Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We have previously been discussing the positive case for Christian non violence, and now we're going to start to get into the rebuttals and the counter rebuttals. Just as we did with the positive case, I want to begin by focusing on the Biblical elements here. So we're going to start with some of the most common rebuttals that I hear against non violence based on the Bible. The 2 big ones that come up are Jesus and the Money Changers, when Jesus gets angry and breaks out His whip and starts swinging it around.

And the other one is John the Baptist accepting soldiers who come to him. To those who are not pacifists, these seem like clear examples which show that violence can sometimes be acceptable. So how would I deal with this? Well first, let's start with Jesus and the Money Changers. And you can find this passage in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 2.

I'll go ahead and start with what I think is a a weak counter rebuttal to this, but something that I you should probably be aware of. And that is that, oh, there are many pacifists. There are two lines of of pacifism, when it comes to to Christian pacifism in general. And one of those lines would say that violence in and of itself is not off the table. And, it's not off the table because God has the authority to give and to take life.

But we do not. Only God has that authority. So in the Old Testament, when we see killing, and God directing killing, or God approving of certain killing and violence, that's because God has the prerogative to do that, and we don't. And so violence is not completely off the table. And if you take a look at Jesus, and you think that Jesus has a pretty good connection to God, Jesus probably knew God's directive and probably had a very clear clear and open line of communication with Him.

If God wanted Jesus to do what He did in the temple, as some prophetic thing to prepare for the cross, or to, you know, whatever it is that you might think it does, well, if that's God's directive, then Jesus can do that. And that's not a problem for certain brands of nonviolence. Well, I don't think that's a very strong argument. I think it is something that can be taken into consideration and something that does give you a little bit of perspective when thinking about how the nonviolent individuals might answer this. Fortunately, I don't think you really have to fall back on that because there are 2 other convincing lines of evidence which I think show that Jesus' violence wasn't really violence at all.

So the first line of evidence comes from John 2. When you read John 2 specifically, the wording of the text makes clear what Jesus is driving out. Jesus is not using the whips to drive out the money changers, the people. He's using it to drive out the sheep and cattle. Now, maybe He also is using it on the people, but none of the texts say that He's using it on the people.

Only John specifies what objects Jesus uses the whip for, and that's sheep and cattle. It does not mention anything about about humans. So, yeah. Jesus gets angry. I don't think anger in and of itself is a sin.

Jesus flips over some tables. Okay. Jesus whips some animals to drive them out. Alright. But, as far as violence towards other people, it doesn't seem like that exists there.

Now, maybe some intimidation of sorts, I don't know, if the people felt threatened or not. But, anyway, I think that that significantly scales down the severity of what a lot of people think, that Jesus is going in with a whip and hitting all of the people. The second piece of evidence that we have that what Jesus probably did is not what a lot of people think He did, is that Mark and Luke both follow-up the stories here by saying that the religious leaders kept looking for a way to kill Jesus and to accuse Him, but they couldn't find anything on Him. Now, it's hard for me to believe that Jesus goes into the temple and starts lashing people and creating physical harm to a bunch of religious leaders or, religious lackeys, and they can't find a reason to accuse Jesus of something that could be, you know, that something could be done about it. I mean, I would imagine now, I don't know all ancient Roman laws and such, but it seems to me that if Jesus was doing physical harm, in a revolt sort of sense, that the Romans would have had an interest in stopping that too.

So even if the Jews by their own law couldn't do anything to Jesus, which seems like they should be able to if he was whipping them, it seems like the Roman garrison that was stationed right outside of the temple would have had something to say about that. So this just kind of leads me to believe that, this was a small fray that dealt with the whipping of animals and the overturning of a few tables, not something that was a major revolt, or something where Jesus was doing physical harm to people. Now again, the text doesn't say that He didn't hit people, but, as far as the cumulative case for non violence goes, it's just not a compelling line of reasoning to use this to overturn the whole case that I've made so far. Alright. So, the second instance that's usually brought up is John the Baptist.

And in Luke 3, we see a number of soldiers come to John the Baptist and ask what they need to do to repent. Well, come to John the Baptist and ask what they need to do to repent. Well, John gives them 3 things that they need to do. 1st of all, he says don't extort, 2nd, don't accuse falsely, and 3rd, be content with your pay. Now what is noticeable here is that John does not say to repent and come into this, Kingdom revival here.

He does not say that they have to leave the army. And you would think that he would say that if Jesus' kingdom was all about non violence, or if non violence was a central component. First of all, the problem with this argument is that at best it is an argument from silence. There are lots of things John doesn't tell these soldiers to do, that I'm sure they were doing. Now, it does say that they're soldiers, and it seems like emphasizing that probably you would expect John the Baptist to, to say something like don't kill, if, you know, if that was a major component of it.

Nevertheless, at best this is an argument from silence. 2nd, this argument really overlooks the idea that we see over and over again, which is that those around Jesus seem to always be in the dark about the true nature of His Kingdom, or the true extent of His Kingdom. You know, John the Baptist himself sent a bunch of his disciples to Jesus to ask if He was truly the Messiah. John had doubts about Jesus and didn't understand the way that He was going about things. And so John himself was was not fully enlightened as to what this kingdom entailed.

Peter's another great example. He's he said to Jesus that he wasn't gonna allow Him to suffer. And the disciples time and time again just do not get what Jesus is doing. They don't understand this idea of suffering, of death, of resurrection, the idea that this this kingdom wasn't political. They just don't they don't see that the kingdom wasn't physical and here and now, exactly in the sense that they thought it should be.

And you even see this, again, I believe it's in Acts, but, or maybe at the very end of one of the Gospels, but right after the resurrection, so they've seen the risen Christ, they still ask Jesus, so is your kingdom, like, you gonna do it now? You gonna overthrow Rome now? Basically, is what they're saying. And Jesus is like, man, you guys just still don't get it. Just wait around, I'm gonna send the Spirit, and it'll all be clear to you then.

Everyone, even the people who were right next to Jesus for 3 years, just don't get it. They don't get the true nature and the true extent of the Kingdom. So if at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, you've got John the Baptist, who is not telling soldiers not to kill people. I don't know that that's very compelling to me, not only because it's an argument from silence, but also because nobody got Jesus. And I wouldn't expect that John would have understood the true extent, especially before the cross, because that's the ultimate demonstration of this nonviolent action that Jesus, this enemy love that Jesus is trying to portray.

But even more than those two reasons, I think I can even, I think I can even do one better to discount this argument. And just to kind of show you, what I would recommend for you to do is take a look at Luke 3, and do it in 2 different translations. Pick, you know, the NIV or ESV or whatever, and read it, and you're gonna get what I told you. You're gonna get do not extorts, and, be content with your wages. Right?

Well, if you take a look in the King James version, something there is very different. And instead of saying don't extort, it actually says do no harm. So our list, instead of don't extort, don't accuse falsely, is do no harm, don't accuse falsely. If you go and take a look at the Greek now, just to, just to kind of warn you, I am not a Greek scholar, and I do not know Greek. So, I'm relying on all of the tools that I have, which help me.

Nevertheless, I think the King James translation, along with just a minimal study of the range that this word has, and its roots and what it means, we'll kind of show you that the implication here is that they're talking about not using physical force against other people. And you can see how that's how that's used. It's not, I think this is the only time it's used in this exact form, but you can see how other forms of it are are used. And the King James translators, again, thought that the focus was doing no harm, because it seems a little bit redundant, if you kinda say, sort of say the same thing twice, like don't extort and don't accuse falsely, like, you're you're kind of kind of doing the same thing here. So what I think the the author, what I think, Luke was trying to say, is basically that, okay, you can be a soldier, but don't do harm physically, and don't do harm verbally, and just be content.

Just do your job. Just keep going. Don't hurt people. Don't don't, verbally assault people. Regardless of what you think of the Greek in this passage, or, or whatever else, I mean, when you put those 3, those 3 points together, it's just really not a convincing passage.

It's an argument from silence. Nobody knew what was going on with the extent of Jesus' kingdom, and most translations kind of miss out on some of the emphasis that the Greek word should have. Now, if we want to throw in a 4th point here, just sort of a sub point to number 3, if John is really saying to sol if John is really telling soldiers, Hey, you don't have to get out of the Army, Is that really something that we would say kind of goes to show that violence is okay? And, no, not at all. Because if you remember back to the early church episode that we did, the church history, the early church is filled with examples of people saying, sure.

You can be in the army, just don't kill, or do no violence. And if you get an order to kill, don't do it. You have people who are executed for, who are in the army, who are executed for various reasons, sometimes not sacrificing to idols and other times, laying down their weapons. You had the canon 12 in the Council of Nicaea, which said not to return to the army. So there were people getting converted in the army who, a lot of the early church was saying, look, you can't get out of the army, like, they'll kill you for trying to do that, or, or there are severe consequences, so just stay in the army.

I mean, this is the Pax Romana, you don't have to kill people, a lot of time you're just doing construction work, go build the aqueduct, do whatever you're gonna do, keep your head down, don't hurt anybody, and just do your job. But if they do tell you to kill, don't do it. If they tell you to do violence, don't do it. So this, this idea that John is saying you, or John isn't telling you to get out of the army, doesn't really convince me whatsoever that he's saying it's okay to do violence. And we'll definitely revisit this in a future episode where we talk about the early church and, soldiers in the early church.

But for now, these are 2 of the simplest Biblical arguments that we can rebut, and we'll be exploring more difficult ones later. I hope that wet your palate. But that's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.