By Thomas Finger
Abstract:
In our world today, countless people suffer from violence. Many nations are afflicted by the destruction of ongoing wars. Others live under constant threats of violence from other nations and militant organizations. Some of the actual violence and the threats of violence arises from people who claim to belong to one of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
When God called Abraham, according to the Torah, God made a magnificent promise:
“I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Notice that this promise seems to contain two different parts, or halves:
1) I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and
2) in you will all families of the earth be blessed. Throughout history, some followers of each of the three Abrahamic religions have emphasized the first half of this promise: they believed that God called them to curse, or conquer, all other peoples, including adherents of the other two Abrahamic faiths. Other Jews, Christians and Muslims, however, have emphasized the second half: they believed that the purpose of their faith was to bless all peoples.
Notice, however, that the first half of this promise to Abraham does not say to his followers “curse and conquer everyone else!” Instead, God says: “the one who curses you I will curse”– in other words, if other people curse you first, then I will curse them. Only those who strongly oppose Abraham’s descendants will come under God’s curse. Descendants of Abraham, then, are to be guided by the second half of this promise: to spread God’s blessing to all families of the earth.
From Abraham’s time down to our own time, however, people of different races, cultures and religions have often fought against each other. Our world, it seems, has been filled much more often with violence than with blessing. And as weapons become more and more destructive, the more dangerous does our world become. If a nation or people wishes to survive today, how should it regard other nations and peoples? It might seem best to consider the others as potential enemies and treat everything they say and do with suspicion. But people of the Abrahamic faiths should first ask: what was God’s purpose in creating so many kinds of people?
First of all, the creation of many peoples was no accident. According to the Qu’ran,
“the diversity of your tongues and colors” is sign of Allah’s wisdom;
and second, God
“made you into nations and tribes, that you might get to know one another.”
According to the New Testament, God set various peoples in different historical periods and within different boundaries
“where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him— though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For `in him we live and move and have our being….’”
And despite the frequent wars among these peoples, God’s overall purpose, according to the Hebrew prophet Micah, is that one day they will
“beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid….”
The God of Abraham, that is, created many kinds of people so that they might come to know each other, might search for God in diverse ways, and might finally live in peace together. For relationships among people are richer and deeper when these people are not all alike, but are truly different. To be sure, these differences often lead to misunderstanding and conflict. But since they play a positive role in God’s plan, it would seem that when violence or threats of violence arises among countries, people of Abrahamic faith should not treat other countries simply as enemies, but should ask whether these others might share certain interests and goals, which would make possible more fruitful, peaceful relationships.
However, a different approach has influenced many western nations since at least World War II. It is often called “realism,” since its proponents claim that they do not believe naively in human goodness, but are “realistic” about the evils and widespread violence in our world. Realists believe that people are self-centered, and seek, above all, to satisfy their own desires. Nations are the same: to obtain what they want, they seek to gain power over other people, and seek security against those who try to gain power over them. This means that in relationships among nations, power is the “immediate goal and the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating it determine the technique of political action.”
For Realists, international relations are not governed by moral laws, but transpire in a state of anarchy which is riddled with conflicts, whether these conflicts break out into actual violence or not. Since the only goal is to obtain and maintain power, moral rules like telling the truth and keeping promises do not hold.
I will argue that this approach does not simply take violence seriously, but that it is based on the assumption that human nature and society are intrinsically, or necessarily, violent. Violence does not simply occur occasionally in human life, but it characterizes human beings in their basic nature, or ontologically. I will indicate how this view developed in the West, and how it influences western foreign policy, especially American policy, today.
However, since this view has arisen in the West, and the West is thought to be Christian, it is sometimes supposed that “Ontological Violence” is a Christian view. For this reason, I will first say something early Christianity, and about how this view developed in a way that seems quite different. Finally, I show how some insights from early Christianity point towards a different approach to violence. Hopefully, this approach will be helpful for all followers of Abraham, and indeed for all people, who desire peace and justice in our troubled world.
I.) Christianity and the West
Christianity is often called a “Western” religion. Since the New Testament says much about the spread of Jesus’ message to Greece and Rome, it is frequently supposed that it traveled, for the most part, westward from Jerusalem. However, this early movement spread to the east as well as to the west.
Within its first few years, churches arose in Damascus and Antioch. Within the first few decades, Jesus’ disciple Thomas probably reached India. Christians arrived in Armenia by the early 2nd century C.E., where the king was baptized in 301 C.E. Edessa (modern Urfa), positioned on a westward extension of the “silk road,” became a major Christian center during the 2nd century. By the early 3rd century, merchants and monks had carried the new faith to the upper Oxus River (today, the Amu Darya River in northern Afghanistan). By 635 C.E., Christianity had traveled beyond Marv, Bukhara and Samarkand, and become an official religion of the Tang Empire in China.
Earlier, the new faith had spread beyond the Tigris by the first half of the 2nd century, and was established near present-day Baghdad and in southwestern Persia by the early 3rd century. Those Christians in today’s Iraq and Iran had occasional contacts with Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire. Because of this, the Sassanid Empire suspected them of supporting Rome, and unleashed occasional persecutions, beginning in 225, and a major persecution in 339 which killed tens of thousands. But in 410 the Sassanids allowed Persian Christians to establish their own Church— the one which spread all the way to China. Yet this Church, which eventually became known as the Syrian Orthodox Church, was never supported by any government. It sought to show its Sassanid rulers “that the Christian religion was not at all identical with the Church of the Roman enemy.”
During the first few centuries of Muslim rule, Christians in these areas often held government positions and contributed especially to education. Christian scholars translated many works, included a wealth of Greek and Roman literature, into Arabic. Under the Abbassids, the Patriarch of the Persian Church moved to Baghdad. There he dialogued with Muslim leaders, including the Caliph, and oversaw the activities and the mission of the “most widespread church in the Middle Ages….”
I do not mean to imply that Christianity, as it spread eastward from Jerusalem to Syria, Iran, India, and China, was always free from faults. But I have not mentioned this movement in order to evaluate it. I have only sought to provide some illustrations of how Christianity, from its beginnings, was not a “western” religion, but a movement which sought to bring the blessings promised to Abraham to all families of the earth.
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