Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

by N.T. Wright

Even to consider the prospect of violence as permissible or divinely sanctioned enters into a morally fraught space. There is a reasonable argument for a just war against a foreign invader, but a justification for anti-government revolutionary violence against one’s own civic leaders and against one’s fellow citizens is more precarious. To take up arms or to use the might of a mob against one’s own people is an ethical minefield. We are told by Jesus not to take ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘when someone hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one towards him’.55 Paul also taught, ‘Never repay anyone evil for evil,’56 because to resist evil with evil is to create a never-ending spiral that destroys everything and everyone in its path. One could also argue – that is, purely pragmatically! – that non-violent movements tend to be, more often than not, more successful than violent ones.57 The ethics of militant resistance and uncivil disobedience is notoriously complex and disputed.58 Political theorists such as John Rawls have condoned militant and uncivil resistance to authorities that do not meet the criterion of being ‘nearly just’.59 The Czech Catholic political philosopher and anti-Communist activist Tomáš Halík writes: