Inbox: Isn't the embrace of Christian Nonviolence a case of over-realized eschatology?

It can be among those who argue for it in universal terms, who insist on it for the nations this side of glory. Or to put it differently, they too are Transformationalists of a kind who believe the Kingdom is expressed in terms of worldly power, politics, and culture.

In their case, they (rightly) understand the peace ethic of the Kingdom (to a point), but wrongly believe that the Kingdom is manifest in the present age and outside of the Church. Their eschatological-Kingdom concepts are confused and it translates into misguided Christian living and ethics. In this case the problematic ethics I refer to are not their nonviolence but their politicking.

Their error is ultimately the same as that of the Dominionists but I will grant them this –they are (at least) being more consistent in terms of what the Kingdom means and how it looks. But having divorced it from the Church-Temple-Covenant-Union concepts found in the New Testament (or confused them) they are misapplying it and like their Dominionist cousins, they are (in the end) refusing to take up the cross. For them cross bearing is a means not an end. Ultimately they are after political standing and power – at which point they would set aside their cross bearing. Quaker rule in colonial Pennsylvania represents the most poignant example of this – and the story is one of failure.

This is why some make a distinction between not just pacifism and non-violence but even non-violence and non-resistance. The latter is the New Testament position as so many verses testify. Non-resistance is not interested in trying to affect the political order but instead follows the New Testament on these points, from the Sermon on the Mount to Peter and Paul's many exhortations in the epistles.

In addition, the pacifist/non-violence camps fail to take into account the nature of this age – which is still a present evil age. Also, they seem to miss that this age will end in destruction and wrath – the righteous Judgment of God meted out to the children of wrath and the kingdoms of this world that are subject to the god of this world. Pacifism is not an absolute. Christ is coming in wrath and judgment but in his case (as opposed to individuals and nations) the violence (so to speak) is righteous and holy.

For Christians, the ethic of non-violence/non-resistance is covenantal and eschatological and there is no expectation of actualization in this age of wars and rumours of wars. It's specifically a Christian calling to take up the cross. This doesn't mean that others who engage in violence are okay in doing so – by no means. But their problem is not the violence per se (though it will condemn them) but the fact that they reject Christ and instead embrace the Cainite ethics of Lamech – that of unrighteous and self-serving (even self-idolatrous) vengeance.

Again, this is true of nations as much as individuals. A nation like Assyria, Babylon, Rome, or America might be used as a Providential tool of judgment but in the Biblical examples those bestial powers are in turn judged. They were used by God but their motives were not godly and though their wicked aims were steered to a purpose – they are not 'off the hook' as it were. They must answer for their deeds and they too face judgment. Think of Joseph's brothers or the men who schemed to put Daniel into the lion's den.

So it was with Assyria, Babylon, and Rome – and so it is with other more contemporary empires like Tsarist Russia, Soviet Russia, the British Empire, the German and French Empires, and without a doubt the American Empire is being set up for a tremendous fall – and rightly so.

God makes providential provision with the powers that be. They are ministers of providential judgment and yet are not of the Kingdom as they (unlike Zion) shall perish – contrary to the scripture twisting of some transformationalists who believe the state and the ethnos have a role to play in the age to come.