Born in the first century, Marcion of Sinope (85-160 AD) imagined himself a disciple of Saint Paul, but he insisted that there were actually two Gods, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. The former was “the Demiurge.” He was “severely just,” but inferior to the “loving-kind” God revealed in the New Testament through His son, Jesus Christ.

Marcion was ex-communicated from the church of Rome in 144 and then denounced by the early Church fathers as heretical.

Orthodox Christianity has always maintained that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New—Jesus Christ, God the Son—are one and the same.

Yet as fundamental a proposition this is to Christian thought, Western Christians, and American Christians specifically, too often sound as if they are channeling the spirit of Marcion when it comes to the subject of Christianity and violence.

The truth is that Jesus who commanded His disciples to turn the other cheek and love their enemies is the same God, according to Christian doctrine, who flooded the Earth, drowning—with the obvious exceptions of Noah, his family, and two of each species of animal that He chose to spare—every living animal and human the globe over.

It is Jesus who destroyed, through fire and brimstone, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was Jesus who visited numerous plagues upon the Egyptians, climaxing in the deaths of their firstborn sons.

It was Jesus who commanded the Israelites to eliminate every man, woman, child, and animal among the Canaanites, and who commanded Saul to do the same with respect to the Amalekites.

It was Jesus whose anger resulted in the deaths of 24,000 Israelites for their sexual immorality.

It was Jesus who sent two bears to maul to death 42 youths who mocked the baldness of the prophet Elisha.

As for the New Testament:

All four canonical Gospels tell us that such was Jesus’ indignation toward the merchants in the Temple court for reducing His Father’s house to a den of iniquity that He flipped over their tables as He drove them out with a whip.

Jesus commands those of His disciples who hadn’t yet obtained a sword to sell their garments and purchase one.

The book of Revelation, to paraphrase one scholar, is perhaps the most relentlessly bellicose piece of literature ever produced by any religious tradition. It is here that Jesus returns and conquers all the enemies of God. Moreover, He conquers them in shockingly brutal fashion, vanquishing them to endure agonizing pain and suffering for the rest of eternity; (That the language in Revelation is symbolic, not literal, goes no distance toward neutralizing the author’s point that God’s enemies will suffer the cruelest oft fates—eternal existence without God).

Contemporary Christians, deeply disturbed, as they are, by the foregoing episodes, busily attempt to interpret, or reinterpret, such passages in the service of sustaining their preferred pacifist picture of Jesus. Tellingly, these Christians never consider that perhaps a more reasonable hermeneutic regarding Scripture is the other way around. A more coherent understanding of the Bible generally and of Jesus specifically is accessible  by reading the pacifist-friendly passages of Jesus together with what is said about Jesus and divine revelation elsewhere in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Even within the Gospels we encounter violent imagery , e.g., when Jesus repeatedly, and in the most graphic of terms, assures His friends and enemies  that there will be “wailing and gnashing of teeth,” eternal agony, for those who don’t believe in Him.

The overwhelming evidence for Jesus’ teaching on righteous violence in no way undermines His title as the Prince of Peace. Yet Jesus is  Prince of Peace precisely because He is “a man of war” (Exodus 15:3). For as unsettling, as this way of putting the matter may be, it is nonetheless accurate. Peace and war are not mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary, one cannot choose peace unless one possesses the skill and the will, i.e., the choice, to make war.

In other words, a person who, due to weakness, has neither the ability nor the inclination to employ the force needed to protect himself and others from belligerents is emphatically not a peacemaker. He doesn’t choose to refrain from using violence in defense of innocent life. He has no other option . He must hope (and maybe pray) that others do the same, that they decide not to harm him or his own. Yet his weakness is no virtue.

Such a person is no more a genuine peacemaker than  someone who is involuntarily celibate can be commended for possessing the virtue of chastity.  

The peaceful person, the peacemaker, is the person who  can wage war but chooses to forego it. And the greater the capacity and skill for violence, the greater and more deserving of commendation is the peacemaker.

Jesus is indeed the Prince of Peace, for there is no one who is more masterful in the deployment of violence, and no one more justified in visiting violence upon His enemies, than God Himself. And yet, through His mercy, He chose instead to save His human creatures and His plan of salvation entailed His becoming one of them and suffering and dying in their place.

It’s crucial for Christians to rethink the Marcionite conception of God. Marcionism remains every bit as heretical today as it was in the second century. And to be the kind of peacemaker that Christ called “blessed,” His disciples must aspire to follow in His footsteps and make themselves into warriors, i.e., into men and women with the ability  to use violence—but only if necessary. Only such people can and will choose nonviolence, peace, if at all possibles.

Blessed are the peacemakers.