Religion and the War Part 3

What we have here is a well-authenticated violation of the principle of non-resistance--and why not accept it as such? The episode is chiefly remarkable in the life of the Nazarene, not for anything which it teaches in itself, but for its inconsistency with the rest of his career. Never at any other time, so far as we know, did he precipitate riot or himself a.s.sault his enemies. But this time he did--this time he failed to live up to the inordinately exacting demands of his own gospel of brotherhood. Nor is the circ.u.mstance at all difficult to understand! Jesus came to Jerusalem tired, worn, hunted. He knew that he walked straight into the arms of his enemies, and undoubtedly therefore straight to his own death. Weary, desperate, confused, he came to the temple to pray--and here, right before the altars of his G.o.d, were the money-changers--here in the sacred places, the type and symbol of that commercialized religion which he most abhorred, and which he knew was certain in the end to destroy him. What wonder that a mighty flood of anger surged up in his soul, and for the moment overwhelmed him.

In short, the weary Jesus was so irritated by the unexpected (?) sight of the traders, that he threw to the winds not only his principles, but the dictates of the most ordinary prudence, giving his enemies not only their desired opportunity, but provoking the issue at just the point where he himself had been betrayed into the violation of his own teaching. Verily, great is the insight of the modern psychologist. To the observer of the phenomena of petulance an incident like the cleansing of the temple is "easy to understand." The scientific imagination required is easily attained. One acquires it by observing the irritability of tired children. How needless, then, to inform oneself as to the historical conditions which made this great symbolic act of the Galilean prophet full of meaning to every patriot Jew that witnessed it. How needless to raise the question why every one of our four evangelists should report the act and give it the prominence they do. For our evangelists record it reluctantly, minimizing its political significance and its insurrectionary flavor. They naturally disliked to give color of justice to Pilate's judicial murder, and to Jewish denunciations of the new religion as a rebellion against established authority.

Let us then take as our point of departure this admitted "inconsistency." It is not historical interpretation, but the subjective variety sometimes self-designated "psychological" which finds it "easy" to set aside the representation of the oldest and most reliable of our sources, that Jesus was _not_ "weary, desperate, confused," and was not in the least taken unawares, when he drove the traders from the temple; but that he planned his _coup de main_ with careful deliberation. The evening _before_, says Mark, "he entered the temple and looked round upon all things." Jesus was not unaware of the conditions he would find, for they were an abuse as notorious as hateful to every right-minded Israelite. This even the Talmud attests. He was not a hunted fugitive seeking asylum at the altar. On the contrary; for weeks past he had set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem and there lift up the standard of the Son of David.

The initiative was his. He had planned a new campaign for his ideal, the Kingdom of G.o.d, a campaign no longer of mere teaching but of action, and he was now carrying it to the very seat of hostile power.

Long since, probably before he left Galilee, he had planned this very act, a challenge to the corrupt priestly control of his Father's house, an act as full of meaning and as deliberate as Luther's nailing of his theses to the church doors of Wittenberg.

And when the blow had been struck Jesus stood courageously by it. He met the inevitable demand of the hierocracy, "By what authority doest thou these things?" with a counter demand. Whence had the Baptist authority to inaugurate his prophetic reform, making ready for Jehovah a purified people prepared for his coming? The Sanhedrin evaded this counter demand, and answered only (as Jesus had foreseen they would) by secret denunciation of him to Pilate. But Pilate understood the case. We have the Roman governor's official interpretation of its significance in a certain superscription written aloft in Hebrew and Greek and Latin on the gibbet of an insurrectionist. This, too, Jesus seems to have foreseen.

All this was not a mere "episode." It was the culminating effort and crisis of Jesus' career, and richly rewards a just understanding. We are told that it was "inconsistent with the rest of Jesus' career."

His mission, we infer, was to be a rabbi. His attempt at active leaders.h.i.+p in achieving the Kingdom he preached was an unfortunate aberration. He should not have tried to be "the Christ," and thereby incurred a needless martyrdom. The cross is still a stumblingblock.

Strange that the evangelists who omit so much, who would have so strong a motive for omitting this particular "inconsistency" no less for their Master's good name than for the safety of the Church, should one and all record it. The disposition to minimize everything savoring of political action on Jesus' part is very marked in all our evangelists, for obvious reasons. To the evidences of this belong, for example, Mark's denial, and the fourth evangelist's explanation, of the saying about destroying the temple, together with the latter's description of the whip "of small cords" as Jesus'

only weapon in the purging of the temple.[2] Are we then to admit the "inconsistency"--not casual and incidental, as conceived in this pacifistic interpretation, but deliberate and flagrant? Or may we perhaps now raise the question whether the "inconsistency" is not rather chargeable to the interpreter's account?

The interpretation with which we are dealing makes the teaching of Jesus regarding the use of force identical with the non-resistance doctrine of Buddha and Lao-tse. On the other hand, it very justly relates it to that of the great prophet of the Davidic kingdom of righteousness and peace, Isaiah, the son of Amoz. From the point of view of the historical critic the relation of Jesus' teaching to that of Isaiah is absolutely sound. But the effect of this relation is fatal to its identification with the non-resistance doctrine of Buddha and Lao-tse.

Apart from the circ.u.mstances which for the time being made non-resistance, or rather mere pa.s.sive resistance, the policy of true statesmans.h.i.+p alike against a.s.syrian and against Roman domination, Isaiah and Jesus stood together upon the most fundamental point of all, unqualified, unlimited loyalty to the G.o.d of Righteousness and to his sovereignty upon earth. Their pacifism differs from that of Lao-tse and of Buddha in the important respect of having a p.r.o.nounced theistic basis. Buddha and Lao-tse can preach consistently a doctrine of absolute non-resistance because their systems are dest.i.tute of the social ideal of Israel's religion, and indeed ignore the very existence of a "Power not ourselves that makes for Righteousness."

Contrariwise with the great prophets of the Kingdom of G.o.d. Whether of the Christian or pre-Christian dispensation, so far as they advocate non-resistance it cannot be unlimited, _because their religious aim is not merely individual but social_.

The non-resistance of Isaiah and of Jesus is not self-centered but G.o.d-centered. It is bound to consider what is expedient for others, for the weak and dependent, as well as for the individual, and for the present time. It seeks the welfare of the world and of generations to come. It is always subsidiary to the paramount interest of the Kingdom of G.o.d.

Just because it regards non-resistance not as an end in itself but only as one of the divinest means to an end, Biblical pacifism can hold before men's eyes the moving figure of the martyred Servant, dumb as the lamb in the shearer's hands, while it can in the same breath commend the men of violence that take the Kingdom of Heaven by force.

Christian or pre-Christian, it rests upon the foundation of utter, absolute loyalty to a world-wide Republic of G.o.d, a cosmic sovereignty of righteousness, and having this social aim for its religious ideal it can and does nourish to the highest pitch of devotion the heroic virtues of patriotism, of service and of sacrifice. The summons to the standard (not men's but G.o.d's) is ever the same. The weapon may be the sword or the cross, as the times require. Under mere self-centered philosophies such as those of Buddha and Lao-tse the contrary is true.

Notoriously, where these control patriotism and all its heroic virtues tend to dwindle, approaching often the verge of extinction.

The pacifism (not non-resistance) of Isaiah hardly requires elucidation. Two or three very familiar quotations will suffice. There is, for example, the prophet's vision of a universal peace based on international law. This vision of the world's willing acceptance of the sovereignty of Jehovah's justice Isaiah shares with his contemporary, Micah, both prophets seeming to choose it as a text from some forgotten earlier pacifist.

It shall come to pa.s.s in the latter days That the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established at the head of mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills, And all nations shall flow unto it.

And many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, To the house of the G.o.d of Jacob, And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.

For out of Zion shall go forth law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge between the nations, and will be arbiter for many peoples; And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more.

Manifestly the ideal of an international tribunal as the basis of a League of Peace is not so novel as some modern statesmans.h.i.+p seems to conceive.

But the consistent, thoroughgoing advocate of non-resistance rejects even the coercion of magisterial and police constraint. To Russian idealism restraint of the individual as well as the national criminal is tainted with the same poison of violence. Since Isaiah is the exemplar of non-resistance he should be permitted again to speak for himself. His words seem to have a singular applicability to the land which is now testing to the limit the theory of Proudhon, the individualist of individualists, the gospel of anarchism:

For behold the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, The whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water, The mighty man, and the man of war; The judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder; The captain of fifty and the honorable man and the counsellor ...

And I will give children to be their princes, And with childishness shall they rule over them, And the people shall be oppressed every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: The child shall be arrogant against the old man, and the base against the honorable.

But Isaiah, too, expects deliverance from these miseries of foreign servitude and domestic anarchy. He looks for the dawn of a just and lasting peace; only the means of its attainment seem strange for an "exemplar of non-resistance."

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light s.h.i.+ned.

Thou hast multiplied the nation and increased their joy, They joy before thee according to the rejoicing at harvest-time, As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For the yoke of (Israel's) burden, and the rod laid to his shoulder, The staff of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian.

For all the armor of the armed man in the tumult And the garments rolled in blood shall be for burning, for fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, And the government shall be upon his shoulder: And his name shall be called: Wonderful-counsellor; The-Mighty-G.o.d-the-Everlasting (my)-Father; The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end.

Upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, To establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even forever.

The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this.

Even with the devout restraint of the closing line it must be admitted that these verses have a somewhat martial ring.

Doubtless the pacifist will emphasize the line, "The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this," taking here the view of the Pharisees, who in contrast with the fanatical nationalism of the Zealots opposed the aggressive militarism of the later Maccabees with a doctrine of quietism. Their cry was, "Leave all to G.o.d." Against the Zealot they appealed to the proverb: "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword," from which the inference is plain that if the aim be never to lose one's life one should never take weapons. But perhaps Isaiah the "non-resistant" is ent.i.tled to one more chance to prove himself not a Pharisee, even when he expects "the zeal of Jehovah of Hosts" to win the victory of peace. Fortunately he tells us _how_ he expects the zeal of Jehovah to operate, in the doom he p.r.o.nounces upon "drunkard" Samaria, the city whose luxuriant mountain-top was crowned with mingled towers and olive groves, like the fading wreaths upon the heads of drunken revellers. In contrast to Samaria's fate Isaiah has this promise for the temple-crowned hill of Zion, shadowed under its altar smoke:

In that day will Jehovah of Hosts become a crown of glory And a diadem of beauty unto the residue of his people, _A spirit of justice to him that sitteth in judgment, And a spirit of strength to them that turn back the battle at the gate_.[3]

II

It should hardly be necessary to explain that Jesus in deliberately giving up the career of purely non-political preacher, teacher, and healer, to a.s.sume the career of _Christ_ and Son of David, fully conscious as he was of all the dangers it implied, was neither ignorant of the Isaian ideal, nor out of sympathy with it. When he rode into Jerusalem accepting the acclamation: "Blessed be the kingdom that cometh, the kingdom of our father David," he was not betraying the national hope; he was lifting it toward ultimate realization at the cost of Calvary.

It is true that he avoided suicidal collision with Roman authority on the one side, as prudently as he forestalled the sweeping off of his following into the insane fanaticism of the Zealot nationalists on the other. The prophet's method of a symbolic purifying of the temple was exactly suited to this purpose. In the temple Roman authority explicitly renounced control. The policing of this combined fortress, sanctuary, and treasure house was left, even to the power of life and death, in the hands of the Sadducean hierocracy. It was administered by a numerous and efficient Levite police commanded by a "captain of the temple." On the other hand, Sadducean control was notoriously and infamously corrupt. The abuses by which (with their connivance) money was extorted from the wors.h.i.+ppers made it so hateful that a worthy reformer might be sure of popular support strong enough to cow "the hissing brood of Annas" into an interval of "fear of the people." And the reform might even be accomplished without unchaining the red fool-fury of the Zealot mob, if it was seen to be the work of a prophet, by authority "from heaven" and not "of men," consistent, even if regarded as a messianic act, with the course of one who had come "meek and lowly and having salvation, riding upon an a.s.s, and on a colt the foal of an a.s.s."

It is of vital importance to a historical appreciation of Jesus' sense of his mission to realize fully and adequately what he meant by this one public overt act of his career; for by it he signalized to all Israel a.s.sembled at the Pa.s.sover his purpose to achieve a national deliverance such as the feast commemorated. From it every loyal Israelite might infer that the hope of "the kingdom of David" was now about to be realized. Jesus thus entered deliberately upon the stormy and dangerous seas of messianistic agitation, as a claimant to leaders.h.i.+p in the achievement of the national hope.

To herald such a reform as Jesus proposed, reviving the national ideal, the purification of the temple was a symbolic act worthy of the greatest of prophets. It was exactly fitted to raise and define the issues at stake. It would convey just the right impression to the mult.i.tude, whose attention could be reached by this time-honored method, and by this method alone. It was also free from the worst dangers of messianistic agitation. It would avoid on the one hand the Scylla of needless collision with Roman authority, and on the other the Charybdis of Zealot turbulence. The calm and fearless "authority from heaven" with which it was effected overawed resistance, so that even while a.s.serted _by force_ it attained its result with the shedding of no other blood than the Messenger's own.

To show the exact meaning to contemporary Jewish minds of this act of the Prophet of Nazareth we must recall not merely the Isaian ideal of the "Davidic" reign as a universal kingdom of righteousness and peace based on divine law going forth from Zion, but also the later apocalyptic hopes. We must remember that all expectation in Jesus'

time was focussed on the prophecies of Malachi, which made the purified temple the scene of Jehovah's visitation of his people, after they should have been brought to a "great repentance" by the coming of Elias. A rabbinic parable of the period will give us the point of view. It is an answer to the reproach so bitterly resented by Isaiah, "Israel is a wife forsaken," and is based on Malachi 1:6-14, and 3:1-12 interpreting the designation "Tent of Witness" applied to the tabernacle in Exodus 38:21:

A king was angry with his wife and forsook her. The neighbors declared, "He will not return" (cf. Isa. 49:14). Then the king sent word to her (Mal. 1:10 ff): "Cleanse my palace, and on such and such a day I will return to thee." He came and was reconciled to her. Therefore is the sanctuary called the Tent of "Witness"--a witness to the Gentiles that G.o.d is no longer wroth.[4]

Jesus' act was the a.s.sertion of authority "from heaven" to make Jehovah's will supreme upon earth, beginning at his own sanctuary. It was effected by direct appeal to the conscience of the ma.s.ses, which to the extent of their understanding responded overwhelmingly. Jesus did not expect his act to be more than "a witness to the peoples." But on the other hand, for the time being at least, he sacrificed no life save his own. One close parallel could be cited from modern times if the demonstration could be freed from its unfortunate a.s.sociation with really fanatical revolt and real intention to provoke a servile insurrection. In keeping his demonstration in the temple free from entangling alliance with Zealot nationalism, Jesus showed a moderation and foresight which were unfortunately lacking to the demonstration of John Brown at Harpers Ferry; otherwise the two have many points of affinity. It was while the governor of Virginia was still hesitating to sign the death warrant of the champion of negro emanc.i.p.ation, long before his martyr spirit marched on before great armies of liberation, that Ralph Waldo Emerson, once himself a non-resistant pacifist, wrote in his journal:

If John Brown shall suffer, he will make the gallows glorious like the cross.

III

That Jesus intended to raise the standard of David by his public act at the Pa.s.sover is certain. His pacifism was of the type of Micah's and Isaiah's. That he meant the act to convey a religious sense differentiating it from the merely political ideal of the Zealots is also certain. His doctrine of reliance on spiritual methods in the pursuit of the G.o.d-given aim exalts forbearance _as a means_ in terms not less n.o.ble than the foremost champions of non-resistance. We may question whether he actually counted upon his own only too probable fate of crucifixion at Roman hands as destined to serve the precise end which it actually has subserved in human history. Those who see it with the wisdom of retrospect know that it has furnished to all devotees of Israel's ideal of the Kingdom of G.o.d, in all races, unto all successive generations, a rallying point and a symbol of final victory. But Jesus was looking forward with the eye of faith, not backward with the eye of knowledge. He believed that even through death G.o.d would give victory to those who sacrificed life and all to his kingdom's cause, and that it would be given ere their generation had pa.s.sed into oblivion. How much further than this his prophetic insight into the ways of G.o.d with men extended is a question which will be variously answered in accordance with varying views of his personality. It need be no matter of surprise, however, to any discerning mind, that the fourth evangelist should also look backward at the significance of the cross, interpreting it in the light of its actual results. The fourth evangelist is the successor of Paul at Ephesus. Like Paul he naturally emphasizes its effect in "reconciliation," a twofold atonement, "breaking down the enmity"

between man and G.o.d, and also that between man and man; and the great barrier of Paul's experience was that erected by the Mosaic law between Jew and Gentile. By the cross, says Paul to the Ephesians, Christ who is "our peace"[5]

made both one, and brake down the middle wall of part.i.tion, having abolished in his flesh the enmity; even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto G.o.d through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.

No wonder Paul thinks of G.o.d as "the G.o.d of peace," the gospel as "the gospel of peace" and Christ as "our peace" proclaimed to the nations near and far.

That is the pacifism of Christianity. No wonder Paul's great successor at Ephesus compares this healing and reconciling cross to the token of forgiveness and faith which Moses lifted up in the wilderness, and repeatedly presents as its divinely appointed aim the "gathering into one the children of G.o.d that are scattered abroad" (John 11:51-52).

The fourth evangelist devotes the closing section of his story of the public ministry to this great question, Why Jesus came forward as the Christ? The scene he chooses is Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication, that festival which commemorated the death and resurrection of the Maccabean martyrs who had given their lives for the national ideal.

The story begins with the Jews' demand of Jesus that he "tell them plainly" whether he is the Christ. It ends with the mystical utterance of the high priest:

that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for that nation only, but that he might gather together into one the children of G.o.d which are scattered abroad.