"[I]n a world of violence it would not be worthy of God not to wield the sword; if God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship .... My Thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person inclined to dimiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone ... Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis: we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge. In a sorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind."
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996); 303-304.
HT: Jeff Bruce
5 comments:
I can imagine that context such as that one is very healthy for doing theology. Last night I had the privilege of sitting in on a Bible study held by in an refugee asylum between a pastor who's theology would probably be laughed out of the room by intellectuals and two twenty year olds whose only reason for fleeing northern Iraq is that they have commited their lives to Christ. I find it almost dizzying trying to find the gap between what I post on and that kind of reality. That I can see a link is the only this that keeps me going.
Sorry, not "find the gap," "bridge the gap."
I remember reading this at the end of E&E. The point where he says the thesis is key. The thesis as he alludes, should instead be as follows: We should not retaliate since God is just and will judge. The guilty will not go unpunished.
Actually, Ps 94,which basically says what Alex said, sustained me through many a year of boarding school!
I find that theology is a weak place to undergird politics.Therefore, pacifism is based on "pie in the sky"...Theology deals in ideals, such as "God's love", which takes faith.
Politics, on the other hand is "another world", one in which we don't see much of God, because the Church is also political. Politics is the bread of life, when it comes to "real life". Theology is a belief system about God. There is a disconnect these days between the real world and God...We live in the political realm and to be relevant in the world, we'd better engage in politics...
Post a Comment