David f
I have had to preach on most of the readings you mention so I have given them some thought. There are several issues:

1. What was the point of Jesus placing the kingdom above all loyalties even the closest ones of family? I have always understood this as a guard against idolatry. If God is not placed at the center of heart and mind then something else will be and that will be destructive both of that thing and of the person. We witness today the idolatry of the family and of a disconnected freedom.

2. The warnings of trouble to come. This is a sober warning given that the kingdom that is announced in the person of Jesus will upset all worldly authority. There will be wars and rumours of wars etc. This is not a command to establish the kingdom by violence but a warning that the disciples of Jesus will suffer.

3. The kind of pacifism that Jesus stood for is illustrated in the way he went to his death. His disciples would have fought for him but he disallowed it. He walked resolutely to Jerusalem despite his disciple’s disavowal of that path knowing what would happen. He could have easily slipped over the back of the mount of olives to safety but he held his ground and allowed himself to be taken. This is a pacifism that is far from being passive.

4. It was part of the Enlightenment project to establish a universal rational morality. The history since the 17th C would suggest that it has been a failure. The point about the establishment of the kingdom is that it is not established on a new morality but a new way of being. The old law remains in force but it is not seen as the generator of a new reality in which the swords shall be beaten into pruning hooks etc. That new reality can only be established by following the in the way of Christ. i.e. placing our security and our fear below our devotion to him.

david f,
Your exegesis appears lacking as it neglects even basic rabbinic interpretation. Missing is a dialectic of formalism vs. instrumentalism (letter vs. spirit), and textualsim vs. contextualism. The narrow, strictly literalistic interpretation you provide will certainly lend itself to the view you give. The literary context, however, reveals truths you fail to touch on, and ones most certainly taken on by early Christianity. Their conduct reveals the spirit of early Christianity, and this is evidence of itself, without the need of exegesis, viz, serious scholars of church history generally agree that for the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians rejected not only emperor-worship and idolatry but also participation in the military. Obedience to the gospel, the Church held, was consistent only with a position of nonresistance and not serving in the military. Bishop Cyprian (C.E. 258) commented rather bitterly, “if a murder is committed privately it is a crime, but if it happens with state authority, courage is the name for it. Cyprian insisted that Christians "are not allowed to kill, but they must be ready to be put to death themselves."

The climate of the church on the subject of peace and nonresistance changed extremely rapidly after the conversion of Constantine (312), when he gave Christianity legal status in the empire.

The compromise on truth for the sake of peace is unjustified – this is the ‘sword’ that will divide, father against son, mother against daughter or friend against friend.

Religion is not synonymous with morality, I agree, but the legal positivism you suggest, where the Law is a posit without moral implication (natural law), has little claim on our obedience (is there a duty to obey?) It follows, and from the Ayn Rand Institute, Onkar Ghate defended the principle of killing innocent civilians in another country during times of war or other armed conflict. According to Ghate, “The government of a free nation is simply the agent of its citizens, charged with one fundamental responsibility: to secure the individual rights - and very lives - of its citizens through the use of retaliatory force."

david f,
When biologists employ random sampling and probability along with the nature of genetic mutation they say, “Mutations are random” i.e. they are not directed. Mutations provide the raw material on which natural selection acts and it is natural selection which is a deterministic process – as you suggest. Darwin, however, was unaware of this random process or, “genetic drift”. Studies of evolution at the molecular level have provided strong support for drift as a major mechanism of evolution. Strictly speaking, evolutionary biologists are no longer "Darwinists", and when anti-evolutionists equate evolution with “Darwinists” they place their argument in a 19th Century context.

“Packs which care for their members have a better chance of surviving. However, the act is a moral act, and we humans have some of the same conditioning” Your initial sentence here, David, describes something clearly observable. Your second one is conjecture and falls apart if animals are considered amoral through instinctive behaviour. A moral act is decidedly an act of choice, performed within a freedom enabling our separation from not only ‘base’ instinct but anything within our ‘natures’.

Contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer suggest that there is no morally justifiable way to exclude from moral consideration non-humans or non-persons who can clearly suffer. Singer collapses the distinction between humans and animals and pleads consistency in being able to experiment, not just only on animals, but also on brain damaged babies etc.

A further danger lies in taking the absolutist position where any being that is the subject of a life has inherent worth, and the rights that protect such worth and all subjects of a life have these rights equally. Eating animals, hunting animals, experimenting on animals and using animals for entertainment, and work etc. therefore becomes ‘immoral’, irrespective of human need, context, or culture.

Dear Sells,

I roused a beast of pray.

A god placing himself above family is not worthy of worship.

The disciples of Jesus for the most part have not suffered but have dominated the western world and have colonised much of the rest of the world with their missionaries, economic and physical slavery and cultural effusions. With the end of the colonial empires their power has been diminished. Unfortunately they have an excess of power in the US at this time.

The account of Jesus’ death is somewhat similar to the death of Socrates described by Plato. Both figures suffered themselves to be killed by the authorities. Both myths are unhealthy ones. In both the death of Socrates and of Jesus there is a submission to and recognition of arbitrary authority. Pacifism in the terminology of the Quakers ‘speaks truth to power’. It doesn’t cooperate with it. Both Socrates and Jesus were at fault in submitting. Gandhi advocated non-violent resistance. If that is not possible he supported resistance by violent means. Pacifism is not submission, and the submission of Jesus and Socrates is not pacifism. It is subservience.

You used the phrase ‘our devotion to him (Jesus)’ Please do not include me in the possessive pronoun. I have no reason to be devoted to a humanoid God. I will leave that sort of thing to the pagan religions with their pantheon of human like gods and Christians who worship a god made flesh. It is a primitive understanding of deity. Might as well worship idols.

I think there can be no universal morality as morality is the product of societies that differ from one another.

There is no evidence that Christianity has produced better behaviour or more consideration for our fellow beings and the planet we live on. It seems to have produced the Dark Ages when Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire and killed the spirit of enquiry current in the ancient world. It also encouraged intolerance to those who don’t accept the Christian mumbo jumbo. The Enlightenment means human liberation.

Dear Relda,

I was just arguing to the point that Jesus rejected the sword. According to the New Testament he did not. Whipping the moneychangers from the Temple was unjustified violence. People coming to worship from afar would not have local currency. People needed the moneychangers to get lodging and food. Maybe regulation was needed not elimination.

Your first paragraph accurately describes Christianity prior to its becoming a state religion.

The sword that divides families is ‘truth’, but in religion truth is nothing more than belief. One cannot reasonably label any religious belief ‘truth’. A genuine proponent of peace would not divide families.

Certainly the law contains moral implications and a person of conscience must disobey an unjust law if the injustice is not trivial.

I just visited a Catholic pacifist friend in the US, and we, together with other Catholics and Quakers, demonstrated against the Iraq war in Hartford.

I have supported the Catholic plowshares project by participating with them in actions and giving money. http://www.prop1.org/protest/catholic_workers/cathwork.htm describes some of their work. The Jewish Peace Fellowship and Tikkun support non-violence from a Jewish perspective.

I don’t agree with the justice of retaliatory force. The atrocities of the Nazis did not justify the fire bombing of Dresden or the bombing of working class districts in Hamburg. I disagree with Ghate. Force should only be used where it is the only possible alternative – never for retaliation.

My pantheon of heroes includes those who have resisted unjust laws non-violently such as Thoreau, Gandhi, the Berrigan Brothers, Franz Jaegerstatter and the people who committed civil disobedience to work for civil rights. It also includes those who have resisted violently such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Brown. It also includes those who have disobeyed to protest injustice such as Edward Ellsberg who disobeyed the law to release the Pentagon papers.

I don’t know enough to engage in scholarly exegesis. Your criticism of my lack of mastery of any dialectic is justified. I cited those I admire to indicate my positions. I appreciate your posts and will answer the other one.

Davidf
What Gibson thinks does indeed matter. He is a gifted modern story teller capable of influencing the opinion of many. It also matters if your comments are going to remain consistent. For you claim that where the Gospel writer indicates that the Jews said they were happy to have the ‘blood of Jesus on us and our children’, this has been used to justify persecution of the Jews. So if that verse has caused problems, then the way it is read by the populace is of grave importance.

Remembering that the writer of that verse thought of himself as a Jew, I doubt he was calling for Jewish persecution. I’ve always read something in that verse as wishing a prophetic blessing in that Christians see blessing, symbolic if not direct, in the blood of Jesus. This is clear in the sacrament of Holy Communion where Christians appropriate the blood of Jesus to their own bodies as a vital spiritual act.