Everybody hates Reinhold Niebuhr

Halden links to Paul Griffiths' reflections on violence. Halden likes Griffiths' writing style but detects a malodorous whiff of Niebuhrian thought in Griffiths' post, for it demands remorse for and not repentance from violence in the time before the eschaton.

Adam Kotsko in turn faults the conservative (Niebuhrian?) response to pacifism because it insists that the person who resorts to violence feel bad about it. In fact, he argues, there are times when killing is and ought to be a joyful experience. Inglourious Basterds here we go again. Or, if you don't care for that example, the example of domestic violence ought to do, which undid Adam's previous interest in Cristian nonviolence. It's quite satisfying, and rightly so, when an abused women turns the tables on her abuser.

So Niebuhrian realism must (always regretfully) wage war on two fronts: against the Yoderian pacifists like Halden who rightly point out that Niebuhr's lack of a robust ecclesiology and eschatology lead him into "weak resignation to the evils we deplore"; and against what we might call the Carrie Underwood school of ethics in which plotting revenge and executing it are at times not only morally justifiable but immensely pleasurable.

I think that the only way to square Halden's rightful abhorrence of violence with Adam's rightful joy when justice is duly served is with the terribly unfashionable concept of hell. Consider Paul's warning to the Romans not to avenge themselves but leave room for the wrath of God. "No, if your enemy is hungry, feed him... for in doing so you will heap burning coals on his head." I used to think that this was a way of shaming the wrongdoer into repentance, much like Walter Wink's interpretation of "going the extra mile." But some people can't be shamed. And more to the point, I've come to decide that those burning coals are in fact the fires of hell.

It was Ignatius of Antioch who persuaded me. Ignatius' letters, composed on his way to his martyrdom in Rome, are shot through with apocalyptic thought and its attendant dualism and determinism. One telling quote from his letter to the Roman Church: "All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, night and day, chained as I am to ten leopards ((I lean to a detachment of soldiers), who only get worse the better you treat them. But by their injustices I am becoming a better disciple..."

So Ignatius does not smuggle secret correspondence to the churches in order to orchestrate an attack on his convoy that will spring him and give him the Tarantino-like opportunity to etch a cross in the face of his murdered guards. He returns good for evil as a kind of personal spiritual discipline; but there's more to it than that. Like Ignatius' jailers, evil regimes are routinely depicted as wild beasts in other apocalyptic texts, and in these texts they always meet the same end. They're slaughtered.

The only thing that saves Ignatius and any other pacifist from a freakish masochism is an apocalyptic world view; the certainty that they are literally killing their captors with kindness. When his forbearance in the face of injustice only incites further acts of injustice, Ignatius knows, even if they don't, that he is giving his jailers enough rope to hang themselves. Which is why, without a real and I am afraid, literal hell, pacifism is a form of mental illness.

On the other hand, I find the idea of joyful killing repugnant and untenable. Adam faults pacifists for wanting to keep their hands clean more than seeing justice done, but "joyful killing" implies that there is such a thing as clean vengeance, and there's not. Yoder's Nevertheless is spot on here; for it rightly argues that any critique of pacifism can be applied with equal force to those who would defend violence. Perhaps the wife beater set on fire in his own bed has it coming to him, and perhaps he has a mother who loves him and to whom will fall the grim and unjust burden of identifying his body in the morgue. There is always collateral damage, which is why Niebuhr is right. There can never be no such thing as joyful vengeance.

Comments

[PastorMack]

"The only thing that saves Ignatius and any other pacifist from a freakish masochism is an apocalyptic world view; the certainty that they are literally killing their captors with kindness. When his forbearance in the face of injustice only incites further acts of injustice, Ignatius knows, even if they don't, that he is giving his jailers enough rope to hang themselves. Which is why, without a real and I am afraid, literal hell, pacifism is a form of mental illness."

As Paul Ramsey (Niebuhr's student) pointed out, it is one thing to claim pacifism for oneself, to offer up your own cheek. It is quite another to stand idly by as others suffer while you refuse to intervene and stop it. It is a silly platitude that "violence only begets more violence." What is the pacifist solution to American slavery? To Nazi tyranny? Justice - and Christian neighbor love - demands the use of power. Sometimes this power can be exercised by non-violent means and be effective (Ghandi), and other times it is doomed to fail. The sword of the governor exists for a reason. Christians with a fetish for Yoder may lament violence all they want, but they do so safe in beds while men with guns guard them as they sleep. (This argument brought to you by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men)

By the by, I know that Griffiths is (just barely) a just war guy, but surely his work with Hauerwas makes him more of an ally then your post belies? I don't know of anyone around Duke who likes a "liberal" theologian like Neibuhr...except those pesky feminists. They don't have the same tendency to overlook justice while following Jesus.

[Camassia]

So how does Ignatius' forbearance in the face of injustice incite them to further injustice? Would they be less incited if he fought back?

[Halden]

Good post, Marvin.

[Marvin]

Ignatius doesn't really say. I'm speculating here, but I would imagine that the soldiers were used to just two kinds of reactions from their captives--fear and hatred. They may have been taken aback initially by cheerfulness, and once they got over their surprise became determined to elicit one of the two customary responses.

[Jonathan Marlowe]

So you think a pacifist should take joy in the fact that some are burning in hell? A pacifist keeps his/her hands clean and lets God do the dirty work?

[Adam Kotsko]

How exactly does "joyful killing" imply there's such a thing as clean vengence? That remark strikes me as an empty rhetorical tactic: simply reversing what I'm saying into what I oppose, with absolutely no basis for doing so.

[Marvin]

Adam, the two do seem equivalent to me. Is there something about joyful killing as you've described it that remains tainted by sin? And if so, then doesn't that mitigate the joy somewhat? Which is the point that I am trying to make.

I'm not trying to deliberately misrepresent your argument, but I admit that I may have done so accidentally. So, please clarify.

Your point is well-taken that a commitment to non-violence should not result in reducing all forms of violence to the same level. I think that thoughtful pacifists, while eschewing violence and urging others to do so, do in fact make distinctions, especially where there is an imbalance in power or in the justness of the cause.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1405517672]

Jonathan,
there's a couple of things that could be said. One is, if God does it, it is not, by definition, dirty. That's not a point I'm all that excited about making, but it is one response.

I am not saying that the pacifist is keeping his/her hands clean. Actually, I am saying the opposite. The pacifist is the instrument of the wrath of God, insofar as his/her willingness to turn the other cheek to his/her enemy leaves the enemy without excuse when he/she appears before the judgment seat of God.

In that respect, most pacifists would not rejoice in the existence of hell, anymore than Jeremiah rejoiced in his vocation to pronounce Jerusalem's doom. Nahum, however, is a different story.

[Camassia]

I must admit, this sort of passive-aggressive thing really puts me off. I think a lot of people have run up against a Christian who disapproves of them in one way or the other and says "I'll pray for you" when you know they're thinking "You're gonna burn." It's the sort of thing that makes people think Christians are hypocrites. And the idea that behaving some other way might get a tormentor off with an "excuse" seems to be assuming that God might slip up and fail to condemn someone who deserves it, unless you drive them crazy by being all phony-nice. I thought that whole issue got dealt with in Jonah.

[Marvin]

I'm not a big fan of threatening people with prayer. But I do think that we can cut Ignatius some slack. He is not a high-maintenance co-worker who's been slighted. He's being sentenced to death, not for murder, rape, or armed robbery, but for the awful ideological crime of not offering incense at the imperial altar. And the means of execution is being eaten alive by wild animals. I don't begrudge him a little passive aggressiveness.

But more to the point: there's one way to read the NT that says, "Since Jesus literally paid it all on the cross, we no longer need to seek our pound of flesh." That's a compelling argument. But there's another way to read the NT that says, "The resurrection is a summons to the judgment seat of God. The resurrection of Jesus is God's means of designating the judge. At that moment of judgment, all wrongs will be righted and all outstanding penalties will be paid." And I think that's compelling too.

As I said, Ignatius sees his own martyrdom primarily as a personal spiritual discipline, a way of conforming to Christ in death as well as life. But I think he sees it as an apocalypse, an unveiling. His willingness to die, and the state and its officials' willingness to kill him disclose which side of the divide each party belongs to come judgment day.

[Adam Kotsko]

I'm not really talking in terms of the always vaguely-defined category of "sin" in the first place. I'm not even sure you are consistently talking in those terms -- for instance, you talk about collateral damage, which I am as far as possible from denying. If you're equating sin with destructiveness, then of course I'm not saying that violence is untainted by sin. If you mean something else by sin, then tell me what that is and we can talk that out.

[Marvin]

Adam, given your acknowledgment that nonviolence is preferable to violence, that violence is destructive and can cause collateral damage, AND given your insistence that not all violence is of a piece and that resisting evil is a good thing, it seems to me that what you're talking about is a sense of "grim satisfaction" in certain situations. "Joyful killing" sounds like a bit of rhetorical excess to me.

But what's a blog if not for rhetorical excess?

[Adam Kotsko]

So if I'd used the words "grim satisfaction" rather than "joy," you wouldn't have made your cheap rhetorical maneuver of claiming I was implying you could keep your hands clean? It's amazing what a difference a small nuance makes!

[Marvin]

Why yes!

Glad we got that cleared up.

[Camassia]

It's not that I blame anyone for feeling that way in a bad situation, it's the idea of using it as a conscious strategy to urge people along the road to perdition. If you're really trying to destroy someone, it seems more honest just to smack the guy then pretend like you're loving him. (Not that that would help in Ignatius' case, but you see my point.)

[Adam Kotsko]

On another note, I think that "Everybody hates Reinhold" would have been punchier, assuming you intended a reference to "Everybody loves Raymond."

[Marvin]

I don't watch that show. If only I did. Alas, another squandered opportunity.

[Matt]

You seem to believe that it is consistent with the life of God to enjoy retributive violence toward persons, and for eternity. That would be a hard God for me to believe in.

[00001001]

Maybe that meant the joy of violence of killing a pedophile priest, a habitual liar, or a leftist who denies the history of Stalinism---yeah.

[TomL]

My interpretation (and opinion) Reinhold Niebuhr: Running a corporation or a government, by necessity, can only be done by a "rational" set of laws. Which by nature lack the virtue of love. Love can only be found at the individual level or by a very small intimate group. Thus unions and armys are a necessary evil to enforce the fair treatment of the Proletariat. I think this is what Niebuhr is trying to say. Which must have been before Ghandi because his non violent movement certainly exposes flaws in that theory.