An argument in favour of Christian pacifism given purely from the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles is not only quite plausible, but practically incontrovertable. The message of the New Testament is quite clear on the subject of violence and the non-existant place it occupies in Christian practice. The argument for Christian pacifism, however, encounters a very difficult problem when it comes to the Hebrew Scriptures - what Christians know as the Old Testament.

Unfortunately, the Hebrew Scriptures are peppered with accounts of every kind of injustice, including not only war, but slavery, pillaging and outright genocide... All by the command of God. Some particularily lurid accounts include:

Numbers 31:7-18

So they made war against Midian, just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered. Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire. They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast. They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.

Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves."

Joshua 6:1-21, 24

Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. The LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors. You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead."

So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, "Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD." Then he said to the people, "Go forward, and march around the city, and let the armed men go on before the ark of the LORD." And it was so, that when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the LORD went forward and blew the trumpets; and the ark of the covenant of the LORD followed them. The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark, while they continued to blow the trumpets. But Joshua commanded the people, saying, "You shall not shout nor let your voice be heard nor let a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I tell you, 'Shout!' Then you shall shout!" So he had the ark of the LORD taken around the city, circling it once; then they came into the camp and spent the night in the camp.

Now Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the LORD. The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD went on continually, and blew the trumpets; and the armed men went before them and the rear guard came after the ark of the LORD, while they continued to blow the trumpets. Thus the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp; they did so for six days. Then on the seventh day they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the city seven times.

At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, "Shout! For the LORD has given you the city. The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the LORD; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in the house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban, so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban, and make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it. But all the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD."

So the people shouted, and priests blew the trumpets; and when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city. They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.

...

They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold, and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

1 Samuel 15:7-19

So Saul defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is east of Egypt. He captured Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly; but everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.

Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands." And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the LORD all night. Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul; and it was told Samuel, saying, "Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, then turned and proceeded on down to Gilgal."

Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, "Blessed are you of the LORD ! I have carried out the command of the LORD." But Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" Saul said, "They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to sacrifice to the LORD your God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed."

Then Samuel said to Saul, "Wait, and let me tell you what the LORD said to me last night." And he said to him, "Speak!" Samuel said, "Is it not true, though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the LORD anointed you king over Israel, and the LORD sent you on a mission, and said, 'Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are exterminated.' Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the LORD ?"

In fact, some critics have even suggested that genocide and xenophobia are at the very heart of the Hebrew Scriptures, forming the foundation of it's religious experience: Exodus 23:27-9, Leviticus 18:24, Leviticus 25:44-5, Deuteronomy 7:1, Ezra 9:1-12, Ezra 10: 2-5. These instructions go on to manifest themselves not only in the accounts given above, but throughout the books of Joshua and Deuteronomy.

What is the Christian pacifist to do with these teachings? How shall they interpret and understand these blood-drenched passages of Scripture and the blood-thirsty portrayal of God that they give? Even the most ardent pro-war Christian is hard-pressed to take the example of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures to it's extreme and suggest that our own militaries ought to completely wipe out an entire enemy race or loot their property and take their virgin girls as slaves. These passages provide a problem both for pro-violence and anti-violence believers, and must be addressed honestly for both.

The understanding of these passages which I am most comfortable with myself is that of "consequent will": violence was never God's original intentions for our world, and in a reconciled Creation it has no place... But in the mean time, now that we have already fallen and already taken to using violence, God may orchestrate the human use of it to serve His purposes. Though we were originally meant to live in harmony with God, we opt not to and committ ourselves to a path in need of redemption, but that Redeemer would never have come if Jericho had never been sacked.

And this may be at the core of understanding and dealing with the violence present in the Hebrew Scriptures: that violence was not the original intent of God and that the way of violence is not the way of the Messiah. For this we must look both at the beginning, in Genesis, and in the writings of the Prophets about the new age that the Redeemer and Messiah would usher in.

"In the beginning" we encounter a Creation the diametric opposite of the one proposed by the Myth of Redemptive Violence, which suggests that the universe was born into violence and that violence is an inherent, inevitable and unproblematic characteristic of it. What we encounter in the two Creation stories related to us in Genesis is a world in perfect ecological and scientific balance (Genesis 1:1-2:4).

In the second Creation story, that of the Garden of Eden, we are exposed to humanity in a "pre-moral" state where it lives in balance with Creation and in harmony with God. Humanity did not know of good and evil, but rather lived in a state of interdependence, intimacy and (for lack of a better word) innocence.

Genesis 2:15-17

Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

This state of intimacy would come to an end through an act disobedience we call "The Fall". Here is where humanity became alienated from Divinity by becoming aware of the possibility of living in alienation from God... By knowing the difference between good and evil, it opened up the possibility of BEING evil.

Genesis 3:1-7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.' " The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

We immediately see the three fundamental alienations become realities after the pair reach an awareness of the possibility of life in alienation: alienation from God, alienation from Creation, and alienation from other people...

Genesis 3:8-19

They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"

He said, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself." And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel."

To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you."

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return."

We see them hide from God, their former intimacy turned into fear. We see Eve blame the Serpent, and in response God forsees the furture emnity between humanity and Creation, where we constantly see ourselves in opposing struggle against oneanother rather than in intimate relationship. We see the breakdown of human relationships as well. A shockingly little known tidbit of information is that the man-over-woman structure of power so coveted by many claiming to be Christian is, in fact, a punishment for the Fall... These hierarchical power structures are a consequence of our disunity with eachother and God.

Going further on the theme of hierarchy, God condemns Adam to a life of agrarian toil... That is, the life of an established civilization. Civilization is built on an agrarian system which tills the land, which allows a population to settle and to acquire a sense of property. The administration of this system requires a hierarchy and this property requires violence to deffend it. It is easy to romanticize hunter-gatherer societies, and certainly they shared their own portion of violence, but it cannot be denied that there is a systemic flaw in civilization that makes for violence: the belief that there are evil people out there in the world ("them") that we need to kill because we ("us") are good and they want to take our stuff. In a society with looser ideas of property and hierarchy, and a closer relationship with Creation, there have never been problems on the scale that we have developed in the "civilized" world.

This too is noted painfully in the Bible's very first act of violence, when the farmer Cain murders his brother, the shepherd Abel...

Genesis 4:1-8

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD." Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Jealousy, anger, property... God regarded Abel's sacrifice not because of some arbitrary preference for sheep over vegetables, but because Abel more clearly met the demands of God. Throughout the writings of the Prophets, God affirms that what makes a pleasing sacrifice to Him is not the item itself, but the spirit behind it: the spirit of humility, repentance, reconciliation and justness.

Isaiah 1:11-17

"What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?"
Says the LORD.
"I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of fed cattle;
And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats.
When you come to appear before Me,
Who requires of you this trampling of My courts?
Bring your worthless offerings no longer,
Incense is an abomination to Me.
New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies--
I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly.
I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts,
They have become a burden to Me;
I am weary of bearing them.
So when you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Yes, even though you multiply prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are covered with blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight.
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless,
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow.

Isaiah 43:22-25

Yet you have not called on Me, O Jacob;
But you have become weary of Me, O Israel.
You have not brought to Me the sheep of your burnt offerings,
Nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices.
I have not burdened you with offerings,
Nor wearied you with incense.
You have bought Me not sweet cane with money,
Nor have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices;
Rather you have burdened Me with your sins,
You have wearied Me with your iniquities.
I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake,
And I will not remember your sins.

Isaiah 56:1-7

Thus says the LORD,
"Preserve justice and do righteousness,
For My salvation is about to come
And My righteousness to be revealed.
How blessed is the man who does this,
And the son of man who takes hold of it;
Who keeps from profaning the sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil."
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely separate me from His people."
Nor let the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree."
For thus says the LORD, "To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,
To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial,
And a name better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.
Also the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,
To minister to Him, and to love the name of the LORD,
To be His servants, every one who keeps from profaning the sabbath
And holds fast My covenant;
Even those I will bring to My holy mountain
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar;
For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."

This refrain echos throughout the writings of the Prophets, including Jeremiah (ch. 6), Hosea (ch. 8) and Micah's famous line: He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8) God accepts Abel's sacrifices because his heart was in the right place. As for Cain, the propertied agrarian one, he must be councilled on what is acceptable to God. But saddly he never really learns the lesson and goes forth to murder his own brother. But what is God's response to this affront?

Genesis 4:10-15

He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth."

Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is too great to bear! Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

So the LORD said to him, "Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold." And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him.

What a curious response! So very far is this from the bloodthirsty "an eye for an eye" vision of justice, which is really little more than retribution. What God gives Cain in the way of punishment is the torment of his own conscience over what he has done. He exposes to Cain the full alienation that he has caused, even from the land itself, and sets him out as a wanderer.

We also see God threaten to punish sevenfold anyone who would bring violence to Cain... Thuse from the very beginning working to bring an end to the cycle of violence. Nothing is served in the destruction of Cain, since the horrible deed is already done. In being left to the punishment of his own conscience, Cain is being given the opportunity for repentance. Jesus would go on to say that God wishes that none should perish, but that all should come into eternal life. Here we see God's hand of protection over a criminal for that very purpose.

How may we, who have been redeemed by grace, withhold that grace from others by killing them before their time? Our concern should be as God's concern: the redemption of all, no matter how long it takes. We don't know if Cain ever did repent... We do know that he went on to found a city, which doesn't exactly bode well in the case I'm making here. But the intentions of God are clear.

For the present time, I am ignoring questions of the historical validity of the Creation stories. Whether taken as literal accounts or as exaulted parables revealling a metaphysical truth, the effect is the same: violence was not an original part of God's Creation.

Ironically enough, there does tend to be a strange habit where proponents of Creationism - those who take the Creation accounts literally - also tend to be staunch political conservatives and thus regular supporters of war. At the same time, those who are cosmopolitan enough to adopt a position of theistic evolution which looks at the Creation stories as parables also tend to be political liberals, many of whom are also pacifists. Yet the paradigm of evolution would imply that the universe was created in violence, while the Creationist view would imply that violence is the consequence of disobeying God, and to indulge further violence is to, in fact, further compound this problem.

This is much of why I have been very careful in choosing my language throughout this article. I have been wary of using the language of a pre-existant state of non-violence, and rather speaking of good and evil in strictly moral terms. The relationship between humanity and nature, and between creatures within nature, in a state of nature isn't infused with any moral significance until a moral sensibility arises in humanity (whether by evolution or by a tree in a garden). Thus I have spoken of balance, ecology, intimacy and innocence. As presently moral beings, we are capable of making choices as to how we shall interact with each other and with Creation and with God... And often we make very poor choices. What is instinctual in a state of nature may cause great strife and violence in moral, technological, beings. Put simply, we came from nature, but we are now above nature and must make conscious choices that lead us into a new state of intimacy with God and Creation.

This new state of intimacy would be one coming to us from a Messiah long prophecied in Israel... A great leader who would usher in an age of peace and unity, where all should live in reconciliation with God, each other and Creation. The reign of this Messiah would bring a new age, and His throne would be in our hearts. As Christians, we believe that this Messiah has already come, and has already ushered His followers into this new age. And this discussion will occupy the second article in this series on the problem of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Part II: The Prophetic Hope and Jesus the Messiah