Tag: the dividing wall of hostility

The Interlocking Necessity of Universalism and Nonviolence

The nature of violence is division within and without. Warfare is by definition divided, antagonistic, and set for one side to be destroyed. Peace through war is the contradiction that lies behind all warfare. The reign of death is the violent, fearful, grasping, utilizing death to gain life (as in the story of Cain and Abel, the first use of the term sin, Gen. 4:7). Paul’s picture in both Corinthians and Romans is that sin reigns in and through death, with death giving rise to sin. His point is not merely that sin results in death, as in the sin of Adam, but that the spread of death has meant the spread of sin (as witnessed in the sin of Cain, then Lamech, then the generation of Noah, and the ongoing history of a world at war), as sin is what people would do to save themselves from and through death (the death of the other). Sin’s struggle, in Paul’s explanation (Rom. 4, 6, 7) is a violent struggle for existence in the face of the reality of death. There is a hostility toward others and God which is connected to every form of evil (Col 1:21; Rom. 8:7-8). The violent division between people utilizing murder, war, borders, walls, antagonism, punishment, delimitation, exclusion, is the human attempt to violently utilize and control death. Paul refers to it as the “wall of hostility”: the division between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, which are characteristic forms of the infectious violence (Eph. 2:14; Gal. 3:28). Evil, violence, murder, war, suicide, genocide, and deicide describe the hostility definitive of the world. Universal salvation must entail the universal deliverance from death and violence.

Universal or complete peace, at the cosmic and individual level, is the predominant picture of salvation in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:18; 2 Thess. 3:16; Isaiah 26:3; Eph. 2:14; Col. 1:19-20, 3:15). There is an interlocking logic and necessity between the all-inclusive nature of the gospel of peace (its universal import – for all), and the universal realization of the peace of Christ (in and through all, Col. 1:19-20). The universality of the one entails the all-inclusive aspect of the other. All creation must be brought into the peace of Christ and everything within or about the individual and existence must be incorporated into this peace. The “all in all” (I Cor. 15:28; Rom 11:36) of Christian peace is necessarily universal in this double sense. Partial peace, with a remainder of violence, death, or division is not the absolute peace of Christ. It cannot be as Aquinas and others imagined, that those in heaven could delight in watching their loved ones burn in hell. For the individual to find peace, there must be an all-inclusive cosmic peace for there to be an all-inclusive inner peace. Thus, salvation as universal peace means a total abolishment of violence between and within people and powers. Salvation from death and violence cannot be partial, only for some, or parts of some (e.g., their soul) or only for some things. If some part of the cosmic or individual is not included there is division that disrupts at every level. For peace to reign, there cannot be the continuation of either mega or micro violence as the universal is tied to the particular and the particular is tied to the universal.

Universal however, also applies in the negative sense throughout. There is a universal problem, inclusive of all people and extending to the cosmos.  “For as in Adam all die” and “death reigns in the world” (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 8:20-21). Again, the negative universal is inclusive of the cosmic and particular. The universality of death extends to all people and to everything about each. To be dead in sin (Eph. 2:1) is an action (“the law of sin and death,” Rom. 8:2) instituted in a misorientation to life, death, and the law. Death is both a practice and orientation, which is not so much about mortality as an active dying. The “law of sin and death” is not primarily about either law or death, but an orientation to the law that is deadly. A way of characterizing this law is in its divisive violence.

In a catena of quotes (from the law) which apply in their original context to Jews and sometimes to their enemies, Paul weaves together a picture of sin in which the organs of speech, due to taking up a deadly lie, function as a grave and entrap and poison, leading to bloodshed and violence (Rom. 3:10-18). Nothing or emptiness seem to have been taken up into the organs of speech, to become there a grave or a sarcophagus. Throughout the list the organs of speech deal in death: “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit” (3:13 quoting Ps. 5.9). David, in this Psalm, compares two kinds of speech, as they orient one, either to God’s presence or his absence. The lie of sin deals in death even among those who have been entrusted with the oracles of God (3:2). Violence and death reign, having taken root in the inner man.

The divide among people applies as well to the warring divide within the individual. The war of the mind would also destroy itself to gain peace: “for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. . . I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:11, 14,15). Paul characterizes the self-antagonism of sin as “the law of sin and death and “the body of death” crying out at the end of the chapter: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). The recognition that death accounts for the universal human sickness at its root in the inward self (death drive, Thanatos, masochism, etc.) locates this universal sickness within the individual, so that the cosmic cure must begin here. In its universality the peace of Christ is the resolution to psychological violence that is the seed of every form of violence.

If sin and death are a violent struggle for life, resulting in death, then the gift of life, as in Paul’s depiction, is the universal resolution to the problem: “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (I Cor. 15:21-22). The universal problem is universally resolved, and this resolution pertains not only to all people but to the cosmos: “For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:19-20). Peace is the breaking down of the universal wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14). The wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles is the characteristic form of hostility undone in the peace of Christ: “there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). “For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (Eph. 2:14). Christ’s peace, resolves the enmity, in and through himself, extended to all people and then to the cosmos: He abolished “in His flesh the enmity . . . so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:15–18). Universal salvation through defeat of violent antagonism and putting on the peace of Christ are a singular move. The warring factions between Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female, or any other antagonistic dualism in heaven and earth (Col. 1:19-20) are finished in the peace of Christ, inclusive of the inner depths of the individual.

The resolution to the deadly struggle is found in Christ: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:1–2). The holistic peace of Christ is universal in its penetration of the mind and body of the individual: “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:5-8). The inward hostility, in which the mind and body seem to be obeying separate laws, is overcome through the unifying work of the Spirit.

Once again, Paul connects the inner depth of peace within, with cosmic peace: “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now” (Rom. 8:21–22). The new birth of the individual, involves the same suffering futility and corruption imposed on the universe, and so too the new birth is inclusive of cosmic peace and reconciliation. The creation and all that is within it is being set free from violent, alienating, futility, and this universal release from death and violence is the “all in all” peace of Christ. Universal salvation is by definition the telos of a peace that dispenses with all violence.

Two of the most neglected and perhaps reviled doctrines stand at the very center of the gospel: salvation for all in the peaceable nonviolence of Christ.

Build the Wall/Renounce Christ

Our town, Moberly, contains the dynamic of a nearly invisible internecine hostility. The large minority are of an underclass, consisting of the underemployed and unemployed, in which the stigma of poverty, drug addiction, and mental illness are centered. The wall which separates this dispossessed underclass from the possessed and empowered is not merely money but it is an order of religion which is the religion of this place. This was recently illustrated in the fight over Medicaid expansion. Extending health care to the poor is a “moral issue,” but not in the Christian moral sense of helping the poor. As one local politician who touts his practical, conservative, Christian faith, implied, this is a moral issue because these people are undeserving of even basic health care. Though the initiative for Medicaid expansion passed, the vehement opposition to helping 300,000 in the state of Missouri who live below the poverty line (including a disproportionate number of single mothers, those with mental illness, and those most likely to suffer from the coronavirus) revealed the deep antagonism.

There needs to be a line of separation from, and hostility toward the poor and minorities as these people somehow deserve this treatment and their dispossession implies a deserved possession. One would not want to identify with or be mistaken for such people as these are the excluded. The confederate flag is flown by the almost dispossessed, so that they might clearly demarcate themselves (in this area called “Little Dixie”) but the evangelical faith sometimes functions very much like a confederate flag for those more financially able. The religion serves to create a degree of separation (a bubble of division), which with its undercurrent of racism and classism, depends upon literal and metaphorical walls.

Paul describes Christ as breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, but to grasp the significance of this broken wall, it is necessary to understand how hostility constitutes our world. It is not just that we require the immigrants be kept on the other side of the wall, or that we require the barrier to sustain the identity on this side of the wall. We live and move and have our being in identities provided by walls of hostility. This hostility resides within and is the vortex by which we are surrounded. The wall, in Paul’s explanation, is an identity which would use the law/wall as its primary mode of identity for God and for self. Where we identify with the law, there is a part of us which would become the law and a part of us against which this law is enacted. The force of the law, which we would take up into ourselves, becomes at the same time a force against us. To occupy the place of hostility, to enact the law and its ethic, is to enact the division. The divide defines what is included by what is excluded. Jews are not Gentiles but the law of the mind is set over and against the law of the body. The ego is over and against the superego. The desire of the flesh is over and against the desire of conscience. The feeling of inferiority is enacted from a supposed agent of superiority. The more the inferior is ground into the dirt the more the superior is made to feel power and position. The more the slave is made to feel the lash, to that degree the master is empowered (whether within a singular individual or between individuals). The masochistic pain is enjoyed by the agent enacting the pain. The policeman, as the agent of the law, is afforded the pleasure of inflicting the power of the law in the currency of pain. This is a psychology and a sociology.  

This wall, as Paul describes it, is not of divine construction but is constituted by human hostility, though the human tendency is to project this hostility onto God. In this, it is not a problem of the law but it is what we would do with the law. The Jewish law may be holy and good but we are not, and what we would do with the law demonstrates we would make a religion of the law as we would make a religion of hostility. In the religion of Lamech, for example, he is the embodiment of the law and presumes to enact the vengeance of God promised to Cain. Lamech puts on display the notion of a law immediately enacted within himself, in righteous murder, which is the presumption of the murderous generation of Noah. Righteous killing describes the deep satisfaction of those who have inured themselves to murder and war, those who have learned to enjoy their work (as soldiers, politicos, or enforcers of righteousness), those who have completely identified with the purposes of the state, the purposes of the mob, or who presume to embody the avenging power of the law.

In religious myth, death or hostility is the power of order and division and typically depicts the death of a god (Tiamat, Izanami etc.) as the birth of the world (see my explanation here). For example, in the Babylonian myth the cadaver of the god forms the canopy of heaven. The stars themselves exercise this power of hostility, causing sickness, disease, plague, and death, and even a sophisticate like Aristotle, presumed the stars were divine and unfriendly. The world is constituted in hostility and we might try to redirect the violence (scapegoating religion), explain it (we have been stricken by God and need to appease him), or succumb to it or embrace it by identifying with the hostility. To identify with and redirect the hostility on those who deserve it, is the religion of law and order. The identification of God with the law makes hostility the power of his presence so that war (as in the worship of Mars) is worship and service. We can witness the strength of his power through the division, through the exclusion of others, and through the violence that falls upon the objects of his wrath.

Maybe in American literature and imagination it was Mark Twain, in his depiction of Huckleberry Finn, who comes closest (in spite of or due to his antagonism to the accepted religion) to describing the gospel, which would dissolve the religion of division. Huck knew from his “slender Church goin,” just as Samuel Clemens knew from his, that the weight of the religion was behind slavery. The Bible itself, the mores of the religion and the community, informed Huck that the Christian thing to do would be to turn in the runaway slave, Jim. Huck knows his soul is damned to hell should he help Jim escape. He pens a letter to Miss Watson (Jim’s “rightful owner”), explaining where Jim is and figures in this way to save himself. Then he begins to have second thoughts about the two of them “a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing” and he weakens in what he knows is his Christian duty. As he examines the letter, he knows he must choose forever between two things: heaven and hell. He pauses for a minute, then declares, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell,” and tears the letter to pieces. Helping Jim means a betrayal of the society of Hannibal, a betrayal of the law, and ultimately a scorning of his religious duty. This is the Christian moment in the story, the moment when the wall of separation between Huck and Jim is torn down.

The problem, as Paul explains, is not with the law but with this orientation to the law. It is only the Jew who ceases to cling to the law delineating his Jewishness, the Gentile who ceases to refuse the Jew, the master who can embrace his slave as an equal, the man who can love his wife as Christ loves her, that can enter through the broken dividing wall. Those who would sustain the laws of normalcy take it as obvious that one man must die, that sacrifices are necessary, that some must be trodden on, that evil must be done that good will abound. Living within the domain of the law is intellectually satisfying as the worst evil can be accounted for and it is existentially satisfying as it separates one out, as a law-keeper or even law-enforcer, from those who experience evil. This is not God’s wall but a human wall. It is this wall of human hostility that separates from the reality of God. This is the wall Christ has torn down and to confuse this wall and its maintenance with the Christian faith must be a form of blasphemy. 

That Building a wall on our southern border mixes so easily with evangelical belief must mark a characteristic form of this faith.  It is a religion which seems to depend upon walls and is not the faith which Paul describes as breaking down this wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14).