J. Denny Weaver is concerned that commitment to being a peace church is waning among Mennonites (“The peace church as worship of God,” July 2010). His basic thesis is that because we worship a nonviolent God, revealed in Jesus Christ, then we can’t be other than a peace church. I share his concern for maintaining the peace ethic, but disagree with his theological approach.

Weaver’s central argument is essentially this: God is fully revealed in Jesus; Jesus was nonviolent; therefore, God is nonviolent. This argument is logically valid: if we accept both of its claims, then we must accept its conclusion. But should we accept those claims? Let us consider each claim in turn.

God and Jesus

Weaver claims: “We believe God is fully revealed in the story of Jesus Christ, in his life, teaching, death and resurrection.” The relevant word here is “fully.” Absent this, I agree: God is revealed in the human-historical person Jesus. But, fully? To say that is to say that there is literally nothing to God left over once we have looked at Jesus: Jesus exhausts the reality of and possibilities for God; there is no more to be known of God then what is (or can be) known of Jesus. Do we believe this?

According to the Nicene Creed, God is eternally and indivisibly three co-equal persons in one being—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because all three persons share one being, each of the persons is fully God, each reveals God fully, and the respective persons of the Trinity co-inhere with one another: God the Father is fully present in God the Son and the Son is fully present in the Father. Yet, precisely because each person is fully God and reveals God fully, God is not reducible to any one of the three persons—though indivisibly and equally God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit remain distinguishable. According to the Definition of Chalcedon, moreover, the human-historical person Jesus is neither simply God, nor even equivalent to the second person of the Trinity. Rather, Jesus incarnates God the Son—the full nature of God conjoined to the full nature of humanity.

From an orthodox point of view, then, there is both more to Jesus than God and more of God than Jesus. These fine points matter. If it were true, as Weaver claims, that God is fully revealed in Jesus, then all that is true of God would be true of Jesus also (or, if not, then something of God would not be revealed in Jesus); and, conversely, what’s not true of Jesus is not true of God. This logic underwrites Weaver’s argument: Jesus is not violent, so God is not violent. Is this so? According to Scripture, God created the world in the beginning. From an orthodox viewpoint, this means that all three persons of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—were co-present and co-operative in the creation of the world. Jesus, however, was not: the Word was with God in the beginning, but not the Word-made-flesh (cf. John 1:1-2 and 1:14). So, not all that is true of God is true of Jesus; and, conversely, what is not true of Jesus is not necessarily not true of God. From the fact that Jesus is nonviolent, therefore, it does not follow that God is nonviolent.

Jesus and nonviolence

Weaver’s second claim is that Jesus is nonviolent. For sure, as revealed by the Gospels, Jesus is nonviolent in his life, teaching, death, and resurrection.

According to the apostolic faith, however, that is not all there is to Jesus. There is also his ascension, his intercession—and, of particular relevance here, his return “as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). If we are to say that Jesus is nonviolent, then we must say that Jesus is nonviolent in his entirety, including his judging of the world. The New Testament presents Jesus as the appointed executor of divine vengeance in the final judgment (John 5:19-29; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Revelation 19:11-21). These texts use manifestly violent images to portray the final judgment: fire, sword, and destruction.

Now, I think that such imagery is better seen metaphorically than literally. I think also that one can argue, as does Weaver, that the non-retaliatory (so nonviolent) pattern of cross and resurrection is the decisive precedent for anticipating how God might deal with evil through Christ in the end. Scripture testifies, furthermore, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)—hence, the Christ who comes to judge in the end will be the same Jesus who renounced retribution and judged mercifully in his teaching and ministry, death and resurrection. One can thus make a good case that, at very least, the final judgment of God to be executed by Jesus Christ need not be violent. Nonetheless, these arguments cannot necessarily rule out a violent final judgment, such that it cannot be asserted with certainty that Jesus is nonviolent.

Jesus and the Old Testament

For sake of argument, let us assume that Jesus is nonviolent. Does this then prove that God is nonviolent? Not quite. The Old Testament, we all know, depicts God as acting violently. If one is to conclude that God is nonviolent, one must have a strategy for dealing with those texts that run contrary to one’s preferred conclusion.

Weaver’s strategy is to distinguish the “textual God” from the “actual God.” The textual God, as evident from the various stories of the Old Testament, would seem to be both violent and peaceable, depending on which stories you read. Which is the actual God, the violent God or the peaceable God? (Weaver assumes that there is a necessary contradiction in a God who is peaceable but violent—God cannot be both. Why not? God says, “I will be who I will be.”) We know the actual God, Weaver argues, by looking to Jesus: because Jesus reveals God and Jesus is nonviolent, we know which stories in the Old Testament are true revelation—those that depict God as peaceable. (Weaver leaves the logical inference unstated: stories that depict God as violent are false revelation.)

Such a distinction, between the God of the Old Testament and the God revealed by Jesus, comes too close to Marcionism for my own comfort. Putting that aside, notice that Jesus functions in Weaver’s argument as an extra-textual criterion of truth. He states, “To decide which side of the conversation best reflects the character of God, we need a criterion outside these stories.” That criterion is Jesus. But, there’s a problem: we know Jesus only by way of the stories in the Gospels. Weaver’s distinction could thus be applied to Jesus himself: one can suppose (as historical-critical scholars do) that there is a “textual Jesus” and an “actual Jesus.” One could then argue on Weaver’s own terms: the peaceable depiction of Jesus in the New Testament might have been biased by the nonviolent ethic of the early church just as the violent depiction of God in the Old Testament was biased by the violent culture of the ancient Israelites. Weaver simply assumes that the textual Jesus, the peaceable Jesus, is the actual Jesus. Why believe this? If we can’t trust the text to show us the actual God, why can we trust the text to show us the actual Jesus? Or, if we can simply trust the Gospels to tell us the truth about Jesus, as Weaver assumes and I agree, why can’t we simply trust the Old Testament to tell us the truth about God?

Weaver’s argument, then, is flawed on three counts: it reduces God to Jesus, contrary to orthodox doctrine; it neglects Jesus as judge; and its distinction between truth and text begs the question.

An “orthodox” peace church

Weaver’s theological approach would have us make a choice: either accept the orthodox doctrine of God and the whole of Scripture, or be a peace church. Is such a choice necessary? No. Can we affirm the fullness of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and embrace the fullness of Scripture as revelation of God and maintain a robust peace ethic? Yes.

The key is to acknowledge God’s sovereign prerogative: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Deuteronomy 32:35). Only God has right to take vengeance, not us; and God is free to exercise that prerogative as God chooses, whether violently or nonviolently. Far from contradicting a peace ethic, affirming that vengeance belongs to God is the faith that grounds Paul’s teaching that we are to live peaceably, renounce retribution, love enemies, and overcome evil with good (Romans 12:14-21). As Willard Swartley has written, “the rationale for constraint in the human role to combat evil is based in God’s right to vengeance and judgment” (Covenant of Peace, Eerdmans 2006).

For further development of this view, I refer the reader to Swartley’s excellent book as well as my forthcoming book, Atonement, Justice, and Peace (Eerdmans).