Book details: Weaver, J. Denny. The Nonviolent God. Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2013. [Available on Kindle]
By Glenn Johnson
For a church pursuing peace, the ultimate revelation of God in Christ shapes the conversation. While various reports and perspectives on violence may be found in the scriptures, the conversation is not inconclusive. As Denny Weaver puts it in his book, The Nonviolent God, “whatever we might say or think about God should not be contradicted by what is revealed about God in the narrative of Jesus.” (Weaver, 5). On balance, Weaver agrees with John Dominic Crossan whom he quotes: “It is not the violent but the nonviolent God who is revealed to Christian faith in Jesus of Nazareth and announced to Christian faith by Paul of Tarsus.” (Crossan as quoted by Weaver, 21).
Tony Chvala-Smith introduces Weaver’s book this way: “Weaver represents one of the historic peace church traditions (Anabaptists/Mennonites) and is therefore well placed to engage us on the topic of believing in and serving the God whom Jesus reveals, whom Weaver calls the nonviolent God. Weaver is a theological descendant of the Mennonite theologian, the late John Howard Yoder, whose 1972 book The Politics of Jesus is a classic work among pacifist theologians and ethicists. The Nonviolent God builds on, extends, and even departs from Yoder's work, and is a sequel to Weaver's earlier book, The Nonviolent Atonement (2001; 2nd edition 2011). The Nonviolent God is a spirited, reflective attempt to do theology from the standpoint of the primary Christian claim that Jesus Christ reveals the nature and identity of God.”
As Paul J. Deffenbaugh noted in his review in The Christian Century, “Weaver is convinced that the divinely sanctioned violence featured in the church’s atonement models—especially the Christus Victor, satisfaction, and substitutionary views—is a regrettable diversion from the original message of Jesus.”
In Community of Christ, the conversation about God is more easily framed in a non-violent perspective when using the Community of Christ sermon helps, worship helps and lessons. These materials prepared for your use aid congregations in responsibly remembering and interpreting the sacred story even when the surface meanings in a particular passage may seem to diverge from the overall peaceful narrative revealed in Christ.
It is important for local church leadership to recognize that some specific scriptures are dissonant with the overall narrative of Christ often due to the perspective, context or theology of the writer. Helping a congregation to deal with these scriptures requires careful steps to avoid “misuse of scripture” (Doctrine and Covenants 163:7).
A good classroom exercise to help illustrate the “conversation” about violence in the Bible might be a discussion on the parable of the banquet. As noted by Weaver, Luke’s version omits the violence present in Matthew’s version (Weaver, 119-120).
Weaver does not dodge some of the harsher and more violent passages in the gospels. Weaver addresses them directly. I will admit I found the violent threads highlighted by Weaver in some of Jesus’ parables at great dissonance with my rose-colored image of Jesus, particularly his review of the parable of the unforgiving slave (Weaver, 95-96), the parable of the wicked tenants (Weaver, 96), the parable of the marriage feast (Weaver, 96-97), and the parable of the talents (Weaver, 97).
In the corresponding section “counters to nonviolence” Weaver counters the violence present in Matthew’s parable of the marriage feast with Luke’s nonviolent approach. Then he introduces a very interesting concept of “invitational judgment.” (Weaver 119-120).This idea attributed to Nelson-Pallmeyer of a concept of “invitational judgment” as noted by Weaver could make for an interesting Sunday School discussion or book club topic(120).
During the lesson, the congregation could be helped to see how such conversations are reflective of Community of Christ scriptural affirmations, such as affirmation 8: “Disciples are called to grow in their knowledge and understanding of the scriptures so that they may ever increase in love for God, neighbor, and self (Matthew 22:37–40; Mosiah 1:49), uphold the dignity and worth of all persons (Doctrine and Covenants 16:3c–d), and faithfully follow the way of Jesus Christ.” (See https://cofchrist.org/scripture/)
Pastors and mission center leaders who select speakers and teachers have a special responsibility to discern whether scripture is being used responsibly with regard to the full context of the original author, the cultural and historical setting, and the possibility of misunderstanding by modern listeners. Having useful commentaries available in the church library may be helpful to responsible interpretation. The People’s New Testament Commentary by Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock is recommended. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.) The People’s New Testament Commentary is a very useful single-volume commentary on the New Testament that is more detailed than a study Bible but less intricate than a multi-volume commentary.
I have also enjoyed a subscription to Sojourners’ Preaching the Word which offers lectionary-based commentary that can be consistently relied upon to find peace and justice perspectives in the weekly readings. Churches wishing to interpret scripture responsibly can benefit by Weaver’s perspective on the narrative of Christ as an important foundation for revelation of God.