Ted Grimsrud. Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness. Cascade Books, 2013. x + 270pp.
For more on this book, including purchasing information, follow this link.
Category Archives: Theology
How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources (Part Two)
[Ted Grimsrud]
I wrote in the first part of this post several weeks ago (“How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources [Part One]“) that even though most Christians are not pacifists—and in fact being a Christian seems to make it less likely that a person would oppose war, at least in the United States—we “Christian pacifists should double down and intensify our emphasis on the pacifist aspects of our belief systems.” I went on to mention eight areas where too many Christian pacifists (it seems to me) accept non-pacifist ways of approaching key sources for our theology and ethics.
I promised a sequel where I would briefly discuss how these areas could be viewed in more consistently pacifist ways. I don’t have time or space to develop these alternative perspectives very fully, but I will go through the list. I don’t even have time to cite examples of how these alternative perspectives have been articulated except to point to several of my own writings.
Let me quote from my introduction to the first post: “My main concern in this two-part post is to suggest that Christian pacifists should actively resist the tendency to see our pacifism as something extraneous to our core theological convictions, as a kind of overlay in relation to the ‘common beliefs’ we share with other non-pacifist Christians. Part one [gave] examples of how pacifists read Christian sources non-pacifistically.” Now, part two will give examples of how we might read Christian sources pacifistically.
What I offer here is a bare outline of what may in the not-too-distant future expand into a more carefully detailed essay. I would greatly appreciate responses that could help me in developing the piece.
Reading Christian Sources as Pacifists
(1) Old Testament. Too often pacifists simply accept as a given the assumption that the Old Testament contradicts Christian pacifism. The task then becomes a defensive one, trying to make a case for pacifism in spite of the Old Testament. Continue reading
How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources (Part One)
[Ted Grimsrud]
It’s not easy being a Christian pacifist. We make extraordinary claims (that war is never acceptable) on the basis of our faith convictions, even in the face of the reality that the vast majority of people who share many of those convictions reject these claims. It seems quite quixotic to argue for Christian pacifism when the facts seem to show that being a Christian makes a person less likely to be a pacifist.
Rather than quailing before this scenario, I propose that we Christian pacifists should double down and intensify our emphasis on the pacifist aspects of our belief systems. I think it is a terrible mistake for pacifist Christians to accept as normative the ways of reading Christian sources that ignore or actively oppose pacifism—no matter how widespread and institutionally embedded these non-pacifist readings are.
My main concern in this two-part post is to suggest that Christian pacifists should actively resist the tendency to see our pacifism as something extraneous to our core theological convictions, as a kind of overlay in relation to the “common beliefs” we share with other non-pacifist Christians. Part one will give examples of how pacifists read Christian sources non-pacifistically. And part two will give examples of pacifist readings of these sources.
Reading Christian Sources Non-Pacifistically
(1) One of the most common steps that immediately puts pacifists on the defensive is the acceptance of the assumption that the Old Testament is ultimately a problem for Christian pacifism. What matters most, it is assumed, in reading the Old Testament in relation to issues of violence, peace, and justice are the stories of God commanding warfare and exercising violent judgment. The God of the Old Testament is violent, vengeful, and practices punitive, retributive justice.
With this starting point, the pacifist must explain away the obvious normativity of violence. This is a challenging situation, to say the least. Pacifists have tried various strategies to retain their pacifism, but in general they allow the assumption of the Old Testament as a problem to stand. At best, it seems, the Old Testament is “messy” and gives us mixed messages. We will have to ground our pacifism on other sources—a resignation that invariably weakens the bases for that pacifism.
Why we Christians don’t love our enemies
[Ted Grimsrud]
I continue to reflect on the issue of violence and religious faith. In the class I am teaching on nonviolence, we have had some good discussions lately about the link between Christianity and violence. In our discussions, many of us express some mixed feelings about our religious convictions and traditions.
On the one hand, some of us strongly believe that our own Christian values push us in the direction of nonviolence—and even have the sense that religious faith seems essential for sustained commitments to nonviolence (we discuss Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., as obvious examples in both thought and deed). But others of us note that religion seems to exacerbate, even originate, many violent dynamics.
This discussion made me go back to some thinking I did some time ago about why Christians, in particular, seem to find it especially difficult to embody the teaching of Jesus, the one we profess to seek to follow.
Our need for Jesus’ love command
If there is one passage in the Bible that points to both the glory and shame of Christianity, it is this statement by Jesus: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:44-45). Here we have a direct statement of a profound ideal, a call to break the cycle of violence that so bedevils our world. And here we have a stark reminder of just how far Christianity has strayed from the will of its founder. Continue reading
Filed under Biblical theology, Jesus, Pacifism, Theology, Violence
God is not a pacifist, right?
[Ted Grimsrud]
Last month at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings (as I reported), I was challenged again to consider how to think about God in relation to violence. I heard a couple of pacifist Old Testament scholars (a very small population as far as I can tell) in separate settings state explicitly that they believe “God is not a pacifist.” This is a relatively common view in my broader circles among scholars who still often make the point that they themselves are pacifists (a widely cited expression of this view is A. James Reimer, “God is not a pacifist,” Canadian Mennonite [July 26, 1999]; also in A. James Reimer, Mennonites and Classical Theology, 486-492).
This viewpoint strikes me as counter-intuitive. Like what I assume would be the case for all pacifists, I believe that violence is a bad thing and that responding to wrongdoing nonviolently is a good thing. I base this belief, in part (again like I would assume all Christian pacifists would), on Jesus’ command: “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:35-36) I tend to think that pacifism is an aspiration for a high level of ethical rigor that finds its grounding in God’s will and character. So it is a little discordant to hear that “God is not a pacifist” but we should be. Obviously, the people who believe this are bright, sincere, committed to faithful living, and thus to be taken seriously. So I want to try to understand.
Why we would say “God is not a pacifist”
These are some of the ideas I heard expressed that seem to support the belief that God is not a pacifist: Continue reading
Filed under Biblical theology, Jesus, Mennonite, Militarism, Pacifism, Theology
Why the Bible matters for theology
Ted Grimsrud
Probably the class I teach that I enjoy the most is Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice. I had an especially good group of students this semester, and I am sorry that our time together is coming to an end. We do a quick run through of the Bible, starting with Genesis and ending with Revelation. We focus on big themes that relate to peace and justice—some of the problematic texts such as the Joshua conquest as well as texts that more directly point toward pacifism and antipathy toward power politics.
The Bible is of course way to big and complex to be covered in just one undergraduate semester-long class. We have to skip a tremendous amount of important material and surely over-generalize as well as over-emphasize some parts in relation to others. But, still, I think many good things happen in this class and it provides students with an interpretive framework that at least in some cases sticks with them and helps them as they do more studying and thinking.
Even though I follow a similar outline each time I teach the class (I think this is the sixteenth time I have taught it—we always read John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, and Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers), I still find each opportunity to do this class a time myself to think new thoughts and make new connections. One huge factor, of course, is the different make up of students who always have questions and observations different than their predecessors. It is also the case, though, that no one can fully master this material. Each time I work through it, I see new things.
I want to write a little here about what I am especially noticing this year. This class is actually listed as a “theology” and not “biblical studies” class (I wish this were not the case) because, I suppose, my main areas of teaching are theology and ethics. Though I think this class should have a BIST rather than THEO prefix, I also recognize that I teach it more as a theologian than a biblical studies scholar. And I can’t help but think about the Bible in relation to what we could call “doctrinal theology” (as I elaborate in my book Theology As If Jesus Matters: An Introduction to Christianity’s Main Convictions
Filed under Biblical theology, Jesus, Theology
A pacifist at the AAR/SBL
Ted Grimsrud
Last weekend, my wife Kathleen and I made our annual trip to the big city to hobnob with 10,000 religion scholars. That is, we attended that convention of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago, November 17-20. As per usual, we had a great time. This year, things were pretty low key—both in the sense of not having many responsibilities and of not attending any high powered, life changing sessions (no Cornel West, Judith Butler, Jeffrey Stout, or Robert Bellah this year).
As always, the biggest highlights were the times with friends—especially those who I usually only see at these meetings, but also some new friends (including meeting in the flesh a couple of cyber friends) and even some good times with people I see regularly.
Because I didn’t have much business to attend to and didn’t really have much interest in the book fair (I’m not quite sure why this was; in the past, I spent as many hours as I could with the always amazing collection of books from hundreds of publishers—maybe as I get older I realize just how many books I already have that I will never read), we spent most of our time attending sessions. While my socks stayed securely on my feet throughout, I still found the sessions interesting and stimulating of thought—even if mostly it was to argue against much of what I heard. Here are some highlights. Continue reading
Filed under Abortion, Anabaptism, Book of Revelation, Empire, Gordon Kaufman, Mennonite, Militarism, Pacifism, Theology
Faith and Politics (Including Voting)
Ted Grimsrud
All this talking and thinking about voting (this post is part three: #1—Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?; #2 —More thoughts about voting (or not) for a “warmonger”) has pushed me to think about what I understand politics to be about and what this has to do with my faith convictions. These are some thoughts.
Biblical politics
I find the Bible enormously helpful for thinking about politics. Not that it gives us a blueprint or an explicit political philosophy or even a list of principles for godly politics. Just that it tells a story (a complicated story, with many subplots) that we can share in—a story, ultimately, of people trying to join together to make the world more peaceable in light of their understanding of God’s will for their lives.
In a nutshell, I would define “biblical politics” as people working together for peace. “Peace” I would understand as “biblical shalom”—the wholeness of the community, all people living harmoniously with one another and with the rest of creation. The operative sense of “politics,” then, is people working together in community for the sake of shalom.
The Bible, thus, is intensely political as it tells both of how communities can operate in peaceable ways and of how communities violate shalom (and suffer the consequences). From Genesis’s account of the communal problems that emerge when people turn from shalom to Revelation’s account of a great city of peace (the New Jerusalem) being established on earth, the Bible focuses on politics done (or not) in light of the peaceable will of the creating and sustaining God of the universe.
Filed under Anabaptism, Biblical theology, Empire, Jesus, Pacifism, Theology
A helpful resource on homosexuality
[A review of C. Norman Kraus, On Being Human: Sexual Orientation and the Image of God
Reviewed by Ted Grimsrud
Norman Kraus provides something that has, by and large, been missing from Christian theological discussions about homosexuality—careful theological analysis of some of the foundational issues about how we understand human beings in the image of God.
This short book contains an essay from Kraus that is thoughtful, carefully laid out, and fairly dense, accompanied by several short responses to Kraus’s statement by people representing four somewhat diverse perspectives, though all laudatory of Kraus’s effort. While Kraus and his companions in this book are Mennonites and the book certainly speaks to Mennonite debates and efforts at discernment, it is written in a more general tone that makes the book relevant and useful for a variety of church-related contexts.
As I read it, this book most centrally argues for an understanding of human life where we recognize our creation in God’s image and, from that recognition, appreciate our created need for intimacy with other human beings and, for the vast majority of us, a need for one particularly intimate relationship that involves commitment, mutuality, and sexual expression.
Kraus does affirm, in this context, the moral validity of same-sex intimacy that follows the same moral expectations Christians affirm for heterosexual relationships—fidelity, a livelong commitment, shared life in the context of involvement in a congregation. He does this while giving little attention to the debate about the several short biblical passages that are usually affirmed or debunked as providing churches’ most authoritative guidance. Continue reading
Filed under Homosexuality, Theology
Why We Christians Don’t Love Our Enemies
Ted Grimsrud
[Here is another excerpt from a sermon from some time ago—October 2005]
If there is one passage in the entire Bible that points to both the glory and the shame of Christianity, it is this famous statement by Jesus: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:44-45). Here we have a direct statement of a profound ideal, a call to break the cycle of violence that so bedevils our world. And here we have as stark a reminder as we could imagine of just how far Christianity tends to have strayed from the will of its founder.
The cost of hating enemies
“Love your enemies,” such an obvious statement of what our world needs. We see so clearly in our present day how hatred of enemies fuels war with simply incredible costs. In the name of stamping out “terrorists” our country spent billions upon billions to pour violence upon the nation of Iraq, diverted resources in a way that made the Gulf Coast more vulnerable to devastation from recent hurricanes, alienated people throughout the world, and sent hundreds upon hundreds of our soldiers to their death along with thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. This hatred fuels a spinning cycle, eye for an eye for an eye leading to more and more blindness.
Hatred of enemies fuels our nation’s prison-industrial complex. We send millions behind bars where they are all too often brutalized, infected with devastating diseases such as hepatitis, and permanently disenfranchised as stakeholders in civil society. As someone said, no matter how long a convicted criminal’s official sentence might be, it is invariably a “life sentence” in terms of the impact going to prison has on one’s life. In the name of “security,” we only increase the spiral of destruction and alienation.
In many other ways as well, hatred of enemies leads to unhappiness, brokenness, pain being visited upon pain—and the cycle of creating only more hatred. So, Jesus’ words cut like a warm knife through butter. He gets to the heart of things. We need to find ways to love instead of hate and to forgive instead of simply punish and to heal when there is brokenness, not simply retaliate. We also need the vision of God these verses give us. The One who models love for enemies and who offers generosity and genuine wholeness, who gives us hope, who empowers us to find another way from the spiral of death.
Jesus’ words seem so obvious. What could be more straightforward and more needed than Jesus’ incisive words? We need them now more than ever; they come to us straight and clear. If it were only that simple. If only Jesus’ words would set the agenda for Christians in our needy world today. If only being a Christian would mean ending hatred of enemies. But, it doesn’t work this way, sad to say. We Christians actually aren’t that good at loving our enemies. I struggle to understand why. Continue reading
Filed under Empire, Jesus, Militarism, Pacifism, Theology
