social justice and social change over time in the biblical settingThis book reveals the continuity of the Old and New Testaments in the development of these three major themes over millenniums of time in the unfolding biblical story of God's creation, tough love, and redemption of the social order. It presents biblical faith as a providentially guided process in the community of faith resulting in global social change that can be observed and described as yeast in bread or seeds in soil as Jesus taught.

Section VI

Growing Seeds

8

An Adequate Social Gospel of the Kingdom for Mission

Slavery, Race, and War

Race relations became the dominant social issue in the second half of the 20th Century in North America and South Africa, places where the gospel, as interpreted by the heirs of the Protestant Reformation, had taken deep roots. We will now look at the issue of race and American slavery in the light of what has already been presented. Today no one would try to defend slavery from scripture, but it must be acknowledged that in the past, thousands of believers owned slaves. The first of those who can be identified would be Abraham and Sarah. I want to show that what has happened regarding slavery is applicable to the issue of war as well.

Abolitionism in the United States followed the influence of the First and Second Evangelical Great Awakening. As whites and blacks repented together at the altar, the seeds of the gospel began to destabilize the old social order. Historian, Mark Noll, from Notre Dame University writes:

When some of the younger followers of Jonathon Edwards1 became pastors, they began applying insights of their teacher more broadly. In particular, they expanded ideas from the revival about the essential dignity of all created beings stemming from the fact that they shared the “Being” of their Creator . . . With such notions, a distinct movement of social reform grew from the Awakening. Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) a pupil of Edwards, eventually became troubled about the existence of slavery in America . . . Increasingly he came to feel that slavery violated the essential “being” of the kidnapped Africans and that the practice of slave trading made a mockery of Christian efforts to spread the gospel among Africans. He asked, “How could the Congress complain about ‘enslavement’ to Parliament when it so casually overlooked the real slavery imposed upon hundreds of thousands of blacks in the colonies?”2

Charles G. Finney was the dominant figure in the Second Great Awakening. Donald Dayton writes, “Finney argued that God wills that all should be converted and receives all who turn from their sin. This implied a new role for the human will and a new emphasis on human ability. When this doctrine was transposed into the social sphere, it meant that God had given men and women a new role in the shaping of society and that nothing had to be accepted as it was.” 3 Finney called slaveholding a sin, and refused communion to any who were slaveholders. But his was an extremist minority view, even in the free states.

Largely as a result of Finney’s influence on the youth of his day, Oberlin College was established in 1833, and became the national center for Christian student radicals in the fight against slavery. Oberlin students also made significant contributions to the women’s movement, and many took antiwar positions. “The Oberlin Evangelist attacked President Polk for risking war with Britain through his ‘expansionist’ policy of demanding all of the Oregon territory,” and described the Mexican War as “most dishonorable, unjust, and nefarious . . . conceived in sin.”4 The students at Oberlin, however, were divided as to whether Christians could participate in war, but as the inevitable conflict between North and South accelerated, the voices for nonviolence were silenced. Unfortunately a great war destroyed half the country before slavery was made illegal, and one hundred years later, events of the 20th Century proved that the oppression had still not ended. It took another martyr by the name of Martin Luther King to establish as public policy what the Civil War could not—the dignity of the black race as a legitimate, equal participant in the social order, as Galatians 3:28 teaches.

How would Jesus have confronted slavery in the United States in the year 1840 or 1850? How would the early church? In his letter to the church, James insisted there be no deference to people of high social status in the church (James 2:1–13) and Paul declared the same in Galatians, as noted. Quite early on, it became known for churches to take up offerings to purchase and free slaves, something that Jews had also previously done for Jewish slaves in the Roman Empire. The church was the place where social attitudes and practices could change.

The changes that took place followed the pattern Jesus had established. First he trained his disciples, and then formed them into the nucleus for a new nation of priests, pursuing the Mosaic ideal. Jesus built his own team, making a kind of end run around the defenses of Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas, and the emperor. He did not appeal to their authority or seek to enlist their support. Had Jesus been looking for allies, the most logical ally would have been the Pharisees: they were definitely Biblical; took Moses and the prophets seriously; and had widespread support. But Jesus made no compromise with them either. As stated in chapter 7, politics is the art of the possible and is conducted by compromise, but faith achieves the impossible, and operates “within the perfection of Christ.”5

Suppose the abolitionists had done as the early church did. Imagine them taking up offerings to buy out targeted slave owners who might have been sympathetic, but required compensation for property. Suppose the abolitionists had recognized the rights of slave owners under the then current system, but demanded that inside the doors of the church the distinctions would have to disappear, as Paul taught, while poor and rich were given equal status in the church as James taught. Had this been the case, the black slaves who served white masters in the fields could still be elected to rule over their white masters in matters of church government where the rule of Galatians 3:28 prevailed. Instead of going to the legislature and the rule of law to enforce their morality on the world, had they attended to justice inside the body of Christ among those willing to follow Christ, then they would have actually been following the pattern Jesus established and Paul followed, leaving the outside world to the judgment of God. No doubt there would have been martyrs, but the blood of the martyrs could very well have brought down the system of American slavery without the horrors of civil war. Yeast in the loaf need not destroy the bread in the process of transforming it.

In the Kingdom of Christ, the rules of engagement for spiritual warfare demand that we confront the enemy and be willing to die—to accept violence, but not to commit violence. When we seek to use civil authorities to enforce morality and justice for which the world is not ready, we deny the power of the gospel to bring needed change, and the strongholds of the human mind remain under enemy control.

In the New Testament, social change came first inside the church. In modern times, this is how apartheid was defeated in South Africa without civil war, to the amazement of the world around. It is true that apartheid was strong inside the institutional church, but strong voices of opposition within the church were also raised, and the impetus for social change came initially from the seeds of the gospel inside the church, nonetheless. In South Africa there were martyrs,6 but the martyrs won. That should not surprise us who claim to follow Jesus! It is the New Testament pattern.7

Over the last 2,000 years we have seen that the systems of monarchy, patriarchy, and slavery have proved incapable of justice and unworthy of trust. If the Gospel is what has brought this about, which is the burden of this book, then it should be expected that one day the Gospel will also succeed in destabilizing the institutions of warfare, proving them nonviable, and unworthy of the faith we have placed in them.

The Jesus who made no compromise with evil is the Jesus we offer to the nations, and to offer a lesser Jesus is to sell Jesus short. During the American Civil War, a young conscientious objector by the name of Seth Loflin was brought before the firing squad. Beaten and bloodied, but still refusing to put on the uniform, he asked for a moment to pray before his execution. The execution was stayed for a moment so that he could pray, and with a clear voice he prayed, “Father forgive them, for t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Section I: The Soil
• Section II: The Seed
• Section III: The Root
• Section IV: The Stem
• Section V: The Flower
• Section VI: Growing Seeds
• Appendix: Whe Said Jesus That Didn't Understand Politics?
• Bibliography