Why I'm Wearing a Poppy Today

It is the crazy time of term: marking to do and I'm away at ETS/AAR next week. So blogging has been slow. But I wanted to get this up for Remembrance Day.
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For years I was conflicted about Remembrance Day and found it difficult, especially as a pastor. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with the issue of war and whether Christians should participate in it. For about 15 years, from the start of my doctoral work until about 5 years ago, I embraced pacifism, to which I had always been vaguely inclined. But after I completed 12 hectic years of academic administration in 2004 and had a chance to read, reflect and pray systematically about the theological implications of the pacifist position, I gradually changed my thinking.

Theologically, I have always been conservative, Reformed and Evangelical. On moral issues like sexuality, marriage, the family, abortion and euthanasia I have always held firmly to the traditional, biblical positions. But for a period of my life I departed from the conservative consensus on two points: war and economics. Over the past few years, having had time to reflect on these issues more thoroughly, I have come to reject liberal pacifism and socialism as incompatible with a biblical worldview. I have been deeply influenced by my reading of Augustine over the past few years, whose thought on matters relating to Christianity and culture I now regard as the most profound in the history of the Church.

I admire the Amish and their separatist way of life, just as I admire the venerable tradition of monasticism, even if neither pacifism or celibacy is my personal calling. Like celibacy in the monastic tradition, socialism can be a positive thing if it is voluntary and limited to a specific community like the Amish or the monastic orders. But to impose either socialism or pacifism on the modern nation state, which means imposing it in unregenerate people, is folly and the theology that teaches we ought to try is, in the end, heretical.

The reason for my change of mind is not practical but theological. I have no problem seeing that a moral position may be true and right even if highly impractical and hard. But it was when I began to think through the theological implications of the position that the Church should be calling the nation to adopt a pacifist stance that I lost my pacifist faith.

First, there is the Pelagian optimism about human nature that one must have if one seriously believes that a nation can become pacifist without causing a disaster. One must take seriously all that old social gospel rhetoric about abolishing war, disarmament and so on. Is human society susceptible to being reformed to that extent in this age? To the extent that war becomes a thing of the past? No it is not, I now believe, without a tyrannical, absolutely totalitarian, total world government - in which case the cure is much worse than the disease.

Second, the tendency toward pacifism involves an over-realized eschatology in which the kingdom of God becomes a human project achievable by human effort here and now. Since there is no evidence to suggest that this is an actual possibility, the determination to achieve it hovers precariously between triumphalism and nihilism. The anti-war stance can become a nihilistic, fatalistic, stubborn call to abandon the defenses of civilization, let the wave of evil roll over the culture, and give up the ambiguous work of fighting against barbarianism with all its shades of grey in favor of morally clear but grim determination to die heroically.

Third, where my pacifist faith really went off the rails was when I realized that the very nature and character of God is at stake. Non-violence becomes an absolute higher than good and evil themselves; in fact, for the liberal pacifist God is non-violence. All judgment must be then considered unworthy of him. God does not fight against or punish evil; he simply absorbs them until they stop. Why they should ever stop is never explained; it is just assumed. But in any case, God does not judge sin or conquer it except by suffering from its effects.

I came to realize that non-violence, while certainly a very important good, has been turned into an idol. In fact, it has become God. The old God of wrath who acted in history to reveal his wrath against sin and his mercy for sinners has been turned into an abstract principle of non-violence. Pacifism is the appropriate way to worship the God who is non-violence. There is no grace in such a God because there is no holiness. There is no love, because there is mere passivity. The passive tolerance of modern liberalism finds its ultimate sanction in the God who passively suffers but never acts to conquer.

To embrace liberal pacifism, that is, to advocate pacifism for Christians and non-Christians alike and for the nation state in this age is to embrace liberal Protestantism and its deformed, modern doctrine of God. To advocate liberal pacifism for the state is to become liberal. It is to have a Pelagian doctrine of human nature, an over-realized eschatology, a passive, suffering God who is no longer the righteous judge of all the earth and a view of salvation as essentially a human, social accomplishment.

I noted in my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture, that General Dwight D. Eisenhower entitled his memoirs of his experience of World War II as supreme allied commander, Crusade in Europe. I criticized World War II as a crusade on the grounds that it bore a resemblance to the Medieval crusades to liberate the holy land from Muslim invaders. If the Medieval crusades were wrong, so must the modern one be wrong. But it was my assumption about pacifism that was wrong: both the Medieval and so, logically, the modern crusades were justifiable, though tragic, wars. To fight against the neo-pagan death cult called Nazism and save civilization from its nihilism and terror was the right thing to do. Of course it involved great evils, but once Hitler started invading one country after another great evils were set in motion and would have continued regardless of how the West responded.

I wear a poppy today in honor of the brave men who gave their lives for freedom, civilization and peace in that war. War is always horrifying and always involves sin and evil. It is never a matter of absolute good and evil; both sides are made up of sinful people. But nevertheless, as Augustine recognized long ago, there is a need for good people to do their duty even when duty is compromising, morally ambiguous and tragic. And it always is and always will be until that great day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory to end all opposition to his rule and bring peace once and for all.

Was the Early Church Pacifist?

Lots of people recently have been convinced by John Howard Yoder that the pre-Constantinian church fathers were all pacifists and then, in the fourth century, like the French Communist Party receiving news of the new party line from Moscow in 1941, abruptly reversed themselves and suddenly people like Augustine became rabid theocrats. So the answer to the question in the title of this post would be "Yes!" First they were pacifists and then suddenly they did a 180 degree turn over night. Is this a convincing reading of early church history?

In this post at First Thoughts a while back, Matthew Lee Anderson tentatively suggested that J. Daryl Charles just might be right - and John Howard Yoder wrong - about the stance of the church fathers on pacifism. Yoder famously said that the fathers up to the end of the third century were pacifists (though he thought that their convictions unfortunately weakened a bit during the "long peace" in the second half of the third century between the 9th and 10th great waves of persecution). In opposition to this view, Anderson reports, Charles argues that there is a great deal of ambiguity in the teachings of the Fathers on the issue of serving in the Roman army and pacifism with no evident consensus.

Now, we also must remember that Yoder famously lumped Augustine in with Eusebius and Constantine as creators of what he called "Christendom," which according to Yoder means something like a totalitarian theocracy - kind of like contemporary Iran with bishops replacing the mullahs.

Anderson quotes me offering a rebuttal to Peter Leithart on the meaning of the term "Constantinianism" in Yoder's writings. I pointed out that for Yoder, Constantinianism is an eschatological heresy, not an historical conclusion about what happened in the fourth century. For Yoder, Constantinianism is an illegitimate attempt to reach forward into the future and pull the kingdom of God into the present as if the kingdom had already come in its fullness. This idea is wrong whenever it pops up in history and if it isn't in a particular century or place that does not affect its existence as a theological idea. Well, I still think that is true, but I think Yoder also did contend that the church from the fourth century onward did fall into Constantinianism and Leithart is right about that.

So is Yoder right about the pre-Constantinian Fathers? Is he right about Augustine? Is he right about the "Constantinian Shift"? Is he right about "Constantinianism" being an eschatological heresy? Let's go one at a time.

1. Is Yoder right about the pre-Constantinian Fathers being pacifists? I now think that Charles and those who see more ambiguity in the first three centuries have the better of the argument. It is difficult to be categorical but the most I think we can say is that some early Christians took a pacifist position. But there is nothing decisive like the inclusion of the homoousion in the Nicene Creed to prove that it was an agreed upon doctrine of the ecumenical church. Yoder's view is not supportable by the facts.

2. Is Yoder right about Augustine? I have now read Augustine for myself and I am a bit embarrassed to report that Yoder is spectacularly wrong to lump Augustine in with Eusebius. Yes, the young Augustine got caught up in the excitement of the Theodosian settlement after his conversion in 386. But from about the middle of the 390s onward he gradually worked his way free of these assumptions through his biblical studies and by 410 was in a position to articulate his mature eschatology in The City of God. He renounced Eusebian postmillennialism and adopted his amillennial eschatology of the two cities, in which the State becomes part of the secular - that which belongs to this age - and is thoroughly desacralized. The doctrine of the separation of church and state is rooted in Augustine's thought and there is no basis for theocracy in The City of God.

3. Is Yoder right about the "Constantinian Shift"? I have to say that I think it is overblown by Yoder for one very good reason. Although there is a shift in that the church embraces the state to a considerable extent, the pacifist impulse continues in the form of monasticism while the impulse of the church to partner with the state has more precedents in pre-third century thought that Yoder would have us believe. So there is evolution but not a sudden, wrenching, 180 degree about face.

4. Is Yoder right about "Constantinianism"? I think he is both right and wrong about what he calls "Constantinianism." I think that the term is unfortunate, as is the tendency to equate "Christendom" with "Theocracy." More is obscured by this terminology than is illumined. First, the theologically illegitimate reaching forward and pulling the kingdom back into the present is a perennial temptation of both liberal and conservative, or, better, Romantic Utopian and Coercive Theocratic theologies.

Liberal Pacifism is an example of the former tendency and it is heretical because it envisions the perfection of human nature by the reform of political institutions, which is impossible. The Spanish conquest of the Americas and forced conversion of native peoples is an example of Coercive Theocracy.

I do believe there are examples of tendencies toward theocracy in Western history, although one hates to say so just because the Left unfairly blows them all out of proportion and defines theocracy as Christian morality having any influence on public affairs whatsoever. But where theocratic tendencies do pop up, they are betrayals of Augustinian theology, not implementations of it.

The Bottom Line
The really important point to see is that both Romantic-Utopian and Coercive-Theocratic theologies are both rooted in the same postmillennialist attempt to bring about the kingdom of God here and now within history and without the spectacular Divine intervention the NT refers to as the Return of Christ.

One of the implications of this insight is that Romantic-Utopian and Coercive-Theocratic theologies are not as different from each other as proponents of both might think. Certainly, all attempts to impose Utopian schemes in history tend to degenerate quickly into coercion and violence. This is true of medieval millennial movements, the 16th century peasants revolts and various kinds of Marxist revolutions in the 20th century.

In contrast to all these stands the Augustinian amillennialist, two cities doctrine in which the state and church are kept separate and the state is seen as potentially good and potentially evil in this age. Christians are encouraged to work within the state, but not to sacralize it. Between pacifism and revolution lies the just war doctrine to guide moral decision-making on issues of defending good and repelling evil while realizing that the final defeat of evil will not occur within this age of history as we know it.

The bottom line is that the Church Fathers were neither Utopian pacifist nor warmongering theocrats and we ought to follow their example.

The Heresy of Liberal Pacifism

John Deer is a Roman Catholic priest who advocates a fanatical brand of pacifism that refuses to recognize any difference between the Church and the State or between the future Kingdom of God that will come with the Return of Christ and the fallen world between the first and second comings of Christ.

He responds to the killing of Osama bin Laden by positing a disgusting moral equivalence between the US and Al Qaeda and between terrorists and the use of the sword by the civil authority to mete out justice. For him State punishment of evildoers is the same thing as personal revenge.

He writes as follows: [My comments are in square brackets and in red]

"It had been a stimulating weekend. We spent three days reading the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5-7, line by line. There we discovered that Jesus is clear, consistent and insistent about creative nonviolence: “Blessed are the peacemakers. Offer no violent resistance to one who does evil. When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer the other cheek. Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. Do not judge. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Seek first God’s reign and God’s justice.”

We could not find one instance where Jesus waffles on nonviolence. [He never considers other parts of the Bible and fails to acknowledge that the interpretation of Jesus' words he offers makes the Gospel texts contradict Joshua, Kings, Romans and Revelation. This is to fall back into the ancient heresy of Marcionism.] He never says, “However, if your enemies are particularly vile, kill them all.” He does not offer a set of conditions to justify warfare. He commands universal, nonviolent love. He goes even further in his politics of peace to argue for this unusual practice because, he says, it is the very nature of God. Then you will be sons and daughters of God “who makes the sun rise on the bad and the good and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust,” he announces.

Many in our group expressed bewilderment at such teachings. It felt to some like a crash course in Mandarin. Too challenging, too hard, too impractical, too scary! they said over and over. [Their gut feeling was right on in this case.]

These are the basic guidelines for Christian conduct in the world, I replied. Following these teachings, Christians reject violence, vengeance, retaliation, war, and killing, and instead practice universal love, boundless compassion, generous forgiveness and persistent peacemaking. Even if other Christians reject Jesus’ nonviolence and parade around like wolves in sheep’s clothing, I suggested, we are still summoned to walk this narrow path.

Gandhi took these words to heart, I pointed out. He is one of those rare figures who read from the Sermon on the Mount every day for many decades to strengthen his nonviolence and satyagraha. [In light of Pakistan's prominent place in world news this week, we might recall that the existence of Pakistan, a perpetually violent and close to failed state, is part of Ghandi's legacy.]

“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” Jesus told his disciples the night before he was assassinated. Violence in response to violence only leads to further violence, he taught. Retaliatory violence will not break the downward spiral of violence. It will only fan the flames of hatred and war. Active nonviolence breaks the cycle of violence. Nonviolently resist those who do evil; don’t become like them. Create justice for everyone and you will reap a great harvest of peace. [This is a Utopian perspective that owes more to Pelagius and J. J. Rousseau than to St. Paul, St. Augustine and mainstream Christianity.]

I think Jesus’ teachings on the futility of retaliatory violence and the possibilities of active nonviolence have long ago been proven true. Our wars, our weapons, our state terrorism have not brought peace. [Of course not! Who says anyone can bring peace other than our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring peace when he returns. What hubris to think that there must be some magic solution we can discover to make a fallen world unfallen.] The U.S. assassination of bin Laden, like the death of Saddam Hussein, will not end terrorism or bring peace. It will only inspire further violence, and bring new terrorist attacks against us. [Maybe it will and maybe it will deter terrorist attacks. In any case, the alternative is surrender to radical Islam and to advocate that is treasonous and evil.]

Bombing and killing civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan only fuels the spiral of violence and inspires a new generation to retaliate against us. Jesus was right. Stop killing people, treat people nonviolently, and you will have a better chance of being treated nonviolently too. [A better chance? I don't think so. This is naive.]

But who follows these teachings anymore? Very few. We have twisted Christianity so that God will bless our wars. If Osama bin Laden did not represent true Islam and the All-Merciful One, neither do George W. Bush or Barack Obama represent true Christianity and the nonviolent Jesus.

In fact, Al Qaeda and the Pentagon are two sides of the same coin. [Here it comes: moral equivalence between liberal democracy and militant Islamofascism. This is morally obtuse. Look at Muslim countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia; only a morally deficient person could doubt that they are worse than Western, liberal democracies. The treatment of women alone is decisive.] In the end, both spend their resources trying to kill, and end up killing innocent civilians. [The difference is stark: one does it accidentally and reluctantly in defense of the innocent while the other does it as a matter of deliberate policy with no conscience.] If Osama bin Laden was guilty of killing innocent civilians, so are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton guilty of killing innocent civilians. But the truth is that the U.S. military has killed many more people -- millions more -- than Al Qaeda. Both need to be stopped and dismantled. [This is not cute or a matter of "high ideals." This is utter depravity. If we followed this advice millions of innocents would die unnecessarily. This is dangerous advice.]

The U.S. should immediately end its evil wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Libya, bring all its troops home, dismantle its nuclear weapons, close its military bases, feed the world’s poor, and institutionalize nonviolent, non-military methods of resolving global conflict. Its method of global domination and imperial policing has utterly failed. The cheering crowds outside the White House after Obama’s announcement symbolize our failure to make peace. Instead, we too are caught up in the contagion of bloodlust, violence and revenge. [This sounds like the Stalin-controlled Western Communist Party propaganda during the Cold War.]

I urge Christians everywhere to repent of the sin of war, quit the U.S. military and return to the Way and Wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount. Just as many Muslims are reclaiming their call to practice nonviolence, so too we Christians need to reclaim the mission of creative nonviolence and peacemaking which Jesus demands."

This man is not teaching Christianity. He is a smooth talking heretic who would lead sincere and naive people astray. His theology is based on left-wing, humanistic, Utopian thinking that refuses to take the Biblical view of sin seriously.

This kind of teaching has nothing to do with the pacifism of monks and nuns or the nonresistance of the Amish. It is liberal pacifism and it come right out of the heart of theological liberalism and its rejection of orthodox, biblical theology. Those who swallow this stuff are swallowing poison.

Liberal Pacifism is Not Biblical; It is Embarasingly Shallow

William Willimon, in a Christianity Today interview, discusses the question of whether or not the US should stay militarily involved in Afghanistan.

"After an acrimonious debate about the Iraq war at the United Methodist Church's annual conference a couple of years ago, I declared a series of "Bishop's Conversations about War" all over Alabama.

I'll never do that again. I opened each discussion by saying, "We are going to talk about this war as Christians." I soon learned that it is virtually impossible for us to talk about war using any specifically biblical or Christian referent.

Most people were in favor of the war. We are a democracy; we are powerful; we have a responsibility to spread freedom and democracy around the world; when our government calls, we have a patriotic duty to offer our children. Missing was any reference to Scripture, church teaching, or any other specifically Christian criterion.

. . .

As a Christian, I'm forced to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that all presumptive lordlets are not. So when our President declares that we have a responsibility to fight, to destroy, to force democracy and our brand of freedom anywhere, I wish I had the guts to ask, "Who is this 'we' of whom you speak? We are Christians; Jesus gives us some odd definitions of 'we.'"

I'm not sure that Christians in America could do much to stop these Bush-Obama Near Eastern wars without end. But could we have at least contributed to the national debate by offering an occasional, "But Jesus says that …"?

In our attempts to be good, responsible members of a democracy, we have given away the store. While we say Jesus Christ is Lord, we let Caesar call the shots."

Now, where to start. CT asked a perfectly coherent, though difficult, question regarding American foreign policy which can be discussed ethically. Willimon ducked that discussion and, like a fundamentalist who waves his proof text in your face insisting that it says so right here, he assumes (not argues) that Jesus would tell his followers to tell the US government to withdraw immediately from Afghanistan and that the US should never have invaded in the first place.

So let's try to imagine Willimon's Jesus saying what Willimon thinks he would say. Here is how I think it would go:

War is bad; killing people is bad and you ought not to do it. You should join a liberal peace and justice group right away to lobby the US government to withdraw from Afghanistan and stop fighting the terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan as well.

If you would just read the Four Gospels and look at how I never stopped talking about the oppressive power of Rome and the need to lobby Caesar to stop the war in Persia, the war in Gaul and the endless, expensive and totally unnecessary border skirmishes with the so-called "barbarians," you would have to re-order your priorities. I told you the barbarians were just people with a culture different from your own whom you should respect instead of demonizing as the "other."

As you know, I was against this war from the beginning. Overthrowing the Taliban was a huge mistake. Sure they blew up Buddhist statues, practiced female genital mutilation and trained terrorists to fly planes into buildings but who are you to act like your culture is superior? Every time you overthrow an oppressive, violent, tyrannical government you just stir up the Muslim street and create a recruiting bonanza for radical Islam.

All that stuff I ordered you to do like preaching the gospel, baptizing and teaching them to obey can wait. This is more important. You aren't going to bring peace to the world by evangelism and catechism, you need a PR strategy, a manifesto and computerized voter lists. Above all, you must remember to demonize Bush; the polls say there is still value in it. Have some famous sports figure record a robo call. Organize a march on the White House; that is where all the power is.

I'll be waiting to hear how it goes because I really want peace and you know that politics is the only way, the only truth and the only way of life. And you can't do politics up here where I am.

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Liberal pacifism is the attempt to impose the Christian life upon secular nation states as if would be appropriate for such states to act like Christian pacifists and renounce their obligation to defend the nation by force, which is why God ordains human government during the period of human history in which the effects of the Fall have yet to be reversed by the Second Coming of Christ. (Rom. 13:1-7) Liberal pacifism is part of liberal Protestantism and it is a heresy.

A Kind of "Pacifism" that Leads to War

I have been struggling with the issue of pacifism for nearly twenty years now and my academic work includes a doctoral thesis and book on John Howard Yoder. Yoder, or at least the early Yoder, taught a Christological pacifism for the Church as part of the witness of the Christian community to the eschatological Kingdom of God.

Unlike the liberal pacifism of the Social Gospel movement, which urged modern nation states to disarm unilaterally after World War I and thereby made it safe for Hitler to re-arm and start World War II, Christological pacifism does not expect non-Christian governments in a fallen world to be pacifist. Paul was clear on this point in Rom. 13 and the Sermon on the Mount is for the Church, not the unbelieving world.

The problem is that Mennonites from the beginning of their history to the present have been tempted to make the call to pacifism the content of their message to the world instead of the Gospel of salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ with pacifism following as the result of faith and discipleship. When the Church asks the world to be pacifist without being converted, it in effect denies original sin and implicitly downgrades the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. It becomes a subset of liberal Protestantism.

The Mennonites and other peace churches are always tempted by liberal pacifism and, from my experience with Mennonite scholars, they succumb to this temptation more often than not. A controversy is currently going on concerning the proper interpretation of the work of John Howard Yoder and the currents are flowing in the direction of co-opting him for the side of liberal pacifism.

I went to the Mennonite Central Committee website hoping against hope that I would not find them taking the usual anti-Israel line in common with the secular and religious Left. I was hoping that they would not be advocating a "peace" in which Israel simply allows Hamas and Hizbollah to blow it to bits. I was hoping that the Mennonites would see peace as the mission of the Church rather than a political program for nation states in a fallen pre-Second Coming world.

I was disappointed. Below is a portion of a press release in which the MCC joins with the Marxists, liberationists, social gospelers, socialists, the EU, Hamas, Iranians, Turks, etc. in condemning Israel for defending itself. The press release calls for the unilateral lifting of the blockade of Gaza by Israel immediately. It proposes no mechanism by which arms to Hamas may be kept out of Gaza. It makes no demands of Hamas or its sponsors. It does not condemn Hamas for rejecting a two-state solution or calling for the destruction of Israel. In the name of peace it calls for a policy that will surely lead to war, bloodshed and the killing of civilians.

If this is pacifism, I would like to distance myself as far as possible from it. The use of the words "pacifism" and "peace" is positively Orwellian. The "liberal pacifists" unwittingly helped pave the way for the first Holocaust and they have learned nothing from history.

Here is the press release entitled: "MCC urges governments to end the Gaza blockade."

WINNIPEG, Man. – Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is urging the governments of the U.S. and Canada to work constructively within the international community to restore the normal flow of goods and people through Gaza-Israel border crossings.

In letters to the U.S. president and Canada’s foreign affairs minister, MCC urges them to support an impartial and independent investigation into Israel’s deadly response to the Free Gaza flotilla on May 31.

The convoy, carrying 10,000 tonnes of much-needed aid, was attempting to enter the Gaza Strip by sea and break the Israeli blockade that has a devastating effect on the livelihoods and lives of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians. The convoy was intercepted by the Israeli military before reaching Gaza and clashes led to the deaths of nine people.

Daryl Byler, MCC’s representative in the region, said hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza live in dire conditions without employment and basic supplies because of the Israeli blockade.

Read the rest here.

This is modern Progressivism but it is not historic, orthodox, Christianity. In my heart, I want to believe Yoder would not be so naive, but it is hard to prove what he would or would not say today, a decade after his death.

But it would appear that those who claim his mantle today have enlisted him in modern Progressivism. Let there be no mistake: Yoder interpreted through the lens of modern Progressivism is a heretic and a dead end theologically - just like theological liberalism in general.

Liberal Pacifism is Not Christian Pacifism

From Christian Week comes this story about pacifists who insist that the Canadian government become pacifist. Immediately. This is called having a "peace witness."

WINNIPEG, MB—Christians who want less bang from their tax bucks are protesting Canada's military spending by withholding a portion of their taxes this year.

Peaceloving taxpayers can include a special form when they file their taxes. The form offers two options: taxpayers can sign a declaration of conscience, yet still pay all their taxes, or they can divert 9.2 per cent (the amount allocated to Canada's military spending) to the Peace Tax Trust Fund of Conscience Canada.

Conscience Canada, a Toronto-based organization, set up the fund and produces the forms. Canada Revenue Agency doesn't endorse the Conscience Canada tax form or the trust fund, so withholding taxes adds up to a form of civil disobedience.

"We believe this is a witness we as a historic peace church can make," says Janet Plenert of Mennonite Church Canada. The denomination is the only one Plenert knows of in Canada to promote the tax form on its website. Anyone who downloads and submits the form should let her know, says Plenert, who's trying to track how many people participate. Last year about 100 Mennonites reported filing the form, but Plenert suspects there are many more.

She doesn't know of anyone who has suffered any penalties for withholding tax money, but some "repeat offenders" have received letters and phonecalls from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Canadians like to joke about having a puny military, but Canada is actually the world's 13th biggest military spender. In 2008, Canada spent more than $19 billion on national defense, compared to just over $1 billion allocated to the department of the environment and about $5 billion on international aid.

MP Bill Siksay has introduced a private member's bill to Parliament that, if passed, would let conscientious Canadians divert their tax money toward peaceful efforts."

I have a few problems with this approach.

First, it is to act in disobedience to Scripture. Paul already dealt with some proto-pacifists in Romans 13 and we are, therefore, fortunate to have explicit guidance on the point of whether Christians are to pay taxes to the government or not.

Verse 6 says that we pay our taxes as Christians not because we agree with everything the government does (in which case most people would not pay taxes most of the time) but rather because we recognize the powers that be as performing a legitimate function of punishing evil and maintaining order. To the extent that governments provides these minimal functions they are doing what God has ordained that it do and to think that we could get to a point in a fallen world where such coercive authority is unnecessary is to deny the doctrine of original sin.

Second, the call to a pacifist lifestyle is a legitimate vocation for some Christians, who are called to renounce involvement in politics and worldly endeavors and live lives of peaceful prayer. I think of the Amish and Mennonites as Protestant monastics and think they do well when they follow their calling.

However, to expect a secular, non-Christian society to embrace pacifism without embracing Christ first is to drift into liberal pacifism. Liberal pacifism is an outgrowth of liberal Protestantism and it is a Pelagian and utopian system of thought in which the eschaton is immanentized. It expects non-Christians to live the Christian life, which is impossible. It is heresy.

Third, Mennonites who pursue this form of what they call the "peace witness" are failing to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ front and center in their public witness and replacing it with anther gospel, just as Liberal Protestants replace the Biblical Gospel of sin and salvation with the Social Gospel of socialism. To do this is to fail to make it clear that one's pacifism is Christocentric and thus to become worldly and compromised. If the salt loses its savor it is good for nothing but to be thrown out.

If you are called to a separated life of prayer and peace, that is a worthy and noble calling. If you are called to a life of political involvement and social action that is also a noble and worthy calling. To mix the two indiscriminately, however, is unwise, imprudent and ineffective.

The Politics of the Cross versus Liberal Pacifism

A recent comment on my post refuting those who recklessly and slanderously accuse Israel of “genocide” accused me of not applying the “politics of the cross” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He asked what I thought of a one-state solution and I dismissed it because it would put the Jews right back in the same position as they occupied in Germany in 1933 - a persecuted minority in a country run by people who had been telling the world for years that they believed the Jews should be wiped out. He then wrote the following:

“A one-state solution would have to assume a radically different approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict that took the long hard road of reconciliation as its goal and a willingness by both parties to absorb some of the violence on both sides. But the cross suggests that such reconciliation is possible...and, for the Christian, this is the sort of thing we are called to bear witness to.”

This is a classic statement of liberal pacifism. Liberal pacifism is Pelagian, Utopian and highly dangerous in a sinful, fallen world. Liberal pacifism turns the kingdom of God into a human political project that need not await the Second Coming. It turns the cross into a symbol of liberal faith in human nature, rather than viewing it as a symbol of the reality of evil and the necessity of Divine suffering for redemption. Liberal pacifism chooses not to take evil seriously and blithely assumes that all forms of human conflict can be settled by negotiation and compromise. Liberal pacifism is not about Christians being peaceful, but about the human race being peaceful here and now.

The politics of the cross, on the other hand, is a specifically Christian form of witness in which Christians evangelize without violent coercion and bear witness to the love of God in a world that is dark and evil. Following Jesus by taking up our cross means that we renounce the use of violence and seek to convert people by preaching the gospel, rather than by forced conversion. This makes Christians stand out in the world because most other religions either do not evangelize or else they not only occasionally slip into violence, but actually glorify it as Islam does in its concept of Jihad.

To apply the politics of the cross to the Arab-Israeli conflict as the answer is a category mistake. Neither Muslims nor Jews profess faith in Jesus Christ, so to ask them to take up their crosses and follow Jesus Christ in the way of suffering for the Gospel is to put the cart in front of the horse. The first thing Christians have to say to Muslims and Jews is the call them to accept Jesus as Lord, believe the Gospel and be converted. Then it would be right and proper to call them to follow Jesus in the way of peace. But to think that those who are not followers of Jesus can embrace the politics of the cross is to separate peace as a political project from the Gospel. Our message is that peace on earth is only possible through being reconciled to God and then to neighbor. Christians expect the lion and lamb to lie down together, but not until Jesus has returned, set up the Kingdom of God and begun to rule as the Lord and Messiah of all the earth.

In the meantime, given the fact of hatred, violence and anti-Semitism in the world, Christians will expect the nation state of Israel to adhere to just war theory in defending itself and to make war only as a police action for defensive purposes and never as a means of revenge, conquest, genocide or deliberate targeting of civilians. Christians will expect Hamas to repent of its hatred of Jews, clean up school textbooks that portray Jews as inherently evil, stop firing missiles into Israel, accept a two-state solution, renounce suicide bombing, accept the legitimacy of Israel as a nation, negotiate peaceful co-existence in good faith and use whatever means are necessary to police militants from within its ranks who wish to undermine the peace process.

Given these two sets of expectations, which side do you think is likely to come the closest to living up to its responsibility in the next 12 months?

I am concerned that the politics of the cross not become a bridge over which Evangelicals travel into Protestant Liberalism. Many people, I fear, do use Yoder's theology in that way, but it is illegitimate and much to be regretted.