Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics

by Willard M. Swartley

Overview

One would think that peace, a term that occurs as many as one hundred times in the New Testament, would enjoy a prominent place in theology and ethics textbooks. Yet it is surprisingly absent. Willard Swartley's Covenant of Peace remedies this deficiency, restoring to New Testament theology and ethics the peace that many works have missed.

In this comprehensive yet accessible book Swartley explicates virtually all of the New Testament, relating peace — and the associated emphases of love for enemies and reconciliation — to core theological themes such as salvation, christology, and the reign of God. No other work in English makes such a contribution.

Swartley concludes by considering specific practices that lead to peacemaking and their place in our contemporary world. Retrieving a historically neglected element in the Christian message, Covenant of Peace confronts readers anew with the compelling New Testament witness to peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802829375
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/11/2006
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.14(d)

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Covenant of Peace

The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics

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By Willard M. Swartley

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2006 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8028-2937-6

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Introduction

This book is a study of peace in the New Testament, a topic often marginalized in texts on NT Theology and Ethics. Most people want peace. Jesus promised blessing to peacemakers: "for they shall be called sons (children) of God" (Matt. 5:9). Some first-century Roman emperors claimed for themselves the title peacemaker (eirenopoios), but those living under their occupation experienced life otherwise. Humans during the centuries, and certainly we today, continue to long for peace. In this decade, designated "The Decade to Overcome Violence" by the World Council of Churches, we do well to consider anew the NT witness on peace.

Peace, however, is often "used in vain," in that what we really mean by the word is getting good things for oneself, even if it means that others suffer so we can achieve our peace goal. In the social and political realm, peace most always assumes also "peace with security" - that is, my or our security. A tacit assumption in most public thinking about achieving this goal is that peace is to be won through superior power and violence; "just war" criteria would add "when necessary." Necessary usually means by the standards of self-protection of some sort, often "protection of nationalexpansionist interests" of one type or another, usually economic advantage and/or political gain. Yet the goal hoped for often becomes more and more illusory the harder one works to secure it.

If one examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the last decades, for example, the point is graphic. More power and violence from Israel only brings more violent subversive tactics from Palestinians, followed by more violence from Israel. The grinding, devastating war in southern Sudan for two decades is especially heart-rending, since so many have died as a result - some counts are two million. Now with a new front in the western Darfur province, some 1.2 million have been displaced as refugees (mostly in Chad). Until recently the larger world and especially the U.S. paid scant attention. The ethnic wars in the Balkans and in sub-Saharan Africa only compound the dismal picture of God's shalom project for humans gone terribly awry. Lamentably, these wars are often between Christian groups. How can such things be?!

The persisting challenge of the Mideast conflict exemplifies in microcosm the more macrocosmic situation in which the U.S. extends its enormous power to crush opposing interests, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq. A similar pattern of domination appears in the ever-increasing global expansion of multinational corporations. Though corrective analyses and protests to these strategies abound, few put forward concrete alternatives that carry persuasive hope for achieving peace.

So why another book on peace, especially when written by one trained in biblical studies, not in political analysis and strategic planning for national or international security? Indeed, this book makes no direct contribution to enhancing the national security of the United States, Iraq, Sudan, Israel, or the Palestinians, to name specific cases. Nor does it prescribe self-help formulas that promise to help people find peace personally in the sense of prosperity and personal accomplishment. But this book is important for those who wish to know how Christian faith bears on the formation of personal and corporate societal values, which in turn shape our personal and corporate ambitions and the means we use to achieve them. It contributes also to thinking about political issues, for example, how nations might win peace with security by addressing underlying enmity-creating factors. Put another way, this book seeks to shape human character formation so that different foundational questions are asked. Rather than thinking first and foremost about peace with security, the exposition leads one to think about peace through repentance, personal and corporate, and then transforming enmity into valued friendship.

This book raises vexing questions that challenge and at times irritate: Why are certain specific people our enemies? Why do they want what we also want? What does it mean to overcome evil with good? Is peace something we can achieve, or does it have a gift and grace dimension, both in personal and sociopolitical dimensions? How does Christian Scripture contribute to our thinking about peace? Do the many self-identified Christians today seek peace by the means prescribed in Christian Scripture, in the New Testament? What could happen to current conflicts if all Christians would refuse the use of violence? Would evil overwhelm good, or would good prevail? Do we have the capacity to live by faith, or are we hopeless victims consigning the future to fate? Do we think of justice and prosperity as a good for all people, or just for those who share in our identity, be it familial, social, economic, or political? Do we think only in national terms or international as well when we speak of justice, the common good, and shalom?

In one respect, this book addresses these broad questions. In another respect it is focused on a more modest and clearly defined task, namely, to show that the major writings in the NT canon speak to the topic of peace and peacemaking. Further, it intends to show how we are to seek peace, the motivations that guide such actions, and what "habits of the heart" or practices lead to peacemaking. Surprisingly, this task has been largely neglected in the textbooks on NT theology that have been in the staple diet of seminary and graduate students in biblical studies of the past several generations. Texts devoted to NT ethics have done little better, with some exceptions. How is it that a massive volume on NT theology or Pauline theology would have only one or two references to peace, even though that word and associated motifs permeate NT literature? Put simply, why have peace and peacemaking been topically marginalized in the NT academic guild?

During the last twenty-five years I have taught a course on Theology and Ethics of the New Testament every other year, more recently focusing on the Gospels. What I have noticed is how sparse, if at all, the treatment of peace is in numerous NT theologies especially, and also in NT ethics texts as well. Richard B. Hays's The Moral Vision of the New Testament does more than most, but while nonviolence appears in his Topic Index with three citations, peace does not appear (there is one reference to "peace churches"). Even N. T. Wright's magisterial Jesus and the Victory of God has no peace listing in his "Index of Selected Topics," though he speaks more than most about peace as an integral part of messianic hope and Jesus' mission. Thus while both authors speak about peace at numerous places, the topic as such is elusive, buried within other topical discussions. Major Pauline theologies are even more deficient, as a long footnote in Chapter 7 below will point out.

For this reason it is urgent to bring together in an accessible volume an understanding of peace in the NT as a companion volume to texts in NT theology and ethics. No other book in English makes this contribution. Some of the volumes I edited in the series "Studies in Peace and Scripture" provide important resources for this project, but they are mostly more narrowly topical contributions. They do not pursue the topic through the full NT canonical witness. The exception (though it does not treat the entire NT or each Gospel separately) is volume 1 in the series, The Gospel of Peace, by Ulrich Mauser. I am indebted to him for some key emphases in this volume. Another exception, as a model for Paul only, is Virginia Wiles's Making Sense of Paul, which I include in my analysis of NT theologies and ethics in Appendix 1, even though it is not a NT theology or ethics study as such. Much work on peace has been done in German, and my writing will incorporate some of the good exegesis available there. William Klassen's numerous essays contribute significantly, as does his book Love of Enemy.

This marginalizing of peace in standard NT theologies and ethics is dismaying when many of the authors carry also keen concern for peace in our world. The disparity may arise from the limitations of the discipline. To hold a scholarly discipline accountable to moral values may seem to smack of doctrinal sectarianism and thus not reflect objective research. Recent developments in NT studies, however, have exposed that illusion. Matters of social location, economic and political allegiances, and religious convictions are valued as part of the academic enterprise. Hence scholarship seeks to honor diversity and discerning dialogue with one another, even when disagreements exist.

Documenting the Neglect

With the research help of a graduate student, I discovered that fifteen of twenty-five NT "Theology" or "Ethics" textbooks included peace in their subject indexes. Of the remaining ten, four have no subject index and the other six fail to list the word peace. Indexes, of course, do not tell the whole story. One needs to read the text to determine whether the neglect is in the Index or in the theology or ethics textbook itself. Further, the idea or notion of peace/ reconciliation may be present though the words are not used.

One would think that the term peace, however, which occurs one hundred times in the NT and in every canonical book except 1 John would get some showing in theological or ethical treatments. To assess the extent of this deficiency we summarize what has and has not been done in numerous textbooks (see Appendix 1 for data and analysis).

In analyzing major texts on New Testament theology or ethics, research student Shank looked also for associated terms and emphases, such as love of enemy, reconciliation, and verbal or adjectival forms of peace. On the basis of the number of occurrences of peace, Rudolf Bultmann, I. Howard Marshall, Ben Wiebe, and, most outstanding, Virginia Wiles receive high marks. But in these works, perceptions and emphases differ significantly. Bultmann speaks of peace mostly in personal relational terms, in keeping perhaps with his existential mode of "translating" kerygmatic meaning into (then!) contemporary relevance. Marshall mentions peace often, but never as a subject of discussion. Wiebe understands peace to be at the core of the messianic movement inaugurated by Jesus, which expresses itself in NT ecclesiology. But Wiebe's work is limited to the Jesus section of the NT canon. Wiles is a basic introduction to Pauline theology (200 pages), and does not develop Pauline theology at the level of the other volumes analyzed. While peace/shalom literally laces her treatment and provides a thematic unity to the various facets of Pauline theology, her book does not exploit the full range of peace emphases in Paul. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable and outstanding contribution demonstrating how shalom/peace might function to provide coherence to Pauline theology (and to NT theology and ethics more broadly). See Appendix 1 for the detailed analysis of these twenty-five contributions.

When these limiting factors are taken into account, Bultmann is seriously deficient in lacking any clear trajectory between the personal and the corporate, even for the corporate life of believers (the ecclesial dimension), let alone the church's peace witness socioeconomically and politically. Wiebe's and Wiles's constraints are also significant, though the two together might function well to provide an elementary shalom/peace theology and ethics of Jesus and Paul.

If one examines the theological understanding of peace and related terms - as surely one should - at least eight of the twenty-five sources give significant attention to the topic. Overall, reconciliation receives more attention than peace, however, even though peace in nominal, verbal, adjectival, and compound forms occurs one hundred times in the NT, while reconciliation in its noun and verb forms occurs only seven or eight times! Richard Hays's Moral Vision of the New Testament, while lacking a Topic Index entry on peace, nevertheless gives considerable attention to peace and related topics. Even more, he devotes a complete chapter to "Violence" and uses the term nonviolence numerous times.

This dominant attention to nonviolence occurs also in Walter Wink's influential contribution in his "Powers" trilogy as well. This raises the question whether nonviolence is the contemporary word replacing peace and peacemaking. If so, why? This term, like nonresistance (Matt. 5:39 KJV has "resist not" for me antistenai), connotes what one does not do. Stanley Hauerwas makes a similar point:

... pacifists cannot let their understanding of Christian nonviolence be determined by what we are against.... The very phrase "Christian nonviolence" cannot help but suggest that peace is "not violence." Yet a peace that is no more than "not violence" surely cannot be the peace that is ours in Christ.

If the term is coupled with resistance (i.e., nonviolent resistance), that objection is only partially overcome, since the witness of the church still appears to be mostly reactive rather than proactively initiating peacemaking. Here Glen Stassen's work is salutary, since he accentuates transforming initiatives. An injunction oft-repeated in the NT, "do not return evil for evil" (in the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and 1 Peter) would valorize nonretaliation. Though the term as such is not used, it expresses the meaning of the imperative. This also emphasizes what not to do, but it is also often accompanied with positive action: love enemies, more frequently overcome evil with good, and occasionally bless those who curse you. Jesus' blessing on the peacemakers also connotes positive action. For it speaks not of merely thinking peace or avoiding evil, but a proactive making of peace. Nonviolence might be taken as denoting the work of peacemakers, but nonretaliation, peacemaking, reconciliation (noun and verb form for the latter two), loving the enemy, and overcoming evil with good are biblical terms.

This serious peace deficiency is not limited to NT studies in theology and ethics. It shows also in some of the best contributions on mission in the NT, for example, in David Bosch's magnum opus Transforming Mission. It illustrates the anomaly of how an excellent scholar in missiology, much concerned about peace and justice in South Africa and the wider world, could exposit mission in the NT in its distinctive theological character and yet miss completely its relationship to peace emphases, also prominent in the same texts that authorize mission. The same omission on peace emphases occurs, most lamentably, in Joseph A. Grassi's valuable treatment of social justice in the NT.

May this volume, as a companion to other works in NT theology and NT ethics, begin a corrective and spur other scholars to continue the task. One of the weaknesses of the contemporary church's peace witness is that so often its rationale is grounded not in Scripture but in general cultural notions of justice and fairness. Equally lamentable, Christians who stress biblical authority and preach "biblical" sermons react by criticizing peace and justice proponents and then put peace and peacemaking on discount, regarding it secondary, perhaps even unimportant, to the evangelistic mission of the church. In his insightful study of Eph. 2:11-22, Thomas Yoder Neufeld puts the point provocatively,

This text reminds us that there is no evangelical and missional way of speaking of Christ that is worthy of him that does not come to terms with the radical spiritual, social, and even cosmic dimensions of peace. Were it not for the fact that we see it all around us in churches great and small, we would find it inconceivable that one could come to know the peace of God without being drawn into the costly making of peace in our world.

... if remembering Christ, but forgetting peace is a terrible truncation of the gospel, so also is remembering peace while forgetting the Christ who is our peace. Such forgetfulness results in losing touch with the core of peace, its roots, and its pedigree. Peace thus becomes divorced from the mission of reconciling people not only with each other but with God. Worse, the proclamation of Christ as peace is viewed as exclusivistic and arrogant, as maintaining or erecting new walls when they should be coming down.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Covenant of Peace by Willard M. Swartley Copyright © 2006 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company . Excerpted by permission.
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