(6) S1E6 Rebuttal: Jesus's Anger and John's Silence

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Episode Transcript

Derek (00:05):
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We have
previously been discussing thepositive case for Christian non
violence, and now we're going tostart to get into the rebuttals
and the counter rebuttals. Justas we did with the positive
case, I want to begin byfocusing on the Biblical
elements here. So we're going tostart with some of the most

(00:26):
common rebuttals that I hearagainst non violence based on
the Bible. The 2 big ones thatcome up are Jesus and the Money
Changers, when Jesus gets angryand breaks out His whip and
starts swinging it around.
And the other one is John theBaptist accepting soldiers who
come to him. To those who arenot pacifists, these seem like

(00:48):
clear examples which show thatviolence can sometimes be
acceptable. So how would I dealwith this? Well first, let's
start with Jesus and the MoneyChangers. And you can find this
passage in Matthew 21, Mark 11,Luke 19, and John 2.
I'll go ahead and start withwhat I think is a a weak counter
rebuttal to this, but somethingthat I you should probably be

(01:10):
aware of. And that is that, oh,there are many pacifists. There
are two lines of of pacifism,when it comes to to Christian
pacifism in general. And one ofthose lines would say that
violence in and of itself is notoff the table. And, it's not off
the table because God has theauthority to give and to take

(01:32):
life.
But we do not. Only God has thatauthority. So in the Old
Testament, when we see killing,and God directing killing, or
God approving of certain killingand violence, that's because God
has the prerogative to do that,and we don't. And so violence is
not completely off the table.And if you take a look at Jesus,

(01:53):
and you think that Jesus has apretty good connection to God,
Jesus probably knew God'sdirective and probably had a
very clear clear and open lineof communication with Him.
If God wanted Jesus to do whatHe did in the temple, as some
prophetic thing to prepare forthe cross, or to, you know,

(02:15):
whatever it is that you mightthink it does, well, if that's
God's directive, then Jesus cando that. And that's not a
problem for certain brands ofnonviolence. Well, I don't think
that's a very strong argument. Ithink it is something that can
be taken into consideration andsomething that does give you a
little bit of perspective whenthinking about how the

(02:38):
nonviolent individuals mightanswer this. Fortunately, I
don't think you really have tofall back on that because there
are 2 other convincing lines ofevidence which I think show that
Jesus' violence wasn't reallyviolence at all.
So the first line of evidencecomes from John 2. When you read
John 2 specifically, the wordingof the text makes clear what

(03:00):
Jesus is driving out. Jesus isnot using the whips to drive out
the money changers, the people.He's using it to drive out the
sheep and cattle. Now, maybe Healso is using it on the people,
but none of the texts say thatHe's using it on the people.
Only John specifies what objectsJesus uses the whip for, and

(03:21):
that's sheep and cattle. It doesnot mention anything about about
humans. So, yeah. Jesus getsangry. I don't think anger in
and of itself is a sin.
Jesus flips over some tables.Okay. Jesus whips some animals
to drive them out. Alright. But,as far as violence towards other
people, it doesn't seem likethat exists there.

(03:44):
Now, maybe some intimidation ofsorts, I don't know, if the
people felt threatened or not.But, anyway, I think that that
significantly scales down theseverity of what a lot of people
think, that Jesus is going inwith a whip and hitting all of
the people. The second piece ofevidence that we have that what
Jesus probably did is not what alot of people think He did, is

(04:08):
that Mark and Luke bothfollow-up the stories here by
saying that the religiousleaders kept looking for a way
to kill Jesus and to accuse Him,but they couldn't find anything
on Him. Now, it's hard for me tobelieve that Jesus goes into the
temple and starts lashing peopleand creating physical harm to a

(04:30):
bunch of religious leaders or,religious lackeys, and they
can't find a reason to accuseJesus of something that could
be, you know, that somethingcould be done about it. I mean,
I would imagine now, I don'tknow all ancient Roman laws and
such, but it seems to me that ifJesus was doing physical harm,

(04:53):
in a revolt sort of sense, thatthe Romans would have had an
interest in stopping that too.
So even if the Jews by their ownlaw couldn't do anything to
Jesus, which seems like theyshould be able to if he was
whipping them, it seems like theRoman garrison that was
stationed right outside of thetemple would have had something
to say about that. So this justkind of leads me to believe

(05:13):
that, this was a small fray thatdealt with the whipping of
animals and the overturning of afew tables, not something that
was a major revolt, or somethingwhere Jesus was doing physical
harm to people. Now again, thetext doesn't say that He didn't
hit people, but, as far as thecumulative case for non violence

(05:37):
goes, it's just not a compellingline of reasoning to use this to
overturn the whole case thatI've made so far. Alright. So,
the second instance that'susually brought up is John the
Baptist.
And in Luke 3, we see a numberof soldiers come to John the
Baptist and ask what they needto do to repent. Well, come to
John the Baptist and ask whatthey need to do to repent. Well,
John gives them 3 things thatthey need to do. 1st of all, he

(05:59):
says don't extort, 2nd, don'taccuse falsely, and 3rd, be
content with your pay. Now whatis noticeable here is that John
does not say to repent and comeinto this, Kingdom revival here.
He does not say that they haveto leave the army. And you would
think that he would say that ifJesus' kingdom was all about non

(06:22):
violence, or if non violence wasa central component. First of
all, the problem with thisargument is that at best it is
an argument from silence. Thereare lots of things John doesn't
tell these soldiers to do, thatI'm sure they were doing. Now,
it does say that they'resoldiers, and it seems like
emphasizing that probably youwould expect John the Baptist

(06:44):
to, to say something like don'tkill, if, you know, if that was
a major component of it.
Nevertheless, at best this is anargument from silence. 2nd, this
argument really overlooks theidea that we see over and over
again, which is that thosearound Jesus seem to always be

(07:05):
in the dark about the truenature of His Kingdom, or the
true extent of His Kingdom. Youknow, John the Baptist himself
sent a bunch of his disciples toJesus to ask if He was truly the
Messiah. John had doubts aboutJesus and didn't understand the
way that He was going aboutthings. And so John himself was
was not fully enlightened as towhat this kingdom entailed.

(07:28):
Peter's another great example.He's he said to Jesus that he
wasn't gonna allow Him tosuffer. And the disciples time
and time again just do not getwhat Jesus is doing. They don't
understand this idea ofsuffering, of death, of
resurrection, the idea that thisthis kingdom wasn't political.
They just don't they don't seethat the kingdom wasn't physical

(07:51):
and here and now, exactly in thesense that they thought it
should be.
And you even see this, again, Ibelieve it's in Acts, but, or
maybe at the very end of one ofthe Gospels, but right after the
resurrection, so they've seenthe risen Christ, they still ask
Jesus, so is your kingdom, like,you gonna do it now? You gonna

(08:12):
overthrow Rome now? Basically,is what they're saying. And
Jesus is like, man, you guysjust still don't get it. Just
wait around, I'm gonna send theSpirit, and it'll all be clear
to you then.
Everyone, even the people whowere right next to Jesus for 3
years, just don't get it. Theydon't get the true nature and
the true extent of the Kingdom.So if at the beginning of

(08:35):
Jesus's ministry, you've gotJohn the Baptist, who is not
telling soldiers not to killpeople. I don't know that that's
very compelling to me, not onlybecause it's an argument from
silence, but also because nobodygot Jesus. And I wouldn't expect
that John would have understoodthe true extent, especially

(08:56):
before the cross, because that'sthe ultimate demonstration of
this nonviolent action thatJesus, this enemy love that
Jesus is trying to portray.
But even more than those tworeasons, I think I can even, I
think I can even do one betterto discount this argument. And
just to kind of show you, what Iwould recommend for you to do is

(09:18):
take a look at Luke 3, and do itin 2 different translations.
Pick, you know, the NIV or ESVor whatever, and read it, and
you're gonna get what I toldyou. You're gonna get do not
extorts, and, be content withyour wages. Right?
Well, if you take a look in theKing James version, something

(09:39):
there is very different. Andinstead of saying don't extort,
it actually says do no harm. Soour list, instead of don't
extort, don't accuse falsely, isdo no harm, don't accuse
falsely. If you go and take alook at the Greek now, just to,
just to kind of warn you, I amnot a Greek scholar, and I do

(10:01):
not know Greek. So, I'm relyingon all of the tools that I have,
which help me.
Nevertheless, I think the KingJames translation, along with
just a minimal study of therange that this word has, and
its roots and what it means,we'll kind of show you that the

(10:22):
implication here is that they'retalking about not using physical
force against other people. Andyou can see how that's how
that's used. It's not, I thinkthis is the only time it's used
in this exact form, but you cansee how other forms of it are
are used. And the King Jamestranslators, again, thought that

(10:42):
the focus was doing no harm,because it seems a little bit
redundant, if you kinda say,sort of say the same thing
twice, like don't extort anddon't accuse falsely, like,
you're you're kind of kind ofdoing the same thing here. So
what I think the the author,what I think, Luke was trying to
say, is basically that, okay,you can be a soldier, but don't

(11:07):
do harm physically, and don't doharm verbally, and just be
content.
Just do your job. Just keepgoing. Don't hurt people. Don't
don't, verbally assault people.Regardless of what you think of
the Greek in this passage, or,or whatever else, I mean, when
you put those 3, those 3 pointstogether, it's just really not a

(11:32):
convincing passage.
It's an argument from silence.Nobody knew what was going on
with the extent of Jesus'kingdom, and most translations
kind of miss out on some of theemphasis that the Greek word
should have. Now, if we want tothrow in a 4th point here, just
sort of a sub point to number 3,if John is really saying to sol

(11:53):
if John is really tellingsoldiers, Hey, you don't have to
get out of the Army, Is thatreally something that we would
say kind of goes to show thatviolence is okay? And, no, not
at all. Because if you rememberback to the early church episode
that we did, the church history,the early church is filled with

(12:16):
examples of people saying, sure.
You can be in the army, justdon't kill, or do no violence.
And if you get an order to kill,don't do it. You have people who
are executed for, who are in thearmy, who are executed for
various reasons, sometimes notsacrificing to idols and other
times, laying down theirweapons. You had the canon 12 in

(12:40):
the Council of Nicaea, whichsaid not to return to the army.
So there were people gettingconverted in the army who, a lot
of the early church was saying,look, you can't get out of the
army, like, they'll kill you fortrying to do that, or, or there
are severe consequences, so juststay in the army.

(13:01):
I mean, this is the Pax Romana,you don't have to kill people, a
lot of time you're just doingconstruction work, go build the
aqueduct, do whatever you'regonna do, keep your head down,
don't hurt anybody, and just doyour job. But if they do tell
you to kill, don't do it. Ifthey tell you to do violence,
don't do it. So this, this ideathat John is saying you, or John

(13:23):
isn't telling you to get out ofthe army, doesn't really
convince me whatsoever that he'ssaying it's okay to do violence.
And we'll definitely revisitthis in a future episode where
we talk about the early churchand, soldiers in the early
church.
But for now, these are 2 of thesimplest Biblical arguments that

(13:45):
we can rebut, and we'll beexploring more difficult ones
later. I hope that wet yourpalate. But that's all for now.
So peace, and because I'm apacifist, when I say it, I mean
it.