When it comes to War we need to realise that Jesus’ voice has been turned down, even ignored by our own cultural baggage. Throughout our history, The Old Testament has been used to justify violence, side-lining the voice of Jesus.
But there is a narrative we can follow through the whole bible that demonstrates how God’s continued action directly challenges our perceptions of biblical violence.
Reading the whole Bible and following its story, a peaceable narrative begins to appear. Rather than a story that encourages violence, we see a peaceable trajectory emerging, leading to a radical challenge to us all.
What went wrong?
Christian Tradition in the west has held to a Just War tradition since the age of Constantine. This has led to the Church blessing acts of violence throughout Christian History into the modern day.
In the main, theologians and Church leaders have used the Bible like a “pick’n mix” at a sweet shop. Taking out their favourite texts try and twisting them to fit current events. For example, the Just War position is commonly justified using a proof text of Romans 13, which is a text used to warn the Christian Church in Rome against violent revolt.
And significantly, throughout history, Just War advocates such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Paul Ramsey have followed this same method in relation to war. The consequence of this being that the Church in each generation has justified wars being waged and Christians serving in the armed service.
We need to read the Bible as it asks us to read it?
Follow the narrative flow of the bible and you begin to understand how God’s continued action challenges our perceptions of Biblical violence. The Bible as a whole is a story of promise and fulfilment, which asks to be read directionally, and actually critiques itself in relation to war.
Prophets
Through the Prophets we hear of a coming reign of God characterized by peace and justice. God is going to do something about the current state of the world and will inaugurate a reign where God is King and the world is full of peace and justice.
Violence
It is, ironically within the very Old Testament violence that a peaceable trajectory begins. Some of the great Prophetic texts that speak of this coming reign occur through the Prophet Isaiah. Prophetic speech that is issued in the midst of the destruction and invasion of Jerusalem and then Babylon.
The New Testament
Within the New Testament, these Prophetic words come in to land and have flesh put on them in the person of Jesus. Through Jesus, all people are continually invited to live lives marked by peace with one another and by building God’s kingdom here on Earth. It’s Jesus himself, who becomes the authority over our life and the life of the Church. Jesus wins this authority, because he has done something about the evil in the world on the Cross, so that all is left for humanity is repentance from evil.
The Example of Jesus
The example of Jesus is crucially important, because through his life and death, He rejected the militaristic expectations placed on Him by scripture and the people around him, even at a time of occupation that had lasted several centuries.
Instead, the Old Testament hopes for military deliverance or “salvation” from the pagan Gentiles was subverted by Jesus and this new peaceable narrative – that of the Gentiles inclusion into God’s Kingdom plans rather than their destruction. God’s people are called to love their enemy as Jesus has loved them, shown in His life, death and resurrection.
A New Hope
So rather than a book that encourages violence, we learn that the Bible critiques itself and offers a radical redefinition of the idea of salvation and the breaking in of God’s Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
Through this narrative, there is a new hope. A hope that God’s Kingdom does not come by violent means but rather through faith in Jesus and being His disciples: loving the enemy with a view to their ultimate inclusion into God’s new community – The Church.
And how do we respond? – Let’s look to Jesus in the bible!
We are called to follow this redefinition where it occurs most strikingly, in the Sermon on the Mount. A passage described by Tom Wright as, “a challenge to Israel to be Israel,’ to be the blessing to the nations that God originally promised to Abraham in Genesis 12.
“Evil would be defeated, not be military victory, but by a doubly revolutionary method: turning the other cheek, going the second mile, the deeply subversive wisdom of taking the cross. The agenda which is mapped out for his followers was the agenda to which he himself was obedient. This was how the kingdom would come, how the battle would be won.”
Tom Wright
God is King over the whole world. God invites the allegiance of all people to share and to build for His Kingdom in the here and now.
How are you going to join in?
Written by Nat Reuss APF Chairman – 
Hi, I’m Nat, I’m married to Ruth and we have two girls. I am Priest in Charge of the Anglican Parish of Onkaparinga Valley in the gorgeous Adelaide Hills. I love reading and preaching the Bible and find within its pages God made flesh who shows us how to live. My involvement with APF is an overflow from this.
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