You're listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are an extension of the ministry of the university. So very glad to be back with you guys and working through Vice Chancellor's Hour. It's a real honor. It honestly is. We're into a new topic today. A topic I haven't covered with you guys before, but I have spent a lot of time on it personally in my studies. I hadn't brought it before because, to be honest with you, it is a complicated topic and I want to do it well and because It's one of those things, I kind of, I'm a little concerned if you join me on the radio and, you know, radio listeners, they tune in and tune out, you know, somebody interrupts you and you're not sure you get the whole message. And this is a complicated topic and it's important that you get all the information and not just part of it. If you only get part, it's going to be a real problem. You may come away with the wrong idea. But in the end, I think it really is important, and it is about the Bible and understanding God's Word, which, of course, this whole podcast is about, this whole radio show is about. And because now you can listen to it if you miss it on the radio. So we are putting this out, vchour at buzzsprout.com. So if you've missed any of the episodes, you can go back and check there. And I'm recording this episode unlike any other episode I've recorded just to explain why we're doing this, how we're going to do it, and kind of what it's all about. So you can always go back and hear that, hear where I'm coming from. Now, I didn't start studying this because of current events. In fact, I would say anytime, anytime, really, in the world, this would be a relevant topic. But we're talking about Christian pacifism. And the reason I want to talk about it is because there are a good number of people in academia, a huge selection of books that are about this topic. In fact, I would say I have read a lot about this a number of years, wrestled with biblical texts, and I probably have read significantly more from the viewpoint of pacifists than I have those who are not pacifists, despite the fact that I don't agree with them. I think that pacifism actually is wrong, and I think it's because it's unbiblical. Now, that being said, I have found that the reason I wanted to study it in the beginning was the fact that I did occasionally come across a text in the Bible that caused me problems. I don't know if you've ever had that. There have been a number of issues where I'm reading through the Bible, I see something, it seems to be saying something that doesn't naturally fall in line with what I believe, like what I already believe. whether it's because of cultural baggage, whether it's because I'm taking the wrong approach. I have a way I think the Bible would have read, and I'm reading the Bible, and it doesn't read that way. That puts you in a dilemma, doesn't it? And for me, the only way to resolve that is to begin to study what does God's Word really say? I'm not able to be persuaded about God's Word by external sources. They may help with organization of thought and communication and those kind of things, but it's always going to come back to what God's Word really says. So the opinions of men of their own, they don't do very much. But they can be helpful guides as they express things, or they have understanding of original languages, or context of history, or whatever the case may be. And we're going to sample from some of those people, mostly people who disagree with me. I'm going to spend a lot more time interacting with people who disagree with me and using their words because I want you to hear their words. I do. I think that's the best way to learn about a topic is spend time with people who disagree with you. We do spend a little time with people who agree with us or agree with me, but a lot more time with people who disagree with us. All this comes from a desire for obedience, obedience to God's Word. That's what it was about for me. I've had several issues like this, as I mentioned earlier, across my life where I came across a passage of scripture and I found it unsettling, and a good number of those times it did change what I believed and therefore how I should act. And I thought, as I entered into this, this might be one of those times as well. I did. I thought it might be. But as I examined the texts, as I looked at the Bible itself, every time I looked for pacifism, I did not find pacifism. In fact, as pacifists understand it, I literally didn't find it even one time. Now, I found something else, but I didn't find pacifism. And so that's one of the reasons why I want to share this with you, is I've also interacted with a lot of Christians who find Christian pacifism unsettling, because they, like me, have read certain texts, or they've read somebody who's an expert. Honestly, even the world often assumes Christians are supposed to be pacifists. And some people who are Christians are also pacifists. And that can be confusing. Confusing to a lot of people. Now, I want to say in this, I am coming from a Christian perspective. I mean, this is Christian radio, I'm working for a Bible university, and our standard is the Christian standard. So there are a lot of pacifists in the world of varying stripes. By the way, that might tell you something. It's not a particularly Christian doctrine. Just to let you know, you can find humanists, don't believe in God at all, who are pacifists. You can find Hindus, actually some ancient tribes that were pacifists, believe it or not. A lot of modern movements which are pacifists. I'm only concerned about the Christian ones. I'm not gonna debate about or with anybody else. Not because that's not a valuable debate to have. It's just not the nature of this episode, this conversation. That's really what it boils down to. I'm not going to spend a lot of time, having said that, defending historic Christianity either. As is always the case on my show here, we're going to assume, because it is true, that what I'm saying is true. And anybody who has a problem with historic Christianity as such That's a good conversation to have in a different platform, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it on these episodes. So reach out to me by email vchourofficial at gmail.com and I'll answer your questions, respond, and if it's a really good question, I'll answer on air. I do Q&As all the time and I love engaging with while engaging with everybody. I had a great question not too long ago about how to get a blessing, about whether or not Daniel was a eunuch. Those are two very different types of questions, but I like doing both of them. One of them I think more impactful and serious, but the other one is super interesting and I think has some implications for the modern day. All that being said, I'm not going to defend being a Christian on this show or in this series of the show. We're going to take it for what it is. I am a Christian, and there's no problem with that, and we're talking about whether or not Christianity is pacifist or not. Now, you do have to ask yourself, what is pacifism? In general, when we think about pacifism, we're really talking about not being violent, choosing other methods. I mean, there's going to be friction in human relationships. That's a thing that's going to happen. There is going to be friction. And people who assume there won't be are assuming that we are going to act as though we all are ready in the future, at the end times. So they're assuming that we're living in a world we're not living in. We're still living in this world where human beings are not perfect and we still have problems, because we are imperfect. We do have problems. You know, it's interesting, I heard recently a young man who was asking one of our professors, why do we talk about sin so much? Why do we worry about sin so much? And my question for that is, why does the Bible talk about sin so much? And the answer is because it's important. But another way of thinking about it, as I was preparing for this episode, was to say, because sin affects you every day. Now, you know and sense other people's sin against you, and I promise you, you do care about it when it happens. Right? It's no good to say, well, sin's not that important for me. Oh, but it is, brother. It is. Because someone is going to sin against you in this life. I know it. I guarantee it. And you will care. You'll be mad about it. You'll be upset about it. You'll be frustrated by it. You'll be hurt by it. A number of possible reactions, all of which will indicate you actually really do care about sin. Yeah, sin is real, it's practical, and it affects our actual lives, your life and my life. So I know for a fact there is going to be conflict among human beings, and when that happens, a pacifist will say, we have to reject violence. and embrace other methods. They may say a lot of other possible methods, you know, you can leave the problem, you can surrender, right, give up, not hold on to your rights, but let the other person have what they are demanding. You can ask for intervention, negotiation, arbitration, discussion, non-violent methods of interacting with one another. Now, interestingly, when pacifists describe it, all that sounds fine. I mean, honestly, don't we want to live in a world where we talk through our problems or someone helps us to work through our problems rather than us hurting each other or potentially killing each other? Of course we all want that. Well, maybe not all. Most of us want that. Is it true that sometimes it's better to surrender your rights than it is to demand an outcome? The answer is absolutely. It absolutely is better to do it that way sometimes. Is the best call sometimes to leave a problem, to get out of there, rather than to stay and become violent? The answer is yes. That is sometimes the right answer. The problem comes in because you see A pacifist will say those types of answers, the avoidance of violence, is always the right answer. But does the Bible say that? Is that what the Bible demands of us as human beings? Now, there is another side, which I also don't believe, which are a lot of people and cultures and civilizations which have been predisposed to violence, meaning always looking for their rights, their opportunities, their power, and so forth. And the Christian perspective rejects both of those and said instead, it says, that there is a right way to deal with a specific set of circumstances, and it's neither always pacifist, nor is it always violent. Now, when we say violence, what do we mean? Here I'm going to bring in an author, actually, of the pacifist books. He's one of my favorite authors. His name's Preston Sprinkle. He wrote a book called Fight! A Christian Case for Nonviolence. From here on out, you're probably going to hear me call him Preston Sprinkle or just Sprinkle. I'm going to quote him quite a bit. What I liked about his book, and what I would commend about it if you want to understand biblical pacifism, is that Sprinkle was willing to wrangle with the Old Testament. And I'll be honest with you, most of the pacifists do not do good service in dealing with the Old Testament. The reason for it, I think, is pretty obvious, which is the Old Testament is not pacifist. It's not. And it's really hard to deal with a huge chunk of scripture that disagrees with your position and still call it Christian. It's really, really hard to do. I mean, they try, but it's really hard to do. Preston Sprinkle does the best job of it. Most of the authors make the error of trying to divorce the Old Testament from the New Testament. They do violence to the Bible, and that's not good. You don't want to do that. There are differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but they are not radically different. There's more continuity, we would say, than discontinuity. We don't have two different gods, one in the Old Testament, one in the New Testament. And so when you say, like, well, people did that in the Old Testament and that was bad, but God told them to do it, now you're into some trouble, aren't you? That's a real big issue. But Sprinkle has a great book. He does try to deal with the Old Testament. We'll work through that in a future episode. But we're going to use his definition of violence. It's not the only one, but I do think it's a fantastic one, and we'll keep making reference to it. And I do think it does good service of representing the pacifist position in general. I didn't want to have a bunch of definitions for you to have in your head as we talk about it. And I thought, you know what, let's grab a good one. If you've come across one you think does a better job of defending the pacifist case, Feel free to send it to me, ask me about it. There's a really good chance I've read it, but, you know, I'm happy to try to work with you on it. Sprinkle says violence is a physical act that is intended to destroy, i.e. injure, a victim by means that overpower the victim's consent. There's three big pieces about that. One is physical violence, right? Physical act. Two is destroy. He includes anything that's injurious in there. And then three, consent. So you have those pieces. So when those three things come together, then he says you have violence. And of course, pacifism rejects all violence. So they would say there's never a situation in which you can use a physical act which injures someone to overpower their consent. That for them, they think it's always wrong. So what's our standard for this? Well, our standard for this is the Bible. Our standard for this is the Bible. And thankfully, I have this in common, at least with some of the people who call themselves Christian pacifists. Again, there are guys who call themselves Christian pacifists. They don't interact with the Bible very much. Sometimes writing a whole book about Christian pacifism, never once quoting the Bible, I find that a bit odd. But I'm going to kind of narrow the list down to a handful of guys who at least try to make use of the Bible in defense of their position. And they agree with us. One pacifist says Christian theology should start from the scriptures, not from preconceived ideas. I love that. That's great. Yeah. So if we're going to have a theology, we should start with the Bible. You agree with that? If you're a Christian, you should. And so I can read this guy and I can go, yeah, that's right. We should. We should start. That's why I enjoyed reading the rest of his books called War and the Gospel. We should start with that. Sprinkle, who I've mentioned before, says the only reason I endorse Christian nonviolence is because I believe the Bible tells me to. I think he's being sincere. I really do. I think he really believes that the Bible endorses pacifism. I think he does. I don't agree with him, but I commend him for taking that view, and I'm going to use his book at points to try to describe the pacifist position and explain why it's absolutely wrong. One of the most famous pacifists, his name's John Howard Yoder, he says in his book, The Politics of Jesus, So he's looking at Jesus. Of course, that's a bit of a hint of which direction he's gonna go and where he may fail, but you at least have some idea of where he's going. He wants Jesus to be the center of his idea of what the Christian social ethic is. Now, as we go through this, if Scripture is our standard, it does us no good to say Scripture is our standard and then say, but we don't really believe all of Scripture, right? And for that reason, I'm just going to tell you up front, I believe the Bible and you should too. There's a fantastic statement on inerrancy called the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, and it says the following. It has this affirmation. We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historic exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture. we deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativization, dehistorization, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claim to authorship. And that is a hundred percent my stance, and I think the biblical stance, which is We want to understand the words, we want to understand the history, and pull the meaning out of that. That's not the total way to do exegesis, but it's the foundation of every other type of exegesis that's legitimate. You have to begin with what the words actually say and the location they were actually said, and so forth. The context matters. We've got to think about how it was written—that's the literary form, any type of devices that are there. You have to believe that Scripture is the one that interprets Scripture, so when you come to a hard passage, you do have to weigh it against other passages. It needs to make sense, right? Again, I'm not saying that everyone believes that, but I'm saying Christians should believe that because it's true, and that should be our methodology as we approach these texts as well. Not only that, but I'm not going to deal with anybody except perhaps pointing out where this happens, where they think that a book of the Bible is not historical, or it's only meant for one group of people, but God couldn't possibly have meant it for everyone, or saying, like, this teaching actually really is important. We're not going to do any of those things. We're going to assume the Bible is for us, and we're going to make sure it's within its own historical context, for sure, but as an understanding that it is for Christians and that we are to understand it, and that in some sense it's for our good and for God's glory. And I'm not interested in anybody who wants to argue about the nature of the Bible itself, not for these episodes. Again, if you have questions, feel free, email me. I'll be happy to talk to you about those things. Not only that, but there are people, in fact, I've talked about this a number of times in episodes, there are people who don't believe that the moral law has anything to do with this. I want to be really clear about my standard here. Again, I think someone else's words actually say it better than I could. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which I've quoted a number of times on this show, says it this way, the moral law does forever bind all as well-justified persons as others to the obedience thereof. not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God, the Creator who gave it. Neither does Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation." What does that mean? Well, you could go back and listen to my episodes on Sermon on the Mount, but when Jesus describes his relationship to the law—in fact, my last episode I did on what is a blessing, we get into this in just a little bit—but The idea that the moral law of God was somewhere else and for someone else is not true. The law of God is for us. Why? It's based on God's character. Jesus came to fulfill the law, and he describes the law as a righteous thing. So I in no way am going to downplay the law, because Christ doesn't. And if you agree with Yoder that we have to center it on Jesus, you can't downplay the law either. Now, there is a ceremonial law about how it goes on in the temple and how people prepare for it. There is a civil law, the law about how citizens in the nation of Israel should have treated each other. Those things were for what they were for. And again, the Scriptures, I get all that from the Scriptures. Go back to my previous episodes on Hebrews, and you can hear the Mechizedek, Christ of the Feasts and Festivals address this topic a bunch of times, so I'm not going to go back on it. But for here, just know, when God says, thou shalt not commit murder, I think that's for us. When he says, don't have any other gods before me, I think that's for us. You know if you've listened to me very long. And when he says, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, I also think that's for us, because that's his moral law. His moral law doesn't change. It's built on his character, who he is, his person, you see? So I think there's continuity. And to that end, we're going to read the text that way. We're going to apply them that way. Now, as I get into this, some people who are listening who are not pacifists but are Christians, let me tell you some ways that we kind of sometimes come at this the wrong way, okay? So, so far, if you agree with my conclusions, you might be anticipating this is going to go a certain way or I'm going to take a certain tact And I want to be clear with you, I'm not going to cheat or cut corners here at all. I'm not going to cut corners at all. I'm going to try to do my best to take an honest approach to the text, that it's not about the people who are pacifists, it's not even about the intentions of the people who are pacifists, but it's about what Scripture actually says. I want to be super clear about that from the beginning, and this is why. A lot of times when we frame pacifism, we might think of it as George Orwell did on his notes on nationalism. He writes, those who abjure violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf. That's a pragmatic approach. And he's saying you're only free to be a pacifist because you've outsourced your violence. Someone else is being violent for you. That's the only reason you can be violent. That's a pragmatic approach. It may be true, it may not be true, but it has nothing to do with whether the Bible tells us to be pacifists or not. Now, again, there is a way you can come at Christian pacifism, which is natural law. There is a way you can come at pacifism as a Christian to say there is a pragmatism to God's teachings. I think both of those things are true. I actually affirm both of those. Neither of those are what got me in trouble where I had, you know, I'm lying awake at night thinking, am I living my life wrong? Because I think violence is sometimes the answer to the problem. It wasn't natural law. It wasn't pragmatism. It was, what does the Scripture say? And Scripture is the authority. It's above both of those things. And so even if what George L. Wells says is true, which I think in many ways it is, I don't think it's the point. It's certainly not the point of these episodes. You know, I often think about that old movie, A Few Good Men. I don't remember seeing the movie fully. I only watched it on one of those, like, I think it was TBS or something like that, where they, they edit the movie. So I have no idea if it contains any objectionable content. So don't, don't come at me with any concerns about that. But it does have a quote, I think everybody knows, where the guy who turns out to kind of be the bad guy, he's talking about the world's need for people like him. And he said, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I think that's a lot of times, especially if you've been on the other side, where you're a person who has had to be a protector, had to be a soldier. Maybe you feel that way. Maybe you feel a bit attacked by this whole, hey, look, you're safe because of what I did. And how dare you question what I did? Again, I'm sympathetic of it because that's a great deal of sacrifice, and I think a lot of people don't really understand it. It's not just the threat of violence that guys who are in that position put themselves in, but there's a lot of things they give up much beyond that. And then to have the thing that they did questioned, that's hard. So I am sympathetic to it. I will say this, though. It is always possible that we've done a wrong thing with the best of intentions. Now, I don't think because you've used violence or trained for violence that you've done a wrong thing. And I think as we go through the scriptures, you're going to feel confident that the use of violence itself in the right way at the right time doesn't make you wrong. But I don't think anyone is above examining whether or not what they did was right. No matter how this big the sacrifice was, I don't think anyone is above being self-reflective over what they did was right. I don't think anybody is beyond that. And I think that's fair. And so for that reason, we're not going to frame it that way. There's no reason to frame it that way. In fact, by the way, the pacifists do try to say that they are practical. They do. They try to say that. If we're going to be fair to them, they do often try to give ways that you could resist evil without being violent. Yoder says to follow Jesus does not mean renouncing effectiveness. Okay? Now, he may be right or wrong. I think, actually, I don't disagree with that. I think if you follow Jesus, you don't have to renounce effectiveness. What he really means is to embrace pacifism. Well, actually, I think embracing pacifism does renounce effectiveness, but for our purposes, not really the point. They don't think they're renouncing what's practical. They think they're embracing something that's superior and practical. Morally superior and practical. Lacerre says the trouble comes precisely from considering effectiveness before fidelity to the gospel. If we were studying problems of sexual morality or financial honesty and tried to resolve them from the standpoint of effectiveness before thinking about being faithful to God, the results would plainly be disastrous. And I think this pacifist, Lacerre, I think he actually has a point, that we should go first to the Scriptures, right? Don't you agree? And from the Scriptures, we'll find out what's true or not. Now, it just so happens, I find the Bible to be imminently practical, and I've told you a number of times as we look at the Scripture, especially complicated sections of Scripture, complicated human elements, I actually find the Bible to be very, very practical. There's another way that people think about these things sometimes, which is to assume that all pacifists are pacifists because they're cowards. I think some of this comes from looking deep down in our own thoughts, which is the times we haven't wanted to fight have typically been because we were a bit scared. And some of us overcome that and fight people, and some of us don't. And we have had times where we looked around and felt like somebody ought to be using some violence, and we see people around us who are too scared to use it. And so we just assume that all pacifists are therefore afraid. They're pacifists because they're afraid. They're cowards. But it really doesn't fit the bill. I'm just going to give a handful of examples. And again, people who are not pacifists, I'm not a pacifist. People who are not pacifists don't always respond well to me bringing this up. But the fact is, it's not fair to say all pacifists are cowards. Tolstoy is probably one of the most famous. I don't think Tolstoy's version of Christianity was a super helpful version of Christianity, and there were a couple of ways that are important where he was not orthodox. But he was a pacifist, not always a consistent one, but he was a pacifist eventually in his life. But it's not fair to call him a coward. The man volunteered to go fight multiple times. He was in multiple conflicts, Chechens, Turks, British and French and Crimea. He got promoted for outstanding bravery. He was awarded medals. He was given responsibilities. He was in heated battles and acquitted himself well. I mean, I don't think we normally think of people like that as being cowards. Now, those events by and large happened before he was a pacifist, but I think it's fair to say someone who does all of those things is probably not eschewing violence because he's too afraid of it, but rather because he seems to have come to the position he didn't think it was right or good. And that's a different thing, isn't it? I mentioned Le Serre earlier. Le Serre is noted to have worked with the French resistance against the Nazis, and that included taking some very dangerous acts himself. For instance, he hid some communications equipment and he aided in the destruction of an ammunition plant. As I understand it from my research, they tried to be very sure no one was in there. Destroying a thing and hurting a person are not the same thing. But Lasserre did take great personal risk. He just wasn't willing to be violent. He wasn't willing to hurt another person. Again, I think he's wrong, but I don't think you could look at those actions and call him a coward. There was another prominent pacifist called Truc May who hid Jews. During the Nazi occupation, he operated a network of safe houses. When confronted about whether he had Jews with him, he said, we do not know what a Jew is. We only know men. That's brave, my friend. I don't know what you want to call it, but those kind of things were risky and dangerous and potentially lethal things to do. He protected life at the risk of his own life. So I think he's wrong about pacifism, but I wouldn't call him a coward. There may be individuals who are for pacifism because they're terrified people. That's possible. In fact, I think it's probably likely. Just as some people who advocate for violence are because they are violent people with an anger problem. that also is possible. I hope we can all agree on that. And neither of those realizations make pacifism more or less true. Those aren't the standard. The standard is, what does the Bible say? And so we're going to get in future episodes exactly into what the Bible says, and we're not going to go for the easy slam-dunk passages which seem to support the use of violence in a restricted and measured way, but we're going to look instead at the passages that the pacifists go to to support their position, and we're going to work through those passages together. I want to close out on what this series is not about. I want to be very, very clear. I don't know when you're listening to this. I have no idea. And if you're drawing a straight line between hearing this and some event that's going on, that is the wrong conclusion to draw. This was neither researched for, written for, nor being presented for an attempt to persuade anyone towards any particular war or any particular type of violence anywhere. This is not an advocation for violence per se, but instead I am trying to tell you that pacifism is not biblical. That's not the same thing as me saying I'm believing someone should go out and be violent. And I am especially not calling for any type of insurrection or revolution. I'm not calling for those things. Again, I have no connection between when this was written, why it was researched, when it was recorded, and any particular set of events. This is a theological question with practical implications, and the theological question is, is the Bible for pacifism and universally against violence? That's the borders of what we're going to talk about. Can we use the Bible to say all Christians should be pacifists? And I think the answer to that question is no. I don't think the Bible says we should universally be pacifists. We cannot draw the conclusion from that that all violence at all times and in every way is permissible or encouraged, because I also think that's unbiblical as well. But instead, we should look and see what does the Bible really have to say. And for that, well, you're going to have to listen to me next week. I've got to catch my next episode. Until then, I pray for peace. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 16, where Paul says he wants the Thessalonians to have the God of peace give them peace at all times and in every way. And what I want for you and for me is I want peace. You're listening to the Vice Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are an extension of the ministry of the university. you