The Bible and Peace Bibliography
Jo-Ann A. Brant
Professor of Bible, Religion, and Philosophy
Goshen College
with
Joseph Sawatzky
Spring 2007
In the exercise of building a bibliography of biblical scholarship on peace, one quickly learns that peace is not a principal category in biblical scholarship. At the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, you will find sessions devoted to the study of Warfare in Ancient Israel and Violence and Representations of Violence among Jews and Christians, but no sessions devoted to peace. Advocates of peace and nonviolence must often contend with those who argue that the Bible sanctions both just war and even unjust war, or at least provides motivation for unjust wars. It is clear from the frequency with which people support war and claim to lead their lives with reference to biblical teachings that teachings about peace in the Bible can be easily overlooked. In order to study peace in the Bible, one must consider a number of related themes. Having done that, the centrality of the call for peace to both testaments becomes transparent and pervasive. The following bibliography is not exhaustive, but it provides a place to begin.
Word Studies and General Works. The study of peace in the Bible cannot be limited to texts that explicitly use the word “peace.” A number of other words carry the meaning of peace and occur frequently in scripture. Studies of the Hebrew word shalom and the Greek word eirênê are two such words and have proven good starting points for studying peace in the Bible. Word studies help distinguish between the modern usage of the word “peace” and what ancient authors meant by the words we commonly translate as “peace.” For example, a word study quickly reveals that our modern use of peace as the opposite of war, or “keeping one’s peace” as the practice of remaining silent, often in the face of injustice, may bear no relationship to shalom. The word studies by Perry B. Yoder, Claus Westermann, and Erich Dinkler point to an understanding of shalom that denotes shared well being and prosperity and a state of justice. Walter Brueggemann’s short essay “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity” lays out the worldview of the Bible, making a vision of shalom sensible and destroying the myths under which we labor that make it difficult for the modern mind to treat peace as a possibility. Ulrich Mauser’s The Gospel of Peace: A Scriptural Message for Today’s World is a more recent study that looks at the understanding of peace in individual books of the New Testament. Willard Swartley’s work, Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics, provides a comprehensive treatment of themes of peace in the New Testament.
Forgiveness and Love of Enemies. Often biblical teachings about peace are implicit within narratives and their representation of reality. Therefore contemporary biblical scholars have made use of a wide range of theoretical frameworks and examined recurrent motifs in order to make biblical teachings explicit. For instance, an implicit motif of peace recurs in texts about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the means of restoring justice and avoiding the cycle of retributive violence that erodes the well being of a community. I have chosen Gregory L. Jones book Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis as an important work with which to begin the biblical study of forgiveness. Another closely related peace theme is the concept of love of enemies. Most of the work on this theme focuses upon New Testament teachings, but all of the following works make clear that the New Testament teaching is informed by the Old Testament: Lisa Sowle Cahill, Love Your Enemies; William Klassen, Love of Enemies: The Way of Peace; Christopher Owczaarek, Sons of the Most High: Love of Enemies in Luke-Acts: and Willard M. Swartley, ed., The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament.
Social Justice. Word studies reveal that social justice, another peace theme, is central to the concept of shalom. There are numerous excellent studies of this topic. This bibliography includes the following: Moshe Weinfeld’s Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East and Richard B. Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics.
Sabbath and Jubilee. An important mechanism for the maintenance or creation of shalom within a community is fulfillment of the ideals of Sabbath and the Jubilee. These traditions teach an ethic of sufficiency, contentment and redistribution of wealth rather than acquisition, competition, and hoarding. Several works provide a clear picture of these biblical traditions: Ched Myers’ two articles from Sojourners (“God Speed the Year of Jubilee! The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics” and “Jesus’ New Economy of Grace: The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics”); Richard H. Lowery’s Sabbath and Jubilee; and an older work by Sharon H. Ringe, Jesus, Liberation and the Biblical Jubilee: Images for Ethics and Christology.
Honor and Shame. Besides examining topics that are part of the conceptual web that informs shalom, this bibliography includes a number of contemporary scholars who did not set out to contribute to the study of peace but whose findings make significant contributions. In the last 20 years, biblical scholars have increasingly made use of the methodologies of the social sciences in order to gain a clearer picture of the societies reflected in and constituted or imagined by scripture. Honor and shame studies have emerged as especially fruitful in this endeavor. While it’s true that the Bible treats honor and shame as important features of social codes and even perpetuated injustice and oppression in Israelite and early Christian Communities by conferring honor on some and inflicting shame on others, close readings of narrative and prophetic teachings make clear that the Bible also serves to subvert these social norms in ways that liberate the oppressed. I have chosen the work of Jerome Neyrey, S.J. (Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew and “Despising the Shame of the Cross: Honor and Shame in the Johannine Passion Narrative”), and a writing by K.C. Hanson (“How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew’s Makarisms and Reproaches”) to illustrate the importance of the study of honor and shame to an understanding of peace.
War and Violence. Given that violence and subjugation of one people by another are antithetical to the concept of shalom, any serious study of peace in the Bible must contend with numerous texts and tendencies that are antithetical to peace in the scriptures. This bibliography includes several authors’ examinations of themes of warfare in both testaments. The people of the ancient Near East lived in a world where warfare and violence were normative, but this does not mean that warfare and violence are sanctioned by God. These studies work to undermine the practice of using God’s deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt and the conquest narratives of Joshua and Judges as a warrant for the use of warfare to create new political realities or to secure political boundaries and power. Rather, they explore the ways in which the Bible points to the injustice wrought by war and the inability to achieve shalom through warfare. They take note of the way that instruction to Israelite armies ran counter to the maintenance of a standing army or the creation of a military state. Millard Lind’s book Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in Ancient Israel points to important distinctions between the way God intervenes in history and the way humans fight. T.R. Hobb’s book, A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament, focuses upon the realities of Israelite warfare and draws distinctions between the defensive wars of the period of the Judges and the aggressive wars fought under the monarchies. While polemic against human kingship is not his focus, his work lays the ground for more sensitive readings that recognize the biblical narrator is not always approving of violence perpetrated by the supposed heroes of the Bible. In War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence, Susan Niditch approaches the various war ideologies present in the Hebrew Bible from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies. Her study is a very nuanced treatment of the rationalization and critique of the use of violence.
One essay on my list, Alexander Rofé’s “The Laws of Warfare in the Book of Deuteronomy: Their Origins, Intent and Positivity,” helps modern readers situate the legal material that seems to sanction war and violence within an Ancient Near Eastern context and, thereby, shows how the law seeks to move Israel on a trajectory toward peace and justice. In his book, Peace, Violence and the New Testament, Michel Desjardins provides a study of the New Testament that promotes both peace and violence and will help the new reader to this field gain a balanced picture of what the Bible teaches. Violence in the New Testament, a collection of essays edited by Shelly Matthews and E. Leigh Gibson, helps us locate the violent language and images of the New Testament within the religious and political tensions of Roman Imperialism. I have also included Tom Yoder Neufeld’s study, “Put on the Armour of God”: The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesians, in this section because it makes sense of the use of the divine warrior motif in the context of a peace theology.
Mimetic Violence and Scapegoating. Another contribution from the social sciences comes from the work of René Girard, an anthropologist interested in how mimesis leads to violence and a culture conceals its collective violent origins through scapegoating. Just as history tends to be written by the victors in such a way as to make their victory seem just, the literature and rituals of a culture can obscure for the members of that culture their victimization of others. Girard argues that the narratives of New Testament in particular, but also much of the Old Testament, unmasks the mimetic nature of violence and the scapegoating mechanism that allows hierarchal structures of oppression to deflect violence onto an innocent and marginalized group or individual. This is a growing body of literature from which we have chosen a collection of essays published in 2000 entitled Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, in particular, Willard Swartley’s essay “Discipleship and Imitation of Jesus/Suffering Servant: The Mimesis of New Creation.” We have also included two works by scholars who have attempted to undertake a Girardian analysis of biblical texts: James G. Williams (The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence) and Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross).
Kingship, Empire, and Politics. During the last decade, scholars have become increasingly aware of the polemic against empire that runs through the entire canon. In particular, scholars have become sensitive to how New Testament authors exploited the images and language of the Roman Empire to ridicule its claim to be bringing peace and security to the world. The language of the kingdom of heaven and divine sonship that pervades the New Testament now must be understood as part of a counter claim to Rome’s claim to divine sovereignty. Several works illustrate the contributions to the study of empire: Bernard M. Levinson’s “The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History’s Transformation of Torah” in Vetus Testamentum; Richard A. Horsley’s collection called Paul and Politics and also his Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance; Warren Carter’s Matthew and Empire; and Alan Storkey’s Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers.
Jesus and Nonviolence. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus begins his public ministry by announcing that he came to fulfill the good news promised by Isaiah (Is. 61:1-2) to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed (Luke 4:18-19). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus proclaims “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” (Matt. 5:9), and he directs his disciples not to resist violence but to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39). Those who treat these texts as the sole foundation for the claim that Jesus is a teacher of peace and renounces violence run afoul of “I have not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matt. 10:34; par. Luke 12:51).
A number of scholars have written persuasively for an understanding of Jesus that puts a vision of shalom and an ethic of nonviolence squarely at the center of his ministry. The first of these authors included in the bibliography is André Trocmé, who demonstrated his commitment to his understanding of Jesus through his pastorate of the French community of Le Chambon during World War II. Under his leadership, the people of Le Chambon saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. Trocmé’s book Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution (1961) is available, along with his other works, as a free PDF download on the Bruderhof community web site. At the end of World War II, a young John Howard Yoder met Trocmé. He acknowledges his debt to Trocmé in his now classic work The Politics of Jesus (1972). This work should stand at the heart of any bibliography on the theme of peace in the Bible. Another important text is Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (2003), a work that explores creative practices based on Jesus’ teachings.
The work of John Howard Yoder has influenced many scholars of Christian ethics and theology but has been generally ignored by biblical scholarship. Research on Jesus in that arena has focused upon the quest for historicity and has tended to divide into two camps: those who see Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet whose ethic is interim and not the basis for seeking peace between communities, and those who see Jesus as a social critic. In the latter camp, students will find numerous scholars whose work can support dialogue about Jesus and peace. Foremost among this is John Dominique Crossan whose monumental work The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (made more accessible to a less scholarly audience in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography) gives us a picture of Jesus laying down the power to dominate and oppress others at every turn.
The Gospels and Peace. Scholars who have focused upon the Gospel writers as theologians in their own right have produced a number of works relevant to the study of peace. In Peace on Earth: Roots and Practices from Luke’s Gospel, Joseph Grassi examines traditional themes in the Gospel of Luke, such as forgiveness and love of enemies as well as themes related to justice for children, women, and animals. Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus examines teachings of nonviolent resistance in the Gospel of Mark. Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes are examined in many works in this bibliography. Many studies of peace examine Matthew’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, but for a study that focuses upon the representation of Jesus as a peaceful king in the Gospel of Matthew see Dierdre Joy Good’s Jesus the Meek King. The study of the Gospel of John most relevant to the study of peace is perhaps David K. Rensberger’s Johannine Faith and Liberating Community.
Nonviolent Atonement. While Jesus proclaims a doctrine of peace and forgiveness, the church has derived a doctrine of atonement from the two testaments that describes Jesus’ violent death as the satisfaction of God’s need for blood. A number of scholars have re-examined the New Testament’s understanding of Jesus’ death as an act of violence necessary to salvation. The bibliography contains an article by William C. Platcher, “Christ Takes Our Place: Rethinking Atonement,” that orients readers to this body of literature. Most of this discussion has taken place within theological rather than exegetical studies; however, Richard D. Nelson’s article, “He Offered Himself’: Sacrifice in Hebrews,” shows what a good exegetical study of relevant texts can contribute to a clearer understanding of how Jesus’ death brings reconciliation with God.
Apocalyptic Literature and Nonviolent Resistance. The final selections of the bibliography direct students to works that examine what might strike them as the most violent pieces of literature in the Bible. The so-called apocalyptic texts that describe God’s judgment seem to many to reveal a violent God rather than a God who loves peace. Since Adele Yarbo Collins’ publication of her work Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse, scholars have come to see pieces of literature like John’s Revelation to be the product of persecuted and oppressed communities. Collins places Revelation in the context of Domitian persecution of Christians. Given that the reality Christians experienced did not match up with their expectations, and given that they did not want to give up their religious convictions, the author of The Revelation of John tries to eliminate ambiguity by revealing the true state of affairs. Rome is an agent of Satan, and God’s heavenly forces are engaged in a battle in which they will ultimately prevail. Collins’ work comes with a renewed interest in apocalyptic literature that has produced a number of studies of peace in the Bible. It is perhaps ironic that at the same time scholars have found a witness to peace and nonviolence in these texts, some evangelical readers have intensified the use of these texts to advocate a disregard for the well being of society and the reconciliation of creation. The first of these works on peace included in this bibliography could also find its place among the books on Empire. J. Nelson Kraybill’s Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse, and Gordon Zerbe’s “‘Pacifism’ and ‘Passive Resistance’ in Apocalyptic Writings” (The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation) introduce the reader to the broad spectrum of apocalyptic literature and provide a balanced picture of the call to nonviolence in this literature.
Bibliography
Word Studies and General Works
Yoder, Perry B. Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation, Justice, and Peace. Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life Press, 1987.
Perry Yoder Shalom is a call to the Christian church to recover a commitment to the biblical demand for justice for the oppressed, commending shalom as the broad vision to which the pacifist call to peace must be subordinate. Yoder builds his case through a series of word studies, demonstrating how the term “peace” was used in ancient Hebrew and Greek. He thus concludes that a biblical concept of peace does not denote simply the absence or cessation of overt violence, but rather the presence of “okayness” (Yoder’s word), or what can be called justice in all relationships in a given society. In other words peace is the condition that arises only after justice is done. The combination of justice and an ensuing peace are, then, what the Bible calls shalom. However, Yoder is quick to point out that shalom justice is the justice of grace, the justice whose end is the restoration of societal okayness, not individual payment due in exact proportion to offenses committed.Yoder’s argument proceeds from the Hebrew scriptures to the Greek (or from the Old Testament to the New). Disavowing simplistic categorizations of the two texts into Old Testament and New, law and grace, justice and love, Yoder points out the fundamental, thematic congruency of the entire canon—its avowal of right relationships, or shalom, as God’s will for creation. Indeed, Yoder points out that the foundational acts of salvation in both the Hebrew scriptures (Exodus) and the Greek (Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection) were initiated by God’s grace; both Hebrew slaves and “ungodly” sinners owe their salvation to no merit of their own but only to the God who is the helper of the helpless. Likewise, Yoder points out the integration of grace and law in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. Just as the Ten Commandments (law) flow only from the restatement of God’s grace (“I am Yahweh who brought you up out of the house of bondage”), so the Pauline epistles proceed from theology (declarations about God’s gracious acts) to ethical mandates (law) which the communities must carry out in response. (JS)
Westermann, Claus. “Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament.” The
Meaning of Peace:
Biblical Studies. Ed. Perry B. Yoder and Willard M. Swartley.
Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. 16-48.
In this erudite essay, Claus Westermann lays out the various uses of shalom in the Hebrew scriptures. He groups these uses in three main types: 1) shalom as comprehensive wellness within a community; 2) shalom as hope for a future state of peace; and 3) shalom as a theological term derived from the character of God. With regard to the first type, Westermann notes that shalom is so broad it cannot be spoken of as existing between realties. Rather, shalom can only refer to order or balance within one reality, as when the basic humanity of every member within a single community is upheld by every other. As a result then, shalom should not be thought of as a close approximation to the English “peace,” usually conceived as the opposite of war. Indeed, Westermann’s point is that shalom has no opposite—it is the state that exists when order is so prevalent as to constitute a whole.
Although the first use is the broadest type, Westermann argues that the meaning of shalom as the opposite of war came into use with the rise of political kingship in Israel. As a sovereign nation among the nations, Israel now found its “shalom” threatened by nations apt to wage war for control in the region. Once Israel considered its internal “shalom” disrupted by war, it began to place its hope in a future restoration of its national sovereignty.
With the prophet Jeremiah, this hope for political restoration began to take on explicitly theological tones. Shalom was not first of all the restoration of the state but the intervention of God to make a “new covenant” with God’s people (Jer. 31.31ff.). Shalom in its explicitly theological sense that the New Testament employs describes the peace that came through Jesus Christ. (JS)
Dinkler, Erich. “Eirene—The Early Christian Concept of Peace.” The Meaning of Peace: Biblical Studies. Ed. Perry B. Yoder and Willard M. Swartley. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. 164-212.
Erich Dinkler’s essay overlaps a great deal with the Claus Westermann essay that precedes it in the same volume. Dinkler, like Westermann, takes his time in laying out the uses of shalom in the Hebrew Bible. However, in defining peace (eirene)in the Greek scriptures, Dinkler departs from Westermann in one fundamental way. Following von Rad, Dinkler asserts that the theological sense of shalom is “not only the most operative historically but that [it] is also dominant in the Old Testament” (79). Rather than seeing the theological meaning of shalom coming to the fore with the major prophets, Dinkler finds it present in the earliest textual traditions. Consequently, because it is precisely the theological sense that Greek takes from Hebrew to describe peace, Dinkler’s conclusion presents a more thematically united canon throughout the Hebrew and Greek scriptures than does Westermann. That is, while the New Testament is both historically close and heavily indebted theologically to the major prophets, the seeds of peace conceived theologically—even explicitly—should not be overlooked elsewhere in the Old Testament (cf. Dinkler, 73ff.).
Rather than delineating between the testaments, Dinkler sets the scriptural visions of peace over against peace as conceived in pagan Greek literature. Through his survey of pagan literature, Dinkler finds peace defined largely in terms as the result of political and military victories. By contrast, the biblical, theological witness of peace (i.e. peace from God) subverts all notions of peace as something won through human, especially violent, means. The peace of God, which Dinkler traces in the Greek through key biblical texts (Eph. 2.13-18; Col. 1.19f.; Rom. 5; Heb. 7.1-3; John 14.27 and 16.33), is the peace that “makes itself present in the encounter with Christ or with his word” (111).
Brueggemann, Walter, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity.” Christian
Century 24-31 Mar.1999: 342-347.
In this brilliant and delightful essay, Walter Brueggemann reconceptualizes salvation history in economic terms. As he retells salvation history, the “fall” happens in Genesis 47 when Pharaoh exploits humans to increase his assets, including enslaving his own people. Brueggemann calls this hoarding of resources, which is repeated over and over again in the biblical story, “the myth of scarcity.” Out of fear (i.e. a failure to trust in the God who provides), humans seize control of resources and their distribution. The inevitable result is greed. The few in control never feel as if they have enough; their ravenous acquisitiveness means that a few become wealthy and many people never get enough.
The biblical story, however, sings “the liturgy of abundance.” Abundance, not scarcity, is the true reality. God declared creation good, with each kind of plant bearing its fruit for each kind of animal and for humanity. God rained down bread from heaven upon a wandering people, unable to provide for itself. When that people turned the truth of God’s goodness into the lie of their own sufficiency, stockpiling manna beyond immediate need, the manna went mouldy. So it is with anything that humans seek to secure without deference to a gracious God. (JS)
Mauser, Ulrich. The Gospel of Peace. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992.
This study of the word for peace differentiates between its treatment in different books of the New Testament. Mauser identifies Jesus’ compassionate treatment of mental and physical illness as the principal manifestation of peace in the Gospel of Matthew. In Luke, the focus is upon good news to the poor and downtrodden. In Acts, peace is the unity of the Christian community within the Pax Romana. In Paul’s letters, peace is paradoxically found not by resisting but by submitting to the experience of oppression and injustice in order to bring reconciliation. Mauser deals extensively with the Christian hymn in Colossians 1:15-20 and the call to be a reconciled community in Ephesians 2:11-12. The book ends by discussing the implications of the study for the contemporary world in which nuclear power makes possible our own self destruction.
Ulrich is useful to an undergraduate reader because of his engaging prose style and the useful bibliography at the end of each chapter. (JAB)
Swartley, Willard M. Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology
and Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.
Willard Swartley addresses the neglect of peace in scholarly discussions of New Testament theology and ethics by examining the relationship of enemy love and reconciliation to the core of Christian thought (salvation, christology, and the reign of God). He begins with a solid review of shalom and eirênê in both testaments and in the Greco-Roman World, substantiating his claim that peace is integral to the good news of God’s kingdom that Jesus proclaims and embodies. Subsequent chapters focus on particular aspects of peace in the various books of the New Testament. Each chapter is worth reading. Swartley is recognized for his careful scholarship in Mark. In his treatment of the earliest gospel, he highlights how Mark uses and subverts the divine warfare traditions to reveal how Jesus confronts evil, all the while practicing nonretaliation. In much of the work, he draws a contrast between Jesus’ peace and the kind of peace that Rome offers, a peace concerned with personal security rather than universal well being. Swartley strengthens his case by seriously engaging the works of major theorists such as René Girard, and theologians such as John Milbank, Nancey Murphy, and Miroslav Volf. This new work will surely become a classic. (JAB)
Forgiveness and Love of Enemies
Jones, L. Gregory. Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1995.
This work seeks to untangle the Christian concept of forgiveness from contemporary therapeutic grammar of “moralism and narcissism,” clarifying the relationship of forgiveness to the communal vision of the New Testament. Strictly speaking this is more a theological work than a work of Biblical scholarship, but Jones grounds his discussion in scripture. (JAB)
Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Love your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory.
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994.
The first chapter of the work examines the concept of kingdom in the New Testament from the perspective of an ethicist seeking to delineate the call to pacifism and distinguish it from the just war theory of the Christian tradition. (JAB)
Klassen, William. Love of Enemies: The Way to Peace. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1984.
This book has recently been reprinted by Wipf and Stock (2002). Klassen connects Jesus’ teaching on love of enemies to Old Testament teachings and stories and shows that the New Testament should be read in continuity with the Old Testament. Klassen presents Jesus as an interpreter of Hebrew tradition and not its critic. (JAB)
Owczarek, Christopher. Sons of the Most High: Love of Enemies in Luke-Acts. Nairobi:
Paulines, 2002.
This is the published version of Owczarek’s doctoral thesis. He examines the relationship of love of enemies to Hellenistic and later Jewish writings as well as Old Testament texts. Owczarek shows that by loving enemies, one imitates God. This work is valuable to undergraduate students because he provides a review of scholarship on Luke 6:26-37 in chapter two and a detailed exegetical treatment of the text in chapter three. (JAB)
Willard M. Swartley, ed. The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament.
Studies in Peace and Scripture. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992.
This volume is essential reading for anyone studying love of enemy. William Klassen provides an introductory essay on current research and provides a list of areas deserving further work. Here is a source of topics for anyone looking to make a new contribution to the field. All of the essays are good, but the following essays may be of particular interest to undergraduate researchers: “Who is My Enemy? The Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Love of Enemies,” by John R. Donahue, S.J.; “Paul’s Ethic of Nonretaliation and Peace,” by Gordon Zerbe; “Nonretaliation and the Haustafeln in 1 Peter,” by Mary Schertz; “Love for one Another and Love for Enemies in the Gospel of John,” by David Rensberger. (JAB)
Social Justice
Weinfeld, Moshe. Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East.
Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1995.
Weinfeld explores the concepts of justice and righteousness found in the Hebrew Bible as elements of Ancient Near Eastern literature. He discovers that justice has less to do with judicial proceedings and more to do with mercy and loving-kindness that seeks to improve the situation of the destitute, represented throughout the canon by widows, orphans, and sojourners. Not only should judges rule with righteousness, but landowners and the ruling class must care for the poor. He examines how the role of the liberated person, one delivered by God, is to act as God’s servant. Whether one serves as a king or as an ordinary member of society, each is expected to act justly and to direct this justice to individuals. Weinfeld’s use of relevant Ancient Near Eastern texts makes this especially valuable for students. (JAB)
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New
Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.
Hays begins by laying out his methodology of working through an interpretative grid of community, cross, and new creation. He uses the grid systematically to examine the social ethic in the four gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, and Revelation. He also explains the role that metaphor plays in the moral imagination and looks at how a number of major ethicists (Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza) have used scripture. Hays applies his conclusions to five contemporary issues: violence, divorce, homosexuality, anti-Judaism and abortion. (JAB)
Sabbath and Jubilee
Ched Myers, “God Speed the year of the Jubilee! The Biblical View of Sabbath
Economics.” Sojourners May-June 1998. http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj9805&article= 980520.
Ched Myers, “Jesus’ New Economy of Grace: The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics.” Sojourners July-August 1998.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj9807&article=
980724.
These two articles are written for a broad audience rather than scholars, though Myers’ work is based on his own scholarly research. These are good articles for beginning scholars to read for orientation to the Sabbath and Jubilee traditions and their importance for peace studies. To stress the importance of the economic ethic of the Old Testament and the Jubilee tradition of redistributing wealth, Myers begins the first article with a quotation from Jesuit theologian John Haughey: “We read the gospel as if we had no money, and we spend our money as if we know nothing of the gospel.” He contrasts the “trickle down” notion of economic justice advocated by most western governments with the biblical tradition of restoring equilibrium periodically. Myers briefly explores distributive economics in the Exodus story of the manna and then reviews the biblical legal material on the Jubilee tradition. In the second article, Myers examines Old Testament stories that illustrate how human beings fail to fulfill the Jubilee economic ethic and the Hebrew Prophets’ condemnation of this failure. He then summarizes the work of John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus who understood that Jesus called for a new Jubilee and Jubilee economics as the best expression of justice within God’s kingdom. Myers links many aspects of the Jesus tradition to the Jubilee tradition, including the obvious forgiveness of debts and the less obvious reconciliation between the powerful and “socio-economically alienated groups.” Myers notes how often Jesus’ stories of social inversion (the first are last and the last first) explicitly contain references to redistribution of wealth and the elimination of poverty. Myers work brings economics to the center of peacemaking and justice. (JAB)
Lowery, Richard H. Sabbath and Jubilee. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000.
This is the best recent work on sabbath, sabbath year, and jubilee. This work builds upon that of Sharon H. Ringe by bringing the rigor of Old Testament scholarship to bear on the material. Lowery recognizes the difficulty of locating the sabbath, sabbatical year, and jubilee traditions within a particular historical context and multiple traditions within the biblical text. He also acknowledges that the material is a witness to utopian vision rather than actual practices; nevertheless, he argues that this material is at the heart of Israelite identity and influences ethical norms and social practices. The work focuses mainly upon the Old Testament but does demonstrate that the vision of these texts extends into the New Testament. (JAB)
Sharon H. Ringe. Jesus, Liberation and the Biblical Jubilee: Images for Ethics and Christology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.
Ringe reviews the jubilee traditions of the Old Testament and then traces their development in the New Testament in the following themes of the gospels: the reign of God, the proclamation of good news, Jesus’ healing miracles and exorcisms, forgiveness and the call to repentance. Ringe delineates two stages of development: first, the role of jubilee in Jesus’ own ministry and teachings, and secondly, the use of this tradition in the primitive church to identify Jesus and to make sense of his death as a redemptive act. This work is very accessible to an undergraduate student. (JAB)
Honor and Shame
Neyrey, Jerome H., S. J. Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1998.
This volume by Jerome Neyrey provides the reader with an excellent introduction to the concepts of honor and shame and the socio-scientific study of how they shaped traditional Mediterranean cultures. In his application of this lens to the Gospel of Matthew, Neyrey reveals for students of peace how Matthew turns the values of honor and shame on their heads. He renders what Mediterraneans would consider a shameful death on the cross into Jesus’ honorable death. Jesus does not need his honor to be restored but, rather, is one who “deserves our highest praise” (162). Moreover, the beatitudes reveal that God honors those who the dominant cultural system dishonors, and the longer Sermon on the Mount with its list of antitheses requires “his disciples to withdraw completely from certain forms of aggressive behavior” (191). Freed from the system of honor and shame, the disciples can ignore the rules of violence while accepting the risks that such disregard for social norms might invoke. Neyrey’s work is an important contribution to the study of Matthew’s gospel as well as to the study of peace. (JAB)
Neyrey, Jerome H., S. J. “Despising the Shame of the Cross: Honor and Shame in the
Johannine Passion Narrative,” Semeia 67 (1996): 113-37.
In this article Neyrey provides an excellent complement to his work on Matthew. Neyrey carefully outlines the progressively humiliating and emasculating ordeal of crucifixion. He provides his reader with a succinct introduction to the grammar of honor and shame. He then demonstrates how John carefully constructs Jesus’ trial and crucifixion narrative in a way that shows how Jesus plays the honor and shame game and defeats it. Once again, a gospel writer presents a version of Jesus’ death that denies Jesus has been shamed by his executioners, thereby liberating the early Christian community from engaging in a system of challenge and riposte. The Christian community is freed from the need to avenge their leader or the need to hide in shame as followers of a humiliated leader. (JAB)
Hanson, K.C. “How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew’s Makarisms and Reproaches.” Semeia 67 (1996): 81-111.
Although Hanson’s conclusions are not as clearly focused on nonviolence as those of Neyrey, he adds to the study of Jesus’ makarisms or beatitudes by looking at them in conjunction with Jesus’ reproaches (woes). Without properly understanding these speeches in the context of ancient Mediterranean culture, readers often treat Jesus’ reproaches as curses or prophecies of judgment, that is, speech that wishes violence upon its object. By the same logic Neyrey uses, Hanson identifies the beatitudes as positive responses to hostile challenges to honor. He provides a helpful comparison of Old Testament and intertestamental blessings and those in the Sermon on the Mount to demonstrate that Jesus’ blessings in Matthew’s gospel construct a new set of standards for judging what is honorable within the community. The purpose of the reproaches found in Matthew 23:12-36 is not to wish violence upon anyone, but rather to expose the shame in actions in which the scribes and the Pharisees normally take pride. Jesus draws attention to the way in which a system of garnering honor may mask a system of injustice or excess. Hanson’s discussion may be too technical for a student who is unfamiliar with the critical methodologies and technical terminology of biblical studies, but the material on reproaches should be sensible to any attentive reader. (JAB)
War and Violence
Lind, Millard. Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in Ancient Israel. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1980.
Lind’s pacifist perspective allows him to call attention to subtleties in the Old Testament representation of God as a warrior and how God’s role in wars “exclude[s] or downgrade[s] the value of human fighting.” This is essential reading for any student struggling to make sense of the conquest narratives. Lind uncovers an anti-militarism that runs throughout the Old Testament and points to the absence of traditions that valorize and commemorate war as the field of human honor. For example, in his analysis of the Song of Moses (Deut. 32), Lind makes the following observations. First, military power is exercised neither by nor through Israel. Secondly, while God’s saving act is portrayed as the act of a warrior, God is not depicted as Israel’s general but as its sovereign. YHWH the warrior becomes YHWH the king. Israel is to be a people without a standing army, without a physical king. Thirdly, Israel is saved by an act of nature, not an act of war. While the Egyptians suffer, this observation makes it difficult to argue that human wars can be holy or are imitations of God’s salvific acts. And finally, the Song of Moses stands as an example for human beings, not of God’s acts as a warrior. The proper response to God’s act of deliverance is not to dress for battle but to worship God. (JAB)
Hobbs, T. R. A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament. Old Testament
Studies 3. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier Books, 1989.
In contrast to Millard Lind, Hobbs does not write from a pacifist perspective. Strictly speaking, this book has very little to do with peace, although Hobbs himself is very concerned about peace and does address the question of how the New Testament stands in contrast with the Old, but for the student who must contend with the focus upon war in the Old Testament, this is necessary reading. Hobbs helps modern readers refrain from imposing their own experience of war onto what they read in the Old Testament by discussing the nature of ancient warfare. Hobbs contends that the Old Testament presupposes a world in which warfare is a constant reality, a way of life. (JAB)
Niditch, Susan. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. New York:Oxford University Press, 1993.
With depth and sensitivity, Susan Niditch explores the war texts of the Hebrew Bible, identifying seven types of war in the texts: ban as sacrifice, ban as justice, the “priestly” war of Numbers 31, the wars of bardic tales, tricksterism, expediency, and human non-participation. Unsatisfied by scholarly work that identifies one Hebrew or “Jewish” attitude toward war, Niditch understands the wars of the Hebrew texts as indicative of the universal human attraction and repulsion to violence. She sees even in the ban—the wars of total annihilation of enemies, combatant and non-combatant—an underlying valuation of human life. For example, in the case of the ban understood as sacrifice, Israel was not allowed to keep the best of their “winnings” in war precisely because the best (human life) belonged to God, and was thereby returned to God through sacrifice.
Still, Niditch does not claim to find a solid basis in the Hebrew Bible for a modern ethic of peacemaking. She concludes that it is only in the texts where the divine warrior Yahweh wins Israel’s battles through miraculous intervention that we have any kind of seed for modern human non-participation. Yet given that her ideal is non-participation in war, Niditch might have found more support in the Hebrew Bible had her study pointed to basic themes beyond the war texts. For instance, if the foundational “myth” of the Hebrew Bible is that God set things right (i.e. makes justice) for a band of slaves based not on their merit but on their need, then grace rather than retribution is the basis on which to develop an ethic of peace. (JS)
Rofé, Alexander. “The Laws of Warfare in the Book of Deuteronomy: Their Origins, Intent and Positivity.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32 (1985): 23-44.
In this article, Rofé demonstrates the merits of reading scripture through the lens of traditional Jewish interpretation rather than relying strictly on modern historical method. Rather than trying to reconstruct a notion of “holy war” from the limited resources presented by the Old Testament, Rofé points out that the legal material is edited in a period when it would no longer be treated as a prescription for how to wage a war or muster an army. Rofé’s method shows that the laws of herem, which look to the historical critic like a call to destroy one’s vanquished foes utterly, are actually pointing to the virtue of negotiated peace. Rofé, therefore, provides another important resource for the student of peace by providing insight into the importance of difficult material and a method of interpretation that enriches our grasp of the Old Testament as a collection of traditions pointing to a trajectory of peace. (JAB)
Neufeld, Thomas R. Yoder. “Put on the Armour of God”: The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesians. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.
Tom Yoder Neufeld traces the development of the image of the armoured divine warrior “from Isaiah to Ephesians,” giving his greatest attention to Ephesians in which he sees the convergence of various strands of the warrior motif. With each successive occurrence of the armoured divine warrior, Yoder Neufeld identifies points of adaptation and critique. For example, although God alone is the warrior who fights against an apostate human community in Isaiah 59, in 1 Thessalonians 5 the community itself participates—puts on the armour—in the battle the divine warrior is waging against evil. As Yoder Neufeld puts it, the community’s donning the divine warrior’s armour and weaponry signals a “democratization” of the image within scripture, a sharing in God’s power. The same democratization is also present in Ephesians 6, but with new militancy. Whereas 1 Thessalonians offers the reassurance of the Lord’s intervention on its behalf (cf. 4:13-18), Ephesians assumes that it is through the church that God’s battle is waged and won (cf. 3:10). Yoder Neufeld argues that the idea of participation in the divine warrior from 1 Thessalonians to Ephesians has changed from one of passivity to action. (JS)
Desjardins, Michel. Peace, Violence and the New Testament. Sheffield, England: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1997.
Desjardins’ book is written for beginning scholars. This book may be initially problematic for readers whose ultimate interest is peace. Desjardins does not try to reconcile the presence of violence in the New Testament to its teachings on peace. Instead he outlines all the material with which proponents of a New Testament peace position must contend. Desjardins has a broad concept of violence and draws attention to what he calls the “dark side” of the New Testament, texts that are not so loving in their treatment of enemies. This is a good place to begin when looking for a topic upon which to write. (JAB)
Matthews, Shelly, and E. Leigh Gibson, eds. Violence in the New Testament. New York: T & T Clark, 2005.
Matthews and Gibson consciously build upon Desjardins’ work on violence and construct a volume of papers that look at Desjardins’ material with more critical, scholarly methodologies. In “Violent Acts and Violent Language in the Apostle Paul,” John Gager and E. Leigh Gibson look at the rhetoric of violence that suffuses the core of Pauline writing. In “The Blood Required of this Generation: Interpreting Communal Blame in a Colonial Context,” Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre looks at the Q tradition in which “this generation” is indicted for killing and persecuting the prophets. John Marshall, uses postcolonial theory in “Collateral Damage: Jesus and Jezebel in the Jewish War” to show how intra-group conflict in the Apocalypse may be a product of colonial domination. In “‘By the Finger of God’: Jesus and Imperial violence,” Richard Horsley also uses postcolonial theory to locate Jesus within the spectrum of resistant movements. Warren Carter uses a social scientific method in “Constructions of Violence and Identities in Matthew’s Gospel” to argue that class and status rather than ethnicity are the key factors for the construction of violence in the Gospel of Matthew and how the elite are the targets of eschatalogical violence. Adele Reinhartz (“Love, Hate, and Violence in the Gospel of John”) and Shelly Matthews (“The Need for the Stoning of Stephen”) argue that the violence that Christians suffer at the hands of Jews is not historical but serves as a basis for rationalizing revenge upon the Jews. These are not papers that make one feel good about the Bible. The student of biblical peace traditions may want to take issue with some of their positions. Nevertheless, these confrontations with scripture arise precisely because of their tension with themes of peace. These are articles with which students of biblical peace must wrestle. (JAB)
Mimetic Violence and Scapegoating
Swartley, Willard M., Ed. Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking. Studies in Peace and Scripture. Vol. 4. Waterloo, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2000.
René Girard responds to essays about his work. René Girard is a literary critic and cultural anthropologist interested in how a culture conceals its collective violent origins in religion. He argues that primordial mimetic desire gives rise to rivalry which, in turn, gives rise to violence. Through the agency of myth, religion institutionalizes or ritualizes mimetic desire to limit and control violence by directing it to a culturally sanctioned object, the sacrificial scapegoat. Girard argues that the New Testament gospels expose this mechanism as myth by proclaiming the innocence of its victim. Girard’s own work is very difficult to navigate for an undergraduate reader. The intent of the volume is not to introduce Girard but rather to explore the contribution of his work to biblical studies; however, Marlin Miller’s posthumously published essay, “Girardian Perspectives and Christian Atonement” provides one of the clearest, least jargon-ridden accounts of that theory I have read, even though, like all summaries, it paints over subtleties with its broad strokes. In a response by Girard, with which the volume concludes, the theorist provides his own qualifications to Miller’s representation of his thought. The new reader of Girard ought to read Miller first and then turn immediately to the opening pages of Girard’s response. (JAB)
Swartley, Willard M. “Discipleship and Imitation of Jesus/Suffering Servant:
The Mimesis of New Creation.” Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking. Ed. Willard M. Swartley. Waterloo, Ont.: Pandora Press, 2000, 218-245.
In this thorough essay, Willard Swartley supplements Girard’s theory of mimetic desire with his own mimesis of discipleship distilled from the relevant New Testament texts. Building on Girard, whose work he largely embraces, Swartley attempts to make explicit what Girard only implied. That is, while Girard’s work exposed the negative human tendency toward acquisitive desire, only in passing did it point the way to a positive mimesis, the human imitation of Jesus, the one who broke the cycle of violent, acquisitive desire. This positive aspect is what Swartley expounds.
Swartley’s fresh perspective on Hebrews 12:1-3a particularly illustrates how Girardian theory can impact biblical theology. Taking the phrase variously translated “despising” or “disregarding the shame of the cross,” Swartley opts for “despising,” an ostensibly more puzzling yet closer approximation to the Greek than “disregarding.” He chooses despising, despite the NRSV’s translation, largely due to insights gleaned from Girard. As Swartley argues, the cross is not something that Jesus simply disregarded in order to “get on to glory” (228), nor something that he despised as an inconvenient hurdle in his way toward the desired “joy … at the right hand of God.” Rather, Jesus’ despising of the cross lies precisely in the Girardian sense of it as the mechanism of shame, the unjust death of an innocent scapegoat. Jesus thus “endured the cross” in order to expose it once and for all as the despised mechanism of shame, something finally accomplished when God subsequently exalted him. (JS)
Williams, James G. The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. San Francisco: Harper, 1992.
Williams explores the potential of Girard’s notion of mimetic violence and scapegoating beginning with the Bible’s first story of murder, the conflicts of the Exodus, and the institution of a sacrificial system. He sees Ancient Near Eastern kingship as a controlling mechanism to limit and direct violence and the tradition of the Davidic king and the prophets as the development of a nonviolent mechanism for disclosing and protecting the victims of violence. Because Williams is attempting to turn Girard’s work into a method, some of his analysis is a stretch and should be treated with circumspection by undergraduate readers. Nevertheless, he does draw attention to elements of nonviolent theology. (JAB)
Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
Hamerton-Kelly uses Girard’s work as a method of analysis and applies it to Paul’s concept of the cross in order to argue that Paul does not validate the sacrificial system of ritual violence but rather deconstructs sacrifice. Hamerton-Kelly’s adherence to Girard as a method may, in the end, do some violence to Paul’s writings, but he does help readers recognize that much more is going on in Paul’s references to the cross and what it accomplishes than suffering, so that we do not have to suffer the consequences of our sin. (JAB)
Kingship, Empire, and Politics
Levinson, Bernard M. “The Reconceptualization of Kingship in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History’s Transformation of Torah. Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001): 511-534.
The book of Deuteronomy, Bernard Levinson argues, promulgates an alternative vision of kingship in the ancient Near East. The standard vision—the king as guardian and executor of justice, head and patron of the cultus, and military commander-in-chief—is present in the Hebrew scriptures, but Deuteronomy specifically relegates the king’s authority to the authority of Torah. Pointing to Deuteronomy 17:14-20, Levinson argues that the text leaves “for the king but a single positive duty: while sitting demurely on his throne, to ‘read each day of his life’ from the very Torah scroll that delimits his power (vv. 18-20).” Furthermore, though the power by which kings rule indeed comes from God and is modified by an authoritative text, it is not independent of the human actors who bear responsibility for its administration. (JS)
Horsley, Richard A., Ed. Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation.
Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2000.
This collection of essays is a dedicated to Krister Stendal whose important essay “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Consciousness of the West,” published in Harvard Theological Review in 1963, forced biblical interpreters to recognize that much of Christian theology was based upon individual salvation whereas New Testament authors were writing about salvation of communities. The realization that Paul, in particular, was concerned with the salvation of communities from the powers that oppressed them has led the contributors of this volume to look for subversive resistance to Roman imperial power in the writings of Paul. Not all the papers in this volume are valuable to peace studies, although all may be of interest to students of peace. Two articles are particularly worthy of note: “Paul and the Politics of Empire” by Neil Elliott and “Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire” by N. T. Wright. Both point to the way in which Paul challenges the empire by using its language to describe Jesus and what his death and resurrection accomplish. (JAB)
Horsley, Richard A., Ed. Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance: Applying the Work of James C. Scott to Jesus and Paul. Semeia Studies, vol. 48. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004.
This volume introduces students to the work of James C. Scott who has examined how religion and culture interact with politics and economics in subtle ways by exploiting human feelings and passions to permit domination and subjugation. Scott analyzes what he calls rituals of “public mastery” and “ideological justifications for inequality.” He draws attention to how the Romans produced “performances of mastery and command” through its symbolic use of public space, images, and rituals. He also identifies equally subtle signs of discontent and resistance by the subordinated peoples. The contributors to this volume take Scott’s analysis of domination of African-American slaves and European serfs and apply it to Palestinian peasantry to find the “hidden transcripts” of oppression and resistance. This volume will provide students with a set of questions with which they can contribute their own analysis to passages that may seem to have been worked to death. In his essay “On Stage and Offstage with Jesus of Nazareth,” William R. Herzog II provides an example of how this might work when he uses Scotts’ paradigms to perform a fresh reading of the story of paying tribute to Caesar. (JAB)
Warren Carter. Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2001.
Carter contends that Matthew creates a counter-narrative that adopts the imperial terms and symbols of the Roman Empire to show that service is stronger than domination. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Carter’s study for an undergraduate reader is his treatment of specific activities that constitute Roman power. Rather than an army of soldiers to enact aggression against other peoples and opponents, Matthew’s messianic king rallies an army of servants to enact reconciliation and transformation. Carter pays careful attention to the way Matthew exposes the weakness of the Roman system of taxation, social elitism, and autocratic brutality in his narratives and parables. (JAB)
Storkey, Alan. Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2005.
Storkey focuses upon Jesus’ relationship to political powers and draws a picture of the cultural background of power politics based upon historical sources such as Josephus. He examines how many of Jesus’ actions including his baptism would have been seen as a challenge to political power. He sees Jesus’ teachings as a critique of political power for neglecting such things as healing that ought to be their concern. He contends, as do many authors in this bibliography, that Jesus calls for change through a change of heart and lives rather than the use of conquest, class power, or technology. This book is written for a non-academic audience and therefore should be treated as a starting point for building a bibliography rather than the only source for a paper. (JAB)
Jesus’ Teaching of Nonviolence and Nonretaliation
André Trocmé. Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution. Trans. Michel Shenk. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2004.
Trocmé examines how Jesus, through nonviolence, avoids withdrawal from the world and the use of violence against those who act unjustly. He focuses upon Jesus’ adoption of the mantle of the suffering messiah, the prince of peace, who overcomes injustice through sacrifice and humiliation. He would be a prince, but a prince of peace. Trocmé then discusses how Jesus is a model for contemporary Christian peacemakers and refutes the charge that pacifists practice a selfish piety. This is the oldest work in the bibliography. It earns a place not only because it has inspired many of the other works, but because Trocmé practiced what he preached. During World War II, Trocmé was the pastor of a small French community, Le Chambon, where as many Jews as residents were safely hidden. For their leadership in the community, Trocmé and his wife have been recognized by Yad Vashem (the Jerusalem Holocaust memorial and museum) as “Righteous among the Nations.” A PDF version of the book is available online at <http://www.bruderhof.com/e-books/Jesus.htm>. (JAB)
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.
Yoder makes a case for the radical nature of the call to the complete renunciation of violence by Jesus and New Testament authors. His refutation of the use of Romans 13:1-7 as a justification for the just war theory has been widely accepted. Yoder’s reconstruction of Jesus’ teachings relies heavily upon the Gospel of Luke. Until recently his work was largely ignored by historical Jesus scholars because he does not submit the Jesus’ sayings in the gospels to the rigorous criteria of authenticity. These criteria have been criticized as too limiting and at odds with ancient practices of memory and transmission. As a result of questions about the criteria and because Yoder’s reconstruction is so coherent, his work has become a classic that more recent scholarship on the historical Jesus has begun to discover. (JAB)
Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
Wink tackles the accusation that Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence are “impractical idealism” by providing creative interpretations of three of Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount: “resist not evil,” “turn the other cheek,” and “go the second mile” (Matt. 5:38-42), using activist Saul Alinsky’s principles for nonviolent community action. Wink’s interpretation of these passages has been widely adopted by peace and service workers. Some of his findings stand in tension with other aspects of Jesus’ teaching and actions, particularly, his reevaluation of honor and shame. One may also question whether humiliating one’s opponent will lead to resignation of violence or an escalation of violence. Nevertheless, Wink opens up space for the important discussion of how we can creatively fulfill Jesus’ call to nonviolence. (JAB)
Crossan, John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992.
This is a controversial work in the context of traditional historical Jesus research because Crossan seriously engages anthropological models and typologies regarding power, social stratification, and protest movements in tribal and third-world societies and applies them to Galilean society in the Greco-Roman world. While Crossan is not concerned with peace and nonviolence, he paints a picture of Jesus that is compatible with such interests. His Jesus preaches a message of radical inclusion of the excluded and, by living an itinerant life, daily disavows power and privilege. This work is rigorous in its methodology and so most undergraduates find it a difficult read. Crossan has published his conclusions in a much more accessible format in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: Harper, 1995). (JAB)
Grassi, Joseph. Peace on Earth: Roots and Practices from Luke’s Gospel. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2004.
In this work written for a popular audience, Grassi examines the image of Jesus as the messiah of peace and nonviolence presented in the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s letters. He focuses upon Jesus’ social ethics of “nonviolence, love, compassionate justice, true repentance, and forgiveness” (ix-x) and the way that Luke integrates this teaching into his narratives, particularly the birth and infancy narratives. Like many contemporary works on Jesus, Grassi contrasts Jesus’ notion of peace with that of the Pax Romana.
Besides noting Jesus’ inclusion of those formerly excluded, such as women and children, Grassi notes Jesus’ compassion for animals. Grassi also gives space to the discussion of peace as a spiritual discipline, what he calls “inner peace” (the dispositions of compassion and mercy) as a necessary complement to “outer peace.” (JAB)
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1988.
Ched Myers is an activist who hypothesizes that Mark presents Jesus as a grassroots advocate of revolutionary nonviolence who attacks both Jewish and Roman established powers and offers a program for constructing a new society. Myers sees the institution of the synagogue and the Temple in Jerusalem as tools of economic and social oppression and the demons, the power of which Jesus binds, as symbols of oppressive human institutions. Myers also focuses upon Mark’s teaching on discipleship and argues that the call to take up one’s cross is an invitation to political action. Any student using this book should acknowledge that Myers brings his own left-leaning politics to his reading of Mark and should recognize that many more conservative scholars reject his findings. (JAB)
Good, Dierdre Joy. Jesus the Meek King. Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International,
1999.
Good examines what Matthew means by Jesus’ self-representation as a meek (praus) king (Matt. 11:29; 21:5) by conducting a linguistic and cultural analysis of the use of meekness in the descriptions of Hellenistic kingship and then setting the quality of meekness in the context of other virtues foundational to early Christian communities. Her investigation of the relationship of kingship and virtue in Matthew provides another important contribution to the relationship of personal virtue to the path of the peacemaker. (JAB)
David K. Rensberger. Johannine Faith and Liberating Community. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1988.
Rensberger helps readers locate within the Gospel of John ethical teachings and a concern for the needs of individuals and communities. Rensberger sees the gospel responding, in particular, to the plight of people who have been excluded from established communities, such as the synagogue. He shines a light upon the representation of Jesus as one who stands in solidarity with the dispossessed, offers them salvation, and calls them to an ethic of love rather than fear and hostility. This is an important book for helping readers get beyond the idea that the Gospel of John calls for a personal introspective piety rather than a social ethic and is of limited use for the study of peace. (JAB)
Atonement Christology
Placher, William C. “Christ Takes Our Place: Rethinking Atonement.” Interpretation 53.1 (1999): 5-20.
In an essay that is more theological than exegetical, William Placher “rethinks atonement” through a synthesis of contemporary analogies, classic theology, biblical inspiration, and modern scholarship. Placher’s case rests on the reality that guilt is too persistent to be overcome on our own; Christ’s cross absorbs our sin and guilt, bearing it away. Likewise, the church—the Body of Christ—also absorbs the sin of guilty individuals, restoring them to right relationship. His essay sets up the work of Jon Levenson and René Girard as foils for the presentation of his own solution to the problem of human sin and guilt. Placher appreciates both Girard and Levenson’s insights into the atonement, but concludes that they are both essentially “good theology for good people.” Placher believes that Levenson and Girard help humans expose the lie of the efficacy of violence, but do nothing to empower us to live beyond the debilitating guilt that our injustice incurs. Placher asserts that Levenson and Girard both assume that education—the exposure of all that is false and unjust—is sufficient for our salvation. Placher’s work is important for the way it regards the connection between individual and corporate sin: the One dies on behalf of the many because God identifies God’s self in the plight of sinners. Similarly the many members of the one body (the church) also take responsibility for the restoration of the individual because they recognize their own complicity in his or her sin. (JS)
Nelson, Richard D. “‘He Offered Himself’: Sacrifice in Hebrews.” Interpretation 57.3 (2003): 251-265.
In straightforward comments on Hebrews, Richard Nelson fits the death of Christ within the category of sacrifice. While Nelson argues that the author of Hebrews views Jesus’ suffering and death as a necessary step in the salvation of humanity, it is just that, a step. Indeed, the death of Christ is not a saving end in itself, but precursor to the application of the blood that makes atonement for the people. Hebrews argues that the blood of Christ—the cleansing agent that effects salvation—is greater than, yet parallel to, the animal sacrifices for the Day of Atonement (Lev 16) that form the framework in which to explain Christ’s sacrifice. Nelson points out the ways in which the author of Hebrews took over the Old Testament sacrificial framework to form his understanding of the sacrifice of Christ. For example, just as the priests in the temple made sacrifice on behalf of the people, so now Christ intercedes for the people. In this way, Christ is parallel to the priests, but through the pouring out of his own blood he is at the same time sacrificial victim, parallel to the animal sacrifices in the temple.
Nelson challenges much Christian preconception on both the atonement and the logic of Hebrews. For example, though Christ’s sacrifice was unique, Hebrews does not present it as substitutionary. Whereas substitution implies reconciliation completed in a one-to-one exchange through death, Christ’s sacrifice is reconciliation effected once and for all through his blood—the seat (cf. Lev. 17:11ff.) of his godly life has power to “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God” (Heb. 9:14). In other words, the end is not death but the life to which it leads; the end is not death but the transformation to life beyond the stain of sin. Or, to use Nelson’s categories, the soteriological benefits of Christ’s sacrifice (the removal of sin) lead beyond to psychological benefits (freedom from fear; peace within) and social benefits (solidarity of the faithful in the face of persecution) for God’s people. (JS)
Apocalyptic Literature and Nonviolent Resistance
Zerbe, Gordon. “‘Pacifism’ and ‘Passive Resistance’ in Apocalyptic Writings: A Critical Evaluation.” The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation. Ed. James H. Charlesworth and Craig A. Evans. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994. 63-95
Zerbe examines the evidence to support the recent claim by scholars that Daniel, The Testament of Moses, Revelation, and 2 Baruch promote a stance of “passive resistance” or “pacifism” in the face of foreign oppression or imperial rule. In particular he focuses upon the opposition to the use of armed resistance and the call to endurance, suffering, and martyrdom. Much of the value of this article lies in Zerbe’s careful use of language and his sensitivity to qualifications in terms. Zerbe, himself an advocate of nonviolent resistance is cautious not to impose his own views upon these texts. As a result, he does not gloss over the places where the texts call for violent treatment of oppressors and those who collaborate with them or seems to condone the use of the sword. (JAB)
Kraybill, J. Nelson. “Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series. Vol. 132. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.
Kraybill’s work stands out because of his careful attention to the realities behind the rich imagery of John’s Apocalypse. Besides locating this text in the context of resistance to the Empire, Kraybill takes note of the particular ways that the text invites its readers to resist. For example, Christians are encouraged not to participate in a trade that is itself a corrupt system of power. Moreover, the text calls for Christians to make difficult economic choices. He goes beyond the obvious Christian rejection of the imperial cult to examine the economic implications for refusing to participate in it. Kraybill demonstrates that the images of judgment and condemnation are adapted from the Hebrew prophetic tradition and, as a result, make use of the prophetic tradition of social justice. (JAB)
Last Updated: March 2008
