Can Christians Do Violence?

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), Jesus introduced a surprising teaching, one that is so unlike our natural human impulses that Christians have mostly ceased to follow it. Though Jesus taught against violence, and though the pre-Constantinian church continued to teach Jesus’ command, few Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestants consider Jesus’ command to be necessary.

This article is the first in a series on the Biblical and early Christian doctrine of nonresistance.

• The first article gives an overview of violence and Christianity. It defines key terms like “nonresistance” and “violence,” and shows how the Biblical and early Christian evidence fits together. It answers many general objections to the concept of nonresistance.
• The second article discusses what the Bible teaches on violence and shows that Scripture is in full support of nonresistance for Christians.
• The third article looks at evidence from the early church and shows that the consensus of early Christian leaders was against violence for Christians.
• The fourth article discusses the leading Christian worldview which states that violence is permissible in certain circumstances, and shows that worldview to be impoverished and unable to stand up to Scripture or reason.

Defining “Nonresistance”

First, it is important to define nonresistance. It is distinct from pacifism, which is typically the belief that earthly societies should refrain from violence, and from nonviolence, which simply indicates refraining from violence. Nonresistance includes nonviolence, but is much more. Pacifism can be defined in many ways, so nonresistance could be considered a form of it, but typically it is different enough that the term can be confusing.

Nonresistance is an ethic of the Kingdom of God. While God has allowed earthly nations to resort to violence in order to maintain some degree of justice among non-Christians, members of God’s nation use more sanctified methods for achieving justice or rectitude.

The centerpiece of this doctrine is that Christians should employ love, self-sacrifice, generosity, courage, blessing, and prayer in order to rectify bad situations. But it is so deeply engrained into people to employ violence when these holy methods seem inadequate, that these articles will focus on what Christians may not do.

Thus, though nonresistance proper is inextricably linked to an active loving service, this series will need to focus more on what we should not do than on what we should do. Biblical nonresistance opens up more effective options than it restricts, but since people primarily question the restriction, I will defend that specifically.

How nonresistance works

Nonresistance is a tool for societal transformation by which the nonresistant person absorbs the aggression and returns love for hatred. Like a detox agent, nonresistant people cause there to be less violence and more goodness in the world.

In contrast, if one responds to violence with violence, this aggravates and amplifies the aggression by returning it and perpetuating it. There will always be a chain of violence in which each party tries to retaliate.

Nonresistance is even opposed to political action, which tries to use peaceful coercion. In contrast nonresistant people would rather suffer than gain the upper hand through a method that is not strictly loving.

Where violence is permissible

The doctrine of nonresistance differs from most forms of pacifism, since some violence is permitted—just not for Christians. We do not believe that it is ever appropriate for Christians to do violence, since Jesus taught against it in the Sermon on the Mount.

However, when God is working with people who are not Christians, seeking to bring them to Christ, he allows their governments to use violence. He has allowed the governments of this world, since they are unable to access the better way of Christ, to employ the most effective means available to them—violence. Their specific use of violence limits harm done to their subjects by more violent people.

Ancient Israel also operated on this pre-Christian principle, and God allowed and even commanded them to do violence. But the violence that they did was never considered the ideal for how God’s people would act.

Let me emphasize that by no means should the doctrine of nonresistance be interpreted as against secular violence. It is against Christian involvement in violence—but recognizes that the government has a right to employ violence to maintain order.

In God’s kingdom, he has specified that violent means belong to him alone. Unlike us, he is not hampered by the impossibility of knowing what method has the best consequences, nor does coercion remove his innocence, because his love and authority are both perfect. Vengeance belongs to God.

The definition

This is how I’m defining and defending the doctrine of nonresistance: Violence is not a legitimate method for Christians to use; when in conflict, we are to respond with active love. Violence is “ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ”¹As the Schleitheim Confession puts it. as an unsanctified method which God allows governments to employ because in this age they are outside of God’s Kingdom. For those who follow Christ, it is better to die or to suffer wrong than to become complicit in killing or harming another.

For shorthand, I’ll use this definition: Though God authorizes earthly governments to use violence, Christians must always respond to injustice with love and never with violence.

Note that nonresistance, as I’ve hinted, is closely linked to the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. That is, basically, that Christians belong to a heavenly nation rather than their earthly one, and that they need to live by those values and to understand that the values of earthly nations differ so much so that we cannot give full loyalty to them. For a defense of Two-Kingdom Theology, see the linked post.

Defining “Violence”

Since the concept of “violence” is at the center of this discussion, it’s important that I define what I mean by the word. There are many possible definitions, but I will be using the word to express this concept: “Any potentially harmful action that is performed with the intent or willingness to harm another person.”

The following actions do not fall under this definition of violence:

• Restraining someone without injuring them
• Surgery to promote health
• Injuring a person with the intent of benefiting them (such as throwing them out of the way of an oncoming vehicle)
• Restrained and benevolent discipline of one’s child

I will also use the term “coercion” for related concepts that do not fall under the category of violence. I define coercion as follows: “any action done in an attempt to curb a person’s agency and force that person to take a specific action.” I will not be arguing that coercion is always wrong for a Christian.

The evidence that needs to be explained

Nonresistance is based solidly in Scripture and the early church. This series will examine the data from Scripture, supplementing it with other sources for the teaching and practice of the pre-Nicene church. I will show that the historical data supports the following truths.

1. The New Testament consistently teaches that, notwithstanding the permission for certain violence in the Old Testament, Christians should not do violence in defense or retribution. This implies a denial of war as well.
2. Before 313, Christian leaders consistently taught that Christians should not do violence in defense, retribution, war, or in general.
3. Neither the New Testament nor early Christian leaders leave any exceptions where Christians can do violence.
4. Concerning the state, the New Testament and the early Christian leaders consistently teach that governments may use violence as part of carrying out their duties.
5. While Christian leaders taught against joining the military, some converted soldiers remained and served nonviolently, with their permission, and others served violently.

The following articles in this series give the evidence underlying these points. You may want to read the articles now in order to have the full evidence in front of you.

• A supporting article on biblical nonresistance examines the biblical evidence and demonstrates the truth of points 1, 3, and 4.
• A supporting article on early Christian nonresistance examines the evidence from the pre-Nicene church and demonstrates the truth of points 2–5.

Inferring nonresistance as the best explanation

Given the historical truths that I offered above, the question now is how to reconcile them to form a coherent historical understanding. In this section, I will show that the best explanation of these facts is that Jesus, the apostles, and the early church taught the doctrine of nonresistance. No other views are consistent with the full range of the evidence. In this section, I’ll compare each view with the evidence.

Nonresistance?

How does nonresistance stack up against the Biblical and historical data?

• Nonresistance teaches that Christians should not do violence, so it is consistent with points 1, 2, and 3.
• Nonresistance teaches that the state may do violence as part of carrying out its duties, so it is consistent with 4.
• We know that, even though Christian leaders teach something as doctrine, not all lay Christians obey correct doctrine, so nonresistance is consistent with 5.

Thus, the doctrine of nonresistance explains all five facts.

Some violence is wrong, but war is right?

Many Christians would say that the apostles and the early Christians condemned some violence, but believed other violence, such as war, to be appropriate.

• This view doesn’t fit the implications of points 1 or 3, which imply that the apostles believed Christians may do no violence, even in war.
• This view certainly isn’t consistent with point 2 or 5, since the early Christians taught against Christian participation in war.
• This view teaches that the state may do violence as part of carrying out its duties, so it is consistent with 4.

Thus, this view is inconsistent with two points, is very surprising given two further points, but is consistent with one point.

Just war is an okay development?

Another view states that the early Christians hadn’t yet figured out the just war theory, so there was no consistency on what they thought. Some believed violence to be wrong; some did not. But it was a legitimate later development.

• This view doesn’t fit the implications of points 1 or 3, which imply that the apostles believed Christians may do no violence, even in war.
• This view isn’t consistent with point 2, since the early Christian teaching on this subject did not lack in consistency.
• This view could theoretically be reconciled with point 5, since we don’t have quite as much evidence behind it, but it would rely on some very improbable speculation.
• This view teaches that the state may do violence as part of carrying out its duties, so it is consistent with 4.

Thus, this view is inconsistent with one point, is very surprising given three further points, but is consistent with one point.

However, this view is historically inaccurate, since the pre-Constantinian Christians left no room for doctrinal development. Other articles have shown that development of doctrine is an innovation, and is foreign to the beliefs of early Christianity.

Not even the state may do violence?

One view, less common but with some support, is that the apostles and the pre-Nicene Christians believed that no violence at all is permissible for either Christians or non-Christians.

• This view, since it unilaterally teaches against violence, is consistent with 1, 2, 3, and 5.
• However, since the New Testament and the early Christians taught that the state may do violence, this view is not consistent with point 4.

Thus, this view wins on four points but is inconsistent with one point.

The early Christians got it wrong?

Another possible view is that the apostles permitted some violence, but the pre-Nicene Christians wrongly believed that no violence was permissible.

• This view doesn’t fit the implications of points 1 or 3, which imply that the apostles believed Christians may do no violence, even in war.
• This view is consistent with 2 and 5 since it holds that the early Christians did teach that, but wrongly so.
• This view could be consistent with 4, since it holds that some violence is right, but most forms of this view are probably not consistent with 4, since they would probably hold that early Christians didn’t believe any violence to be right.

Thus, this view is very surprising given two points, but is consistent with two points, and could be made consistent with one more.

However, this view is historically inaccurate, since the pre-Constantinian Christians did not fall away quickly from the apostolic teaching. My article on the historic faith shows that this view is incorrect, since the pre-Constantinian Christians inherited the faith of the apostles. They were not perfect, but they were accurate on most points.

Conclusion

All four of these competing views fail on one or more points. Two of them have further problems, since they make historical claims that are very inaccurate. The view that is nearest to accurate is the view of absolute pacifism—that not even the government may do violence. However, the point that it denies is very well evidenced by Scripture and the early church.

Thus, the only view that explains all the data is that the early church taught the doctrine of nonresistance. If the other views are to be salvaged, their proponents will have to show that my straightforward analysis of the data, which is found in the other articles, is wrong.

With that established, I will discuss some further implications and nuances of the doctrine of nonresistance. Then I will move on to responding to some general objections to the view.

Can we protect others?

While Jesus, the apostles, and the pre-Constantinian Christians spoke directly and definitively on the question of defensive violence, they nearly always criticized self-defense rather than speaking directly about the question of defending others. It is certainly clear that we should not defend ourselves with violence, but what if someone else is being attacked? Can we defend them with violence? Here are several reasons why not:²See Cecil John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, London, 1919, pp. 84–89 for a great treatment of this subject, which I will draw on

• The straightforward answer would seem that, if we can’t correct wrongs done to us with violence, how could we correct wrongs done to others with violence? It’s not that we shouldn’t protect others—of course we should!—but the means of protection matters. If we aren’t to use violence when protecting ourselves, then why when protecting others?
• As I show in my exegesis of Matthew 5 in my next post, refraining from violent defense of others is implied by Jesus’ command.
• When Jesus condemned Peter for using the sword, saying that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt 26:52), his statement was in context of a sword that was drawn to defend an innocent person.
• The Kingdom ethic is a powerful one, and its methods are weakened when laced with violence. Why would we draw out our weakest tool when protecting others, when we would scorn to use it for ourselves?
• If we should love even our own enemies, shouldn’t we love others’ enemies too?
• If someone wants to harm an innocent person, it’s reasonable to say that such a person could be considered our enemy by Jesus. So we should love and bless that person and stop him through the same means that we would use to stop our enemy.

I don’t see that this leaves any room for using violence to defend others.

Protecting the Innocent

However, we have a strong impulse to protect innocent people, and it often seems, to our limited understanding, that violence is the best means for doing so. This emotional objection to nonresistance is a powerful one. Yes, it is fine for us to risk our own lives through nonresistance. But what if someone attacks innocent people who can’t defend themselves, like children? Even if we can’t protect ourselves, can’t we at least unselfishly protect others?

I recognize the emotional pull of this. Protecting my wife and children is one of the deepest-seated values I have. However, no matter how noble that desire is, it is not a good reason to commit violence.[As Cadoux writes, nonresistance “means the adoption, not only of gentler, but of more effective, tactics, calling—as the Christian persecutions show—for their full measure of danger and self-sacrifice; it means too a refusal to stultify those tactics under the impulse of a rush of feeling which so soon fails to justify itself as a guide to conduct.”³Cecil John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, London, 1919, p. 87)

First, God has asked us not to fight back. Yet God is good, and he cares for the innocent far more than we do. Surely he can be trusted to bring good out of any evil situation, without us needing to disobey him in order to do so ourselves. God himself will bring justice for the oppressed: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” he says. It is a terrible thing to have to see the innocent suffer, but it is worse yet to become violent people ourselves. By committing violence ourselves, we are making ourselves guilty of the same thing our enemy is guilty of. Romans 12, which I analyze in the next article, teaches that to use violence is to be overcome by evil.

Second, if we take someone’s life, we are acting as their ultimate judge, which we have no right to do. We are taking away their chance to repent and seek God. Yet God loves that violent person and wishes to see him come to repentance. If an innocent person, like a child, dies, that person will be with God. But if a guilty person dies, that person will likely have no chance to repent.

Finally, by resorting to violent means, we are throwing away our chance to make the most use of our spiritual weapons. Instead of doing warfare in the heavenly realms through faith and prayer, we are introducing our impure and worldly methods to try to accomplish good. Yet our enemies are unlikely to be less equipped for physical warfare than we are. If we fight on their turf, they will be most likely to win. Instead, we must fight on our turf, using the power of Christ’s love, which will defeat the worst that they can do.

This may sound like idealism, but it is not. Nonresistant Christians the world over have won great victories through loving their enemies. Our warfare has freed people from prison, saved them from death, kept children safe from rape, and ended all sorts of violence. Not every time does God choose to save us from torture or death, but we trust his wisdom for every situation. We don’t know what great good he has planned, which will come to fruition in spite of the evil.

By refusing to use the warfare of the world, we are not standing aside and doing nothing. Instead, we are wielding weapons more powerful than our enemies can know. How can anyone be a Christian and believe that the sword of the flesh is more effective than the sword of the Spirit? Can one who believes in God trust guns rather than prayer? From the way Jesus speaks in Matthew 5 (which I analyze in the next article), it seems that we cannot fully have both.

Gray Areas

From the argument I presented above, it is quite clear that Christians should not do violence. However, two related truths from Scripture give rise to questions about actions that aren’t, strictly speaking, “violence.” Might those actions also be wrong?

Using Coercion

Is it ever appropriate for a Christian to use coercive means? Coercion itself does not sit well within the New Testament worldview, but it doesn’t seem to be entirely ruled out. So is it okay to stop a violent person by force, if we do not injure him?

This is a gray area for me. It seems that it could be the truly loving thing to stop a violent person before they incur guilt by hurting someone else. However, in many cases, it seems that nonresistant love and prayer often stops the violent more effectively. In any case, whatever we do must be done out of love for our enemy, and we can certainly not harm or kill them.

Using the Government

Is it appropriate for a Christian to call the police when someone is threatening to commit a crime? Though Christians should not resort to violence, we recognize that the government has a right to do so. Are we responsible for any violence that might result if we call the police?

This is another gray area. In my opinion, it is perfectly okay to call the police when a crime is being committed, so as to enable them to do the job God intended for the government. However, it may be the case, especially when a less violent crime is being committed, that we can bring peace to the situation in ways that the police cannot.

Conclusion

These are very important questions, and if I had more space, they would be well worth spending a lot of time on. However, I note that these gray areas shouldn’t cause us to reject the nonresistant position, since, in every view, there just are going to be nuances. Life is messy, because we don’t live in an ideal world. In my final article, I will show that those who don’t hold to nonresistance actually have worse ambiguities in their position.

Objections

This section will cover some objections that are given against the doctrine of nonresistance. Other objections are covered in other posts in this series.

Nonresistance is absurd

One common objection is simply that nonresistance is absurd and obviously false. After all, it just seems ridiculous not to defend ourselves against our enemies.

Of course, this view fails to engage with the teachings of the New Testament and the early Christians, so it is clearly not a good objection. Usually it is supported by arguments from hypothetical situations: “what if someone attacks your wife; what would you do?”

Because of how common this objection is, I’ve devoted the entire fourth article in this series to the question of which view—nonresistance or its counterpart—is actually absurd.

Something that’s wrong for Christians is wrong for non-Christians

Another objection to nonresistance tries to derive a contradiction from it. Nonresistance teaches that Christians should not do violence, but that governments may. How is it possible for something to be wrong for a Christian and not wrong for a non-Christian?

The answer to this is that God allows non-Christian violence as a necessary evil. Given the evil situation that we live in, and given that non-Christians are already willing to do what God does not desire, God allows the lesser of the two evils of government and anarchy. He loves non-Christians too much to let them be destroyed by anarchy when government could give them a certain amount of protection so that they could live to come to know him.

For a further discussion of this and for evidence that God does work with necessary evils, see my article on the two kingdoms.

Violence is necessary

There are several objections that take basically the same form—they argue that violence is necessary, and that Christians must employ it. Thus, Jesus can’t have intended to prohibit it.

But evil will happen!

“Who will take care of the people who are evil enough not to be stopped by loving responses? After all, some evils just won’t be stopped except by war or violence.” When we return good for evil, we do recognize that we will not be able to stop every evil in the short term. However, God has ordained the earthly governments to restrain evildoers for now. The governments can’t ever conquer evil, like we of the Kingdom of God can, but they can at least keep the worst evils from happening.

Still, abuses do happen. When the government doesn’t stop evil through their rightful authority, and when our love won’t stop evil through its transformative power, all is not lost. We know that God is still there controlling evil and bringing it to an end. If we follow his prescribed methods, we can trust him to bring about good. If we don’t follow his prescribed methods, we are working against God.

Defending Christianity

“Christianity would have died out if Christians in the Middle Ages hadn’t resisted pagans or other enemies. We’d all be Muslims now if we didn’t fight.” Actually, the times of the most explosive growth for Christianity have been when Christianity was a persecuted minority. Tertullian said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The Anabaptists converted many simply by their joyful testimony when burned at the stake. And Christianity is even growing today in hostile places where we’re persecuted by communists or Muslims.

In response, some Christians have pointed to areas of the world where Christianity has been persecuted almost out of existence. However, these places are not a counterexample to this principle. In fact, they provide evidence for it:

• Where Christians have leaned on the state to protect them, the state has eventually let them down. That is what happened in the many areas where Christianity was once vibrant.
• Also, generations ago these people were made Christians by compulsion, and their children became Christians by default. Why would they now have the strength and conviction to endure?

Nonresistance is immoral

Another group of objections tries to argue that nonresistance is, for one reason or another, immoral.

Nonresistance is just standing by and doing nothing

“Nonresistant people are just standing by and letting evil happen.” Nonresistant people certainly do not say that we would simply stand by and watch violence happen. This objection is a false dilemma—a type of logical fallacy. It assumes that the only two possible responses to violence are to return it in kind or to do nothing whatsoever.

On the contrary, we are actively doing good in such a way that it will forever end evil. We put our enemies to shame by blessing them and loving them. Our love is an aggressive force against which few forces can stand for very long. Why do you think the nonresistant early Christians or the nonresistant early Anabaptists were persecuted? Clearly, the state feared them. When you are attacked, do the most powerful thing—love—and don’t dilute it with necessary evils. Our prayers have power with God, and our loving actions throughout life will do far more good than the occasional violent actions of a person of the world.

Nonresistance fails to value the image of God

“If we value the image of God properly, we would protect the defenseless.” If we value the image of God properly, we would protect the defenseless in ways that do not harm other people, even evil people, who are also made in the image of God.

Other objections

This section deals with several miscellaneous objections to nonresistance.

• “God isn’t nonviolent; he chooses who lives and who dies. Why should we be nonviolent?” When God chooses that someone dies, he is not committing violence, because it is his right to choose our span of life—he is our creator. Yet he tells us to be nonviolent, so we must obey him. And when the divine Son of God showed us in this world what the ideal response to violence is, he showed us suffering love on the cross, where he forgave the worst deed the world ever committed.

The church has joined the world.

Violence is one of the go-to weapons of the kingdoms of this world, but it’s not how the Kingdom of God works. However, most Christians have forgotten this.

• The Roman church, the very church that Paul admonished long ago to overcome evil with good, has departed from the apostolic faith to take part in crusades and countless other wars.
• The Protestant reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, also took part in violence and war.
• Furthermore, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches all have a long history of being state churches, and the resulting mixtures of God’s and the world’s kingdoms have always used violence to subjugate their enemies.
• Even now that they are no longer state churches, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches have encouraged Christians to take up arms and go to war for the sake of their earthly nations.

In fact, most wars in the West for the past millennium have consisted of Christians slaughtering fellow Christians who simply lived on the other side of a national border. As I write this article, one of the major branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church is urging Russian Christians to go to war against Ukrainian Christians, most of whom belong to the very same church. By their actions, they demonstrate that the heavenly calling of the Kingdom of God is only secondarily important to them after their earthly loyalties.

Even though the Anabaptists reclaimed this doctrine for the church, not all the early Anabaptists followed the teaching of nonresistance as they should have. Yet the nonresistant Anabaptists gave a pure witness of love for their King—when he commanded them, they loved even their enemies, going to the death rather than to kill those who persecuted them.

Conclusion

The best explanation of the teachings of the New Testament and the early church is that Christians are not to use violence. I know that it’s very difficult for people to accept this. However, Scripture and the early church are very clear. We cannot injure or kill others.

When Christians misguidedly use the ways of the world in order to answer their enemies, I dearly hope that God will forgive them. But we must make no mistake. They are disobeying the direct commands of Jesus and the apostles and they are going directly against the apostolic church. No amount of reasoning or church tradition can get around the fact that Christianity definitively forbade violence from the very beginning until the 300s, when the Roman Emperor’s interests became more important than the teachings of the church.

Instead, the core of Christianity is to love God and our neighbors, and Jesus calls us to love even our enemies. Love works itself out in action—instead of responding with retribution, anger, or evil speaking, we will bless our enemies.

• 1
  As the Schleitheim Confession puts it.
• 2
  See Cecil John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, London, 1919, pp. 84–89 for a great treatment of this subject, which I will draw on
• 3
  Cecil John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, London, 1919, p. 87)