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.