27 August 2017

Christian Nonviolence and Pacifism: Some Badly Needed Clarifications (Part 4/Conclusion)

Apart from the Scriptural evidence that supports the nonviolent and pacifist position, there is a significant testimony to be found in Church History.


The appeals to Jesus or the Apostles in support of violent self-defense, litigation or some notion of just war are quickly dispensed with and easily exposed as erroneous.
But wait, someone will ask... what of the Centurion in the Gospels and Cornelius in Acts 10?
First it must be noted (with no little irony) that arguments from silence are usually discounted except when someone thinks it will support their position. We don't know what happened with either of the centurion converts. It is assumed by anti-pacifists they continued in their official capacities, but do we know that? I too can argue from silence and yet the record is not entirely without voice.  At least one tradition reports Cornelius left the Roman military and eventually became bishop of Caesarea.
If true, that's hardly in keeping with modern Protestant notions of Vocation. Remember, that popular (but false) teaching asserts that someone like Cornelius is serving the Kingdom of God as a soldier and that task is just as important to the Kingdom as someone serving within the Church.
As far as the centurion in the gospels whose faith is praised by Jesus and whose servant is healed... we know nothing, not even tradition gives us any clues. Even if he became a Christian, his staying in the legions may not have been the right thing to do. My guess is that he would have left and followed the Apostles, but again we just don't know. Of course leaving the military (even in our own day) is not always an easy thing to accomplish.
But what of the Church in the era subsequent to the Apostles?
As mentioned previously the early Church was generally opposed to military service. There's debate is over why this was the case. Was it due merely to the hostility of the Roman government?
Those who argue thus have forgotten something. Not all of the Church was located within the sphere of Rome. There were many Christians outside the empire in the tolerant lands of the Parthians and as far as I know there is no record of them serving in their rather cosmopolitan military.
Of course later the Church suffered persecution under the Sassanids because when Constantine 'converted' to Christianity, the many Christians inhabiting the Persian Empire were perceived to be a potential fifth column.
By the late 2nd century there are stories of Christians within the Roman legions but it must be contended this is a still a minority position and the idea of 'Christian' soldiery was not properly born until the age of Constantine.
And yet even then not everyone accepted this. The early monastic record casts a great deal of doubt on the perceived path of a so-called Christian soldier. One need only think of Martin of Tours. Many like him viewed it as a 'lesser' calling if not incompatible with following Christ and others still continued to view it throughout Late Antiquity as a deviation from Christian norms.
During the early medieval period the record continues to be mixed. While on the one hand so-called Christian kings such as Charlemagne are lauded, the profession of soldier is something base, something sub-Christian in the eyes of many. It was a life of sin, murder and a road to hell.
Only with the rise of chivalry and the Crusades was this image re-cast and even then despite it becoming the official position of the Western Church, not everyone accepted it. Eastern Orthodoxy has never 'embraced' war in the way the West has.
Roman Catholicism itself has always been ambiguous on the topic, even as it blessed Crusades there were still forces at work within it that challenged war and all that goes with it. The Franciscans of course became so radical in this as to suffer persecution and then in desperation some of them turned (ironically) to violence and made war with Rome and the Papacy.
Protestantism (I think) is the only Christian movement in which the mainstream has almost unanimously blessed and endorsed the soldier's life and the path of warfare. There are reasons for this I think, unfortunate ones to be sure, but they do make sense. It was Protestantism's secularisation of society, its support of the middle class, nationalism and capitalism that both necessitated this path and constructed a theology in defense of it. Its transformation of the secular into the sacral made this almost inevitable.
While the old Celtic Church was far from monolithic and far too prone to tribalist prejudice, generally speaking its testimony was one of peace and an attempt to break with the impulses of worldly power and glory... the forces it associated with Rome and its Anglo-Saxon mission.
The Waldensians were committed to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount and were opposed to warfare and capital punishment. That said, there are always exceptions and some communities were so pressed by their Roman persecutors that they turned to the assassination of Inquisitors as a last resort.
Among the Hussite spectrum, the Taborites represented the worst forms of sacral violence and were rightly denounced by figures such as Petr Chelcicky. In some ways they were as bad as the Crusaders. The majority Utraquist faction was committed to the Bohemian state, helped crush the Taborites and later played no small part in the schemes that led to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War.
If we wish to use 'Hussite' in the broadest sense, then Chelcicky and the later Unitas Fratrum (which was itself a formation of Utraquist and other dissidents) bear witness to the proto-Protestant peace testimony... a heritage lost in the fires of the Magisterial Reformation and its wars for Christendom.
The Lollards were always a diverse group. Scripturalists in the proper sense, there was a strong tendency among them to follow the New Testament to the letter. That said, it's clear some were involved in not only the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 but the Oldcastle Revolt in 1414. After that, the political aspirations of the Lollards disappear and they become a deliberate underground group until the 1530s when they join the Reformation and disappear from history. I think it best to say their testimony was mixed from the beginning and despite the certainty of official histories, their origins like that of the Waldensians are somewhat obscure. It also must be pointed out that groups like the Lollards and Waldensians were far from monolithic.
It is of interest to note that whenever a dissident group arises that is determined to follow the New Testament to the letter... the pacifist position is embraced. It's only when the doctrines of Scripture are mixed with political, economic or philosophic concerns that the powerful testimony of Christ and the Apostles is diluted and corrupted. Once a group believes the Kingdom is defined by some boundary, class or political concern the pathway is opened to eventual violence.
With the Magisterial Reformation the peace testimony of the medieval underground and in particular the Waldensians all but disappears. Intriguingly a case could be made that some of the Waldensian groups in Germany, Austria and elsewhere were during this period transformed into Anabaptists. Though I lament their abandonment of Scriptural Baptism, the Anabaptists faithfully retained the Waldensian view of the Kingdom of God. This view was most clearly articulated by Chelcicky who I personally believe was either a Waldensian or closely connected to them.*  
Later, groups like the Quakers adopted a pacifist position but theirs is the beginning of a process of doctrinal development wherein I would argue Christian Pacifism takes an unfortunate turn. Some of the Pietists movements should probably be included in this reckoning.
Next come some of the 19th century Restorationist groups. The 19th century was an era of turmoil and contrasts within the Christian Church. Many errors were born and yet there were also some healthy corrective impulses at work. With regard to the issue at hand the Plymouth Brethren and Church of Christ both have a peace testimony, but sadly this was lost in the wake of cultural movements and social conflagration. The Civil War in the United States drove some such as David Lipscomb to a peace position while others moved away from it. The Crimean War drove some of the Brethren toward a position of non-violence but eventually the position was abandoned.
The World Wars largely destroyed the peace testimony of many of these groups. In a forgotten chapter of American Church history, many of the early Fundamentalists also held to a pacifist position in the face of WWI. For most of them this was not due to an outworking of the gospel or a literal ethical application of the Sermon on the Mount. For them it was the principle of separatism and antithesis vis-à-vis the world. They were attacked for it and accused of being subversive.
Sadly when the world was faced with the carnage of World War II, most of these Fundamentalists abandoned the position entirely and embraced the nationalism and narratives of the Cold War. Fear of communism drove them to abandon their separatism. Not everyone jumped on the Evangelical bandwagon but many did and those that didn't fell into a morass, eventually equating their remnant mindset with confused and erroneous metanarratives about the United States.
At the end of the day few Christians are willing to follow through on the teaching and implications of the New Testament. Power, material wealth, security and respectability are the world's jewels, its quest and its reward. We are called to eschew these things and yet that means taking up the cross and enduring ridicule and shame.
Sometimes I wonder how many professing Christians become hostile to this message and embrace theology which affirms the world because in the end they are afraid to appear as something less in the eyes of their peers. Having lived without these things for many a year I can testify that sometimes the hardest to endure is the lack of respect... to be looked down on and even despised.
And yet the Scriptures tell us to expect this. Is this not the plight of Psalm 73? Is this not the encouragement given to the early Church in the epistles but especially the Asian churches in Revelation?
This basic and fundamental aspect of Christian consciousness and mentality was lost in catastrophe that was born of Constantine. Truly his tenure represented a foundational 'shift' in the identity of the Church. It was the beginning of an apostasy that within a few generations would all but decimate the message and calling of the Gospel. Indeed it was a Dark Age.
Take up the cross according to your Providential calling. Speak to the culture, don't be ignorant of the world, but don't get caught up with its conflicts and concerns either. Let them fight over their money with Caesar's image, let them fight over their stolen lands that they trade back and forth. Let them fight their political theatre. Let the dead bury their dead. Watch, tell the truth and proclaim truth to a lost and dying world but remember you're a pilgrim. We are exiles in Babylon, Sons of the Prophets in the Northern Kingdom, Christians in the Roman Empire.
Constantine not only represented a shift but the trajectory born of his conversion has sowed fog and confusion. Once the paradigm that birthed Theodosius, Charlemagne, Calvin's Geneva, and Oliver Cromwell is dispensed with, the line of demarcation becomes all too clear.
We're not here to earn respect or find security, to become rich or famous. We're not here to seek vengeance or help build a new Babel. Once this is understood, the question of retribution, taking up a badge or gun, or putting on the uniform of the state become basic questions, obvious and not worthy of controversy. In many cases these obligations are also forms of bondage, which Paul also commands us to avoid. Once your eyes are opened, then truly the tragedy of Constantine and even the Church today becomes painfully clear.
But again, we were warned of this. Take comfort.

* This point has been a subject of debate but when the term Waldensian is understood properly as a generalisation, the problem is largely resolved. Chelcicky like the vast majority of Waldensians remained a committed paedobaptist even while criticising paedobaptism as it functioned within a Constantinian system. He seemed to grasp that infant baptism was not a result of Constantinianism, the historical record alone makes this clear. Rather, the problem was that infant baptism along with many other doctrines was corrupted by the Constantinian framework. The Anabaptists, tainted by the reductionist tendencies of a kind of common-sense rationalism proved unable to navigate these waters and rather than remain faithful to the full testimony of the New Testament, they instead embraced a theology which all but eschewed outward signs, symbols and means. While solid on the question of antithesis, they failed to do justice to the full-orbed teaching of Scripture with regard to the Church and its rites and ordinances.