This article argues that theological pacifism is best evaluated when situated in a network of practices, beliefs and biblical reading strategies that support a critique of Empire, and when mapped onto this world open up a space for living that is non-territorial and non-sacrificial, the grammar of which is governed by a political understanding of love.

In order to offer a substantive Christian challenge to modern state violence, the particular character of the modern state cannot be ignored. Nor can New Testament teaching on peace be reduced to flat and generalized ethical imperatives. The subtlety of peace is neglected if either of these two tendencies goes unchecked. After thus framing the question of a Christian response to modern state violence, itself the product of Christian agency among other factors, I offer a New Testament challenge to modern (...) state violence along two lines: refusing the sacrificial political economy characteristic of the modern state, laboring instead at a christological dynamic of gift that takes account of the relative position of agents in the inherited distribution of power and expects more from the strong; observing the limits of state representation for addressing vulnerability to violence, indeed its complicity in that vulnerability, and investing in scales of community commensurate with the subtlety of peace. (shrink)

This article takes up the current debate on populism and democracy and deals with the philosophical critique that the twentieth-century idea of pacifism represents an ideology, the misguided nature of which must be debunked. In this context, the term ideology is referred to with a post-Marxist understanding, which interprets ideology as a collective fantasy structuring our social reality by way of a practice of disguise. Hence, the question will be raised as to whether modern religions, such as neo-Buddhism or Christianity, (...) are well advised to appropriate the idea of pacifism in order to renew their imaginary register of peace and non-violence. In conclusion, it will be argued that the imagination and promise of a peaceful community is among the biblical motives that are the source of Christian faith. However, in order to prevent a political force from turning into an ideology, biblical motives have to be interpreted from the perspective of a negative Christology, which sees pacifism as an impossible project and thus liberates us from the pitfalls of human desire. (shrink)

Pacifism is an active form of resistance, and therefore not to be criticised as a passive withdrawal from the world. The defining characteristic of pacifism, in both the institutional and the witness approach, is its categorical commitment to nonviolence. Therefore, pacifism’s discourse on violence deserves special attention. This article identifies incoherencies and developments in pacifism’s discourse on violence, which are due to the almost unbearable burden of thinking and acting categorically in a nonviolent manner. It furthermore identifies two presuppositions in (...) pacifist thinking on the consequences of the use of violence which turn out to be rather myths than reality. It cannot be proven that violence always begets violence nor that violence cannot be tamed in military operations. Therefore, the belief of pacifism that peace can be brought about effectively only when refusing any kind of violent means turns out to be an irrational myth as well. (shrink)

Pacifists and their opponents disagree not only about moral questions, but most often about factual questions as well. According to my reconstruction of pacifism, this is not surprising, since the pacifist, legitimately, looks at the facts in the light of her system of values. Her opponent, in turn, looks at the facts in the light of an alternative value system. And the quarrel between the two parties about supposedly descriptive matters never ceases, as there is no objective reality that could (...) settle the issue. The pacifist’s value-laden perspective on reality is informed by Christian charity and humility: a specific mixture of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

The article questions concepts of ‘democratic peace’ that presuppose an intrinsic relation between pacifism and democracy. This view lacks from both, empirical evidence and historical insight. Instead, pacifism as political and personal virtue can be better linked to the Deweyan idea of democracy as the basic way of life, that is, mutual cooperation and self-realisation. But not only pacifism but also warfare and aggressive conduct often are rooted and result in an ethos of solidarity and cooperation. Therefore, the task for (...) any realistic concept of democratic pacifism is at least two-fold: finding ‘moral equivalents’ to war and cultivating an ethos of self-criticism and self-restraint as already the Old Testament’s prophets have proclaimed. (shrink)

This introductory essay differentiates between divergent forms of pacifism, concerning their background assumptions, status, scope, justification and political implications. Then, it presents two versions of criticising pacifism, one external, one internal way. Finally, it will be discussed whether there is a specific coalition between religious faith and pacifism and what form that relation might take.

The relation between peace-oriented politics and theology will be discussed from a philosophical point of view by approaching the problem in five steps. In a first step, I will focus on logic as one of the most powerful and simultaneously misleading forces in our thinking. Utilising the results of this step will, secondly, enable a clarification of the misunderstanding implied in an idea such as eternal peace. Thirdly, the article will unveil the paradoxical character of violence inherent in the notion (...) of political power as well as the antinomy of war and peace. This will open the space for accepting second-best solutions. In so doing at least some of the problems implied in any philosophical contribution to a political theology of pacifism may be solved. (shrink)

This article considers what makes a compromise bad. First, it defines a compromise as a decision involving a loss of good, which should therefore be accompanied by ‘agent-regret’. Regret, however, is not moral guilt. Pace proponents of ‘dirty hands’, a morally right compromise cannot retain elements of moral wrongness. Second, the article proceeds to elaborate the features of bad compromise further in terms of common moral sense: the preference of less rather than more of a single good; the preference of (...) an inferior to a superior good; and the violation of an absolute moral rule. Third, it extends its elaboration in terms of three historical cases: the abandonment of strategic promotion of a good; tactical suspension for insufficient reasons; complicity in indubitable and certain injustice to avoid tolerable costs; and the violation of a basic principle of justice as distinct from normal judicial process. Finally, it adds a methodological epilogue, in which it reflects on whether its treatment of the topic has been sufficiently theological. (shrink)

There are broad commonalities between the projects of Donald MacKinnon and Stanley Cavell sufficient to make the claim that they struck an analogous pose in their respective contexts. This is not to discount their manifest differences. In the milieu of 1960s and 1970s Cambridge, MacKinnon argued in support of a qualified language of metaphysics in the service of a renewed catholic humanism and Christian socialism. At Harvard, Cavell articulated commitments that made him more at home in the world of North (...) American secular political liberalism. Where Nietzsche, Hume, Freud, Heidegger, Emerson and Thoreau were Cavell’s inspirations, Butler, Kant, G. E. Moore, Collingwood and the New Testament were MacKinnon’s. For all the stark differences, commonalities abound and the reason for this can be traced to a shared appreciation of Austin’s contribution to the ‘lingusitic turn’ together with Wittgenstein’s later work. They both developed projects obsessed with the problem of scepticism together with a commitment to a creative re-animation of moral discourse in light of it, with MacKinnon defending a qualified ‘moral realism’, and Cavell, ‘moral perfectionism’. Seen together, a distinctive post-Kantian and post-Wittgensteinian therapeutic moral philosophy is in evidence. (shrink)

This article interrogates the use of a Kingdom-of-God narrative frame, in the work both of progressive evangelicals Glen Stassen and David Gushee and in liberation theology, claiming that this narrative has often inspired hope and moral action but can be questioned on a variety of theological and methodological grounds. It considers startling recent claims by liberation ethicist Miguel De la Torre that all talk of a coming Kingdom of God is mythic, a middle-class illusion that undermines radical commitment to ethical (...) praxis for justice. Engagement with two classic liberationist texts confirms both that liberation theology offers a somewhat radicalized Kingdom-of-God narrative and that De la Torre’s new claims represent a clear break with liberationism. The article concludes by briefly considering options in eschatology for those who have heretofore invested considerable hope in an immanentist, participative, certainly-coming Kingdom-of-God narrative to ground their Christian ethics. (shrink)

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through (...) a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification. (shrink)

Apocalypticism has been widely denounced as a framework that devalues the world and its history, funding moral dualism. While this is certainly true of many forms of apocalypticism, it is not an accurate understanding of ancient apocalyptic texts. This article establishes a framework of theological virtue ethics drawn particularly from Herbert McCabe, in which human rationality and Christian morality are understood as political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental. From within this framework, Anathea Portier-Young’s work is considered, relating early Jewish apocalyptic (...) to trauma theory and describing how these texts narrated socio-political catastrophe in order to open up possibilities of resistance and hope. These considerations point us towards a constructive understanding of apocalyptic imagination and praxis within a political, linguistic, narrative, bodily and sacramental framework. Contemporary employments of Afro-pessimism in Black theology, particularly in J. Kameron Carter, then interrogate the proposed apocalyptic imagination, asking whether Christian apocalyptic praxis can cultivate hope in the face of the catastrophe of modern racism. (shrink)

Paul L. Lehmann was one of the leading Protestant theologians and ethicists of his generation. Working directly from archival sources and early writings, this article offers an account of the formation of key features of his distinctive theological perspective up to and including the first decades of his professional career. It argues that Lehmann prosecutes a distinctive and markedly Protestant form of public theology, centred on an understanding of the Word of God as a present, dynamic and humanising power, to (...) which Christian faith, life and thought give witness and serve catalytically. In this, Lehmann shows himself to be a premier advocate for lines of thinking he first encountered in the work of Karl Barth and of his friend, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (shrink)