Category: Jesus

Salvation and the way of peace—(4) Jesus’s death and resurrection

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 2 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

[This is the fourth in a series of six posts that will summarize the argument of my recent book, Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (Cascade Books, 2013). Here is a link to the first three posts in the series.]

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The story of Jesus’s death helps us understand the violent dynamics of our world and helps us answer the question of how to respond to violence without adding to the violence. This story helps us understand why the simple message of God’s love has not been readily embraced in our world. And this story helps us understand how God works to overcome these problems.

Using the logic of retribution (and its application in atonement theology) as the basis for understanding the meaning of Jesus’s death and our salvation actually leads to the opposite conclusion from what the story conveys. The story tells us that the logic of retribution was an instrument of the fallen Powers, not God—and that Jesus’s followers should see in the story a direct refutation of that logic.

In what sense does Jesus bring salvation from the dominance of the fallen Powers? The Powers rely on belief. As long as we believe in their ultimacy, trusting in them for security and meaning, the Powers rule. Jesus challenges human beings to change our allegiance. He asks us to trust in God’s love and not the sense of superiority over others that legalistic belief in the law provides. He asks us to end our trust in the assured access to God that sacred rituals (at a price) provide. He asks us to end our trust in the sense of power over others that being on good terms with the empire provides. In these ways, trust in Jesus breaks the hold of the Powers.

Jesus’s death links with salvation in that: (1) it exposes the fallacy of the logic of retribution; (2) it exposes the direct link between this murderous logic and the institutions that exploit it; (3) it shows that the spiral of violence that is set loose and ever-deepened by this logic may be broken only by non-retaliation and mercy in the way Jesus embodied them; and (4) it sets the stage for God’s act that vindicates how Jesus exposed the Powers and embodied domination-free life when God raises Jesus from the dead. Continue reading “Salvation and the way of peace—(4) Jesus’s death and resurrection” →

Salvation and the way of peace—(3) Jesus’s life and teaching

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Ted Grimsrud 

[This is the third in a series of six posts that will summarize the argument of my recent book, Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (Cascade Books, 2013).]

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The story told in the gospels places itself in the heart of the traditions of Israel. Jesus presents himself in this story as embodying the promises of Yahweh to his forebears. For Jesus the Old Testament’s salvation story remains fully valid. He does not tell a different story, but proclaims the truth of the old story.

Jesus and Old Testament salvation theology

In the stories of Jesus’s birth, we learn that indeed something new is at hand, a “new thing” in full harmony with the Old Testament portrayal of salvation. There is no hint that something has to happen to God to make restoration possible. God initiates the reconciliation. God unilaterally declares that salvation has come and is especially available to vulnerable and marginalized people.

The birth of Jesus is not linked with the logic of retribution. The birth stories’ announcement of salvation’s presence contains no sense of a new approach to satisfy God’s aggrieved holiness or violated honor or to balance the scales of justice with ultimate innocent sacrifice. The stories point only to God’s initiating mercy and forgiveness.

As Jesus begins his public ministry, he expresses his own sense of continuity with the Old Testament salvation story. In his resistance to Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus quotes Israel’s scriptures. In his opening message to his home synagogue in Nazareth, he links himself with Israel’s hopes and Yahweh’s promises from the book of Isaiah. Throughout his teaching as presented in the gospels, Jesus quotes and alludes to and paraphrases the Old Testament. He never hints that he might understand his teaching as anything but in full continuity with Israel’s scriptures.

Jesus drew on Torah to transform how people viewed God’s participation among the people. People in power used debt to enhance their power and wealth at the expense of the less powerful. Jesus saw debt differently. Drawing on Torah, Jesus’s believed debt provided an opportunity for forgiveness. God does not demand repayment for every ounce of indebtedness. Rather, God offers abundant mercy. The debts would be forgiven without any kind of payment. Jesus’s God was not a God who maintained debt records for the purpose of foreclosing on the poor, but a God who canceled debt and restored life. Continue reading “Salvation and the way of peace—(3) Jesus’s life and teaching” →

How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources (Part Two)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

[Ted Grimsrud—March 3, 2013]

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 Two)” →

How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources (Part One)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

[Ted Grimsrud—February 10, 2013]

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.

Continue reading “How Pacifists Should Read Christian Sources (Part One)” →

Why we Christians don’t love our enemies

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 9 Comments

[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 “Why we Christians don’t love our enemies” →

God is not a pacifist, right?

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

[Ted Grimsrud—December 16, 2012]

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 “God is not a pacifist, right?” →

Why the Bible matters for theology

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

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). What I have realized this semester is that the reason I, as a theologian, care about the Bible so much and do so much of my constructive theology based on the Bible is because the Bible is, we could say, “this-worldly” in a way that later Christianity and Christian theology are not. Continue reading “Why the Bible matters for theology” →

Faith and Politics (Including Voting)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

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.

Continue reading “Faith and Politics (Including Voting)” →

Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 78 Comments

Ted Grimsrud

This election season is (or should be) an agonizing time for pacifists and other people in the United States who care deeply for peace on earth. Perhaps as much as any time in the history of this country, an uncritical embrace of militarism as a way of life is on display. We have a president running for re-election proudly trumpeting his success in one military intervention after another (including direct assassination of “national enemies”)—and being harshly criticized by his main opponent for being a wuss on national security issues.

Except for people like us on the fringes, Obama’s militarism is not seen as a problem in the national discussion. The country faces extreme economic difficulties and the two main options in this election are giving the military either a somewhat greater share of the national treasure or a much greater share.

Peace advocates’ discouragement with Obama

American peace advocates’ discouragement is heightened by the reality that we thought we might be getting something better four years ago. And we weren’t alone in the world—how else to explain Obama’s clearly premature Nobel Peace Prize (now a distant memory) other than as a statement of hope from the selectors that he truly would provide a new direction in American foreign policy? Yet, when all is said and done, what we see over the past four years is a slight decrease in the bellicose posturing that characterized the Bush administration, but overall a continuation of the trajectory of empire as a way of life.

So, it is understandable that many peace advocates who supported Obama in 2008 (with admittedly varying degrees of enthusiasm—no one I know or know of expected Obama to tack very far toward a truly new, peace-oriented national security agenda; but we did hope for some major positive shifts) are now asserting that they will not vote for him this time. None of these folks, of course, are remotely interesting in voting for Mitt Romney—they talk either of voting for a third (or fourth or fifth) party candidate or of abstaining. Continue reading “Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?” →