Richard Hays on Christian Just War vs. Jesus’ Teaching and Example

In a world torn by violence, the distinctive vocation of Jesus’ followers is to renounce violence and seek where there is strife to make peace. No other issue is more urgent. But on hardly any other issue has the church so massively failed to embody the promise of the resurrection. In the wake of the Constantinian settlement, the church has found ways to baptize violence, to construct theories of “just war” so called, that have no basis whatever in the teaching or example of Jesus, and generally to provide rationalizations for violent practices that imitate the Roman crucifiers of Jesus rather than imitating the way of the crucified one.

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