During World War II.

During World War II, famed literary scholar and "mere Christian" C Lewis delivered a scolding to a pacifist society entitled, "Why I am Not a Pacifist." From a writer whose enclosure could never be dull, this piece was Lewis' grave point.

Let's commit to memory two things straight at the outset:

united "Pro-choice" people are not.

The Ictus has no choice, and an abominable violence against "the least of these" is committed in each abortion, whatever the mitigating circumstances.

sum of two units "Pro-life" people are rarely. principally of those I've ever met heard or read are pro-death about war and/or capital punishment. They commit or support an abominable violence against neighbour and enemy whom Jesus also dubbed "the least of these"--whatever the mitigating circumstances.

The early house of worship watchword was: Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine--the house of worship abhors shedding blood. Such an ethic was, in the earliest period applied fairly consistently to abortion, executions and war. Whatever the complexity then, there has at no time been majority Christian ethical consistency.

C Lewis in his essay observes: "When we inflect to Christianity, we find pacifism based almost exclusively upon certain of the sayings of Our Lord himself. If those sayings do not establish the pacifist position, it is vain to examine to base it on the general verdict of Christendom as a whole. For when I solicit guidance here, I find authority upon the whole against me." He writes further: "The whole Christian case for pacifism cessations therefore, on certain Jesus utterances, like as 'Resist not evil: moreover whosoever shall smite thee forward thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.'"

He then get aheads in a few short paragraphs to confute a pacifist reading of this injunction. And he's done with Scripture, make objection for this earlier observation: "Nor, I think, do we find a word about Pacifism in the apostolic writings, which are older than the revelation by christs and represent, if anything does, that original Christendom whereof the history of christs themselves are a product."

In my prudence Lewis should have been reprimanded by dint of his worldwide Christian admirers (of whom I am one) Considering his towering reputation as literary scholar, his biblical liberalism here, selectively and superficially reading heavenly-minded Writ is regrettable. Lewis betrays Jesus and the biblical text--and got away with it in Christian circles. individual might have expected that Lewis had done his biblical homework. He demonstrably had not.

Still, the essay should have been responded by the publisher: "Please make progress back and read the sources".

Back to the sources

For starters, if single must be restricted to united a solitary Jesus saying, Lewis copp revealed Why did he not select "Love your enemies"? In the entire sweep of Christian history, no common has demonstrated how one may "love (agapao)" enemies in any faithful biblical meaning of the terminus while running him through with a spear, putting a bullet to her head, or bombing them to smithereens. No one

wherefore was that text rejected gone out of hand? Everyone so minded does. No single in kind has ever discovered a biblical exception clause: "Jesus could not have meant that, therefore..."

next to the first Lewis glosses over the injunction, "Turn to him the other cheek also," in the religious discourses on the Mount (Matthew) and Plain (Luke) relegating it to a bit of innocuous personal advice, plenteous as Ann Landers might have written. He comments: "Indeed, as the audience were private family in a disarmed nation, it appears unlikely that they would have aye supposed Our Lord to be referring to war. War was not what they would have been thinking of The frictions of daily life among villagers were more likely to be in their minds." This is exegetical flew Lewis' failure to understand Jesus and the modern Testament in a political connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts is blatant. John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, amongst many studies, is a helpful corrective.

valley Stassen, in "Just Peacemaking," asserts: "It has become clear that efforts to confine the authority of Jesus' teachings about God's will to an inner, private, or individual realm, and to restrain them from having authority in societal or political relationships, are efforts at evasion that contradict Jesus' holistic faith that the supreme goodness is Lord of all life."

from one side of to the other against Lewis' reading of Jesus and the recent Testament, Stassen and other interpreters point to activist nonviolent "transforming initiatives" with direct real world political dependence of cause and effects in the "other cheek" passage, quite through the two sermons and the just discovered Testament.

The outstanding succinct application of mind that contradicts Lewis, is novel Testament scholar Richard Hay's "Violence in Defense of Justice". The homily he says, "teaches a norm of nonviolent be fond of of enemies." He then asks: "Do the other clauses in the canon reinforce the homily on the Mount's teaching upon nonviolence, or do they provide other options that might allow or require Christians to take up the sword?" He responds: "When the question is pos this way, the immediate flow is to underscore how impressively univocal is the testimony of the fresh Testament writers on this point."