The Problem

I have a good friend who loves the great Christian thinkers, Erasmus and his 16^th-century Anglican friends and contemporaries known as the Oxford or London Reformers, Dean John Colet, Thomas More, and Juan Vives.

My friend writes:

But, Erasmus was no absolute pacifist. He was very much the nimble, subtle and nuanced owl of his age, ever finding a thoughtful and navigating a thoughtful pathway between the pacifist doves and warlike hawks. (name and source withheld).

My friend’s assessment that such thinkers are “the nimble, subtle and nuanced owls of their age” has always struck me as passing strange. If “Teaching the Gospel Message that Jesus was totally nonviolent, and we’re called to be nonviolent too,” ¹ then aren’t exception caveats in the otherwise dovish Erasmus–he the premier 16^th-century Peace theologian–more of a departure from The Way than ‘nimble’ on The Way? And can it be denied that his opposition to church militarism² became his legacy–not nimble path-picking between doves and hawks?

My conditional “if” above is of course the nub. But as I read Jesus in the Gospels³, the burden of proof is surely on those “nimble” thinkers to explain why they seem to contradict/obviate/set aside what Jesus explicitly taught: Love your enemies–don’t you think?

What follows is not so much an argument for Pacifism as making space for a challenge to its alternative, in one’s commitment to taking Jesus seriously. It does not address the minefield of thorny practical issues of living “in, but not of the world,” which two millennia plus of Church history have brought to bold relief on this matter. Then again, neither does Jesus.

Abstract theology holds for me little appeal. So along the way, beginning with my friend, I interact with embodied expressions of Pacificism’s alternative.

Simply stated: in Jesus, if not Pacifism, why not?

Exception-Clause Footnote Theology?

I must express textual agnosticism: Search as I might throughout the New Testament, I find nowhere any Exception-Clause Footnote Theology at work that permits, let alone encourages, an end-run around this central text and theme. Do you?

Surely a nimble mind does not try to find a (convenient?) agnosticism about this theme, while seemingly ignoring that

peace [is] the heart of the gospel message and the ground of the New Testament’s unity. (New Testament scholar Richard Hays. See above footnote.)?

Whereas, one must wonder at the apparent abnegation of simply seeing this unifying theme of the New Testament!? Or have I missed something–and not they?

Mind you (intentional pun), that great thinkers such as C.S. Lewis had such “nimble” minds, one cannot deny. Perhaps though therein lies the problem? . . .

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