W ith the Grain o f the Universe:

Reexamining the Alleged N onviolent

Rejection o f Natural Law

Paul Martens

This essay challenges the prevailing p re s u m p tio n s concerning the antithetical

relationship betw e e n nonviolence and natural law. In conversation w ith the rep-
resentative natural la w positions offered by J. Daryl Charles and Jean Porter, I
turn to the fra m in g o f the relationship b e tw e e n the n e w la w and the natural
la w in A quinas's "Treatise on Law " and appeal to the w riting s o f J ohn H o w ard
Yoder and Sta nle y H a u e rw a s (s o m e tim e s against th e m s e lv e s ) in o rd e r to ar-
g ue th a t nonviolence can and should affirm natural la w in s o m e fo rm if it in-
tends to claim to represent "th e grain o f the universe."

IN T H E SE C O N D H ALF O F T H E T W E N T IE T H CENTURY, MANY

Christian ethicists agreed on two assumptions: (1) natural law must eventually
justify violence, especially if expressed in self-defense or through just war; and
(2) nonviolence is a sectarian option that necessarily stands in contrast to the
real world, that is, to the way the world naturally works. H ere I challenge the
legitimacy of these assumptions. By appealing to the writings of John Howard
Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas (perhaps the most im portant late-twentieth-cen-
tury advocates of Christian nonviolence), I suggest that the very convictions
that ground these assumptions (the definitions of natural law and the relation-
ship between nonviolence and the way the world works) are contested and,
therefore, open to possible revision.
To begin to revise the relationship between nonviolence and natural law, I
argue that the nonviolent appeal to “the grain of the universe” by Yoder and
Hauerwas, much like M artin Luther King Jr.’s reference to the arc of the moral
universe, implicitly entails a dependence on an understanding of natural law that
deserves attention and articulation.1T h e phrase “with the grain of the universe”
was used first by Yoder to name the fundamental logic or ordering of the uni-
verse, the “universe—that is, a single system—in which God acts and we act,”
to use the language of The Politics o f Jesus.1 It appears most famously in his

Paul Martens, PhD, is an associate professor at Baylor University, One Bear Place #97284,
Waco,TX 76798-7284; Paul_Martens@baylor.edu.

Journal o f the Society o f Christian Ethics, Z2, 2(2012): 113-131

114 · W ith th e Grain of th e Universe

conclusion to “Armaments and Eschatology,” and that invocation was then

borrowed by Hauerwas to title his Gifford Lectures: “T h e point that apoca-
lyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster
justice by the sword are not as strong as they think. . . . It is that people who
bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. . .. One comes to [that
belief] by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection and the
Lamb.”3 To defend the apparently counterintuitive thesis of this article, I be-
gin with the arguments that have justified or reinforced the prevailing assump-
tion that advocates of nonviolence must necessarily eschew the natural law.

The Alleged Nonviolent Rejection of Natural Law

T h e prevailing assumption that advocates of nonviolence reject natural law did

not appear in a vacuum. In fact, after Ernst Troeltsch’s early-twentieth-century
narration of these nonviolent groups in sectarian terms, Niebuhrian American
polemicization of this sectarian position soon entailed arguments necessitating
their rejection.4 O n this basis and against what was perceived as “the sectarian
temptation,” theologians on both Protestant and Catholic sides have advo-
cated a return to the centrality of natural law with a stake in denying nonvio-
lence a defining role in natural law thinking.5 In the following I sketch two rep-
resentative samples of this argument, the first by J. Daryl Charles (a popular
Protestant account) and the second by Jean Porter (a more rigorous Catholic
account). O f course, advocates of nonviolence have, to some extent, invited this
conclusion in their own denigrations of natural law. Therefore, after present-
ing the charges of Charles and Porter, I also present self-incriminating repre-
sentative comments from both Yoder and Hauerwas that support the prevail-
ing assumption. Only after all of this prosecuting evidence is marshaled can a
full defense of nonviolence’s dependence on natural law be presented.

J. D aryl Charles and the Need fo r Public M orality

Charles is one of the central figures at the forefront of the contemporary
Protestant retrieval of natural law. In his short essay “Protestants and Natural
Law,” Charles presents a kind of “state of the discourse” summary containing
his basic narrative concerning the devaluation of the natural law. T he narra-
tive begins with Karl Barth. For Charles, the famous debate between Barth and
Emil Brunner crystallizes the issue: “T h e critical question is whether basic
moral truths are present and operative within fallen human beings by nature,
and thus whether human beings can be held accountable for their actions.”6
W hether Charles is right in this conclusion will not be debated here. W hat mat-
ters is his response to this critical question: for Roman Catholics and the his­
 Paul Martens · 115

toric Christian tradition, the answer is yes, basic moral truths are present and
operative in fallen human beings by nature; for Protestants, there is consider-
able equivocation. For Charles, this latter ambiguous state of affairs is a prob-
lem with serious moral ramifications.
After Barth, according to Charles’s narration, a new species of opposition
to natural law emerges with an emphasis on “radical obedience” to the bibli-
cal witness of Jesus.7 Charles singles out two exemplars of this opposition: Yo-
der and Hauerwas.8 Invoking The Politics o f Jesus, Charles argues that Yoder re-
jects what Yoder takes to be pagan philosophical influence (e.g., the Stoic
emphasis on reason and natural law) that allowed the Christian church to make
peace with Constantinianism. Against his own pessimistic conviction that po-
litical power is always evil, Yoder’s alternative— “radical obedience to Jesus’s
ethic of nonviolent resistance to political and social oppression”—is drawn
from the sixteenth-century Anabaptists.9 Recognizing the Catholic and Protes-
tant persecution of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, Charles is sensitized to
Yoder’s resistance to natural law (at least partially by the fact that Charles him-
self grew up “in the M ennonite tradition”).10 Yet, he continues, “Yoder is at his
worst to the extent that he is unwilling to submit his notion of moral forma-
tion—and Christian social ethics—to the collective wisdom of the historic
Christian tradition.”11 To bring his discussion of Yoder to an end, Charles of-
fers two differing though related reasons why Yoder rejects natural law. First,
he concludes that, given Yoder’s overarching commitment to “ideological pad-
fism,” his rejection of natural law should be viewed as a result of his pacifist
ethics. Second, he concludes that Yoder, like Barth, believes that natural law is
“an addition” to the W ord of God as divine revelation.
In short order, Charles then turns to Hauerwas, whose confessed debts to
Yoder in these matters shines through in Hauerwas’s own “ideological pacifism”
and “deep-seated distrust of natural-law thinking.”12 According to Charles, the
same negative evaluation of the adoption of natural law by Christendom in sup-
port of a “culturally assimilationist” agenda is also present in Hauerwas. Hauer-
was clearly rejects a “universal” ethic grounded in human nature per se; he
clearly rejects an autonomous realm of morality separate from C hrist’s Lord-
ship. Further and finally, he suggests that natural law “offers justification” for
war and violence, which is necessarily “cooperating with sin.”13
Charles’s placing of Yoder and Hauerwas (and, by extension, their nonvio-
lence) as a distortion of and therefore outside the natural law discourse is not
benign. In Charles’s pseudo-Niebuhrian critique (borrowed from C. S. Lewis’s
Christian Reflections14), these two radicals are attempting to begin Christian
ethics with a tabula rasa. Charles thereby suggests that Yoder and Hauerwas ad-
here to a kind of revelational positivism.15 H e then charges them with posing a
false dichotomy between nature and grace that thereby renders them incapable
of entering the public square and contributing meaningfully to civil society.
116 · W ith th e Grain of the Universe

Implicit in this conclusion is the assumption that public morality must rest upon
public principles, which must in turn rest upon “the fabric of creation.”16
At bottom, however, Charles’s derision of Yoder and Hauerwas is rooted in
his fear of disorder (or a need for orderly accountability). H e explains his ap-
peal to creation as the means to reestablish the priority of law in support of or-
der. “Since law is part of creation, the order of things as they are, it is a bibli-
cal, an anthropological, and an eminently theological question: H um an beings
cannot avoid or deny their true nature, which, made in the image of God,
seeks order.” H e continues with a rather blunt account of the transitive prop-
erties assumed in his understanding of cosmic reality: “Thus, natural theology
concerns cosmic reality, not human autonomy. And cosmic reality entails law.
T he structure of law is such that it informs the commandments and forms the
basis for ethics. T h e New Covenant in no way abrogates this moral reality.
Therefore, law cannot be severed from authentic Christian religion and social
ethics.”17
Despite the internal difficulties in his argument (e.g., the question-begging
nature of his appeal to “the collective wisdom of the historic Christian tradi-
tion”18 and the ambiguous invocation of “order” and “law” without a clear def-
inition or differentiation between natural, divine, or positive law or a developed
account of how they are related), Charles is correct in that, if his understand-
ing of natural law is the core of Christian ethics, then, as Yoder and Hauerwas
conclude, nonviolence must necessarily reject it.

Jean Porter and the Dialectical Process o f M utual Interpretation

If Charles’s attempt to distinguish natural law from nonviolence contains the
sophomoric flaws of American Protestantism’s eager twenty-first century em-
brace of natural law, the same cannot be said of Jean Porter.19 Porter’s Natural
and Divme Law is a greatly underappreciated recent text that addresses the re-
lationship between natural law and scripture in unmatched detail and nuance.
Inevitably, she too is forced to wrestle with the challenge Yoder and Hauerwas
pose to the usefulness of the natural law. In her narrative they run aground on
the scholastic commitment to equality as a central value for a Christian social
ethic. According to Porter, Yoder and Hauerwas argue that “the foundational
Christian value is not equality but non-violence.”20 W hether this conclusion
is accurate will not be debated here. W h at matters for Porter is what is at stake
in these theologies of nonviolence that seem to truncate the biblical canon: the
conviction that a Christian ethic must be grounded in the uniqueness of Jesus’s
person and message as revealed in the New Testament. Like Charles, Porter
cites Yoder’s The Politics o f Jesus to this effect: “God broke through the borders
of our standard definition of what is human and gave a new, formative défini-
tion in Jesus.”21
 Paul M artens · 117

Rather than follow Charles in opposing a radically biblicist nonviolence

against natural law, Porter suggests that choosing one or the other is precisely
the problem.22 Looking back beyond perceptions of the contemporary divide,
she points out that the scholastics provide the example of intratextual scriptural
reading that attempts to reconcile a theologically informed understanding of
natural law and the particularity of Jesus Christ revealed in scripture. She
explains:
For the scholastics, the concept of the natural law is explicitly present as a
scriptural concept, and they find both warrants and interpretive guidance for
their appropriation of the earlier natural law tradition in their reading of
Scripture. It is true that they also interpret Scripture at some points on the
basis of their concept of natural law. But this is not a matter of reading Scrip-
ture through the lens of an alien philosophical doctrine, because their con-
cept of the natural law cannot be equated with its pre-Christian an-
tecedents. . . . In this sense, when the scholastics use their concept of the
natural law to interpret specific scriptural texts, they are interpreting Scrip-
ture (as represented by a particular text) by Scripture (taken as a whole,
through the medium of theological reflection).23

T herefore, according to Porter, the fundamental difference between the

scholastics and the contemporary nonviolent theologians is a doctrinal differ-
ence: the latter consider the distinctiveness of Jesus Christ as the criterion for
an adequate Christian ethics, and the former give priority to preserving the in-
tegrity of Christian doctrine as a whole, and especially to the role of the doc-
trine of creation.24 Porter sides with the scholastics. And she is prepared to lean
on Aquinas and endorse the human inclination toward self-preservation, which
includes self-defense and retaliation if they are understood in terms of the au-
thentic human goods they serve. Given the scholastic concept of natural law,
these inclinations reflect the goodness of human nature and the wisdom and
love of its creator.25 Consequently and insofar as self-preservation may be ex-
pressed as self-defense, advocates of nonviolence are also forced to reject
Porter’s appropriation of the natural law.

Nonviolent Self-Incriminations

One does not need to look far in the corpus of either Yoder or Hauerwas to
find comments that could also be construed as rejections of natural law think-
ing. Perhaps the most famous statement in Yoder’s corpus appears in the first
chapter of The Politics o f Jesus. “W hether [the] ethic of natural law be encoun-
tered in the reformation form, where it is called an ethic of ‘vocation’ or of the
‘station,’ or in the currently popular form of the ‘ethic of the situation,’ or in
118 * W ith th e Grain of th e Universe

the older catholic forms where ‘nature’ is known in other ways, the structure
of the argument is the same: it is by studying the realities around us, not by
hearing a proclamation from God, that we discern the right.”26
Hauerwas is no less compliant in providing suitable polemics. In The Peace-
able Kingdom, he explicitly links his own position to that of Barth.

Even though Protestants have been less confident in natural theology or a

natural law ethic, they also assume theology begins primarily with prolegom-
ena. Also, especially since the nineteenth century, they have tried to prepare
the way for doing theology with anthropology, attempting to show the in-
telligibility of theological claims. Often what was done in that respect was
“ethical” insofar as ethics is understood to involve accounts of human exis-
tence, but this often resulted in theology being no more than, in Karl Barths’
memorable phrase, “talking about man in a loud voice.”27

Several pages later, Hauerwas launches into a list of difficulties entailed in be-
ginning Christian ethics with natural law. H e levels the following charges
against natural law: (1) It creates a distorted moral psychology because judg-
ments are made about actions irrespective of the dispositions of the agent; (2)
it fails to provide an adequate account of how theological convictions are a
morality (i.e., how they form a moral community); (3) it confases the claim that
Christian ethics is an ethic that we should and can commend to anyone; (4) it
fails to appreciate that there is no actual universal morality; (5) it fails to pro-
vide the critical perspective for the church necessary to challenge the inherent
violence in the world; (6) it ignores the narrative character of Christian con-
viciions; and (7) it tempts Christians to coerce those who disagree with them
since it assumes the moral high ground in all disputes.28
Yoder, borrowing from and adding to Hauerwas’s list, has his own list of the
failures of natural law reasoning. In his unpublished “Regarding N ature,” cir-
culated in January 1994, he notes that the appeal to “nature” cannot (1) resolve
the tension between the given and the critical; (2) adjudicate debates between
different definitions of the given; (3) resolve the paradox of someone with a par-
ticular position telling others what they are supposed already naturally to
know;29 and (4) ultimately keep the promise of offering security and validation
through ontology (i.e., resolving “ought” conflicts by an “is” claim).30
Each of these claims deserves farther scrutiny, to be sure, but their reitera-
tion here simply serves to contribute to the mounting evidence that advocates
of nonviolence (represented by Yoder and Hauerwas) must necessarily reject
the natural law in their articulation of Christian ethics. One final comment also
deserves mention because it takes Yoder’s position to the extreme. In addition
to directly challenging the validity of the natural law, Yoder goes one step fur-
ther and undermines its authority even among those who allegedly hold it dear.
In Nonviolence—A B rief History, he suggests that the heart of the moral life of
 Paul M artens · 119

the ordinary Catholic believer lies neither in canon law nor in episcopal loy-
alty nor in natural law. Rather, the heart of Catholic moral life has more to do
with the lives of the saints, with the cultivation of virtues, and with the lived
experiences of family and community.31

Reexamining the Definition of Natural Law

If I were writing this essay as a scholastic argument, this would be the place to
insert a poignant sed contra. And, if I were to insert a sed contra, it would be the
following quote drawn from Paul Ramsey’s Nine Modem Moralists: “Christian
ethics, especially in Protestant circles, is bedeviled by the fact that, whether we
come to praise or to bury them, we always have in mind continental theories
of the natural law. We have in mind a whole realm populated by universal prin-
ciples.”32 In this way, Ramsey reminds us that “natural law” is not a static con-
cept but rather a notion that has a history, a history that contains diverse def-
initions that may be either helpful or harmful. Again, Porter is very useful in
illuminating why we ought to step behind the radical autonomy of natural law
asserted in the early modern period to reexamine the significantly different me-
dieval interpretations of natural law.33 She argues that, at bottom, the medieval
concept of nature was theological and developed with key scriptural texts taken
from Genesis and the Pauline letters.34 Therefore, the complex ancient and me-
dieval philosophical traditions of reason and nature are brought into a conver-
sation with scripture and not merely accepted uncritically O n this basis, she
argues, the theological background of natural law helped the scholastics develop
a critical perspective to distinguish between those aspects of human nature that
are normative and those that are not.35
T h e example of Thom as Aquinas can be drawn forward as an example to il-
lústrate Porter’s argument. Aquinas begins his “Treatise on Law” {Summa the-
ologiae I—II, 90-108) by arguing that “law is something pertaining to reason”
(90.1).36 H e concludes that law “is nothing else than an ordinance of reason
for the common good, made [and promulgated] by him who has care of the
community” (90.4).37 W hat follows then reveals the depth of Aquinas’s theo-
logical commitments: “A law is nothing else but a dictate of practical reason
emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community. N ow it is evident,
granted that the world is ruled by Divine Providence . . . that the whole com-
munity of the universe is governed by Divine Reason” (91.1). T he law contained
in the mind of God is referred to as eternal law and, since all things are ruled
and measured by eternal law, Aquinas argues that it is evident that all some-
how share in it (i.e., their tendencies to their own proper acts and ends rise from
its impression) (91.2). In sum, this sharing of intelligent creatures in the eter-
nal law—the divinely ordered community of the universe—is what, Aquinas
120 * W ith the Grain of th e Universe

concludes, is called “natural law.” As Porter notes, Aquinas does not shy away
from scriptural support, drawn from Psalm 4:6, for his conclusion.

Hence the Psalmist after saying: Offer up the sacrifice of justice, as though
someone asked what the works of justice are, adds: many say, Who showeth us
good things? In answer to which question he says: The light of Thy countenance,
0 Lord, is signed upon us: thus implying that the light of natural reason,
whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of
the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light (91.2).

Aquinas then moves to introduce human law, the process of making more
specific arrangements about human community in accordance with the natu-
ral law (91.3). And, if this is all he had to say, then there is little doubt that
Charles’s confidence in the possibility of establishing public morality on the ba-
sis of “the fabric of creation” would be warranted. At times it even appears that
Charles wants to affirm (implicitly) that a divine law besides natural law and
the human laws deriving from it would seem to be unnecessary (91.4). After
all, the first principle of natural law is fairly straightforward: good is to be
sought and done, and evil is to be avoided (94.2). All secondary principles of
natural law, therefore, are merely specifications of this principle according to
the three stages of natural tendencies: (1) to the nature humans share with all
substances (i.e., to preserve one’s natural being); (2) to the nature humans share
with other animals (i.e., to reproduce and educate one’s young); and (3) to the
nature humans possess as rational (i.e., that humans should know truths about
God and live in society) (94.2). Following this logic, it is expected that Porter
will argue that to preserve one’s natural being (and, perhaps, one’s young and
even one’s society) with violence, if necessary, is a reasonable expression of the
first principle of natural law.
Therefore, to illuminate how nonviolence m ight align with natural law
properly understood, it is necessary to attend to the complete process of re-
turning to the “Treatise on Law” in the Summa (which is frequently artificially
cut short by concluding with human law).38 To read further is to attend to the
reasons why Aquinas believes the divine law is necessary: (1) humans are des-
tined to an end beyond their natural abilities (i.e., to eternal happiness) and
therefore must be directed by a divinely given law above natural and human
law; (2) human untrustworthiness provides differing decisions about human
conduct that result in diverse and conflicting laws on contingent and particu-
lar issues; (3) humans are incompetent to judge their own inward behavior; and
(4) human law cannot forbid or punish all wrongdoing (91.4). Therefore, in ad-
dition to the precepts of the natural law, some other principles are needed,
namely, precepts of divine law (91.4).
Having followed Aquinas in a rather straightforward and uncontested man-
ner this far, it is precisely at this point—at the point where the divine law be­
 Paul M artens * 121

comes necessary for rightly reorienting human beings to the eternal law—that
I would like to press elements of his thought against its own gravitational pull
toward legitimating violence as an expression of Christian “doing good.” This
gravitational pull is facilitated by the separation of a hum an’s natural and su-
pernatural end and encouraged by limiting the new law to grace and, there-
fore, virtually limiting the new law to the work of the H oly Spirit.
T he first of these elements lies latent already in Aquinas’s rationale for the
necessity of the divine law when he claims that “by the natural law the eternal
law is participated proportionately to the capacity of human nature. But to his
supernatural end man needs to be directed in a yet higher way. Hence the ad-
ditional law given by God, whereby man shares more perfectly in the eternal
law” (91.4). By the time he turns to addressing the divine law more fully, how-
ever, Aquinas acknowledges that the human law is directed toward tranquility
in temporal affairs while the divine law is directed toward bringing human be-
ings to the attainment of eternal happiness (98.1).39 Further, in his discussion
of the new law, the separation is entrenched by tying grace to internal matters
of faith and reason to the moral precepts of the law (108.2).
Once natural and supernatural ends are distinguished in this way, it be-
comes easier to claim that the first grace of the new law is the grace of the
H oly Spirit given inwardly (106.2). T his distinction also facilitates a farther
problem between the old law as external and the new law as internal: the for-
m er threatens and the latter justifies; the “letter” kills but the “spirit” gives
life (106.3).40
Against this trajectory, and in fall awareness that I am working against the
current of Thom istic scholarship, I now draw out the full picture and attend
to what Aquinas calls the “second element” of the evangelical law (106.2). His
gloss on John 1:14—17 provides exactly the Christological key that the advo-
cates of nonviolence need if they are to disturb the accepted distinction between
natural and supernatural ends, namely, the Incarnation.
Hence it is written (John 1:14): The Word was made flesh, and afterwards: full
° f g>'ace and truth; and further on: O f His fullness we all have received, and grace
for grace. Hence it is added that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Conse-
quently it was becoming that the grace which flows from the incarnate Word
should be given to us by means of certain external sensible objects; and that
from this inward grace, whereby the flesh is subjected to the Spirit, certain
external works should ensue. (108.1)
Christ, “the Lawgiver,” brings grace but also evokes external works that are
brought forth by “the promptings of grace” (108.1). Specifically, although ad-
mitting that the kingdom of God consists primarily in inner actions, Aquinas
claims that everything required for these interior actions also concerns the king-
dom of God. H e continues, “if the kingdom of God is internal righteousness,
122 · W ith the Grain of th e Universe

peace, and spiritual joy, all external acts that are incompatible with righteous-
ness, peace, and spiritual joy, are in opposition to the kingdom of G od” (108.1).
Here, and again in 108.4, Aquinas offers an appeal to the unity of righteous-
ness, peace, and joy as a criterion for evaluating both internal and external ac-
tion befitting the kingdom of God.41
W ith this, advocates of nonviolence find a Thomistic conclusion from which
they can engage all actions and not merely the internal life. O f course, this is
not to suggest that Aquinas does not believe that violence is inherently evil.42
It is to suggest that all actions undertaken by Christians must align with the
unity of righteousness, peace, and joy mediated through the divine law, which
thereby refines and corrects the conclusions of fallen human law. Aquinas says
as much himself: because humans are untrustworthy in providing decisions
about human conduct on contingent and particular issues, the divine law pro-
vided in and through the scriptures reorients Christians toward the divine or-
dering of the community of the universe (91.4).
Drawing forward Christ as “the Lawgiver”—as the W ord/Logos/Law made
flesh—and demonstrating that the evangelical law entails external actions, how-
ever, does not resolve all of the contentious issues separating advocates of non-
violence and those that appeal to the natural law in support of violence. Yet it
does open the possibility, internal to Aquinas’s own argument, of appealing to
Christ as the revelation of divine law that necessarily corrects the failures of
human understandings of “good” and “evil” in the first principle of natural law,
corrects misguided secondary applications of the first principle of natural law,
and attempts to define external relations by human law alone. Furthermore, a
distinction has slipped into this discussion with little fanfare, but it is a distinc-
tion that merits attention given the previous arguments against nonviolence.
For Aquinas, life lived according to the divine law must look different from life
lived apart from the divine law for good theological reasons.
In what remains, I reexamine and assess the arguments provided by Charles,
Porter, and the advocates of nonviolence that allege a natural law that accepts
violence as natural in certain circumstances. Keeping Aquinas’s less emphasized
theological convictions in the forefront, I argue that Charles actually depends
more on a particular Christology than he alleges, that a refined eschatological
orientation must be added to Porter’s emphasis on creation, and that Yoder and
Hauerwas actually have positive, even if undeveloped, accounts of natural law.

A Return to Natural Law in a New Vein

Earlier I sought to use Aquinas to revisit the relationship between Jesus Christ
and the natural law for the purpose of clarifying a theological understanding
of the natural law that is dependent on the revelation contained in the Chris­
 Paul Martens * 123

tian scriptures, an understanding that is significantly different from the secu-

lar autonomous accounts that have come to dominate ethical and theological
conversations since the late modern era. Redefining the natural law as a theo-
logical category radically changes the tenor of the conversation and shifts the
loci of debate. W ith this shift in mind, I return to the arguments for the al-
leged rejection of natural law by proponents of Christian nonviolence.

J. D aryl Charles and the Cross o f Christ

In his critique of Yoder and Hauerwas, Charles argued that they are incapable
of entering the public square and contributing meaningfully to civil society be-
cause they appeal to the “radical obedience to Jesus” in opposition to public
principles. Yet Charles seems to make exactly this sort of “mistake” in his med-
ical ethics. I apologize if the following may look a bit like an ad hominem ar-
gument, but Charles aptly demonstrates that Protestants almost invariably still
appeal to Christ in one way or another to fill out the content of the natural law.
While writing on the topic of suffering, Charles acknowledges that, “in the eyes
of contemporary society,” suffering is meaningless and must be avoided at all
costs. T h e task of the Christian church, therefore, is daunting. An “im portant
‘plank’” in the work of the church is to “re-educate society regarding the ‘re-
demptive’ side of suffering.”43 This assertion leads one to suspect that Charles
holds that the church and the world are, in fact, speaking different languages
and, therefore, the world must be “re-educated.” This position hardly looks like
an appeal to public morality on the basis of shared public principles.
Further, Charles rightly notices that the desire to eliminate suffering can lead
to a “dehumanizing” effort that undermines the role of love, sacrifice, compas-
sion, community, and character in society. Yet, rather than appealing to natu-
ral law to affirm these profoundly im portant aspects of human existence, he ap-
peals to the 1984 apostolic letter Salvifici doloris (“T he Christian M eaning of
H um an Suffering”) by John Paul II. As if he senses the equivocation in his
methodology at this point, Charles notes there is much in the letter that com-
mends itself to all people of faith, and that it is a tool that should greatly en-
courage the Christian community to embody a redemptive presence in the
current cultural context. Yet Charles ultimately appeals to the “radical” claims
of Christianity concerning the cross of Christ in order to gain a critical dis-
tance necessary to “re-educate” society. H e summarizes, “John Paul’s basic the-
sis is that meaning can only be found in suffering as a result of revelation, and
specifically, the revelation of C hrist’s suffering on the Cross and redemption of
humankind that ensued.”44 This claim, however, is precisely the sort of claim
that Yoder and Hauerwas use for exactly the same formal purpose (i.e., the re-
education of society by witnessing to the truth of Christ as revealed in his will-
ingness to suffer on the cross). And, Charles’s attem pt to make this particular
124 · W ith the Grain of th e Universe

position “public” by “embodying it” and then wrestling “seriously with build-
ing bridges to surrounding pagan culture” simply echoes the nonviolent appeal
to the necessity of witness,45 followed also by Yoder’s attempt to speak to the
wider world through the use of “middle axioms” (in the 1960s),46 “interworld
transformational grammar” (in the 1980s), and even simple “semantic bridges”
(also in the 1980s),47 just with a little more angst. All of this suggests, there-
fore, that Charles is inconsistent both theologically and methodologically. And
I would venture to guess this has at least as much to do with his ideological
commitment to imposing a moral order (perhaps even through violence) as it
does with either natural law or the revelation of Christ’s suffering on the cross
and the redemption of humankind that ensued.

Jean Porter and the Christological Shape o f Creation

Undermining Charles’s argument by turning it on itself, however, does not re-
ally affirm a nonviolent position but merely illustrates, representatively, that
Protestants are still learning to navigate the complex relationship between Je-
sus Christ and the way the world works. Porter provides a much more coher-
ent and persuasive Catholic challenge by drawing on the natural law tradition
that many Protestants openly envy. By elevating creation within a thicker the-
ological reading of scripture, she notes that “the scholastic concept of the nat-
ural law . . . presupposes that there are certain qualities or traits that are char-
acteristic of human beings, in the strong sense that these characteristics must
be incorporated into any adequate account of what it is to be hum an.”48 Since
being human includes existing as a living organism, as an animal, and as a ra-
tional creature, characteristics of all of these must be included in an account of
what it means to be human. And, since self-preservation is a natural character-
istic of all living organisms, the same applies to humans as humans, which in-
eludes Christians as humans.
T h e issue that Hauerwas raises on this point is, I believe, the right issue.
In the short essay “N atural Law, Tragedy, and Ethics,” he argues that “sur-
vival is not and cannot be a proper end for the moral life.”49 T h e question he
means to force in this statement is the ideological question, the question con-
cerning the ultimate purpose of human life. Indirectly evoking the long his-
tory of Christian martyrdom, he continues: “For if the end of life is not sur-
vival, then the moral problem is how and under what condition would we be
willing to die and let others die.”50 Aquinas could be used to support this ar-
gum ent as he, too, asserts that “every law orders human conduct in view of a
definite end” (107.1).
Therefore, what Yoder and Hauerwas demand, in a way not evident in
Porter’s work on natural law, is an eschatological vision that rightly frames ere-
 Paul Martens * 125

ation as we experience it. Yoder’s comments in an early denominational jour-

nal succinctly set the agenda:
Certainly we should not “miss the orderliness of creation and commit hu-
man society to chaos and discord.” . . . But that orderliness does not arise out
of the considerations of things as they are; both its bindingness and its knowa-
bility are founded in the “new creation.” True enough, when all things are
made new in Christ, we can affirm that the old creation is fulfilled; yet we
can never tell what the new will be by extrapolating from the old. Only the
light of Christ can tell which of the structures and values which our fallen
minds observe in a fallen world are truly the constants of covenant history
[that are] usable in our witness to the world.51
Rather than focusing on Genesis and the letters of Paul to define the na-
ture of the universe, Yoder and Hauerwas also add (and perhaps privilege) the
Gospels and Revelation. O n this basis, they suggest that rooting the telos of
fallen creation in the eschaton “imparts to life a meaningfulness which it would
not otherwise have.” Grounded on the belief that Jesus reigns at the hand of
God, their eschatology includes “a hope which, defying present frustration, de-
fines a present position in terms of the yet unseen goal which gives it mean-
ing.”52 As the quote regarding the grain of the universe at the beginning of this
essay indicates, the point of an eschatological view is that the present can never
be definitive for understanding either the grain of the universe or the natural
law. And what, for Yoder and Hauerwas, instantiates the eschatological vision
of the universe?: the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. T h ere is
no sharp separation of natural and supernatural ends in the Incarnation. For
these advocates of nonviolence, the life of Jesus clarifies existence in line with
the ultimate telos of the universe, a position summed up best by the final
kenotic lines of Yoder’s The Politics o f Jesus: “O ur Lamb has conquered: him let
us follow.”53
Having asserted this much, however, is not to say that all the questions have
been solved. T here is much detail that has been quickly glossed. T h at said, what
I have tried to do by giving Yoder and Hauerwas considerable latitude here is
simply to suggest that it is possible to begin to reframe the divine ordering of
the universe in a way that allows Christ a definitive role as the W ord through
which all was created, as the W ord made flesh, and as the Lamb that reigns
with God. And, in this way, the nature of the universe cannot be properly un-
derstood without theologically wrestling with Jesus Christ as truly human and
as the Son of God. For example, please allow a brief return to the notion of
equality at the root of Porter’s critique of both Yoder and Hauerwas.
Porter’s assertion that scholastic natural law is a fundamental expression of
the equality of moral capacity shared by all normal adults is right.54 T here are
good reasons to affirm this conclusion as an advance over moralities constrained
126 * W ith the Grain of th e Universe

by class, race, and nationality. King, too, would strongly affirm this conclusion
since it aligns with his conviction that G od “has placed within the very strac-
ture of the universe certain absolute moral laws,” a conviction that provides him
with assurance that the truth concerning the evils of racism will ultimately
conquer.55 Yet, to say that this much about the implications of equality is all
that a Christian can or should say about equality is to leave the story incom-
plete, to treat equality instrumentally w ithout proper purpose and context (a
vacuum with many prospective occupants). As I see it, this notion of equality
as moral agents must be taken up and pressed farther in relation to the equal-
ity in Christ proclaimed in Galatians 3:28.56 Or, to use the language of King,
“desegregation is only a partial, though necessary, step toward the final goal
which we seek to realize, genuine intergroup and interpersonal living. Deseg-
regation will break down the legal barriers and bring men together physically,
but something must touch the hearts and souls of men so that they will come
together spiritually because it is natural and right.”57 In this way equality re-
ceives a particularly Christian expression that fills out the picture beyond the
limits of reason alone and refines prior notions of equality in order to align them
with the ultimate telos of human relations. Participating in this sort of equal-
ity is a fuller participation in the divinely ordered community of the universe
than that offered by Porter’s account of the scholastics. T h e same sort of re-
definition would also apply to all other moral claims, including the use of vio-
lence. W hether one chooses to go with Yoder and Hauerwas all the way to non-
violence or whether one goes as far as King and other “realistic pacifists” will
be contested.58 But it is my hope that it would be contested theologically, not
with any illusion of an objective or publicly available safe place to stand on the
spectrum of permissible to nonpermissible use of force as these moral claims
are contested all the way down.

The Unnecessary Timidity of Advocates of Nonviolence

To close, I note that the foregoing constitutes a more direct argument for the
possible rapprochement between nonviolence and natural law limits to violence
than has been offered by either Yoder or Hauerwas. King repeatedly appealed
to the nature of the universe to support his nonviolent imitation of Christ.59
Yet Yoder and Hauerwas have been much more timid (at least in this respect).
Yoder tentatively embraces the idea of natural law to argue tactically against
provincialism, against impossible expectations, against exporting particular
standards to another culture, and against hasty readings of “what everyone
thinks.”60 In fact, he goes as far as to acknowledge that natural law arguments
are useful as long as they are not used against the claims of Jesus or as a means
to resolve a debate between incompatible worlds.61
 Paul M artens * 127

Hauerwas, even more strongly, affirms a limited form of natural law as a way
to name the ability to act and to give reasons for our actions. He asserts that
natural law is, as Calvin emphasized, “but a reminder that ‘to be human is to
order life cooperatively.”62 To order life cooperatively requires the virtues of
promise keeping and honesty as central for the moral life. H e explains further:
“O ur commitment to truth, to saying what is, is a form of our commitment to
maintain the trust between ourselves.”63 Clearly, Hauerwas is attempting to
avoid a sort of foundationalism in his description and this, too, is a strategy for
avoiding a strong reliance on the normative claims that m ight be rooted in ere-
ation as it is experienced in the present. Yet he also recognizes that honesty and
promise keeping are instrumental virtues that need further theological orien-
tation. H e quotes Augustine to this effect using the examples of the cardinal
virtues:
The object o f . .. love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the high-
est wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that
temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is
love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God
only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subjects to man; prudence is love
making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what
might hinder it.64
Attempts to appeal to an objective or public morality as natural law simply
cannot orient either the cardinal or theological virtues sufficiently. This lacuna
is why Barth, King, Yoder, Hauerwas, and any number of post-Enlightenment
Protestants have rejected certain understandings of the natural law. Admit-
tedly, these dismissals have often been rhetorically embellished and, therefore,
less careful than they ought to have been. Yet—perhaps against her own
wishes—Porter’s work of retrieval provides an invaluable resource for demon-
strating that not all definitions of natural law are equal as well as for illuminât-
ing the best medieval attempts to take natural law as a scripturally formed the-
ological attempt to understand the world created by G od and the human way
to be in the world.
But perhaps it is time to press further and to acknowledge that even
though the term “natural law” may have been dismissed, the issues it was em-
ployed to address continue to haunt Protestant and Catholic ethics. And, per-
haps it is time for advocates of nonviolence to revisit their alleged rejection
of natural law and follow through on explaining the complex claim that they
are truly working “with the grain of the universe.” After all, they, like King,
are convinced that despite the embrace of weakness, suffering, and even mar-
tyrdom, “the universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in
the struggle for righteousness [humanity] has cosmic companionship” to see
a way to the end.65
128 * W ith the Grain of th e Universe

Notes

1. O n March 25, 1965, while preaching in Montgomery, Alabama, King proclaimed that “the
arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” See M artin Luther King Jr.
and J ames Melvin Washington, A Testament ofHope: The Essential Writings o f M artm Lather
King, J r (San Francisco: H arper & Row, 1986), 252.
2. John Howard Yoder, The Politics o f Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1994), 242.
3. John Howard Yoder, “Armaments and Eschatology,” Studies in Christian Ethics 1, no.l
(1988): 58. T his section of Yoder’s text is used as the epigraph in Stanley Hauerwas, With
the Grain o f the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids, ML
Brazos Press, 2001), 6.
4. See Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching o f the Christian Churches, trans. Olive W yon
(Louisville, KY: W estm inster/John Knox Press, 1992), 694—729. For Troeltsch, sects were
often regarded negatively by the established church. Yet Yoder would agree with Troeltsch’s
description of the sect movements as representing “a very direct and characteristic way
the essential fundamental ideas of Christianity” (334). See also LI. Richard Niebuhr, Christ
and Culture (New York: H arper & Row, 1951), 56-57; Reinhold Niebuhr, “A Critique of
Pacifism” in Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D.
B. Robertson (Louisville, KY: W estm inster/John Knox, 1957), 241-47; and Reinhold
Niebuhr, “Pacifism against the W all,” in Love and Justice: Selections fi-om the Shorter W rit-
ings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson (Louisville, KY: W estminster/John Knox,
1957), 260-67.
5. See James Gustafson, “T he Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church,
and the University,” Catholic Theological Society o f America Proceedings 40 (1985): 83-94.
6. J. Daryl Charles, “Protestants and Natural Law,” First Things (December 2006): 36, em-
phasis original. One can find a fuller account of Charles’s narrative in Charles, Retrieving
the N atural Law: A Return to First Things (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008). Further
good examples of the recent Protestant return to natural law include David Van Drunen,
N atural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); and Robert C. Baker and Roland Cap Ehlke, eds.
Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011). W hether the conclu-
sions offered in this paper significantly differ from the nuanced account of natural law pro-
vided by Barth is certainly worth pursuing but must be left unattended for another time.
See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 111.4: The Doctrine of Creation (Edinburgh, UK: T & T
Clark, 1961), 3-46.
7. Jacques Ellul is also included in the expanded version of this counternarrative provided in
Charles’s subsequent “T h e N atural Law and H um an Dignity: Reaffirming Ethical First
T hings,” Life and Learning XVI: Proceedings of the Seventeenth University Faculty for Life Con-
ference at Villanova, ed. Joseph W. Koterski (Washington, DC: University Faculty for Life,
2008), 327-28.
8. It is, at the very least, interesting to note that King has escaped nearly allof the contem-
porary criticism directed toward Christian nonviolence. T h a t said, Iwill draw him more
directly into the discourse in my concluding comments.
9. Charles, “Protestants and Natural Law,” 36.
10. Charles, “Natural Law and H um an Dignity,” 328n20.
11. Charles, “Protestants and Natural Law,” 36.
12. Charles, “Natural Law and H um an Dignity,” 331.
 Paul M artens * 129

13. Charles, “Protestants and Natural Law, 37 ,36 ‫ ״‬.

14. See C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, ed. W alter H ooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1967), 53.
15. T his is the term used by James Gustafson to describe the sixteenth-century Anabaptist em-
phasis on scripture and, particularly, Jesus. See Gustafson, Protestant and. Roman Catholic
Ethics: Prospects fo r Rapprochement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 16.
16. Charles, “N atural Law and H um an Dignity,” 332.
17. Charles, “Protestants and Natural Law,” 37-38.
18. Tn “Natural Law and Hum an Dignity,” Charles even suggests this tradition is “without
equivocation” (326), which can only be understood as rather hyperbolic since his argu-
m ent is designed to address precisely these sorts of equivocations within the Christian
tradition.
19. Although the increase in publications dedicated to natural law over the past decade sug-
gests that Protestants have only recently rediscovered the natural law, this is not exactly
true. For example, in 1943 Emil Brunner’s Justice and Social 0?‫׳‬der seems to affirm posi-
tively a form of “Christian law of nature.” See Brunner, Justice and Social 0rde7\ trans. Mary
H ottinger (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002), 80-89. George Lindbeck argued that
Reinhold N iebuhr could be construed as providing a form of natural law already in 1959.
See Lindbeck, “Revelation, Natural Law, and the T h ought of Reinhold N iebuhr,” N at-
ural Law Form 4 (1959): 146-51. A few years later, Paul Ramsey’s Nine Mode711 Moralists
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962) also recast much of twentieth-century Chris-
tian ethics as various attempts to come to grips with natural law. O n this basis, and in ad-
dition to the evidence of the reformers themselves and subsequent Protestant scholasti-
cism, Yoder rightly notes that the typology of historical divergences between Catholics
and Protestants in Gustafson’s Protestant and R 0 ??1an Catholic Ethics may, in fact, be a cari-
cature. See also John Howard Yoder, “Regarding N ature” (unpublished paper circulated
in connection with a N otre Dame course on the Just W ar Tradition, 1994).
20. Jean Porter, N atural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition fo r Christian Ethics (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 284. Porter also names Milbank as one who prioritizes non-
violence. O n the basis of the ontology of peace described in Theology and Social Theory,
many believed M ilbank was or could be a pacifist; John Milbank, Theology and Social The-
01y: Beyond Secular Reason (London: Blackwell, 1990). W ith the publication of Being Rec-

onciled, however, this conclusion was foreclosed when Milbank claimed that “non-violent
assertion is, after all, privation and therefore violence”; John Milbank, Being Reconciled: On-
tology and Pardon (London: Routledge, 2003), 26.
21. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, 285. See also Yoder, Politics of Jesus, 99.
22. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, 286.
23. Ibid., 287.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 293. T his same sentiment appears later with very little modification in Porter’s M in-
isters o f the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2010), 308-9.
26. Yoder, Politics o f Jesus, 8-9. Further, “historical study shows that it has been possible to un-
derstand under order of nature just about anything a philosopher wanted: stoicism or epi-
cureanism, creative evolution or political restorationism, Puritan democracy or Aryan die-
tatorship. We shall do well to avoid thinking of the order of nature as a source of any kind
of revelation.” Yoder, Christian Witness to the State (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press,
1964), 33.
130 · W ith th e Grain of th e Universe

27. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (London: SCM
Press, 1984), 55.
28. Ibid., 63-64.
29. For an example of how this becomes problematic in relation to the death penalty, see John
Howard Yoder, The End of Sacrifice: The Capital Punishment Writings o f John Howard Yoder,
ed. John C. N ugent (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2011), 125.
30. Yoder, “Regarding N ature.”
31. John Howard Yoder, Nonviolence— A B rief History: The Warsaw Lectures, eds. Paul Martens,
M atthew Porter, and Myles W erntz (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 110.
32. Ramsey, Nine Modem Moralists, 14.
33. F or a fuller account o f the diverse medieval understandings o f natural law, see Jean
Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theoiy o f N atural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd-
mans, 2005), 7-24.
34. Porter, Nafíiral and Divine Law, 17. Romans 2:14 figures prom inently here, though it is
not the only source.
35. Ibid., 51.
36. All subsequent references to Aquinas’s Summa are taken from Part I-II of Summa theolo-
giae, trans. Fathers of the Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948). Only
the numbers of the question and article are noted in the text itself. All emphases original.
37.1 use natural law’s relation to practical reason as a limiting factor that differentiates it from
natural theology, which I take to relate primarily to speculative reason. These two cate-
gories are often confused or lumped together in Protestant circles after Barth.
38. See, for example, T hom as Aquinas, Treatise on Law (Summa theologiae, Questions 90-97)
(Chicago: H enry Regnery, 1967).
39. Particularly clear on this m atter is the statement that “the end of human law is the tem-
poral tranquility of the state, which end law effects by directing external actions, as re-
gards those evils which m ight disturb the peaceful condition of the state” while “the end
of Divine law is to bring man to that end which is everlasting happiness” (98.1).
40. See 2 Corinthians 3:6.
41. T h e traditional three counsels, also articulated by Aquinas, are poverty, chastity, and obe-
dience to a rule. N one of these necessarily include or exclude nonviolence, leaving open
the debate as to w hether nonviolence truly is a m atter left to individual freedom (see
108.2).
42. At this point, Yoder and Hauerwas would probably point out Aquinas’s problematic Con-
stantinian context and assumptions. Even if this critique is correct, it should not stop them
from seeing the respective internal resources for moving beyond these limits.
43. Charles, “Natural Law and H um an Dignity,” 352-53.
44. Ibid., 354-55.
45. Ibid., 355.
46. See Yoder, Christian Witness to the State, 32, 72-73.
47. See John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom,: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN:
University of N otre Dame Press, 1984), 56, 162-63.
48. Porter, N atural and Divine Law, 103.
49. Stanley Hauerwas with Richard Bondi and David B. Burrell, Truthfulness and Tragedy:
Turther Investigations in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of N otre Dame
Press, 1977), 68.
 Paul Martens * 131

50. Ibid.
51. John Howard Yoder, “Does Natural Law Provide a Basis for a Christian W itness to the
State? (A Symposium),‫ ״‬Brethren Life and Thought 7 (Spring 1962): 22.
52. Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Notre Dame,
IN: University of N otre Dame Press, 1992), 160, quoted in Yoder, “Peace without Escha-
tology?” in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G.
Cartwright (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1998), 145.
53. Yoder, Politics o f Jesus, 242.
54. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, 266.
55. M artin Luther King Jr., The Strength to Love (New York: Pocket Books, 1968), 128-29.
See also “T here is a law in the moral world— a silent, invisible imperative, akin to the laws
in the physical world—which reminds us that life will work only in a certain way127) ‫) ״‬.
56. “T here is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus.”
57. King, Strejigth to Love, 28.
58. “Realistic pacifism” is a term used to describe movements, ideas, and practices for pre-
venting war and building peace but it is not strictly limited to nonviolence in self-defense
and in the protection of the innocent. See David Cortright, Peace: A History o f Movements
and Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 334—39. It seems possible that
Porter could argue that one holding her position m ight also be considered a “realistic paci-
fist” under certain conditions, thereby highlighting the complicated nature of King’s con-
tribution to the discussion.
59. See Reggie Williams, “Bonhoeffer and King: Christ and the Moral Arc,” Black Theology:
A n International Journal 9, no. 3 (2011): 366-67.
60. Yoder, “Regarding N ature.”
61. Ibid. In various manifestations, Yoder was also willing to argue for coherence between his
theological claims and the findings of sociology and anthropology. See Yoder, Nonviolence,
63-72; and Yoder, The War o f the Lamb: The Ethics o f Nonviolence and Peacemaking, eds. Glen
Stassen, M ark Thiessen Nation, and M att Ham sher (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press,
2009), 125-35. Nancy M urphy and George Ellis have also followed Yoder’s intimations
m uch further in On the Moral Nature o f the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics
(Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1996).
62. Hauerwas with Bondi and Burrell, Truthfulness and Tragedy, 65.
63. Ibid., 66.
64. Ibid., 68. See Augustine, “O n the Morals of the C hurch,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fa-
thers o f the Christian Church, IV, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 15.
65. King, Strength to Love, 172.
Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use
according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as
otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the
copyright holder(sV express written permission. Any use, decompiling,
reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a
violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission
from the copyright holder( s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of ajournai
typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,
for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific
work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the
copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,
or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association
(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American
Theological Library Association.