preaching wolves and lambs

i'm thinking of doing a blog on preaching faith as a way of life. i have in mind to just post things from one or another spheres of life (family, work, citizenship, arts/culture are the four umbrella categories we're working with now) that connect with the coming week's lessons. for now, i'll just make some comments here from time to time and i'll try to categorize them. this one is citizenship.

this week the old testament passage is isaiah 11: 1-10, including this famous image: "the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them."

at the moment, i am also reading jean bethke elshtain's book just war on terror where she attributes a quote to martin luther that in this life, anyway, "if the lion lies down with the lamb, the lamb needs to be replaced frequently." she actually can't find the exact reference, but it fits with luther's sense that war is justified exactly because we need to assure the protection of our vulnerable neighbor. see his on whether a soldier, too, can be saved or on temporal authority. here are elshtain's reflections in a pew forum on the issue of just war, including comments by stanley hauerwas. more on him in my next post, since we hosted him here at the center tuesday night this week.

so between these two, we've got some tension going for reflections during advent--it makes me think of bono's words in 'peace on earth' from the album 'all you can't leave behind': 'peace on earth. hear it every christmas time, but hope and history won't rhyme, so what's it worth, this peace on earth.'

well, preachers, that's pretty much the gauntlet we're facing. go to it, and i'll report on what i come up with. i'm preaching at st. pauls, old saybrook, ct.

anon, and +peace

Comments

[Joshua]

Have you looked into much of Oliver O'Donovan's work on the issue of war, citizenship, etc. I find it to be a good reinterpretation of Augustine for today, especially Res. and the Moral Order, The Desire of the Nations, and his most recent Just War Revisited. His account is much more compelling than Elstains in my opinion.

[Michael Kunz]

Wow. Some good stuff you linked us to.

I just finished reading the Pew Forum piece that you linked us to. Elshtain's just war argument resonates with me, although I'm with you in one of your previous comments in observing that what the U.S. has going on in Iraq doesn't fit the criteria of a just war, because it was not clearly in the defense of "innocents". The "war on terrorism" comes closer to that; in fact, the "war on drugs" comes closer to those criteria.

Elshtain observed that Bonhoeffer's mantra was not "is it the right thing to do", but, rather, "what will the future generation look like." You might be able to guess a mantra that I would also suggest be put into the conversation: "How does this serve the spread of Christ's Gospel and Domain?" Maybe that's what Bonhoeffer was alluding to.

Thanks for the links and the conversation!

Peace,

Michael Kunz