Category Archives: Biblical theology

Old Testament Bases for Christian Peace Theology

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Ted Grimsrud

[Paper presented to the Scripture and Contextual Ethics Section at the American Academy of Religion annual meetings, Atlanta, Georgia—November 1, 2010]

The “just peacemaking” project that brought together Christian ethicists holding both to pacifism and to versions of the just war theory but united in the goal of “abolishing war”[1] has made a great start in a practical effort to overcome the curse of war. The desire to expand the project beyond Christianity is welcome—in fact absolutely necessary.

My paper points in two mutually reinforcing directions—one is to challenge Christians in our understanding of the bases for our peace theology, the second is to work at finding common ground between Christian peace theology and other traditions (most obviously Judaism, but potentially beyond).

The Old Testament as a Problem

Christian peace theology tends to be New Testament centered, especially drawing on the gospels. Most Christians would seem to assume that the Old Testament has little to offer for the work of overcoming war and violence. The comment of a friend of mine many years ago may be representative. We were in a Bible study group together and when someone suggested we study something from the Old Testament, my friend snorted and stated flatly, “I don’t want anything to do with that bloody book!” And many Christians who have wanted something to do with the Old Testament, going back to Augustine, have mainly used it as a justification for the acceptability of warfare. Continue reading →

Jesus’ “Story of Two Sons” and Our Metaphysics

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I reflect on Jesus’ famous parable, often called the “prodigal son” in my December 12, 2010 sermon—the tenth in my series on Luke’s Gospel.

Importantly, we should notice that Jesus’ story begins with “there was a man who had two sons” (Luke 15:11). The focus is on the father and both sons. The story doesn’t end with the younger son’s return. Rather, the story ends with the father’s unanswered plea to the older son to join in the party celebrating the return of his brother.

I approach the story in the light of big questions we have in today’s world about why so many people in our American society are so accepting of violence. I suggest one big issue is our metaphysics (our views of “what is” and “what it’s like”). I counter pose a metaphysics of redemptive violence with a metaphysics of mercy.

Jesus affirms a metaphysics of mercy—he tells his powerful story of the two sons in response to “grumbling” from religious leaders about his merciful ways (that reflect his understanding of reality as “mercy all the way down”).

The sermon may be found here: it’s called “Metaphysical Therapy.” The other sermons in the series may be found here.

Why we pay attention to Jesus

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Article published in The Mennonite [13.12 (December 2010), 12-15].

Jesus is pretty amazing.  He’s an ancient character in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire.  He barely made it to his 30s and then joined countless other expendable people who the Empire considered worth executing.

Yet, in his afterlife, he became surely the most famous human being in world history. Certainly, the story of Jesus has been twisted and turned, exploited for evil purposes, corrupted almost beyond recognition—but somehow sprouts keep shooting up through the rubble, bringing forth flowers, revealing something of the beauty of the original vision of this person who history can’t let go of.

We still must ask, though, why do we pay attention to Jesus?

Once upon a time, there was a brilliant young German scholar and musician who paid attention to Jesus.  The seriousness with which he paid attention to Jesus led Albert Schweitzer to abandon a career that combined being a professor of religion with being a world-renowned organist.  He returned to school, earned a medical doctorate and spent the rest of his long life as a medical missionary in Africa and gained enough renown to be named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.

Schweitzer’s most important scholarly work was about Jesus.  In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, he surveyed attempts by European scholars in the 19th century to produce a purely objective, historically accurate portrayal of Jesus and get behind the obvious biases of the gospel writers to the supposed bedrock of fact.

Schweitzer scorned these efforts. He concluded his book with the famous image of various scholars peering deep into the wells of history looking for the face of the historical Jesus.  They don’t realize that the face they see looking up at them is actually their own.  They are not really looking at Jesus but only at a reflecting pool of water.

This image makes an undeniable, and very important, point. We all look at Jesus through our own perspective.  We all look for stuff that matters to us and that speaks to our world.  None of us can be objective about Jesus.  We all run the risk of turning Jesus simply into a caricature of our own values and our own culture.

One impact of Schweitzer’s cutting insight, though, has been to serve as a kind of cynical debunking tool.  It’s a way to mock attempts to take Jesus seriously: Ah, you’re just projecting your own interests onto Jesus and calling them his.

When we look at what people say about Jesus we see such incredible diversity and  contradictions and self-justifications.  I have two recent books that focus on how Americans have presented Jesus—one’s called American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004) by Stephen Prothero, the other Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession (HarperOne, 2005) by Richard Wightman Fox.  These books make it clear how so many in our culture have confused a reflection of themselves for a picture of Jesus.

And yet….

There just may be something we could call revelatory in this cacophony of images of Jesus humans have generated these past 2,000 years.  Maybe we do see something truthful in the sum of what humans, Christian and non-Christian, rich and poor, religious and secular, young and old, westerner and easterner, say about Jesus.

Continue reading →

Old Testament Bases for Christian Peace Theology

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Paper presented in the Scriptural/Contextual Ethics Consultation

American Academy of Religion—Atlanta, October 31, 2010

Ted Grimsrud

The “just peacemaking” project has made a great start in a practical effort to overcome the curse of war. The desire to expand the project beyond Christianity is welcome—in fact absolutely necessary. My paper points in two mutually reinforcing directions—one is to challenge Christians in our understanding of the bases for our peace theology, the second is to work at finding common ground between Christian peace theology and other traditions (most obviously Judaism, but potentially beyond).

Christian peace theology tends to be New Testament centered, especially drawing on the gospels. Most Christians seem to assume that the Old Testament has little to offer for the work of overcoming war and violence. The comment of a friend of mine many years ago may be representative. We were in a Bible study group together and when someone suggested we study something from the Old Testament, my friend snorted and stated flatly, “I don’t want anything to do with that bloody book!” Many Christians who have wanted something to do with the Old Testament, going back to Augustine, have used it to justify warfare.

So it’s no surprise when a Christian peace theologian such as Jack Nelson-Pallmyer writes a polemical book critiquing Christian acceptance of violent theology, he would portray the Old Testament pretty strictly as a problem. Even peace theologians who don’t share this antipathy do little to develop a positive Old Testament centered peace theology.

Happily, numerous Old Testament scholars have helped us better to see the Hebrew scriptures as conveying a positive message of peace. But as yet, these scholars have mainly produced historical and textual studies more than biblically based peace theologies.

As a constructive theologian drawing on the work of biblical scholars, I try to develop a present-day peace theology that will be usable both within Christian communities and as we relate to fellow peacemakers outside our faith tradition. I am especially concerned to push strenuously the value of reading the Bible as a whole. I believe we find in the Bible a coherent story that provides a powerful basis for peace theology. The Old Testament plays a crucial role in this story—not as a preliminary to the essential part, but by providing the core message of peace and salvation that Jesus and the New Testament confirm and vindicate. Continue reading →

Salvation in the “Good Samaritan” Story

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I have posted another in my series of sermons on Jesus based on the Gospel of Luke. My November 14 sermon, the ninth in the series, focuses on Luke 10 and the famous story Jesus told about the Samaritan who offers help to a beaten traveler, showing what it means to be a neighbor, which—in the context of this story—is about what it means to inherit eternal life.

The sermon focuses on what this story tells us about Jesus’ presentation of salvation. One interesting angle for reflecting on salvation is to ask, what are we saved from? The Good Samaritan story tells us that one key aspect of life we need to be saved from is to limit our love only to certain types of people.

The sermon may be found here: it’s called “Salvation—From What.” The other sermons in the series may be found here.

Bible Studies on the Old Testament God

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During the Fall of 2010, I am writing a series of short Bible studies for the Mennonite Weekly Review. They are focused on the picture of God in Exodus and several of the psalms. Here are links to these essays:

(1) Exodus 3: Moses Meets God

(2) Exodus 20: Rules for the Saved

(3) Exodus 32: Wrath of God

(4) Exodus 34: Wrath and Mercy

(5) Psalm 8: God’s Agents

(6) Psalm 19: Rules that Give Joy

(7) Psalm 46: King of Peace

(8) Psalm 47: Subdued by God

(9) Psalm 63: In God We Trust

(10) Psalm 66

(11) Psalm 90

(12) Psalm 91

(13) Psalm 139

Jesus as troublemaker

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I have started again on my series of sermons on Jesus based on the Gospel of Luke. My October 17 sermon, the eighth in the series, focuses on Luke 9, which is a focused discussion on Jesus’ identity—prophet or Messiah or Son of Man or Son of God? These are the options mentioned in the text.

The sermon suggests that the key motif in this chapter of Luke that clarifies Jesus’ identity is how Jesus was a troublemaker. And he serves as a model for his disciples to join him in “holy troublemaking.”

The sermon may be found here: it’s called “The Troublemaker.” The other sermons in the series may be found here.

Is Pacifism Ever an Idol?

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Ted Grimsrud (January 2010)

As a young adult in the 1970s, I found a strong sense of clarity to realize that I could never participate in war.  Then I discovered Mennonites—Christian pacifists with a strong tradition to back them up.  Then, I discovered surprising ambivalence about pacifism among Mennonites, even to the point where some Mennonites have charged that the church has made pacifism an idol.

What is in mind in this linking of pacifism with idolatry?  I think at least some of the following points may be present.  Pacifism could be seen to be an ideology, a human-centered, rigid philosophy similar to, say, Marxism or Libertarianism—and as such actually in competition with God as the center.

Or pacifism could be understood to be at best something we add to the core message of the gospel, perhaps valid in an optional kind of way but a problem when it is seen as too central.  When pacifism becomes too central it almost certainly will distract us from the main concerns of the gospel such as personal evangelism and the call to holiness.

Or pacifism could be seen to have become a badge of Mennonite identity, something that separates us from and elevates us over other Christians, an occasion for pride.

Or, finally, pacifism could be seen as making a human philosophy the basis for limiting God’s sovereignty.  With pacifism we may be telling God what God may or may not ask us to do.

I believe, though, that properly understood, Christian pacifism can never be an idol. Continue reading →

The Book of Revelation as Peace Theology

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Though the book of Revelation often is presented—by both those who like it and those who don’t—as a book that underwrites violence and judgment from God. There is a vigorous and growing body of scholarship and more popular exposition, though, that presents Revelation as a book that presents a basis for peacemaking and compassion. In a short article, I give a quick summary of how Revelation’s content actually points towards peace.

This article, “Victory over the powers of death and evil,” was first published in 2001. It presents a sketch for a reading strategy that counters the Revelation-underwriting-violence approaches.

Jesus’ Identity—And Ours

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I continued my sermon series this morning on why we pay attention to Jesus, based on the story told in the Gospel of Luke. This sermon (the seventh out of thirteen), called “Jesus’ Identity—And Ours” (and posted here), focused on Luke 7:18-23.

Jesus began his ministry by gaining wide renown as a miracle worker and powerful teacher. He drew crowds, and as this text shows, strong, respectful interest from John the Baptist (as well as a Roman centurion and Pharisee). Luke raises the question of Jesus’ identity in the context of telling of this interest.  As John’s disciples asked him, “Are you the One to come.”

Jesus does not answer the question with a straightforward “yes” but rather answers in the affirmative by reciting the things he’s been doing, summarized with the series’ final clause: “bringing good news to the poor.” In doing so, Jesus points ahead to the big “fork in the road” at which he will arrive—where the choice is ministry by acclaim and success or ministry resistance and suffering.

Jesus, in taking the path of resistance provides a model for all his followers. We find our identity linking ourselves with God’s “preferential option for the vulnerable.”