IV Non-Resistance: Christian or Pagan? — Benjamin Wisner Bacon
All forms of peace propaganda are at present justly and properly repressed by the Government as a war measure. This has served in some degree to silence the voice of the pacifist, but manifestly it cannot serve to quiet the disturbed feeling in the minds of many Christians, that to engage in war under any conditions is to come short of the idealism of Jesus. Forcible measures produce the reverse effect, if any.
Non-resistance, under some circumstances and conditions if not under all, is a duty which Jesus undeniably taught. Moreover, his conduct was fully in accord with his principles; otherwise his following could not have maintained their unparalleled loyalty to him. The manifest inconsistency between these non-resistance sayings (taken by themselves) and the method advocated and used by our Government in defence of democracy and righteousness remains ever present. The grave extent of its inroads upon the national morale may be judged by the circulation attained by a typical pacifistic book, whose principal basis of argument is nothing else than these non-resistance sayings, and which if it does not attempt to square them in all cases with the conduct of Jesus, but rather accords to Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-tse the merit of greater consistency, nevertheless owes all its real effect to the fact that its author speaks as a well-known and authorized exponent of Christian teaching, and leaves in his readers’ minds the conviction not of the alleged inconsistency, but of an absolute and unqualified doctrine of non-resistance as supported by both the teaching and the conduct of Jesus.
The single year 1915-1916 witnessed the appearance of no less than five successive editions of the book entitled “New Wars for Old,” by Rev. John Haynes Holmes, and its propaganda of absolute and unconditional non-resistance was certainly not without effect in the military cantonments, if not among the public at large where its influence is less easy to trace. Recently the Government itself has given public and official warning against this type of pacifistic propaganda; and there is only too much reason to believe that (quite without the intention or knowledge of its authors) those eminent pacifists, the Potsdam conspirators, have made large financial contributions to its success.
“New Wars for Old” may be taken as representative. It is the best example of its type. It seems to be the most effective. At all events, it gives concrete and tangible form to that interpretation of the teaching of Jesus which we regard as misleading and dangerous; it may therefore well form our starting-point toward the attainment of another interpretation, truer at once to historical fact and to the ethical sense of the religious-minded. Recognizing the need for meeting present conditions of the public mind by other than merely repressive measures we may frankly face the question raised in Dr. Holmes’ book, whether the doctrine of absolute and unqualified non-resistance, traced by him to more than one revered teacher of pre-Christian paganism, is indeed identical with that of Jesus; or whether, with Israel’s Messianic hope, some new factor enters in, to differentiate the Biblical ideal.
Isaiah and Jesus are for this champion of pacifism—and doubtless for others—the two supreme “exemplars of non-resistance,” and the eloquence with which his thesis is maintained might well win an assent which would not be granted were account taken of his authority to pronounce upon questions of historical criticism. However, few Americans, competent to form a moral judgment of their own, will hold in light esteem the authority of Isaiah and Jesus. We therefore accept the exemplars at the risk of seeing our native hue of resolution all sicklied o’er with this pale cast of thought. But is their teaching justly and fairly interpreted? That is the question to which we now address ourselves.
I
“‘Resist not evil,’ means never resist, never oppose violence.” Such is the motto, quoted from Tolstoy, with which our propagandist heads his pages. As he cites no other scholar, critic, or interpreter of the Sermon on the Mount, in support of this declaration of the meaning, the inference is perhaps allowable that the reader is expected to endow Tolstoy with a credit for scientific attainments in the difficult field of historical criticism and interpretation equally great with that which all men gladly accord to his noble disposition and sincere humanity. Whether authority as convincing can be cited for the contention that Buddha and Lao-tse taught the same doctrine of absolute non-resistance we are not competent to say. It seems at least to be beautifully expressed in the saying quoted from Buddha:
With mercy and forbearance shalt thou disarm every foe. For want of fuel the fire expires: mercy and forbearance bring violence to naught.
What Christian will deny the Christ-likeness of this teaching? What reader of the Old Testament will not hasten to add with Paul from Jewish “wisdom”:
If thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink; for by so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.1
If, indeed, the duty in question be that of forbearance, all great religious teachers, whether of Christian or pre-Christian times, will be at one. “Hymns of hate” are unknown to the ritual of any religion, unless it be the ultra-modern of Prussian militarism. One must go to Nietzsche before attaining to the gospel that it is virtuous to have a giant’s strength and use it like a giant. Teachers such as Buddha and Lao-tse may well have added to the well-nigh universal religious tenet of mercy, forgiveness, forbearance, the further doctrine of consistent, unqualified non-resistance. We accept it for the obvious reason that their systems of thought, which are philosophies rather than religions, contain (so far as the present writer is aware) no principle of active, but only of passive obligation. The chief end of man is for them not to achieve, in loyal service to the Creator’s ideal, but to abstain and refrain, to put the brakes on life, and to teach others to do the like. According to the author of “New Wars for Old,” Buddha and Lao-tse lived up to their gospel of non-resistance. Contrariwise, “The Nazarene had his inconsistent moments like the rest of us,” and showed it at this point. Our propagandist is too honest to palter with the quibble of Adin Ballou, who in his “Christian Non-Resistance” argues that Jesus in cleansing the temple may have driven the money-changers from the courtyard, but that there is no evidence that he struck any one of them. With such apologetic special pleading he has no patience, preferring to give the act of Jesus its full weight in the following straightforward words:
What we have here is a well-authenticated violation of the principle of non-resistance—and why not accept it as such? The episode is chiefly remarkable in the life of the Nazarene, not for anything which it teaches in itself, but for its inconsistency with the rest of his career. Never at any other time, so far as we know, did he precipitate riot or himself assault his enemies. But this time he did—this time he failed to live up to the inordinately exacting demands of his own gospel of brotherhood. Nor is the circumstance at all difficult to understand! Jesus came to Jerusalem tired, worn, hunted. He knew that he walked straight into the arms of his enemies, and undoubtedly therefore straight to his own death. Weary, desperate, confused, he came to the temple to pray—and here, right before the altars of his God, were the money-changers—here in the sacred places, the type and symbol of that commercialized religion which he most abhorred, and which he knew was certain in the end to destroy him. What wonder that a mighty flood of anger surged up in his soul, and for the moment overwhelmed him.
In short, the weary Jesus was so irritated by the unexpected (?) sight of the traders, that he threw to the winds not only his principles, but the dictates of the most ordinary prudence, giving his enemies not only their desired opportunity, but provoking the issue at just the point where he himself had been betrayed into the violation of his own teaching. Verily, great is the insight of the modern psychologist. To the observer of the phenomena of petulance an incident like the cleansing of the temple is “easy to understand.” The scientific imagination required is easily attained. One acquires it by observing the irritability of tired children. How needless, then, to inform oneself as to the historical conditions which made this great symbolic act of the Galilean prophet full of meaning to every patriot Jew that witnessed it. How needless to raise the question why every one of our four evangelists should report the act and give it the prominence they do. For our evangelists record it reluctantly, minimizing its political significance and its insurrectionary flavor. They naturally disliked to give color of justice to Pilate’s judicial murder, and to Jewish denunciations of the new religion as a rebellion against established authority.
Let us then take as our point of departure this admitted “inconsistency.” It is not historical interpretation, but the subjective variety sometimes self-designated “psychological” which finds it “easy” to set aside the representation of the oldest and most reliable of our sources, that Jesus was not “weary, desperate, confused,” and was not in the least taken unawares, when he drove the traders from the temple; but that he planned his coup de main with careful deliberation. The evening before, says Mark, “he entered the temple and looked round upon all things.” Jesus was not unaware of the conditions he would find, for they were an abuse as notorious as hateful to every right-minded Israelite. This even the Talmud attests. He was not a hunted fugitive seeking asylum at the altar. On the contrary; for weeks past he had set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem and there lift up the standard of the Son of David. The initiative was his. He had planned a new campaign for his ideal, the Kingdom of God, a campaign no longer of mere teaching but of action, and he was now carrying it to the very seat of hostile power. Long since, probably before he left Galilee, he had planned this very act, a challenge to the corrupt priestly control of his Father’s house, an act as full of meaning and as deliberate as Luther’s nailing of his theses to the church doors of Wittenberg.
And when the blow had been struck Jesus stood courageously by it. He met the inevitable demand of the hierocracy, “By what authority doest thou these things?” with a counter demand. Whence had the Baptist authority to inaugurate his prophetic reform, making ready for Jehovah a purified people prepared for his coming? The Sanhedrin evaded this counter demand, and answered only (as Jesus had foreseen they would) by secret denunciation of him to Pilate. But Pilate understood the case. We have the Roman governor’s official interpretation of its significance in a certain superscription written aloft in Hebrew and Greek and Latin on the gibbet of an insurrectionist. This, too, Jesus seems to have foreseen.
All this was not a mere “episode.” It was the culminating effort and crisis of Jesus’ career, and richly rewards a just understanding. We are told that it was “inconsistent with the rest of Jesus’ career.” His mission, we infer, was to be a rabbi. His attempt at active leadership in achieving the Kingdom he preached was an unfortunate aberration. He should not have tried to be “the Christ,” and thereby incurred a needless martyrdom. The cross is still a stumblingblock.
Strange that the evangelists who omit so much, who would have so strong a motive for omitting this particular “inconsistency” no less for their Master’s good name than for the safety of the Church, should one and all record it. The disposition to minimize everything savoring of political action on Jesus’ part is very marked in all our evangelists, for obvious reasons. To the evidences of this belong, for example, Mark’s denial, and the fourth evangelist’s explanation, of the saying about destroying the temple, together with the latter’s description of the whip “of small cords” as Jesus’ only weapon in the purging of the temple.2 Are we then to admit the “inconsistency”—not casual and incidental, as conceived in this pacifistic interpretation, but deliberate and flagrant? Or may we perhaps now raise the question whether the “inconsistency” is not rather chargeable to the interpreter’s account?
The interpretation with which we are dealing makes the teaching of Jesus regarding the use of force identical with the non-resistance doctrine of Buddha and Lao-tse. On the other hand, it very justly relates it to that of the great prophet of the Davidic kingdom of righteousness and peace, Isaiah, the son of Amoz. From the point of view of the historical critic the relation of Jesus’ teaching to that of Isaiah is absolutely sound. But the effect of this relation is fatal to its identification with the non-resistance doctrine of Buddha and Lao-tse.
Apart from the circumstances which for the time being made non-resistance, or rather mere passive resistance, the policy of true statesmanship alike against Assyrian and against Roman domination, Isaiah and Jesus stood together upon the most fundamental point of all, unqualified, unlimited loyalty to the God of Righteousness and to his sovereignty upon earth. Their pacifism differs from that of Lao-tse and of Buddha in the important respect of having a pronounced theistic basis. Buddha and Lao-tse can preach consistently a doctrine of absolute non-resistance because their systems are destitute of the social ideal of Israel’s religion, and indeed ignore the very existence of a “Power not ourselves that makes for Righteousness.” Contrariwise with the great prophets of the Kingdom of God. Whether of the Christian or pre-Christian dispensation, so far as they advocate non-resistance it cannot be unlimited, because their religious aim is not merely individual but social.
The non-resistance of Isaiah and of Jesus is not self-centered but God-centered. It is bound to consider what is expedient for others, for the weak and dependent, as well as for the individual, and for the present time. It seeks the welfare of the world and of generations to come. It is always subsidiary to the paramount interest of the Kingdom of God.
Just because it regards non-resistance not as an end in itself but only as one of the divinest means to an end, Biblical pacifism can hold before men’s eyes the moving figure of the martyred Servant, dumb as the lamb in the shearer’s hands, while it can in the same breath commend the men of violence that take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. Christian or pre-Christian, it rests upon the foundation of utter, absolute loyalty to a world-wide Republic of God, a cosmic sovereignty of righteousness, and having this social aim for its religious ideal it can and does nourish to the highest pitch of devotion the heroic virtues of patriotism, of service and of sacrifice. The summons to the standard (not men’s but God’s) is ever the same. The weapon may be the sword or the cross, as the times require. Under mere self-centered philosophies such as those of Buddha and Lao-tse the contrary is true. Notoriously, where these control patriotism and all its heroic virtues tend to dwindle, approaching often the verge of extinction.
The pacifism (not non-resistance) of Isaiah hardly requires elucidation. Two or three very familiar quotations will suffice. There is, for example, the prophet’s vision of a universal peace based on international law. This vision of the world’s willing acceptance of the sovereignty of Jehovah’s justice Isaiah shares with his contemporary, Micah, both prophets seeming to choose it as a text from some forgotten earlier pacifist.
It shall come to pass in the latter days
That the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be
established at the head of mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills,
And all nations shall flow unto it.
And many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us
go up to the mountain of Jehovah,
To the house of the God of Jacob,
And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk
in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth law, and the word of
Jehovah from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge between the nations, and will
be arbiter for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
Manifestly the ideal of an international tribunal as the basis of a League of Peace is not so novel as some modern statesmanship seems to conceive.
But the consistent, thoroughgoing advocate of non-resistance rejects even the coercion of magisterial and police constraint. To Russian idealism restraint of the individual as well as the national criminal is tainted with the same poison of violence. Since Isaiah is the exemplar of non-resistance he should be permitted again to speak for himself. His words seem to have a singular applicability to the land which is now testing to the limit the theory of Proudhon, the individualist of individualists, the gospel of anarchism:
For behold the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, doth take away from
Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff,
The whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water,
The mighty man, and the man of war;
The judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder;
The captain of fifty and the honorable man and the counsellor...
And I will give children to be their princes,
And with childishness shall they rule over them,
And the people shall be oppressed every one by another, and
every one by his neighbor:
The child shall be arrogant against the old man, and the base
against the honorable.
But Isaiah, too, expects deliverance from these miseries of foreign servitude and domestic anarchy. He looks for the dawn of a just and lasting peace; only the means of its attainment seem strange for an “exemplar of non-resistance.”
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light;
They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
hath the light shined.
Thou hast multiplied the nation and increased their joy,
They joy before thee according to the rejoicing at harvest-time,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of (Israel’s) burden, and the rod laid to his shoulder,
The staff of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of
Midian.
For all the armor of the armed man in the tumult
And the garments rolled in blood shall be for burning, for fuel
of fire.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:
And his name shall be called: Wonderful-counsellor;
The-Mighty-God-the-Everlasting (my)-Father;
The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be
no end.
Upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom,
To establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with
righteousness from henceforth even forever.
The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this.
Even with the devout restraint of the closing line it must be admitted that these verses have a somewhat martial ring.
Doubtless the pacifist will emphasize the line, “The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this,” taking here the view of the Pharisees, who in contrast with the fanatical nationalism of the Zealots opposed the aggressive militarism of the later Maccabees with a doctrine of quietism. Their cry was, “Leave all to God.” Against the Zealot they appealed to the proverb: “They that take the sword shall perish by the sword,” from which the inference is plain that if the aim be never to lose one’s life one should never take weapons. But perhaps Isaiah the “non-resistant” is entitled to one more chance to prove himself not a Pharisee, even when he expects “the zeal of Jehovah of Hosts” to win the victory of peace. Fortunately he tells us how he expects the zeal of Jehovah to operate, in the doom he pronounces upon “drunkard” Samaria, the city whose luxuriant mountain-top was crowned with mingled towers and olive groves, like the fading wreaths upon the heads of drunken revellers. In contrast to Samaria’s fate Isaiah has this promise for the temple-crowned hill of Zion, shadowed under its altar smoke:
In that day will Jehovah of Hosts become a crown of glory
And a diadem of beauty unto the residue of his people,
A spirit of justice to him that sitteth in judgment,
And a spirit of strength to them that turn back the battle at the
gate.3
II
It should hardly be necessary to explain that Jesus in deliberately giving up the career of purely non-political preacher, teacher, and healer, to assume the career of Christ and Son of David, fully conscious as he was of all the dangers it implied, was neither ignorant of the Isaian ideal, nor out of sympathy with it. When he rode into Jerusalem accepting the acclamation: “Blessed be the kingdom that cometh, the kingdom of our father David,” he was not betraying the national hope; he was lifting it toward ultimate realization at the cost of Calvary.
It is true that he avoided suicidal collision with Roman authority on the one side, as prudently as he forestalled the sweeping off of his following into the insane fanaticism of the Zealot nationalists on the other. The prophet’s method of a symbolic purifying of the temple was exactly suited to this purpose. In the temple Roman authority explicitly renounced control. The policing of this combined fortress, sanctuary, and treasure house was left, even to the power of life and death, in the hands of the Sadducean hierocracy. It was administered by a numerous and efficient Levite police commanded by a “captain of the temple.” On the other hand, Sadducean control was notoriously and infamously corrupt. The abuses by which (with their connivance) money was extorted from the worshippers made it so hateful that a worthy reformer might be sure of popular support strong enough to cow “the hissing brood of Annas” into an interval of “fear of the people.” And the reform might even be accomplished without unchaining the red fool-fury of the Zealot mob, if it was seen to be the work of a prophet, by authority “from heaven” and not “of men,” consistent, even if regarded as a messianic act, with the course of one who had come “meek and lowly and having salvation, riding upon an ass, and on a colt the foal of an ass.”
It is of vital importance to a historical appreciation of Jesus’ sense of his mission to realize fully and adequately what he meant by this one public overt act of his career; for by it he signalized to all Israel assembled at the Passover his purpose to achieve a national deliverance such as the feast commemorated. From it every loyal Israelite might infer that the hope of “the kingdom of David” was now about to be realized. Jesus thus entered deliberately upon the stormy and dangerous seas of messianistic agitation, as a claimant to leadership in the achievement of the national hope.
To herald such a reform as Jesus proposed, reviving the national ideal, the purification of the temple was a symbolic act worthy of the greatest of prophets. It was exactly fitted to raise and define the issues at stake. It would convey just the right impression to the multitude, whose attention could be reached by this time-honored method, and by this method alone. It was also free from the worst dangers of messianistic agitation. It would avoid on the one hand the Scylla of needless collision with Roman authority, and on the other the Charybdis of Zealot turbulence. The calm and fearless “authority from heaven” with which it was effected overawed resistance, so that even while asserted by force it attained its result with the shedding of no other blood than the Messenger’s own.
To show the exact meaning to contemporary Jewish minds of this act of the Prophet of Nazareth we must recall not merely the Isaian ideal of the “Davidic” reign as a universal kingdom of righteousness and peace based on divine law going forth from Zion, but also the later apocalyptic hopes. We must remember that all expectation in Jesus’ time was focussed on the prophecies of Malachi, which made the purified temple the scene of Jehovah’s visitation of his people, after they should have been brought to a “great repentance” by the coming of Elias. A rabbinic parable of the period will give us the point of view. It is an answer to the reproach so bitterly resented by Isaiah, “Israel is a wife forsaken,” and is based on Malachi 1:6-14, and 3:1-12 interpreting the designation “Tent of Witness” applied to the tabernacle in Exodus 38:21:
A king was angry with his wife and forsook her. The neighbors declared, “He will not return” (cf. Isa. 49:14). Then the king sent word to her (Mal. 1:10 ff): “Cleanse my palace, and on such and such a day I will return to thee.” He came and was reconciled to her. Therefore is the sanctuary called the Tent of “Witness”—a witness to the Gentiles that God is no longer wroth.4
Jesus’ act was the assertion of authority “from heaven” to make Jehovah’s will supreme upon earth, beginning at his own sanctuary. It was effected by direct appeal to the conscience of the masses, which to the extent of their understanding responded overwhelmingly. Jesus did not expect his act to be more than “a witness to the peoples.” But on the other hand, for the time being at least, he sacrificed no life save his own. One close parallel could be cited from modern times if the demonstration could be freed from its unfortunate association with really fanatical revolt and real intention to provoke a servile insurrection. In keeping his demonstration in the temple free from entangling alliance with Zealot nationalism, Jesus showed a moderation and foresight which were unfortunately lacking to the demonstration of John Brown at Harpers Ferry; otherwise the two have many points of affinity. It was while the governor of Virginia was still hesitating to sign the death warrant of the champion of negro emancipation, long before his martyr spirit marched on before great armies of liberation, that Ralph Waldo Emerson, once himself a non-resistant pacifist, wrote in his journal:
If John Brown shall suffer, he will make the gallows glorious like the cross.
III
That Jesus intended to raise the standard of David by his public act at the Passover is certain. His pacifism was of the type of Micah’s and Isaiah’s. That he meant the act to convey a religious sense differentiating it from the merely political ideal of the Zealots is also certain. His doctrine of reliance on spiritual methods in the pursuit of the God-given aim exalts forbearance as a means in terms not less noble than the foremost champions of non-resistance. We may question whether he actually counted upon his own only too probable fate of crucifixion at Roman hands as destined to serve the precise end which it actually has subserved in human history. Those who see it with the wisdom of retrospect know that it has furnished to all devotees of Israel’s ideal of the Kingdom of God, in all races, unto all successive generations, a rallying point and a symbol of final victory. But Jesus was looking forward with the eye of faith, not backward with the eye of knowledge. He believed that even through death God would give victory to those who sacrificed life and all to his kingdom’s cause, and that it would be given ere their generation had passed into oblivion. How much further than this his prophetic insight into the ways of God with men extended is a question which will be variously answered in accordance with varying views of his personality. It need be no matter of surprise, however, to any discerning mind, that the fourth evangelist should also look backward at the significance of the cross, interpreting it in the light of its actual results. The fourth evangelist is the successor of Paul at Ephesus. Like Paul he naturally emphasizes its effect in “reconciliation,” a twofold atonement, “breaking down the enmity” between man and God, and also that between man and man; and the great barrier of Paul’s experience was that erected by the Mosaic law between Jew and Gentile. By the cross, says Paul to the Ephesians, Christ who is “our peace”5
made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity; even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.
No wonder Paul thinks of God as “the God of peace,” the gospel as “the gospel of peace” and Christ as “our peace” proclaimed to the nations near and far.
That is the pacifism of Christianity. No wonder Paul’s great successor at Ephesus compares this healing and reconciling cross to the token of forgiveness and faith which Moses lifted up in the wilderness, and repeatedly presents as its divinely appointed aim the “gathering into one the children of God that are scattered abroad” (John 11:51-52).
The fourth evangelist devotes the closing section of his story of the public ministry to this great question, Why Jesus came forward as the Christ? The scene he chooses is Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication, that festival which commemorated the death and resurrection of the Maccabean martyrs who had given their lives for the national ideal. The story begins with the Jews’ demand of Jesus that he “tell them plainly” whether he is the Christ. It ends with the mystical utterance of the high priest:
that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but that he might gather together into one the children of God which are scattered abroad.
To show what alternative lay before him we are told of a delegation of Greeks who wait upon Jesus, apparently to invite him to “go to the Gentiles and teach them,” but who receive as their answer, after a momentary soul-conflict paralleling the scene of Gethsemane, that Jesus “must be lifted up,” and thus through his martyr death “will draw all men unto him.” The central scene of the raising of Lazarus is of course directed to the resurrection theme appropriate to this feast, the theme of the Christ who as Messenger of God brings life and immortality to light. But the whole section rests back on an opening parable, that of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11-18). Our concern is with this parable; for it is not an invention of the fourth evangelist, but an authentic comparison of Jesus attested by the preceding evangelists,6 and merely developed in the later interpretative gospel along the lines of the original prophecy,7 and with special reference to the cross as a token of unity in estranged and warring humanity evoked by loyalty to a common higher ideal.
In the parable of the Good Shepherd, as elsewhere, the fourth evangelist shows that his view of the tragedy of Calvary is determined by its actual result. The function of the Shepherd is to gather a flock now scattered, and which includes “other sheep that are not of this fold.” The aim is “that there may be one flock; one Shepherd,” an aim suggested by Paul. But primarily the parable is simply an adaptation of Ezekiel’s famous indictment of the hireling shepherds of Israel, who had first exploited Jehovah’s flock, and then abandoned it to the ravening of wild beasts. Because of this, the prophet declares, Jehovah himself will seek out the scattered and bleeding remnant and will set up over them a worthy shepherd, the son of David.
The special application made by the fourth evangelist is to the gathering of a flock already scattered, bleeding, and torn of beasts, because of the faithlessness of hireling shepherds. Such was in truth the task imposed by the conditions of the time. Such was in the experience of Paul and his generation the actual effect of the cross. But primarily and in Jesus’ mind it was simply the token of the last supreme measure of devotion which he, and all who would follow him, must be prepared to pay in loyalty to the Kingdom of God. Its comparison is purely and simply a contrast between two types of leadership. On the one side is he who lays down his life in defence of the helpless, be it in conflict, as when David the shepherd lad with sling and stone rescued his sheep “out of the paw of the lion and the bear,” or be it in search for the lost lamb upon the mountainside. On the other side is he who “when he seeth the wolf coming leaveth the sheep and fleeth.” The special need of the time, that which appealed to Jesus as the supreme need of those to whom he was sent, was his people’s need of a standard and leadership, rescue of the scattered and lost.
When he saw the multitude he had compassion on them because they were distressed and scattered as sheep that have no shepherd.
He gave them the needed rallying point, a sign in which afterward they should conquer. He also gave them the needed leadership. The former was the need of the first age of the Church. The second need is ours; for defence of the flock is as much a shepherd’s task as seeking out the lost. They who abandon it in the face of wolfish attack need expect no approval from the Son of David.
IV
There is a certain magnificence of logical consistency in the non-resistance doctrine of the pacifist who chooses the Empire of China (!) as the example of its perfect work in the field of international relations.8 With the blessed example of the Celestial Kingdom before us we are asked:
What did it avail Belgium to marshal her armies and hold her forts against the irresistible advance of the German legions?9
The question has an extraordinary resemblance to that addressed by the Kaiser to King Albert in Punch’s famous cartoon: “Don’t you see that Belgium has lost everything?” And Albert’s answer is taken from Christ’s own lips: “She has not lost her soul.” The Celestial Empire on the other hand seems to this champion of the pacifism of Lao-tse to have practically realized the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven. Peacefully non-resistant under the corrupt domination of its Manchu conquerors it had attained the climax of earthly felicity. It had a name to live, and was dead.
The Chinese and the Quakers, each in their own way, are finished products. What they are is all they ever can be. Which means from the standpoint of national idealism, that non-resistance is the “saving element.”10
This eulogy of China, however, was written before the new Republic of China, stirring the long dormant instincts of Chinese patriotism, had roused to new hopes and visions of world achievement the body that had become as one dead, insomuch that the more part said, He is dead. But non-resistant pacifism is ever rich in paradox. Today China herself, so long inert, blessed for so many centuries with all the felicity of submission, has thrown off the Manchu yoke of domination. And in the first surge of new-found strength she declares war against Attila and his Huns, and in the declaration itself avows that she is “fighting to establish peace.” To such inconsistency does non-resistance seem fated as soon as life triumphs over death, as soon as the Christian gospel of a world kingdom of righteousness and peace triumphs over Buddha’s pessimistic obliteration of desire and hope together in the gray nirvana of extinction. “Eternal life” through death-defying loyalty to a divine ideal begins at last to seem preferable, even in China, to mere indefinite “survival.”
Not Quakerdom itself seems able to maintain consistency with its non-resistant ideals. Alas,
they were abandoned by those who could not and would not see the connection between these principles and the uninterrupted peace which had long blessed the Pennsylvania colony.
Becoming itself directly responsible for the order and security hitherto guaranteed by the sovereign British power the Quaker commonwealth followed the example of its neighbor states and girt on the sword.11 For this, doubtless, we may hold the influx of alien immigrants more responsible than the genuine followers of Fox and Penn. But it must at least be admitted that Quaker leaven showed little power to work, so far as the doctrine and policy of non-resistance are concerned.
Inconsistencies such as these on the part of the greatest modern exemplars of non-resistance are saddening to its champions, but there remains ever a more ethereal realm, where philosophy can build without fear of the stern realities of life, the limbo of utopias.
V
Jesus, too, they tell us, though greatest of all non-resistants, was also “inconsistent.” Was he, then, inconsistent with himself? Or was his pacifism the active pacifism of those who give their lives for just and lasting peace, the peace that is real and not mere devastation, not destruction and tyranny miscalled Kultur; not might triumphant over right and unashamed; but a peace that endures because justice and right have been enthroned?
Jesus closed his public teaching with the doctrine that all religion, all duty to God and man, is summed up in the two commandments: Unreserved, unqualified, unfaltering devotion to the One God of Righteousness and Truth; unselfish devotion to the common weal of man. One who in obedience to this law of love took up the succession of Moses, David and the prophets, raising the standard of God’s real sovereignty on earth, and paying to it the last full measure of his own devotion, has not deserved the accusation of inconsistency. Jesus was sublimely consistent. That interpretation of his words which refuses the witness of his heroic deeds to their true meaning is guilty of the inconsistency.
It is true, as Tolstoy finely says, that Jesus’ noble depiction in the Sermon on the Mount of the forbearance of God as the standard of the higher righteousness means that we should “never do anything contrary to the law of love.” But by what right does the great Russian pacifist (or any other who claims for his theory the authority of Jesus) omit from that law of love its “first and great commandment”? How can we ignore the demand of supreme and unqualified devotion to the God of Righteousness, whose kingdom of righteous peace Jesus gave his life to establish, and limit our obedience to acquiescence in the demands of men, be they righteous or the reverse? The second commandment of the Law of Love is dependent on the first, and in separation from it will assuredly be misconstrued. Equal love of neighbor can be no requirement of religion, save as it depends on the prior obligation of supreme devotion to a common Father, whose forbearing, forgiving love extends equally to all. Imitation of that Father’s goodness and forbearance, overcoming the evil of the world with good, is the one teaching, the comprehensive, unifying principle, of the Sermon on the Mount. But the God whose goodness this great discourse sets up as the standard of the righteousness of all “sons and daughters of the Highest” is not a non-resistant God. It is the just and merciful God depicted in those Scriptures wherein Jesus read his beneficent will and purpose for the world.
It is not enough for the Christian merely “to do nothing contrary to the law of love”; he must actively toil and suffer in its service, fighting to the death. His personal enemy he may and must forgive. Enemies have thus been won to the kingdom. The enemy of the weak and defenceless brother he must resist. The enemy of God’s kingdom he must fight to the death. It is true that this foe of God is no human or visible foe. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; it is against the principalities and powers of darkness in the heavenly places. But we do not beat the air. This power of darkness finds incarnation in human form at least as readily as the Power of light. He fights with real and concrete weapons, and this reality is the ultimate test. For the foe who thus incarnates the evil power the Christian has no hatred as brother-man; only as agent of the evil power. The hatred ceases when the man renounces the evil allegiance. Hence the paradox of love that may necessitate a blow. Self-deception is here all too easy, but absolutely selfless devotion may be trusted even here not to substitute its own cause for God’s.
The very paragraph from which the non-resistants draw their doctrine has this conclusion:
Wherefore seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these (outward blessings) shall be added unto you.
It is because Jesus sought first the kingdom, which means righteousness, peace and good will among men, sovereignty of right over might, overthrow of the powers of darkness which claim as their own the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, that he could teach as the best means to its attainment forbearance and loving-kindness to the limit. For a limit there is—the divine limit of the welfare of all. Loyalty to this ideal led Jesus to crown his sublime teaching with action sublimer still. When the scenes of his earlier ministry were closed, he left the quiet paths of teacher and healer in Galilee to tread the martyr’s road, and to set up in his own cross an ensign to rally the scattered and bleeding flock of God. Because he sought “first the kingdom of God” Jesus held back his disciples from the bloody and disastrous path of Zealot fanaticism, and bade Peter return his futile sword to its sheath. For the same reason and no other he depicted to his disciples the Good Shepherd laying down his life in defence of the flock, and poured scorn upon the hireling who “when he seeth the wolf coming, leaveth the sheep and fleeth.” It is for the same reason and no other that he also warned them of days to come when it should be the duty of the disciple unprovided with a sword to “sell his garment and buy one,” days when only he that endured unto the end, fighting to the death against the powers of darkness, should be saved.
Jesus teaches unlimited non-resistance where only personal and selfish interests are at stake; but resistance unto blood for the sake of the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. In this he is inconsistent with non-resistant pacifism that can see no difference between this doctrine and that of Buddha or Lao-tse. Jesus even reverses that Bolshevist pacifism that to save its own skin throws to the Turkish-Teuton wolves the bleeding remnant of the earliest historic flock of Christ. He approves rather shepherds that give their lives fighting in defence of their helpless charge. He is inconsistent with the theories and philosophies of non-resistance; but he is consistent, sublimely consistent, with his own gospel of the sovereignty of God.
The rule of truly Christian pacifism is not hard to understand when we approach it from the standpoint of those who after the precept and example of Jesus seek first the Kingdom of God. Men of this type are ready like “all the saints who nobly fought of old” to lose their lives in this high cause, that they may save them unto life eternal. For individuals and for nations the rule is the same: “In thine own cause strike never, not even in self-defence; in God’s cause strike when he bids thee strike and cease not, come victory or death.” There is, no doubt, an easy self-delusion, prone to identify its own cause with God’s. But against this blasphemous egotism human history henceforth will ever set up the abhorrent warning of a certain imperial attitudinizer whom we do not need to name. There is a time for forbearance, patience, longsuffering, up to the limit of the forbearance of that God who seeks only the good of all, and who seeks it in wisdom and justice as well as in forbearance. The time is up to that limit, and not beyond it. If the enemy can be won, win him. Turn the other cheek, surrender tunic along with cloak. But forbearance is not meant to play into the hands of the evil power. There is also a time when it only gluts the ravenous maw of inhuman, soulless tyranny, a time when incarnate evil sits in the very temple of God, setting itself forth as God, a time when the law of violence is openly avowed and exalted above the law of mercy and right, a time of the beast and the false prophet, threatening to turn civilization back again to the age of Lamech and Tubal-cain. That is a time to remember also the commandment, “Let him that hath no sword sell his cloak and buy one,” and the promise: “He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne.”
Notes
1 Rom. 12:20, citing Prov. 25:21-22.
2 See below as to the fourth evangelist’s explanation of Jesus’ claim to be the Davidic Shepherd of Israel only in the sense of uniting the scattered flock of God.
3 The citations are all from the unquestioned writings of the First Isaiah, Isa. 2:2-4; 3:1-5; 9:2-7 and 28:1-6. The rendering is made independently from the Hebrew.
4 Mal. 3:1-4; 4:1-6.
5 Paul is elaborating Isa. 57:19.
6 Mk. 6:34; 14:27 and parallels.
7 Ezek. 34.
8 “New Wars for Old,” pp. 252-258.
9 Ibid. p. 223.
10 Ibid. p. 258.
11 “New Wars for Old,” p. 241.