“What do we make of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” is an essay I just posted on my Thinking Pacifism blog. I report on new work on the Bonhoeffer story by my colleague Mark Thiessen Nation that argues for a consistently pacifist reading of Bonhoeffer’s life. That is, Mark suggests that Bonhoeffer never did repudiate his pacifism—contrary to the standard account of the story.
[I am posting rough drafts of the chapters from a book I am writing about World War II and its moral legacy. My hope in posting these chapters is that I might receive helpful counsel. So, please, read the chapters and let me know what you think. All comments, questions, and challenges are welcome and will be most useful as I revise the chapters this winter and spring. The first nine chapters are now up—February 25, 2011.]
THE LONG SHADOW: WORLD WAR II’S MORAL LEGACY
1. Introduction
2. Jus Ad Bellum: The Reasons for the War
3. Jus In Bello: The Conduct of the War
6. The Cold War
10. Servanthood
11. The Moral Legacy of World War II—And What We Might Do With It
I reflect on Jesus’ last supper and its meaning for discipleship in my February 13, 2011 sermon—the twelfth in my series on Luke’s Gospel.
The story of Jesus is not simply a case of bad things happening to a good person. It’s bad things happening to a good person because he’s a good person. Jesus’ life raises the issue of how it is that the “good news” leads directly to bad news. The other big question in relation to Jesus is whether the bad news he faces is something that he deals with so his followers won’t have to (kind of the substitutionary atonement motif), or if his facing bad news is a kind of model for Jesus’ disciples.
The account of the Jesus’ last supper with his friends makes a clear and strong point of emphasizing the modeling aspect. Luke, alone of the gospels, inserts the debate among the disciples about who would be “greatest” into the last supper conversation. Jesus’ exclaims: “Not so among you! The greatest must be servants.” Here he makes it clear he expects his followers to follow the same good news leading to bad news path that he follows—with the promise of God’s ultimate vindication.
Also, by placing the last supper in the context of the Passover celebration, Luke reiterates that the good news –> bad news –> vindication dynamic that was central in the exodus story links it with the story of Jesus.
The sermon may be found here: it’s called “When the ‘Good News’ is Bad News.” The other sermons in the series may be found here.
In 1998, I wrote a paper that brought together many of my thoughts about pacifism. When I was in college back in the 1970s, right at the end of America’s war in Vietnam, I had come to strong convictions that war was always wrong and that I could never participate in warfare or even support it. In the years since, this conviction had only only deepened.
The occasion for writing this paper was a conference at Bluffton University on Anabaptism and Postmodernity. The paper, “A Pacifist Way of Knowing: Postmodern Sensibilities and Peace Theology,” was published in Mennonite Life in 2001. I am finally getting around to making it available here on Peace Theology.
I reflect on Jesus’ well known story of the fate, after death, of a rich man and the beggar, Lazarus, in my January 23, 2011 sermon—the eleventh in my series on Luke’s Gospel.
Why did Jesus tell this story? I suggest that his purpose has to do with exhorting his listeners to generosity. He heightens the tensions between himself and the religious leaders by likening them to the calloused rich man who finds himself after death across an unbridgeable chasm from “father Abraham.”
However, when we read this story together with the Prodigal Son story, located just one chapter earlier in Luke, we will see that Jesus seriously presents those who would identify with the rich man and his brothers with a way to healing. Simply return to the message of Moses and the prophets.
What is that message? Love God and neighbor. Jesus illustrates his words from the Sermon on the Plain in chapter six where he warns of coming woes to those who are rich now—in contrast to the blessings promised the poor. However, his overall intent is to exhort to generosity with the hope that healing is possible—not to assert people are locked into condemnation.
The sermon may be found here: it’s called “Listen to Moses.” The other sermons in the series may be found here.
Ted Grimsrud—1/14/11
[Presented at the Military Industrial Complex at 50 Conference—Guilford College, Greensboro, NC—adapted from earlier lectures at Eastern Mennonite University and Goshen College]
Dwight Eisenhower was, I think, an unlikely, and not altogether believable, prophet against militarism. Nonetheless, if we pay attention to a few of his words (in contrast to a long career of actions), we will find some powerful insights.
Most notably, almost exactly fifty years ago, on his way out of the presidency, Eisenhower critiqued what he so incisively called the “military-industrial complex.” Tragically, the past fifty years only underscore both the prescience of Eisenhower’s warning and regret that he did not do more to curb militarism when he had a chance.
In a typically perceptive article called “The Tyranny of Defense, Inc.,” in The Atlantic’s January 2011 issue, Andrew Bacevich writes in appreciation of Eisenhower’s speech. But Bacevich also points out that Eisenhower’s farewell speech came as a kind of bookend, paired with a speech from near the beginning of his presidency in 1953.
That first speech reflected on the dangers of militarism in the United States. Eisenhower stressed the problems of high military spending with these forceful words: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. [When a nation spends so much on warfare] it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” Continue reading
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
Ted Grimsrud with Christian Early
[This is the Prologue to Christian Early and Ted Grimsrud, eds. A Pacifist Way of Knowing: John Howard Yoder’s Nonviolent Epistemology. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010. 1-21.]
John Howard Yoder begins The Politics of Jesus by characterizing that book as coming from “a Christian pacifist commitment.” Yoder attempts, he states, to respond to ways “mainstream Christian theology has set aside the pacifist implications of the New Testament message.”[1]
In a persuasive way that still today, well over thirty years later, witnesses powerfully to those “pacifist implications,” Yoder presents New Testament teaching as speaking directly of social ethics in ways that remain normative for Christians—and that point directly toward pacifism.
Yoder’s essays included in the present book speak, directly and indirectly, of the significance of a pacifist commitment for how we know, for our epistemology. However, he does not extensively explain what he means by pacifism. As this term commonly lends itself to misunderstanding and caricature, we believe it will be helpful to begin with a short explanation of what we mean by “pacifism.”
When we present Yoder’s “pacifist epistemology” as exemplary, what follows in this chapter will show what we mean by “pacifism.”
“Pacifism” has the connotation of a complete rejection of involvement in warfare, and usually other forms of violence. Beyond that simple assumption, however, the term pacifism is used in many different kinds of ways. Yoder’s classic analysis, Nevertheless: Varieties of Religious Pacifism, describes no less than twenty-nine different types of religious pacifism.[2] Given this variety, no one is in a position to make claims for all pacifists because “pacifism” is an essentially contested concept. We wish to be very clear at the outset that our intent in this essay is to argue in favor of a particular, contestable understanding of pacifism. We thought that perhaps it would be helpful to begin with some examples of what we consider to be misunderstanding pacifism, and then go on to give a short case for what we will call Christian pacifism allowing the rest of the book to be an exploration of the epistemological consequences of our view so that readers may judge it and its consequences more fully. Continue reading
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.
Ted Grimsrud
[Published in The Conrad Grebel Review 28.3 (Fall 2010), 22-38]
“One of the most pressing questions facing the world today is, How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves?”[i] These words opened Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers nearly twenty years ago — and voice the concern that remains at the center of many peacemakers’ sensibilities. Wink’s question about resisting evil without adding to it points in two directions at once, thereby capturing one of the central tensions we face. On the one hand, we human beings of good will, especially those of us inclined toward pacifism, assume that at the heart of our lives we have a responsibility to resist evil in our world, to seek peace, to be agents of healing — that is, to enter into the brokenness of our present situation and be a force for transformation. On the other hand, we recognize that efforts to overcome evil all too often end up exacerbating the brokenness. We recognize that resisting evil can lead to the use of tactics that add to the evil and transform the actors more than the evil situation.
So, how might we act responsibly while not only remaining true to our core convictions that lead us to seek peace but also serving as agents of actual healing instead of well-meaning contributors to added brokenness?
In recent years, various strategies with potential for addressing these issues have arisen. These include efforts to add teeth to the enforcement of international law (the International Criminal Court) and the emergence of what has come to be known as the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine affirmed by the United Nations Security Council in 2006. In this general arena of seeking to respond creatively to evil, we could also include creative thinking that has been emerging out of peace church circles related to themes such as restorative justice,[ii] “just policing,”[iii] and projects such at the 3D Security Initiative[iv] and Mennonite Central Committee’s “Peace Theology Project.”[v]
The tension seemingly inherent for peacemakers in these efforts at responding to evil appears in the tendency to incline either towards “responsibility” in ways that compromise our commitment to nonviolence and the inherent worth of all human beings, even wrongdoers, or towards “faithfulness” in ways that do not truly contribute to resisting wrongdoing and bringing about needed changes. We face a basic choice. Will we understand this tension as signaling a need to choose one side of it over the other — either retreating into our ecclesial cocoon and accepting our “irresponsibility” or embracing the call to enter the messy world in creative ways that almost certainly will mean leaving our commitment to nonviolence behind? Or will we understand the tension as a call to devote our best energies to finding ways to hold together our nonviolence with creative responsibility?
I affirm the need (and the realistic possibility) of taking the “tension-as-opportunity-for-creative-engagement” path. A number of the people and writings cited in notes 2 through 5 below have been embodying just this kind of path; I do not mean to imply that peace church practitioners haven’t make significant progress in understanding and applying our peacemaking convictions to the “real world.”[vi] However, I am not content that we have yet done the necessary work at sharpening our understanding and articulation of the “faithfulness” side of the responsibility/faithfulness dialectic. Our creativity in engaging these issues may be drawing on increasingly depleted traditions of principled pacifism that found their roots more in traditional communities than in carefully articulated theological ethics. We may not have the resources to live creatively with this dialectic unless we do more work on clarifying and solidifying our understanding of our peace ideals.
With this essay I will articulate a perspective on pacifism that might be usable for thoughtfully engaging human security issues. My contribution is mostly as a pastor and theologian, not a practitioner. My hope is to help with the philosophical underpinnings, not to direct a program of engagement — though I will conclude with a few thoughts on how I see the pacifist perspective outlined here possibly applying to our present situation. Continue reading
Peace Theology 