ATS WAP SY 20162017 A

CRITIQUE CLUB ESSAY 05

When Jesus Said Love Your Enemies I Think He

Probably Meant Don t Kill Them
NANCEY MURPHY

Murphy, N. (2013). When Jesus said love your enemies I think he probably meant dont kill them. Perspectives in Religious
Studies, 40(2), 123129.

Your task in this activity is to answer the following questions.

1. What is the research problem and question?

2. What made the authors argumentation strong? In what way?
3. What made the authors argumentation lacking? In what way?
4. What features in the authors writing style struck you the most? Why?
Perspectives in Religious Studies, 40 no 2 Sum 2013, p 123-129

When Jesus Said Love Your Enemies

I Think He Probably Meant Dont Kill Them
Nancey Murphy
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena CA 91182

Preface
I believe that I met Glen Stassen for the first time in 1988 at an international
Baptist peace conference in Sweden. So I have known ever since then that he
and I share an interest in peacemaking. It is only since he came to Fuller Semi-
nary that I discovered we also share an interest in science and in how it matters
for theology and Christian ethics. I contribute this essay to this Festschrift be-
cause, in a somewhat tenuous way, it brings science (here, neuroscience)
together with a concern for peace and nonviolence.

Introduction
The title of my essay is taken from a bumper sticker designed by a member of
my denomination, the Church of the Brethren, which is one of the three peace
churches recognized by the U.S. government. Because the avoidance of killing
does seem to be the sine qua non for every other form of enemy love, my focus
in this essay will be on the question of why the vast majority of Western Chris-
tians take killing to be justifiable, even mandatory, under certain
circumstancesand this while sometimes objecting to lesser 44unloving acts.
For example, the largely Christian population of the U.S. is concerned about
illegal imprisonment and torture of suspected terrorists, but no outcry is raised
when suspected terrorists are killed by bombing their camps.1
My topic could be approached via numerous disciplines: biblical stud-
ies; church history and its relation to theology and/or its relation to politics; the
development of theological and philosophical ethics. And, of course, there are
all of the developments in history that escape the spheres of rational justification
and fall more to explanations psychological, sociological, or economic. I shall
touch on a number of these issues only briefly and only through secondary
sources, as is required by the brevity of this essay. So in this aspect of my paper
I shall not be breaking any new ground.
What I do intend to offer that may be novel is to ask where contempo-
rary science is relevant to the story. I shall argue for its relevance in a
backwards sort of way. In brief, contemporary neuroscience has focused public
discussion on the topic of human nature, calling into question the dualist and tri-
partite theories widely held by Christian laity. This, in turn, is provoking Chris-
tian scholars to revisit the work done half a century ago, here in the U.S., on the
Continent, and in Britain, arguing that anthropological dualism is not biblical,

1For statements against torture, see www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org and

www.nrcat.org (the National Religious Coalition against Torture).
 124 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

but was rather a later Hellenistic development. My plan will be to pursue the
question: What can we say of the role of body-soul dualism in the loss of paci-
fism and nonviolence in the Christian West? First, I shall provide a brief sketch
of some of the major political and theological developments; then I shall ask
what a focus on dualism adds to the picture. However, since history can never
be reversed and rerun, the elimination of dualism will not reverse the damage it
has done, so I shall end with some contributions of Glen Stassen regarding prac-
tical initiatives to reclaim our pacifist heritage.

The Standard Account

It is widely agreed that early Christians were pacifists. Constantine^ Edict of
Milan, granting toleration of Christianity in 313, is taken as a major turning
point; soon thereafter citizens of the empire needed to defend it despite their
conversion to Christianity. Augustine later devised his just war theory to
legitimize Christians, participation in certain forms and instances of warfare.
The distinction between two levels of morality in the Christian life, one for the
ordinary (unconverted) citizen and a higher one for those with a special calling,
preserved a limited role for pacifism through the Middle Ages, but even this
was lost by the leveling effects of the Reformers.

The Role of Body-Soul Dualism

For theologians and biblical scholars, dualism may seem an outdated issue.
Among the U.S. public, though, it is anything but that. We have authors such as
Francis Crick writing that neuroscience has shown there to be no soul, and that
this has falsified religion.2 When I lecture on the topic of human nature I often
poll my audiences. Among lay audiences I find the vast majority divided be-
tween dualism and what is called in the literature trichotomism, meaning that
the person is composed of body, soul, and spirit. Of course scholarly audiences
are different, more and more predictably physicalist, except among conservative
Christians; these are divided between dualism and physicalism. Since no one in
academia is a trichotomist, I was curious where the trichotomism in American
culture comes from. Apparently the answer is that much of it comes from Chi-
na: the evangelist Watchman Nee taught trichotomism and was widely read by
American Charismatics and Pentecostals in the 1960s and 1970s.
My purpose is to argue that body-soul dualism played a role in the loss
of Christian nonviolence in the West and that it did so by means of sponsoring
the doctrine of hell.
Early Christian teaching on the afterlife, such as that of Clement of
Rome, writing in approximately 95 C.E., focused on immortality as a gift from
God and as a consequence of resurrection of the body, with no mention of a
soul. The fate of those who were not saved was simply death. His contempo-
rary, Ignatius of Antioch, spoke of the everlasting fire as described in Scripture
(e.g., Matt 25:41), but this was an everlasting means of quick extermination of

2Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1994), 261.
JOURNAL OF THE NABPR 125

those who were lost. (Note that Matthews Jesus speaks in 10:28 of destroying
both body and soul in hell.)
The first mention in Christian teaching of an immortal soul was in the
Epistle to Diognetus, written in approximately 130. Athenagoras was the first to
link a philosophical conviction of the natural immortality of the soul with a
Christian doctrine of the punishment of the wicked and to conclude that the
damned would suffer eternally. He believed that their suffering would be pro-
portionate only to their evil-doing.
Tertullian, living from approximately 160 to 240, is most responsible
for crafting Latin theologys doctrine of hell He accepted Platos arguments for
the immortality of the soul but rejected the souls pre-existence. On the basis of
the pagan idea of ignis sapiens, a fire that reproduces and repairs, he argued that
both soul and body bum for eternity, suffering as much torment as the blessed
enjoy happiness. Tertullian wrote during a time of terrible persecution in North
Africa; he forbade his congregation both vengeance and flight from the persecu-
tion but encouraged them to enjoy the prospect of their persecutors future in
hell.
Augustine, as already noted, played a crucial part in the demise of paci-
fisrn by creating just war theoryrelaxing restraints on the use of violence
against those outside of the church. He is also a central player in loosing vio-
lence within the church itself. His biographer, Peter Brown, recounts his coming
to accept the use of imperial coercion against the Donatists in North Africa. Ear-
lier in his ministry he had held that the physical sanctions described in the Old
Testament were no longer needed. However, in light of shifting views of the
roles of divine action and free will, he came to see a need for corrective pun-
ishment, including such things as loss of property and flogging. Brown says that
44Augustine may be the first theorist of the Inquisition. . . and the 44deadly
sense of urgency in the justification he wrote was his fear for the loss of souls
to hell. As did Tertullian, Augustine believed that the soul was naturally immor-
tal, and so punishment would be eternal. Augustine wrote: 44If blood comes
spurting out of the flesh of a mortal man, anyone who sees it is disgusted; but if
souls lopped off from the peace of Christ die in this sacrilege of schism or here-
sy . . . a death that is more terrifying and more tragic, indeed, I say plainly, a
more true death than any otherit is laughed at... .4
Yet Augustine opposed the death penalty for heretics, both for practical
reasonsnot wanting to make martyrs of themand because it excluded the
possibility of repentance. So there is more to tell before we can understand how
Christians came to kill one another in great numbers in the name of God. To
take one later example, during the trial of Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler, one
of the court officials said to him: 44You desperate evil doer and arch heretic, I
tell you this: if there were no hangmen here 1 would hang you myself and would
be sure I would be serving God thereby.5

3Peter Brown, Augustine o f Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University o f Califor-

nia, 1967), 240.
4Augustine, Parm. 1.8.14 (quoted in Brown, Augustine o f Hippo, 232).
5John Howard Yoder, ed., The Legacy o f Michael Sattler (trans. idem; Scottdale,
Pa.: Herald Press, 1973), 73.
 126 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Charles Taylor, in his monumental Secular Age, provides helpful in-

sight. Taylor is attempting to convey the different quality of life experienced
before the individualism and secularism of late modernity. He emphasizes that
the community faced spiritual powers as a body and relied, as a body, on Gods
protection. In these earlier days, turning heretic is not just a personal matter;
societies were seen as standing together towards God, responsible for the or-
thodoxy . . . of their members. The deviancy of some would call down
punishment on all. At a certain point, God even owes it to himself, as it were, to
his honour, as we might say, to strike. Similarly, it was necessary to extract
vengeance against witches in order to stay the anger of God.6
Does this perceived need to protect the community from the fate of the
single heretic in its midst account for the willingness of Christians to subject
increasing numbers, through thirteen centuries of Christian history, to torture
and death and to do so with pronouncements of the goodness of what was being
done? Taylor has no direct answer, but he does note that the atomic individual-
ism that came to characterize later modem conceptions of the self arose
concurrently with a widespread reaction against the orthodox doctrine of
hellboth of these occurring in the eighteenth century. And this is also the pe-
riod in which corporal punishment for heresy largely came to an end.
The sort of argument I have made here is comparable to creeping out
on the branch of a tree onto thinner and thinner twigs. I have suggested that
without body-soul dualism, mainstream Western Christianity would not have
adopted the, concept of a naturally immortal soul. Without an immortal soul, the
varied and allusive texts in Scripture would not have been interpreted as imply-
ing eternal torment for the damned. Without such a prospect for heretics,
temporal punishment aiming to reform them would not have appeared justified.
Without the belief in divine retribution against the innocent of the community
(and perhaps also without a concept of the violation of Gods honor) the execu-
tion of recalcitrant heretics would not have appeared a good thing to do. I do not
know how far my audience will follow me along these branches.
Clearly the absence of dualism would not have prevented the execution
of heretics for political reasons. Heresy had already become criminal under
Constantine and was made a capital offense by Theodosius II in 382. The oppo-
sition between the Catholic empire and heretical groups was both doctrinal and
political, as with the Arianism of the Goths. The two forms of violence with
which I am concerned in this paper (Christians participation in war and the
execution of heretics) come together in cases such as the execution of Ana-
baptists. This was motivated not only by their theology but also by their
professed unwillingness to take up arms to defend the state. It is a sad irony that
probably the last to die in the U.S. because of religious convictions were paci-
fists who were court-martialed during World War I and died as a result of
mistreatment in prison.7

6Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 42-
43.
7Conscientious Objector, The Mennonite Encyclopedia (ed. Cornelius J. Dyck
and Dennis D. Martin; 5 vols; Hillsboro, Kans.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1955), 1:695.
JOURNAL OF THE NABPR 127

The rejection of body-soul dualism today will, of course, have no au-

tomatic effect on mainstream Western Christian attitudes toward violence.
However, it does seem consistent with a shift in emphasis in theology and in the
life of the church. It bears most directly on the doctrine of salvation. We have
had two motifs throughout much of Christian history: one is realization of the
kingdom of God on earth; the other is the reconciliation of the blessed with God
in Heaven. A degenerate view of the latter is what Lutheran theologian Ted Pe-
ters whimsically calls soul-ectomysaving souls out of this world.
Physicalism certainly calls for a re-evaluation of teachings regarding
everlasting hell. Without the concept of an immortal soul, it must be resurrected
bodies that are punished. But this expectation makes no sense without some-
thing like Tertullians ignis sapiens. Thus, annihilationism, the expectation that
any who are not saved will simply cease to exist, seems a more reasonable ex-
pectation.
Furthermore, physicalism, with a correlative emphasis on bodily resur-
rection, is an aid to Christians to remember that bodies matter to Godbodies
and all that goes with them: society, history, and the whole of nature. So I am
somewhat hopeful that a renewed emphasis on human physicality might lead to
a greater appreciation of Jesus1 teachings about our life together in this world,
such as we find in the Sermon on the Mount.
It is indeed the case that a large number of American Christians support
military action because they locate salvation exclusively in a heavenly realm,
and this is generally combined with an eschatology involving warfare. Many
other Christians, however, reject pacifism because they believe that it is simply
impracticable. For this reason I turn to Stassens reading of the Sermon on the
Mount.
Stassen points out that most interpreters of the Sermon treat Jesus5
teachings in Matt 5:21-48 as dyads, or two-fold teachings: do not kill is aug-
mented by do not be angry; do not commit adultery is augmented by do
not look with lust, and so forth. Because it is manifestly impossible to control
anger and sexual arousal by mere will, the entire sermon has often been inter-
preted as something other than a guide to Christian ethics.
Stassen argues that both the dyadic structure and the dismissal of the
Sermons relevance are mistaken. The structure of each exhortation is a triad: a
statement of the law, a realistic assessment of a common form of sinful bond-
age, and a transforming initiative. Jesus emphasis is on the third. So a better
paraphrase of the first is: The law says do not kill; I say that if you are being
angry (a continuous action participle) you are liable to judgment; therefore (and
here is the imperative) if your brother or sister has something against you, go
quickly and try to make peace. Similarly, Jesus is not forbidding lust but, in a
hyperbolic manner, saying to remove the source of the problemavoid the
practices that cause it. Stassen finds that the central section of the Sermon on
the Mount, from Matt 5:21 to 7:12, consistently follows this pattern of
 128 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

transforming initiatives, and finds numerous parallels in other New Testament

writings.8
The text so often parroted as the epitome of Christian passivityJesus
injunction to turn the other cheekis to be seen in this context as a transform-
ing initiative. Walter Wink spells out more fully the implications this would
have had in Jesus context. A backhanded slap was a gesture used to dishonor
an inferior person. A husband was permitted to strike his wife in this way, or a
slave-owner his slave. But there were severe penalties for striking an equal in
this humiliating manner. Note that Matthew specifies that it is the right cheek
that is struck; Luke does not say. However, the attacker would have used his
right hand, since the left hand was used only for unclean purposes. Thus, a
backhanded blow would fall on the right cheek. Now, if the victim turns the left
cheek the attacker would have to strike with his fist or open palm, not only with
penalties involved but, more importantly, with the implicit recognition of the
equality of the victim.9
Stassen shows that similar patterns of transforming initiatives can also
be found in Jesus command that we go the second mile, give our cloak, and
lend to one who wants to borrowand, in fact, throughout the fourteen central
teachings of the Sermon. So none of the teachings is a prohibition or a hard
teaching or a 4high ideal; each is a transforming initiative of deliverance from
a realistically diagnosed vicious cycle of sinful bondage. Each is based on grace
and is a kingdom breakthrough. Furthermore, the verse usually translated do
not resist evil actually means do not retaliate revengefully by evil means.
And this is exactly how the Apostle Paul reports the teaching in Rom 12:19-21.
The importance of Stassens exegesis, I think, is this. We have today a
number of Christian pacifists, but they are a small minority. There is also a
growing appreciation for the power of nonviolent resistance as a result of the
independence movement in India, the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., and
the peaceful dismantling of the Berlin wall. And there is a recognition that many
participants in acts of nonviolent resistance are Christians. But I believe that
there is lack of appreciation of the fact that nonviolent resistance is a part of the
original gospel. Stassen says:

Once we see the transforming initiative pattern, we can see the Sermon
on the Mount more clearly as grace. Those who thought it offered hard
teachings or impossible ideals were misreading . . . Jesus emphasis. . . .
The emphasis is . . . on what God is doing in Christ. Each points to the
concrete shape and character of Gods gracious delivering action. Each
shows us how we can participate in the deliverance. . . each is a practical
way o f deliverance out o f the vicious cycles.10

8Glen H. Stassen, Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and

Peace (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 33-88; and idem, The Fourteen Triads of
the Sermon on the Mount, JBL 122 (2003): 267-308.
9Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World o f
Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 175-76.
10 Stassen, Just Peacemaking, 49.
JOURNAL OF THE NABPR 129

So it is not the case, as many have argued, that Jesus way of nonviolence is
somehow inapplicable today. The reasons that have been given are many. For
example, Jesus ethic was an ethic for individuals, and he did not address socio-
political ethics. Or Jesus and his early followers lived in a world over which
they had no control, so nonviolence was their only option; today to be a pacifist
is to refuse to take responsibility for society and history.11 Instead, we can see
Jesus as one of the earliest theorists of nonviolent direct action. As John How-
ard Yoder points out, effective nonviolent resistance was being practiced in Je-
Jesus day; Jesus teachings pointing to nonviolent transforming initiatives was
practical in his day;12 it is by no means an anachronism, as we see in the works
of Gandhi, King, and the Revolution of the Candles in East Germany.
I hope that this short and sketchy paper might provide some insight
regarding the loss of Jesus teachings on enemy love in the West and some en-
couragement to all Christians to persevere in loving one another and their
neighbors at least enough so as not to kill them.

11John Howard Yoder, The Politics o f Jesus (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1994), 1-20.
12Ibid., 89-92.
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