No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
It has always been possible for members of Christian communities to find ways to avoid the force of teachings ascribed to Jesus and to his first followers, short of open repudiation. These days we have some new devices. We can stress the gulf of nineteen centuries separating us, (and our historical reconstructions are so insecure). We can point to our nuclear age as creating a gulf even between us and our parents or grandparents: the ‘godlike’ power a small number of us have to end most or all life on our planet can seem to put everything into a quite new perspective. And we can combine these arguments with enhanced versions of old ones, confining our Christian concern to an ever narrower private and religious sphere, perhaps shaping our public character, but making no specific demands on the expanding areas mapped as autonomously social, political and economic. Then we can go back to the New Testament and ‘read’ Jesus and his first followers in the light of our chosen restrictions.
1 Recently. Bowden, J., Jesus: The Unanswered Questions, London (SCM) 1980, esp. pp. 32–71Google Scholar; more thoroughly, Nineham, D. E., The Use and Abuse of the Bible, London (Macmillan) 1976.Google Scholar
2 Garrison, J., The Darkness of God, London (SCM) 1982Google Scholar; Kaufmann, G. D., ‘Nuclear Eschatology and the Study of Religion’, JAAR 51 (1983) pp. 3–14Google Scholar; Race, A. (ed), Theology against the Nuclear Horizon, London (SCM) 1988Google Scholar; see the helpful discusssion in Bauckham, R., Theology after Hiroshima, SJT 38: 4 (1985) pp. 586–01.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Objections to such a restriction argued by Haldane, J. J., ‘Christianity and Politics: Another View’, SJT 40: 2 (1987) pp. 259–286CrossRefGoogle Scholar; compare also for instance, Kuitert, H. M., Everything is Politics but Politics is not Everything, (ET) London (SCM) 1986Google Scholar. In what follows I shall argue that the jesus tradition has had from the start much more precise socio-political implications than these and other authors allow — even if such implications have been ignored or interpreted away.
4 Downing, F. G., ‘Interpretation and the “Culture Gap”’, SJT 40: 2 (1987) pp. 161–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and other references there; and in Jesus and the Threal of Freedom, London (SCM) 1987.Google Scholar
5 See especially my Jesus… Freedom, ch. 1; but also Downing, F. G., Strangely Familiar, Manchester (Downing) 1985Google Scholar; and The Christ and the Cynics, Sheffield (S. Ac. Press) 1988.Google Scholar
6 Wengst, K., Pax Romana and the Peace of jesus christ, (ET) London (SCM) 1987.Google Scholar
7 Dio (Chrysostom) of Prusa, Discourses 45:1, 38:36.
8 Dio 31.111; Pliny Junior, Letters VIII 24.
9 Downing, , Jesus… Freedom, pp. 27–30Google Scholar and notes; Wengst, Pax… pp. 27–37.
10 Pseudo-Lucian, , The Cynic 8 and 15Google Scholar; cf. sibylline Oracles III 350–380, and Jas. 4:1–2, Rev. 18.
11 Pliny, Sr., Natural History II 158–159.Google Scholar
12 Dio 15:26.
13 Most often expressed in terms of the decline from the ‘Golden Age’ of Cronos/Saturn, when none of these bad things were done: see my Jesus… Freedom, esp. pp. 110–115; and, eg., Seneca, , epistulae morales 90, 95.Google Scholar
14 Helgeland, J., Daly, R. J. and Burns, J. P., Christians and the Military, Philadelphia (Fortress) 1985/London (SCM) 1987Google Scholar, citing Cicero, de officiis I 11–13.
15 Dio 22 and 38.
16 Josephus, , Jewish War II 169–177.Google Scholar
17 Josephus, , Jewish War V 376–419, citing 400.Google Scholar
18 Helgeland et alii, 39–44; Swift, L. J., The Early Fathers on War and Military Service, Wilmington (Glazier) 1983, 52–59.Google Scholar
19 Seneca, epistulae morales 88:23.
20 Seneca, ep. mor. 95:30–31.
21 Swift, Early Fathers, op. cit.
22 Dio 38:16.
23 Dio 38:20.
24 Wengst, , Pax, 56.Google Scholar
25 Seneca, ep. mor. 90:5.
26 Dio 1:22; cf. 4:66.
27 Epictetus, , Discourse III 22:56.Google Scholar
28 Cf. Dio 1:15, 12:20; contrast Haldane, , ‘Politics’, 282Google Scholar (and the many others who misread Mark 12:17 in this way.
29 Downing, , Jesus… Freedom, p. 75.Google Scholar
30 Lucian, of Samosata, , The Runaways 17.Google Scholar
31 Epictetus passim; see under ‘Epicurus’ etc, in LCL edition index.
32 Helgeland et alii, 14.
33 Josephus, Antiquities II 156.Google Scholar
34 Dio 40:34: cf. 34:43, and all of Discourses 37–41.
35 Epictetus I xix 13.
36 Mt. 7:12, Lk. 6:31.
37 Josephus, War V 367.Google Scholar
38 Philo, , de virtutibus 153Google Scholar; cf. de somniis II 286–287.
39 Philo, , de specialibus legibus I 121.Google Scholar
40 Compare Josephus on the Procurators. Jewish War II, e.g., 348; Philo, de legatione and in flaccum; Cicero, de officiis, passim.
41 I Pet. 2.13–17, I Tim. 2.1–4, I Clement 37 and 60; and Justin, , Apology I 17.Google Scholar
42 Swift, Early Fathers, op cit.
43 Helgeland et alii, Christians… 56–66.
44 Hippolytus, , Apostolic Tradition 17–19Google Scholar, Helgeland, , Christians 37.Google Scholar
45 Tertullian, Apology 30.4, 42.2–3, Helgeland, , Christians 21–22.Google Scholar
46 Tertullian, , On Idolatry 19Google Scholar, Helgeland, , Christians 22–23Google Scholar; pace Helgeland et alii, Tertullian seems to be directing his arguments against ‘mere oaths’ because he can presuppose the wrongfulness of other aspects of military service; in de corona, against symbols because they represent what is anyway wrong (11).
47 Swift, , Early Fathers 44Google Scholar; cf. Tertullian, , On Idolatry 19.Google Scholar
48 Origen, , contra Celsum VIII 73Google Scholar, Swift, , Early Fathers 55.Google Scholar
49 Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI 6. 22–24, Swift, , Early Fathers 63–64.Google Scholar
50 Helgeland et alii, Christians… 89.
51 Ibidem, 91.
52 Against, eg. J. J. Haldane, ‘Politics…’ and H. M. Kuitert, Everything… This is not at all to ignore the importance of ‘virtue’ (MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, London (Duckworth) 1981Google Scholar) or ‘values’ (Haldane). Some socio-political structures are more conducive to ‘virtue’, more appropriate than others.
53 That conformist attitudes ‘are’ in the Christian canon of Scripture does not mean that Christians ‘ought’ to espouse them in preference to the less conformist ones.
54 Among many accounts of how things are, Seabrook, J., Landscapes of Poverty, Oxford (Blackwell) 1985Google Scholar; Life and Labour in a Bombay Slum, London (Quartet), 1987Google Scholar; and McDonagh, S., To Care for the Earth, London (Chapman) 1986.Google Scholar
55 Consent matters; it may be that consent could not be won for anything more radical than recently suggested by Atherton, J., Faith in the Nation, London (SPCK) 1988Google Scholar; but his failure to pay any explicit attention to the Jesus tradition (the Gospels do not seem to be cited at all) I think allows him to set his sights too low and make his criticism of ‘the market’ far too gentle. Much better, Forrester, D. B. and Skene, D. (eds) Just Sharing, London (Epworth) 1988.Google Scholar
56 S. McDonagh, To Care for the Earth; Timberlake, L., Onty One Earth, London (BBC/Earthscan) 1987Google Scholar; Higgins, R., The Seventh Enemy, (H&S) (2) 1982.Google Scholar
57 Among many books, Gill, R., The Cross and the Bomb, London (Epworth) 1984Google Scholar; Kenny, A., The Logic of Deterrence, London (Firethorn) 1985Google Scholar; Working Party, Board for Social Responsibility of the Church of England, Peacemaking in a Nuclear Age, London, (Church House Publishing) 1988.Google Scholar
58 A conclusion effectively argued in Chilton, B. and McDonald, J. I. H., Jesus and the Ethics of the Kingdom, London (SPCK) 1987.Google Scholar