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Contents I . Traditional Views Compromise, i Nonviolence, 9 Violence, 1-7 I Today's Christians for Violence The Singling Out of the Poor, 30 Copyright @ 1969 by The Seabury Press, Incorporated Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 69-13540 Design by Paula Weiner 644-469-C-5 Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The Basic Presuppositions, 35 The Three Possible Orientations, 43 The Character of Christian Participation in Violence 60 27 The Theological Consequences, 71 :3. Christian Realism in the Face of Violence Violence as Necessity, 84 The Law of Violence, 93 Are There Two Kinds of Violence? 108 Rejection of Idealisms, 115 .1. The Fight of Faith Necessity and Legitimacy, 127 Christian Radicalism, 145 The Violence of Love. 160 INDEX Traditional Views 1 TIHE CHURCHES and the theologians, it is helpful to recall at I lie outset, have never been in unanimous agreement in their views on violence in human society. Today most people believe that general opinion in the past accepted and, in one way or other, blessed the state's use of violence and condemned any revolt against the ruling authorities. But it is a mistake to assume that it is only in our day that Christians have adopted a nonviolent stance or, on the other band, have ranged themselves on the side of revolutionary violence. These two attitudes have had their representatives, their theologians, their sects from the beginning. Let us then put the problem in perspective by reviewing, briefly, the main facts concerning these several positions. COMPROMISE As early as the end of the first century, the Christians found themselves under a political power-the Roman empire-which persecuted them but at the same time insured a kind of order and a kind of justice. They also found themseIves confronting biblical passages which affirmed the value 2 Violence of the state-or, at the very least, of the official political authorities-and ascribed to it a divine origin. We shall not here take up the innumerable exegeses of Romans 13 and parallel texts. The important thing is to understand that such passages and exegeses predisposed the Christians to accept the political power as more or less valid. On the practical level, however, they saw that the state always threatened to become a persecuting state, and they saw also that it used violence against its enemies, internal or external. For war certainly seemed violence pure and simple, and the police operated by violence-the crucifixion of thousands of slaves, for instance. How then accept that, when it used such methods, this power was ordained by God? To be sure, the Christians understood that the state legitimately wields the sword. But was this valid in all circumstances? Questions like these led to the development of various theological positions-that , for instance, which was to be dominant in the West during the Middle Ages (so-called political Augustinianism), or that which triumphed at Byzantium. What is remarkable in these theological constructions is that they do not retain the biblical perspective which sees the state as ordained by God, in harmony with the divine order, and at the same time as the Beast of the Abyss, the Great Babylon; as wielder of the sword to chastise the wicked and protect the good, but also as the source of persecution and injustice. Instead of maintaining the balance of both these truths, these theologians chose rather to validate the political power a priori on a global scale. They worked out their position on the basis of a kind of monism. The question they put was: Under what conditions is the state just, and when does it cease to be just