Walter Wink Beyond Just War And Pacifism Summary

In Walter Wink's “Beyond Just War and Pacifism,” Wink interprets . He believes that instead of us taking nonviolence as not fighting back and letting ourselves be attacked. We should instead try to find nonviolent, but is not a cowardly submission, way to fight back against the evil.

Wink believes that although Jesus does not propose armed revolution. He does lay the ground work for social revolutions. He believes Jesus wanted us to have an active nonviolent resistance to evil. One that was not passive but instead aggressive and courageous.

He describes how all this was the view of the Christian church until they came under the “‘conversion’ of Constantine” (Wink 288). Here, Christianity became directly tied to that of the empires, and making the enemies of the empire the Churches enemies and bringing into the world the just war way of thinking.

Wink describes that for a war to be “just,” it must meet certain criteria, like a last resort or to have a just cause, as well as other conditions for the conduct of war to be permissible such as treating war prisoners humanely.

The problem is that these few criteria for a just war aren’t easy to apply. According to Wink the criteria themselves is not the problem “but the fact that they have been subordinated to the myth of redemptive violence” (Wink 290). Making the just war theory a way to try and justify wars that are unjustifiable. Leading him to believe we should instead change the just war criteria to violence-reduction criteria, since that is what we are all after in the long run. He believes this will be a good medium for both advocates of nonviolence and the just

criteria.
In the end wink believes that it’s time for Christians to stop thinking about the idea of just wars. As well as retire the word “pacifist”, since it is too closely related to the word passivity. We should return to our “peace church” heritage and stop trying to justify war or any violence as good. While changing the just war criteria into the violence-reduction criteria to lessen the devastation by war from a nonviolence position.
In terms of the reading Wink would interpret the “Eye for Eye” as don’t fight back against evil with evil but instead find a different way to fight and free yourself from its hold. If someone slaps you turn the other cheek in a way that they can’t slap you again. If they sue you give them your shirt and coat so they have nothing to sue you for again. If someone forces you to go a mile give them two so they cannot force you to take another. This way you have not fought back against evil with evil but instead a nonviolent, non-submissive way.
While as for the reading of “Love for Enemies”, Wink would interpret as a teaching to try and make us be more like god. To shower evil with good, that we shouldn’t just be nice to the people who are nice to us but to be nice to those who are even bad to us. Connecting us to god, his violence-reduction criteria would be a way of doing this. Instead of just letting other be violent while being non-violent we should find a way to lessen the rest of the violence around us.