Chapter 3: The Forensic Overkill and God-Ordained Killing

RW: It sounds to me like you interpret the cross of Jesus a little differently than I do. I mean, didn’t Jesus come in order to die for our sins, as a sacrifice? Wasn’t this the point of his life—to die so that we can have eternal life? It sounds like your radical vision, which I certainly appreciate, is more of a works-righteousness, which Paul shot out of the water in Romans.
AT: Martin Luther’s ‘forensic justification’ interpretation of the cross has became so popular in Evangelical churches over the past 500 years that it has become virtually the only way of understanding Jesus’ death. Yoder called this the ‘forensic overkill.’ There are many different metaphors used in the New Testament to make sense of Jesus’ scandalous death on the cross. These are metaphors from everyday Roman Empire life. The New Testament bears witness to the death of Jesus as an interpretive quilt, a patchwork of metaphors borrowed from their original life situations: the language of Jewish law [justification], religious worship [sanctification], medical healing and military rescue [heal and save], family [adopt, wed], life processes [born and reborn], the marketplace [redeem and reconcile]—all of these were adopted, adapted and pressed into service in order to describe how deeply meaningful the cross was for these Christian communities. All of these shed light on the new reality that God brought into the world in Christ.

Ever since I started wrestling with Yoder’s thought and trying to get my hands on everything he wrote, I’ve definitely come to cherish a more ‘political’ interpretation of the cross. By this I simply mean that he died because the powers-that-be were threatened by his words and deeds, or as Yoder wrote, ‘the most worthy and weighty representatives of Jewish religion and Roman politics acted in collusion’ because he refused to support their self-glorification. All of these metaphors can only make sense in the midst of the narratives. And the narratives are littered with political language. This is vital. Jesus had to die—not just for my sins and your sins—but because he confronted the oppressive powers head on. But God got the last word and vindicated Jesus’ way by raising him from the dead. But here’s what I want to emphasize though: we are called to model this same humility and willingness to suffer that Jesus embodied throughout his life…and death. This is what Paul is getting at in the beautiful passage in Philippians 2:5-11. Jesus emptied himself of the need to control history, to be ‘in the form of God,’ the original sin of Adam, in order to become a truly human person and obey to the point of death. Paul points to this as a model for the community in Philippi. He’s trying to plead with them, in the midst of trials and persecution, to be like him in his cross—in humility and suffering—and to treat others just like Jesus did, laying down his life. As Yoder writes in the conclusion of Politics of Jesus,

‘The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.’

We obey even if we get outvoted or fail to convince others or convert or possibly even get killed. Paul goes on to write in the same letter that when Jesus returns, he’ll turn our ‘humiliated bodies’ into ‘glorious bodies,’ [3:20-21] just like God did to Jesus on that first Easter Sunday.
RW: I think I’m tracking with you, but doesn’t what you’re saying still border dangerously on a kind of ‘works-righteousness,’ thinking that we have the ability to live with such humility and service, exactly like Jesus! Doesn’t that way of looking at the cross, as a pattern to follow, fail to take into account our own sinfulness and fallenness, our inability to do anything good apart from what God has done for us and in us? I mean, isn’t it a bit presumptuous to put ourselves on the same plane as JESUS? He was God, after all, and we are only human.
AT: Great question. Let me answer this by introducing another legendary theologian of the 20th century who died a year before Politics of Jesus was published: Reinhold Niebuhr. He is recognized by political scientists and foreign policy gurus as the theologian who has had the most influence on the decision-making of our Presidents and their advisors since World War II. Niebuhr was actually a pacifist way back in the 20s—-quite fashionable to be one just after the first World War with millions of soldiers killed and millions of acres destroyed. But Niebuhr abandoned the pacifism of his youth and got ‘realistic’ over the years about the human capacity for sin. He emphasized ‘original sin’ and the need for governments to use force, if necessary, to quell our universal human tendency to go astray, especially as it played out destructively in communities [political parties, nation-states, social classes, etc]. Niebuhr’s ‘realism,’ was of course, coupled with an emphasis on Luther’s popular ‘forensic-justification’ view of the cross: we try as best as we can, but in the end, we fail…but we are forgiven through the blood of the cross. God’s grace prevails. Niebuhr’s ‘realism’ was ‘responsible’ and ‘pragmatic’ and gave the Cold War politicians a respectable voice to back their policies.

Yoder critiqued Niebuhr with what he calls ‘biblical realism’ or ‘gospel realism.’ If Jesus is really Lord of the world, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, then we pledge allegiance to a completely different sort of kingdom. Our faithfulness may be viewed as ‘idealist’ from the point of view of Niebuhr’s pragmatic realism, but it realistically represents the very scandalous enterprise of following Jesus. We can courageously live out this risky brand of Christian faith because of our fervent belief in a God who raises the dead. Death will never have the last word. Yoder prioritizes the cross as a pattern of obedience—it is the price of social nonconformity. This is what we are scandalously committed to as ‘Christians,’ but we will fail in the process. Jesus called for the disciples to deny themselves and ‘take up the cross’ and follow Jesus. In the Gospel narrative, none of the disciples are bold enough to take up the cross…only Jesus obeys the will of God all the way to the point of death. One disciple betrays him, another denies him and the rest scatter. The disciples in Mark’s Gospel are stumbling, bumbling fools as they journey with Jesus and slowly learn his very ‘political’ way of the Kingdom. But in the end, despite the fearful, scattering of the disciples at the cross, Jesus calls them back to Galilee, to the start of Mark’s story all over again. With Jesus, we always have a second chance, an opportunity to take up the cross again and again. But the point of the story, the invitation, is first to take up the cross, not to be forgiven! Forgiveness is the side-car, albeit an important one, to the main source of transportation for our journey.
RW: So the Christian life is an invitation to a life of failure?
AT: Yes, but we partner with a God who is overflowing with forgiveness and mercy. I mean, he’s a God who was willing to watch his Son murdered by the powers in order to show us the way to liberating life.
RW: OK, let me just take one last stab at chipping away at your radical nonviolence. What do you do about these Old Testament texts where God commands the nation of Israel to destroy every man, woman and child in their path [Deut 7 & 10; Joshua 10:34-44] and where he tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac [Genesis 22]? This seems to be saying that sometimes God is OK with violence and war games—sometimes he even commands it!
AT: This is probably the biggest challenge to reading the Bible nonviolently. These ‘holy war’ passages are befuddling and reading all the different perspectives from theologians and biblical scholars can be mind-numbing. Yoder points out that we must take the culture during the time of Abraham and Joshua into serious consideration and that God, at that early juncture, was teaching his people, slowly but surely, to trust him. During the time of Abraham, everyone probably sacrificed their firstborn son just like they made an offering for the first-fruits of their farm and the livestock. The focus on the Abraham/Isaac story is on God’s promise that from Isaac, a gigantic family would spring to life. So, the confusing thing about God telling Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son was not that it was crazy for anyone, let alone for God to do such a horrific thing, but instead that it was diametrically opposed to God’s promise to Father Abraham--that he would produce a world-redeeming community through his son, Isaac [not Ishmael or any other son for that matter].

As far as Joshua’s holy war is concerned, the focus, again, is on teaching Israel to trust the God of the universe. The morality of killing wasn’t even on the radar yet. Humans learn slowly. What we see in these texts are miracles. No doubt, God is fighting for Israel. Israel isn’t prepared for battle. They don’t have a strategy, unless you count Moses raising his hands! They probably don’t even have the proper weapons. They are just grabbing hoes, shovels and pick-axes, whatever they could get their hands on, trusting that God will provide the victory. I’m just not compelled that the OT tells us war is OK with God. The OT chronicles the life and times of a nation of God’s children slowly being transformed into his people. In addition, we should always have the words of Jesus at the forefront of our minds, interpreting the Torah on the mountain for his disciples: ‘You have heard that it was said, but I say to you…’ Jesus intensifies the Torah of Israel and interprets it in the line of the prophets who had consistently called Israel to do things like ‘beat your swords into plowshares’ [Is 2:4; Micah 4:3].

These Old Testament passages are ridiculously complex. A group of us back home in Kansas recently dialogued 6 different interpretive strategies that all come from biblical scholars and theologians of different Christian stripes. My ‘Yoderian’ option was just one of these. It seems like, from my research and conversations, that most scholars would say that it would be a stretch for these texts to justify violent solutions today, especially in light of Jesus’ life and teaching. I’m convinced, now more than ever, that pacifists, like me, who vow to never take up arms no matter what and just-war advocates, like you, who always view violence as the very last resort, can and should come together to find common ground in a third way: just peace-making. We can be creatively committed to practices, however small, that lead to peaceful solutions, both in our own neighborly [and not-so-neighborly] relationships and in the wider world of politicians and their policies, facing each other down.

Ryan was excited about this conversation. He had been a pastor for the past 15 years, first with the youth and now as the next-in-command with a congregation of about a thousand. His job consisted of ‘spiritual’ conversations of all sorts, but he certainly wasn’t used to being so stretched by being confronted with such a different theology which seemed to spring from a completely different set of questions. He was eating up everything Anthony was spewing out, and he found himself thinking of more and more questions as he listened, most of them starting with, ‘But how about…’ Just then, Ryan looked at his cell phone and saw that it was already 11pm—-5 hours had passed and they were just getting started.

As Ryan stepped outside the restaurant to call his wife, Anthony humbly wondered if Ryan, being a pastor, might think he was a bit kooky or even heretical. But really, Anthony had not even begun communicating the tip of the iceberg of how much his mind had been transformed since he sat at the feet of John Howard Yoder during his final semester at Notre Dame. What, after all, would Ryan think when they started talking about their church back in Lawrence?!