In recent posts I trace the interlocking logic of universal salvation with nonviolence, claiming that salvation is through cosmic peace taken up in the nonviolence of the individual. In this post I pursue this theme in apocalyptic imagery (the universal defeat of the powers and establishment of peace) which must be presumed in practicing the ethic of Christ (constituting salvation). The breaking in of the kingdom of peace in Christ is the enabling telos and vision behind the resistant nonviolence of Jesus’ central ethical teaching. The ethic alone does not contain the compelling vision, while the apocalyptic imagery alone does not account for the peaceful nonviolent participation of the individual. Taken together, there is an interlocking logic of universal peace through nonviolent practice. The imagination captured in the cosmic victory, portrayed in Revelation, is enabled to participate in the victory of peace through following Jesus’ ethic in the Sermon on the Mount.
The Victory of the Slain Lamb in the Life of His Followers
Revelation portrays the slain Lamb (Jesus Christ raised from the dead), as having defeated evil and reigning over the world: “And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth” (Rev. 5:6). The perfection of power in seven horns and the fulfillment of omniscience in seven eyes, indicates that this perfect one is able to open the seven seals and reveal what has been formerly hidden.
It is made clear (in 4:1–8:1) that through Jesus’ death and resurrection the reign of God on the earth is established. This message is delivered to a people being harshly persecuted, and the point is to enable them to endure, by recognizing God’s kingdom established through the victory of Christ, which is also established through their martyrdom (the message of the fifth seal 6:9). In the midst of seeming defeat is a vision of victory. The point of Revelation is how to understand and endure devastation without being defeated by Satan: “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death” (Rev. 12:11). Thus, by means of His death and resurrection and then in their witness, Christians are made a kingdom of priests who reign upon the earth (Rev. 5:10).
The perspective need not depend only on future fulfillment, as it is enacted now: “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night” (Rev. 12:10). The dragon, that serpent of old has already been caste down in defeat, due to the testimony and blood of the martyrs and the “blood of the Lamb.” The blood of each represents the defeat of violence through total nonviolence. As Denny Weaver sums up Revelation: “The two sections of the book present different versions of the confrontation, but in both the victory comes through resurrection — the overcoming of violence by restoring life — rather than through greater violence by God to eliminate the world’s violence.”[1] In both the case of Christ and the church there is a confrontation between the reign of God and the reign of Satan, manifest in Rome. In chapter 12, the dragon recognizing his defeat, attempts a final ploy by making war with the woman (the church) and her offspring: “So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). They are able to hold to the commandments and their testimony because they recognize Satan is already defeated.
The Ethics of the Lamb and His Followers
In Revelation, it is in light of the victory of Christ secured and announced in the resurrection, that a martyr’s ethic is enacted. The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, encapsulate the new attitudes Christians are to be, in light of Jesus’ defeat of death. The reworked reality enables a new sort of kingdom ethic, which in the Sermon entails an immediate counter to empire (Rome). Turning the other cheek, going the second mile, giving the inner cloak, giving up on oaths, and loving enemies, are strategies for resisting evil without participating in the violence of evil (Matt. 5:38-48). The better translation of verse 39, rather than “do not resist an evildoer” is “do not oppose the wicked man by force” (David Bentley Hart’s translation). The command is not one of nonresistance, but a forbidding of evil resistance. The entire recommendation is one of nonviolent resistance: enduring the slap and turning the cheek means standing one’s ground, going the second mile means putting the Roman soldier in your debt (going beyond what is required and even legal), and offering up the inner garment in court means standing naked (which again involves the shame of the perpetrator). The specifics of Roman law and the Roman situation make each of these a very specific leveraging of nonviolent resistance.
In the beatitudes (Matthew 5:2-12), poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst for justice displace, the worlds attitudes of pride, revenge, and injustice. Peacemaking, is the mark of God’s children and this is immediately compounded with “those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness,” the mark of kingdom citizens (Matt. 5:10). This is Jesus’ handbook for Christian enactment of universal peace at an individual level. Do and be these things and one is a true follower of Jesus: “a child of God,” enacting heaven on earth, “inheriting both heaven and earth,” finding “satisfaction” in life, and enabled to “see God,” such that the presence of God comes to bear on earth. This is the action and belief behind the prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). As J. Denny Weaver explains, “The reign of God becomes visible in the world when Christians — people identified with and by Jesus Christ — continue to live in Jesus so that the reign of God becomes visible.”[2]
God is with us in Christ (Immanuel) and this reality of God poured out in the particulars of his life, is taken up in the lives of participants in his kingdom. God is Christ-like and the Christian can be like Christ, in imitation and through mutual indwelling. The Christian can enter into Trinitarian relationship, inclusive of the nonviolent practice of Christ’s peace. The character of God is given in Christ, involving concrete attitudes and actions. The nonviolent God revealed in Christ, as with Christ, necessarily involves resistance to the world’s violence, persecution, and the possibility of a violent death, but this is the point. The peace of God is not founded on violence but defeats death and violence, and this is salvation.
Universal Nonviolence
The apocalyptic breaking in of peace into the violence of the world, enacted in Christ and carried forward by his followers, is simultaneously cosmic (universal) and individual (particular), as portrayed in the Sermon on the Mount and the book of Revelation. The world change enacted in Christ defeats death and violence, casting out the ruler of this world, but this cosmic casting out inaugurated by Christ is continued through his followers’ taking up the cross and being the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matt. 5:13). The Truth exposing and casting out the father of lies, transforms human imagination about the world and God (the universal) and this shows forth in a kingdom ethic and attitude. In this apocalyptic understanding the followers of Christ begin to live according to the new ethical understanding set forth by Christ’s example and teaching on resistant nonviolence. The weapons of peace do not deal in destruction and death, but are an enactment of heaven on earth, both assuming and bringing about the reality of Christ’s kingdom on earth.
[1] J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent God (pp. 45-46). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.
[2] Weaver, p. 25.
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