About the Author
About the Reader
Why Americans Have Trouble Hearing God's Law
The Prince of Peace and the Law of Love
"Self Defense" and the Way of the Cross
"Capital Punishment" and Liturgical Bloodshed
"National Defense" and Liturgical Bloodshed
Pacifism, Limited Government, and Anarchism
The Pacifism Debate: Selected E-mail and Newsgroup posts
How to Become a Theonomic Pacifist.
If you are a Christian, you are a pacifist.
the United States, a beginning splattered with blood.
a Christian can only shed a tear at the decline of a "City Upon a Hill" into the Sugar Daddy of international socialism and bastion of the fascist New World Order.
Most Christians do not think of themselves as pacifists because they think of themselves as Americans. Unfortunately, America is an anti-Christian nation. America is a Secular Humanist Theocracy. For a Christian to think of himself as an American is as senseless as a Christian thinking of himself as an Islamic Fundamentalist. If you see the contradictions, you will be saying, "How can I become a better pacifist?" Well, you're in luck; the Bible tells you how.
The problem goes back to the origin of America. Whereas the original colonies were more or less Christian Theocracies, much of the formation of the Federal Government involved an attempt to get away from Christian Theocracy. There may have been some Christians involved in the effort, but they were not consistent with the Scriptures.
Jesus said the entire Law and Prophets might be summed up in the command to love God and love your neighbor, which Jesus taught included our "enemies." Under the Sixth Commandment ("Thou shalt not kill"), the Westminster Larger Catechism explicates the Biblical requirements of non-violence. One could hardly imagine a fuller statement of pacifism.
But a clearer statement could be imagined: it would be obtained by removing three "exceptions" to the law of love which have crowded out pacifistic ethics since the time of Constantine. The Catechism teaches that "publick justice" (i.e., "capital punishment"), "lawful war," and "necessary defense" are all exceptions to the negative requirement not to kill, or the positive command to love one's "enemy." We should examine each of them, culminating with the death of our faith in the whole idea of the State itself.
Some find a justification for lethal self-defense in Exodus 22:2-3. Indeed, some find here a mandate for killing. This is astonishing. Everything else in the Catechism's exposition of the Sixth Commandment -- commands which should govern most of our daily lives -- is overturned by one "exception" -- a hypothetical exception which never even occurs in the lives of most people.
The willingness to give your life for another is not "impractical." I'd like to show you how it has worked for me. John Howard Yoder has edited a book entitled What Would You Do If . . .,
Another concept that has a tendency to overthrow everything else in the Catechism's exposition of the Sixth Commandment is "Capital Punishment."
In Deuteronomy 21, the response to an unsolved homicide is the killing of an heifer.
Accordingly, my page, The Death Penalty Debate, is a little on the long side.
The objective was the shedding of blood. The pacifist says it is no longer theologically necessary to shed blood in "Holy War," but the Westminster Larger Catechism says otherwise, citing Jeremiah 48:10: "cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."
"Holy War" in the Old Testament was, with "capital punishment," a liturgical shedding of blood. War was an act of national "Capital Punishment." After Christ's work on Calvary, there is no longer a Biblical justification for "Holy War," and therefore no justification for war of any kind (Micah 4:3).
The Bible plainly teaches anarchism. Jesus said that the Gentile kings love to be "archists," but His followers are not to be so. There is no ethical distinction between these terrorists and the U.N.-approved "smart-bombs" that killed half a million women and children in Iraq.
The Bible teaches that "national security" is more likely to result when there is no State at all than when there is a strong central government.We must return to the Edenic paradigm of Patriarchy.
I don't claim to have the last word. I still have doubts and questions. I appreciate strong dissenting arguments. Mail them to me at Kevin4VFT@aol.com. Read some of them here.
Slowly but surely I am posting the steps toward pacifism. If you have your own suggestions, I'd love to hear from you.