Fred Bahnson's essay on Mark 11 (Peacemaking in the Midst of Violence and Conflict Resolution Along the Lines of Matthew 18) is one of those that falls short of convincing for me. I think my reaction to the essay reflects my experience this summer. At Hyaets, I often tire of hearing the anti-war line. To me, a lot of pacifist talk comes across as dogmatic and absolutist. In fact, sometimes it begins to sound like BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. Yes, Jesus said "love your enemy" (Mat 5:44), but does that mean that killing your enemy in a state of war is necessarily wrong? I don't have an answer. War is a reality of life on this earth. Has been for a long time. War's presence among us does not make it right, but we cannot allow ourselves to ignore the moral and practical difficulties that arise from that presence.
Allow me to focus here on Bahnson's essay, as I believe his views are pretty well representative of the Christian peacemaker complex.
Bahnson states that Christians support war because of a belief in a "dualist public/private morality." But this argument is certainly an oversimplification. Even if we see the Kingdom of God as more than a personal belief in each individual's heart and as a political reality in dialogue with personal faith, the questions of the possibility of military action remain.
Take for instance the following situation, one similar to current international realities. You have two countries with two sovereign governments, respectively. Both countries have standing armies, although one of the countries is far stronger militarily than the other. The weaker country is controlled by a corrupt government that actively uses violence against certain ethnic groups within its borders. These actions are consistently in violation of the moral law. If the stronger country has an opportunity to effectively put an end to the corrupt regime in the weaker country by use of violent force, is that country permitted to do so? Is it obligated to do so? In this situation we are pulled in two separate direction by the opposing goods of nonviolence and the rights based claims of the oppressed people. Surely there are no simple answers to these questions. But the extreme pacifist would say that in no circumstances is violence permitted, including those above.
What really irks me is those who would prefer to avoid such difficult and important questions and take an absolute stance on nonviolence. Bahnson quotes Dietrich Bonhoffer, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century: "Humanly speaking, we could interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience. He does not want it to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it." I find it hard to accept Bonhoffer's view. The mysteries of our faith such as the Trinity are revealed to us through Scripture and Jesus, God's word made flesh, but other doctrinal elements must stand the test of reason. And "love your enemy" is not one such mystery, but part of a system of truths accessible to human reason and understanding. To usher Christians into a habit of surrender and blind obedience to Scripture would probably create more problems of interpretation than it will solve. I think a more adequate treatment of the dictum "love your enemy" would be to consider loving one's enemy to be always morally better than hating one's enemy, which is not permissible. This interpretation will not, of course, translate into one never being permitted to use violence against an enemy.
Far from discounting Jesus' teachings, my intent is to situate those teachings within a schema which makes sense. It makes much more sense for love of enemy to be classified as a moral good rather than a maxim of moral obligation. For if it we ought to love our enemy to the fullest in each and every instance out of a sense of obligation, how would this view manifest itself in relations between nations? Would U.S emissaries bring made-in-the-USA cookies to the Taliban in Afghanistan? Would President Obama welcome Osama bin Laden into the White House for dinner and conversation? These are some of the ways we show love at Hyaets, and if these signs are among the best ways to love another, would we not also want these signs translated into an inter-national scale? I could go on, but the absurdities are making my head spin.
To accept nonviolence as a good and to seek the good brings practices of conflict resolution into the picture. Conflict resolution is something we see happening often at Hyaets. Hanging out with kids in the neighborhood, we often act in accordance with the instruction of Matthew 18:15 when conflict arises. We pull a kid aside and point out to them their error. This opens the door to forgiveness and restoration. We see this happen almost everyday. It is at the same time both beautiful and mundane. Beautiful, because it is part of the plan laid out by God for our interactions with other humans, and mundane because of its frequency. So while the pacifist stance appears to me as mere hogwash, pursuing love for our enemies through sensible conflict resolution seems, one, practical, and, two, much more in line with the demands of reasonableness.
So this post is a mess - obligation is always messy - but I don't really have ample mental or physical resources to remedy this situation. My train home leaves in exactly 36 hours and I am exhausted, though these two conditions have little to do with each other. Bed time for Matt.
Pax et bonum.
Matt, I do agree with one statement - "This post is a mess." I'm a little short on time, but here are a few things that I hope will generate some discussion.
ReplyDeleteHere's problem number one for me: you want things to conform to 'the demands of reasonableness' or to fit within a 'schema that makes sense,' which you make clear eliminates the pacifist argument as you understand it. However, we have no way of knowing what you mean by being reasonable or making sense. The only conclusion we can draw from your argument then is that 'things that make sense' means things make sense to you. That's not sufficient for me to follow your argument that pacifism is hogwash.
I suppose this is tied up with your Kantian ideals that you have mentioned before, so that is probably a hint as to what you mean. By reasonableness, you may mean something like 'fits within the western, Enlightment liberalism tradition of reasoning.' I may be wrong on that. Maybe not. You won't be surprised to find out that I'm not a Kantian, nor do I find that idea of reasoning all that reasonable.
On a different topic, your lumping of pacifism into one broad category doesn't comport with the reality of the very different sets of rationales that people who call themselves pacifist subscribe to. Some of those (esp. those based on sentimental fantasies about human nature, or silliness like 'can't we all just get along') would not stand up to critique in any way. Christian pacifism is significantly different. Hauerwas says it roughly this way (from my memory): Xn pacifism is not a strategy to rid the world of war, but more the acknowledgement that in a world at war, we (followers of Jesus) cannot help but resist violence. That's a crude restatement, but I know I got the first part right. Xn pacifism is not a strategy to rid the world of war. If it was, then it would obviously be a colossal failure. In that light, the pacifism I would argue for, and that generally folks at Hyaets would talk about, is not concerned primarily with efficacy. It is more concerned with faithfully following Jesus, who, we would do well to remember, was not exactly a political success story.
Finally (for now), I would encourage you to read Bonhoeffer. He's one of the greats, and I'm not sure that quotation really captures his ethic all that well. He stands to me as one of the great theologians of the 20th century, but also one of the great heroes of faith for our time.
John Tyson's has been asking for you again today. He wanted to show you his balls. Know you are missed-
Thanks for calling me out.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to flesh out a criticism against the type of Christian pacifism that takes the form of the statement "acts of war are never permissible." That seems to be the position of the author of the essay on Mark 11. I think this absolutist view would be made to look implausible by calling to mind situations in which there would be compelling reasons to carry out acts of war, such as the one above.
I wasn't intentionally or unintentionally presenting a Kantian criticism. Sometimes I wonder if certain elements of my thinking are unintentionally Kantian, but not in this case. That said, I don't think you should be quick to criticize ideas because they are either Western or liberal or products of the Enlightenment.
Responding to your second point, I didn't set out to lump together all Xn pacifism into one broad category. Perhaps I ought to be more careful. What I did set out to discredit is the dogmatic, "bleeding heart" view that I read into the essay on Mark 11. I don't have the book on me (its at your house), but the author was pulling the whole "American church is a corollary of Empire" trope, which I find to be exceedingly silly. I'm sure that there are good arguments for Xn pacifism, especially those espoused by Hauerwas. However, I have yet to see (nor, admittedly, am I that interested in hearing) an argument of the "acts of war are never permissible" type. And without this type of conclusion, I'm not sure how "pacifist" a Xn pacifism would be.
I would prefer to subscribe to the orthodox just war argument presented here (although current political realities intuitively to me seem to call for a more permissive doctrine):
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm#article1
While we must always remember that Jesus was not a political success story, his followers have to face political realities, and in facing these realities usher in the Kingdom of God in the here and now.
I only used that quotation because it was in the essay on Mark 11.
Miss y'all too.
I'd like to withdraw the statement about needing a more permissive doctrine. I had not read that article in a while and it sounds quite fine to me.
ReplyDeleteI know that's why you used the quotation - just wanted to point out that Bonhoeffer needs a better reading than that one piece can provide. I especially think that he is important because of the life he led and the decisions he made, esp. his decision to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He called himself a pacifist, but chose to participate anyway. In doing so, he did not seek to justify the act, but instead said that he knew that the act of taking someone's life was a sin, and prayed for forgiveness for his participation which he deemed as necessary. He was a courageous example of faith, and his life may be instructive for us in the kind of questions you are asking.
ReplyDeleteI'm no fan of the kind of dogmatism you are arguing against, and I totally respect I serious just war argument, as I think that at its best it represents the kind of discipline needed to limit war in a world where war does really happen. For me, though, I think that the question regarding whether war is permissible raises the question of where the allegiances of those fighting are. If once allegiance is to Jesus the crucified one, then I have a hard time seeing the killing of other humans as permissible. If one's allegiance is to a particular banner or nation-state, then obviously the narrative that informs whether war is permissible is different than the narrative that forms Christians.
I wonder whether we're asking these questions the right way, btw. Your proposed scenario above looks a lot like the situation ethics approach. Macintyre would not approve, I don't think, nor would Hauerwas. I wonder whether a better question would be something like "How do we form a people who, in a world of violence, are able to witness to the peace of God's kingdom?" I'd have to think about that question a bit more to determine whether I like it, but at the very least, I think it points in a better direction and makes different presuppositions than your scenario does.
I'm not one to argue with Aquinas (you played quite the trump card with that), but I find the article a bit lacking at this point. I'll have to read further and see if I can be a better reader in order to understand what he's talking about. Of course, that's only half the battle, as we must also understand our situation, which is not the same as Thomas's.
Peace