Mercy of Jesus = Violence of Rome?
Here’s the provocative concluding statement for Shelly Matthews’ paper, “Clemency as Cruelty: Forgiveness and Force in the Dying Prayers of Jesus and Stephen“:
But I would suggest that in the telling of Luke-Acts, the ethical teachings of early Christians share considerable space with the values of the Pax Romana – inscribing violence as peace, conquest as beneficence, and cruelty as clemency.
Earlier she says of the “Lord, forgive them” prayers of Jesus and Stephen:
As an expression of self-mastery and the ability to refrain from retaliating in the face of undeserved violence, it is an assertion of the ethical superiority of Christianity over Judaism. As an expression of undeserved mercy substituting for deserved retaliation, it may be considered a “marcionite” assertion, and may well have taken shape within the context of the developing second-century marcionite controversy.
She presumes an early second-century date for Luke-Acts. I appreciate her paper, as it makes me consider new things, but I’m not on board.
Do you think there’s anything to it?
Violent Indexing
My job this summer–aside from caring for my baby boy and doing research–is to work as a Research Assistant for Ra’anan Boustan by indexing a book that he is co-editing. The book is a collection of papers given at a conference that Boustan helped to organize at the University of Minnesota: “Sanctified Violence in Ancient Mediterranean Religions: Discourse, Ritual, Community.” Selected papers from that conference were then published in an edition of Brill’s Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches (17:1-2 [2009]). Now, Brill is republishing that edition as a paperback book, entitled Violence, Scripture, and Textual Practices in Early Judaism and Christianity and edited by Ra’anan Boustan, Alex P. Jassen, Calvin J. Roetzel. It will be out before SBL this fall.
Guess who’s working the index. Yours truly! I know what you’re thinking: “Indexing, huh? Isn’t that boring and tedious?” So, maybe there is a modicum of tedium in the job. But look at it this way: I get to decide what the most important concepts in this book are. I can’t just run an indexing program and be done with it. I need to be intimately familiar with the contents–intellectually, that is; not that I go perform acts of sanctified violence to understand them better.
Indexing this book in particular is a good project for me as an Anabaptist. Anabaptists, of course, are not fond of violence but they do spend lots of time thinking about it. Many of the essays in this book take a different approach than Anabaptist biblical scholars might.
I love to read a about a diversity of views, as it helps me sharpen my own thoughts on any given matter, but I have to admit my hesitation about a few of these essays. I am especially conflicted about the contributions of Kimberly Stratton, Jennifer Glancy, and Shelly Matthews. To me, it feels as if they are “blaming” the texts of the New Testament for future use of those texts in justifying violence. They thus speak of the violent “ramifications” of the texts.
Stratton calls Jewish and Christian eschatological visions “colonial mimicry”: they internalize the language of domination that the texts were attempting to critique. Glancy claims that John uses a violent act as a “sign.” She says that Jesus’ use of a whip to drive out his fellow Jews from the temple is a “moment of violent self-revelation.” This Johannine “violence as sign” then “contributes a central building-block to the history of religious violence.” Matthews argues that the dying forgiveness prayers of Jesus and Stephen were intended to demonstrate the “heroic clemency of the speaker,” rather than actually forgive their enemies. She finds affinities with Roman discourse on clemency, “in which imperial domination is figured as beneficence toward the conquered.” [Quotes taken from the Introduction]
My issue with this sort of textual critique is context, context, context. It helps to remember that the Jesus movement was initially a minority within a minority in an Empire not always kind to minorities. The first-century followers of Jesus had not conquered anyone. Jesus did not cause any physical harm to any persons in his temple action. And the forgiveness prayers were placed on the lips of men who were being executed. That said, I think the points of Stratton and Matthews, in particular, should be weighed heavily. It makes sense to me that the authors of these texts used the rhetoric that was available to them–to enhance the meaning of their own perspectives. And can we not find some sort of violence (loosely defined) or domination in almost any sort of rhetoric? The implications–or “ramifications”–of that rhetoric usage deserves close attention.
Okay, now how shall I place “rhetoric” in the index? Hmm… back to the tedious part.
SBL Reflections: Anabaptists and "Nonviolent Atonement"
Greater bibliobloggers have already done their reflections on experiences from the big SBL/AAR meeting in San Diego last month, but I just had to focus on my end-of-the-quarter responsibilities for awhile. Now that the Fall quarter is officially over, my main concern is making sure my doctoral applications are all taken care of and taking some time to reflect. My time at SBL this year was tilted more towards my concerns with the former: I was trying to meet with people (profs and grad students) and get some good advice on PhD stuff. But I also came across some engaging ideas, unrelated to my drive towards doctoral work.
On Friday night (November 16th), I went to what some have called the “Mennonite schmooze fest,” also known as the “Mennonite Scholars and Friends Reception.” It is the answer to the question: “What happens when you fill a room with tons of Anabaptists?” It was my first time doing the SBL/AAR menno-schmoozing, but I heard it may have been the most crowded it has ever been. For the “introduction” tradition, we all stand in a humongous circle and say our name and institution. It seems like the group may have outgrown the tradition, but I’m just a noob.
The next morning continued the menno-fun with the traditional “Mennonite Scholars and Friends Forum.” Last year, it was on Jewish-Anabaptist relations, particularly a discussion on John Howard Yoder, and it hosted Daniel Boyarin for some interesting discussion. This year, the topic was “Reflections on J. Denny Weaver’s Non-Violent Atonement.” Weaver was, of course, there to respond to the reflections. Doing the reflecting, we had Sharon Baker (a prof at my alma mater!), Mark Thiessen Nation (a Fuller PhD grad), and Thomas Yoder Neufeld (who I met the night before at the schmooze fest).
If this had been a presidential candidate debate and we were declaring “winners,” I would have to say that it was hands down Tom Yoder Neufeld. Of course, I’m showing my bias because Tom was the only Bible scholar among them and I’m a Bible guy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me set the scene a little bit.
Honestly, I wish that this could have been recorded and shown to any and all who have interests in the atonement. Denny’s book has become well-known in that field, but I think many people assume it is the Anabaptist theory of the atonement. If they had come to this little Mennonite debate, they would have seen that there is no unified Anabaptist voice on Atonement and indeed, many Anabaptist folk feel quite uncomfortable with Denny’s views. I hadn’t been all that interested in the atonement before I took the class, “Cross in the New Testament” with Marianne Meye Thompson, because it is just so darn complicated and mysterious. But now that I have a basic understanding of the various views and their implications, I’m more interested in engaging the topic.
At the session, we first had a basic summary of Denny’s book. Going against the grain of some significant Anabaptist theology, Weaver wants to avoid attributing violence to God. If we have a “violent” image of the atonement, in which a wrathful God demands a violent sacrifice of Jesus in order to pay some kind of self-demanded debt, then we may be encouraged to be violent ourselves. Drawing upon the critiques of contexual theologies (such as feminist, womanist, and black theologies) against traditional views of the atonement, Weaver attacks the foundation of the historical “satisfaction” theories (with their roots in Anselm): “Satisfaction atonement depends on the assumption that doing justice means to punish, that a wrong deed is balanced by violence” (225). Weaver instead opts for a modified form of Christus Victor, which is the view that attributes to Christ’s death a cosmic victory over the evil powers of Satan. For Weaver, though, those cosmic forces are representative of historical, human realities. For instance, when describing the cosmic symbolism of the book of Revelation, he notes, “it is clear that the symbolism of conflict and victory of the reign of God over the rule of Satan is a way of ascribing cosmic significance to the church’s confrontation of the Roman empire” (27). In Weaver’s understanding, if we have a violent image of God, that justifies the violent actions of humanity (going against a good lot of Anabaptist theology and especially Old Testament scholarship, which imagines God as the “divine warrior” who fights the battles for humanity).
Then we got into the responses. Sharon Baker, up first, was by far the most positive response. She affirmed Weaver’s reinterpretation of the atonement and reinforced it by arguing that the Christian church has continually changed their views depending on their own particular social and historical situations: indeed, “the tradition,” she said, “is to reinterpret the tradition.” She also affirmed that, while it is difficult to establish causes and effects between social violence and atonement theory, if atonement theories lend legitimacy to violence, we must rethink them. She offered one comment that took me aback for a moment: Baker stated that “narrative Christus Victor [theory] offers a more consistent picture of God.” My question: is the biblical image of God consistent? More on that later.
Mark Thiessen Nation was up next and his response to Weaver was quite negative, but his was a more personal reaction. I know I’m not going to do him justice because I didn’t quite follow his argument. He was interested in the affects of martyrdom generally and even mentioned that he grew up in a racist environment and that part of how he got out of his racist views from childhood was the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. He suggested that it was the powerful death of MLK that shook him out of racism. In a sense, Thiessen Nation stated more than once, “Martin Luther King died for my sins.” It was an interesting connection, but for me it raised more questions than answers: if we add such significance to the deaths of all minoritized “martyrs,” does that mean their deaths are good and that their killers did the right thing? Of course not.
As I mentioned, Tom Yoder Neufeld (who is, by the way, the son-in-law of John Howard Yoder) was my personal favorite. He did offer some agreement with Weaver: he concurs that the atonement is connected with transformed/transforming living and that the resurrection is not just a generic hope, but a defining act in the cosmos. But Yoder Neufeld dug deeply into problematic biblical texts to suggest that our understanding of the atonement should be more nuanced. Weaver’s criterion for his atonement theory, and Tiessen Nation mentioned this as well, is nonviolence. In other words, it begins with the idea that the atonement must be nonviolent and is thus self-fulfilling. Furthermore, Yoder Neufeld questioned Weaver’s usage of the term “violence.” What do we mean by “violence” related to the death of Jesus? Is God “responsible” for such violence? And if so, is God appropriately labeled “violent”? Yoder Neufeld also emphasized that we must have a fuller picture of the biblical God, who is at times a wrathful judge, to be both feared and trusted.
Yoder Neufeld’s ultimate critique of Weaver is that he has a “truncated reading of the Scriptures, driven by an ideological hermeneutic.” Instead, we should open our views to see multiple possible atonement theories alive within the biblical text. Biblical atonement theories are less mathematical equations and more poetic ways of trying to understand the death of Jesus. Thus, we can include both substitution and Christus Victor in our understanding. (As an aside, this is partially how I understand Joel Green’s “kaleidescopic” view.)
Weaver responded by suggesting that Yoder Neufeld is “comfortable” with the image of a violent God. Yoder Neufeld responded to that accusation by saying that he was simply trying to accurately reflect the biblical texts, which is a far cry from saying that he is “comfortable” with those texts. In response to other comments of Yoder Neufeld’s, Sharon Baker offered that all of our readings of Scripture are driven by an “ideological hermeneutic.” Tom did not disagree.
So, here’s my two cents. True, we are all driven in our interpretive methods by some particular point of view or ideology. On the other hand, it strikes me as more honest to go with a reading that is less “comfortable” to one’s ideology. Clearly, Tom is dedicated to nonviolence and finds the biblical texts attributing some sort of “violent” tendencies to God quite troubling. We need not be trapped by our ideologies. Instead, we should at least attempt to weigh all the evidence and be willing to concede ideological defeat to that evidence. This brings me back to Sharon Baker’s suggestion that “narrative Christus Victor [theory] offers a more consistent picture of God.” I know there are plenty of Evangelicals and fundamentalists out there who will give me flack for this, but the biblical picture of God is not consistent. As the biblical text (and the picture of God found therein) reflects the social situation of various authors in various times and places, even different languages, we should not expect to find one image of God but a variety of human attempts to reflect their experiences of God. I appreciate Yoder Neufeld’s use of “poetic” language. Theology, biblical theology included, is more art than science. For me, that means I will probably never come to a hard and fast singular conclusion about something I cannot ultimately know for sure (i.e., why Jesus died). Instead, I will live with multiple possibilities held in tension, just as the earliest followers of Jesus apparently did as well.
Augustine on the Donatists: "Correct and Heal Them"
[This was for an assignment for Early Church History with James Bradley. We were to exegete a particular historical text, in this case Augustine's Correction of the Donatists, by giving some historical context, describe the author's thesis and how he defends it, and briefly evaluate the work. I chose this work by Augustine, instead of two others by Athenagoras and Athanasius, because I am keenly interested in the problematic church-state issues that come out of it. I put some notes on my sources at the bottom.]
In his 185th epistle, Augustine writes to Boniface a letter that functions like a prolonged essay entitled, “A Book on the Correction of the Donatists.” In the correspondence, Augustine makes a case for the state-endorsed persecution of the Donatists. The intention of the present paper is to briefly exegete this document by noting the historical context, addressing the thesis and arguments of the text itself, and finally shortly evaluating the claims of the text from the present author’s own theological perspective and situation, namely Anabaptism.
Donatism arose out of a particular historical conflict regarding a specific bishop of Carthage named Caecilian. The group, that would later be called Donatists, accused Caecilian of being consecrated by a traditor, one who handed over Scripture during Diocletian’s persecution of the Christians. They claimed that Caecilian’s consecration as bishop in about 311 was invalid. To give more background to this situation, Mensurius, Caecilian’s predecessor, believed that those who absolutely refused to cooperate with authorities were overreacting. Caecilian, as Mensurius’ arch-deacon, prevented food from being taken to the “confessors” who were in prison and speaking out against the bishop. Therefore, when Caecilian was consecrated, the Numidian bishops, who supported the objection of Caecilian, appointed their own rival bishop who was soon succeeded by Donatus, from whence the Donatists get their name. They challenged Caecilian and when they failed, unsuccessfully appealed all the way to the Emperor (c. 316). Over the next century, Carthage came to be split between the two rival North African Christian communities. This is the situation in which Augustine writes his letter to Boniface in around 417. Bonifice was the tribune of Africa and would have been in charge of implementing punishments upon the Donatists.
Augustine’s main endeavor in his “correction of the Donatists” can be found stated in various ways in multiple places within the document. One of the clearest and most succinct statements in this regard is found in the opening line of the 23rd paragraph: “Why, then, should the Church not force her lost children to return if those lost children were forcing others to perish?” The Donatists have not only been led astray, but they are consequently leading others astray. They pose a threat to themselves and those that they bring to their position, while at the same time they pose a violent threat to the Catholic church. Augustine accuses the Donatists of cruel murders, plundering attacks of homes, burning of homes and churches, the fire into which some even throw Scriptures (30). In other words, in Augustine’s view, there is much at stake here.
Augustine argues that persecution done for the right and just reasons is a good thing, though he tames his language by suggesting that the attempt of the Catholic church to “correct and heal” (see 51) the Donatists is an act of love (e.g., 7). Throughout the argument, Augustine makes frequent use of the Scriptures to make his case. He even uses the words of a non-Christian author, oft quoted by the Donatists, to uncover the inconsistency of the Donatists’ case (21).
Augustine begins his letter by distinguishing for Boniface between the Arians and the Donatists. While the Arians say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of separate substances, the Donatists hold that the three are one substance. The real issue is “Church unity,” about which they quarrel and to which they are a hostile threat (1). Though Augustine will later challenge their beliefs regarding sinlessness (39-40), for example, the central concern about the Donatists is not one of belief about God, but rather about their relationship with the Catholic church and with the state. The Donatists recognize Christ in the Scriptures, but “with an amazing blindness” they deny the authority of the Catholic church (2).
To support their view regarding the Catholic church, Augustine suggests that the Donatists “pick and choose” their Scriptures, so to speak. Augustine goes through various Scriptures with which the Donatists agree and those with which they refuse to agree (3). The implication is that the reading of Scripture done by the Catholic church is correct and holistic, while that of the Donatists is selective and incomplete.
At this point, Augustine addresses the historical concern regarding Caecilian, mentioned above. He states that their evidence is questionable about whether Caecilian was guilty of their accusations (that Caecilian was consecrated by a traditor). Even if they were correct, Augustine argues, the Donatists would still not be justified in cutting themselves off from the unity of the Catholic church (4-5). Augustine uses the actions of the Donatists in this historical situation to point out their inconsistency: the Donatists claim that Christians should not call upon the authority of a Christian emperor against the “enemies of Christ,” and yet that is what they themselves did in appealing to Constantine in Caecilian’s case (6). Augustine states that the Donatists lie in their claim that they won the case against Caecilian, and now “the laws by which the Donatists wanted to destroy the innocent Caecilian have been turned against them” (7). As we shall see, the Donatists treatment of Caecilian surfaces a few more times as Augustine continues to make his case (see 10, 16, and 47).
Augustine next major point in his argument is to distinguish between just and unjust persecution. Those who stand up against “bad laws in favor of error and against the truth” are justified in their correct stance and “win the crowns of martyrs.” On the other hand, those who react against “good laws in favor of the truth and against error” do not gain such status and are indeed “punished.” Of these, Augustine states that “those who act with violence are struck with terror and those who act with intelligence are corrected” (8). The Donatists distort the situation, then, by claiming that they are being persecuted as martyrs, because they are refusing to obey “good laws.” We must distinguish between false martyrs and true martyrs. For this, Augustine points to the Psalms and to the example of Sarah persecuting Hagar in contrast to Saul persecuting David. Hagar was justly persecuted, while David was not (9). The main thought here is that those who are being justly persecuted deserve their “correction,” while those being unjustly persecuted deserve “help” (even though he will later state that correction via persecution is, in fact, a necessary form of help). Therefore, the Donatists say that being persecuted is the mark of the true church, but yet they persecuted Caecilian; Caecilian was part of the true church because he was unjustly persecuted (10).
Augustine appeals to the threat of the Donatists’ heinous violence, even suicidal violence, as reason for their just persecution (e.g., 12, 18, 26). At first, he claims, Augustine was against the use of force in the “correction” of the Donatists. He and some others desired to extract fines from the wayward bishops and leaders of the Donatists (25), but the violent threat was too great and “God knew” that more needed to be done (26). Augustine appeals to the example of Paul, who was forced into faith through physical blindness and then given correction (22). It is better, of course, to bring heretics to the true church through by gentle instruction than by “the fear or the pain of punishment.” This fact, however, does not negate the necessity of the latter option (21).
Augustine believes that saving the Donatists is somewhat akin to saving people in a building about to collapse (33-34), which seems to imply impending doom for the Donatists at the final judgment. He suggests that even if some of the people in the building stubbornly kill themselves when the rescuers rush in to save everyone that they can, that should not stop them from saving those for whom it is possible. Even if they are only able to rescue a few, while the rest perish by their own faults, it would be worth the effort. Augustine states that the Catholic church does not “hate” the Donatists, instead he says, “let them come” and participate in the church, leaving behind their errors (46). They do not take the property of the Donatists out of greed for the property, but if the Donatists would come back to the true church, they would gain their property back and would share in the property of the church, along with the Catholics (35-36). The Holy Spirit, after all, cannot be found outside the Catholic church (49-50).
As an Anabaptist, the present author is skeptical of arguments that would justify state-sanctioned persecution of those who do not belong to what the state considers the “true” church. I am inclined to sympathize with the claims of the Donatists that the Catholic church unjustly appeals to the emperor in its persecution of their sect. In paragraph 20, Augustine asks, “[W]hy should adultery be punished by the laws and sacrilege be permitted? Or is it less serious for a soul to be unfaithful to God than for a woman to be unfaithful to her husband?” It is possible to respond by saying that unfaithfulness to God is indeed more serious than unfaithfulness to a spouse, but the former is not in the jurisdiction of the state to enforce judgment. Augustine also argues that the violence is too large a problem to not appeal to the Christian emperor for help (18). Many would agree that allowing the state to respond to violence is a good thing, as long as the response is appropriate to the action (e.g., punishment would not be enforced upon those who did not commit the actions). We must distinguish punishing violent behavior, however, from persecuting those who have a different belief system simply because they have a different belief system.
On the other hand, Augustine’s arguments are not without merit. One can appreciate the appeal to “love” and the rejection of “hate” in his instruction on how to deal with the Donatists. The reader can also sympathize with the deep division that would have been part of everyday reality in Carthage. If Augustine’s account is correct, something indeed must be done regarding the rampant violence and he rightly denounces the apparent suicidal desire for martyrdom seen in radicals. The unfortunate reality is that Augustine wrapped these valid concerns together with a desire to persecute the rival Christian community because it was a rival Christian community, an inclination that would lead the church into great state-sanctioned trouble.
[On sources: I used the text found in “Letter 185,” translated by Roland Teske in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation of the 21st Century, vol. II.3., edited by Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 178-206. Citations in my paper come from this text, with the paragraph number in parentheses. In his note on the letter (see page 178), Teske states that Augustine later treated this document as a “book” in Revisions 2.48, which is where he gave it the title, The Correction of the Donatists. My historical background information was gleaned from various articles in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Henry Chadwick's The Early Church, and Teske's own introduction to the work.]
-
Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
-
As a member of RevGalBlogPals, I am committed to building a supportive online community for women clergy, women church professionals, and women in religious life.
Research assisted by: