Why the Nonviolent Gospel? (Part 2/2)
Author: Stef Miles
“God Is Light”
I think the Johannine writings give us a beautiful way of expressing this.
After years of reflecting upon the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the Johannine community arrived at two of the most profound statements ever made about God:
“God is love.”
And:
“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
I love that. These aren't abstract philosophical observations. They are conclusions drawn from Jesus himself.
This community had looked at Jesus forgiving enemies, welcoming the excluded, exposing scapegoating, refusing retaliation and bearing violence rather than inflicting it. They had encountered the risen victim returning not with vengeance, but with peace.
Reflecting on all of this, they concluded that there is no darkness in God. No hidden violence lurking behind Jesus or secret cruelty within the Father that somehow needs to be reconciled with the love we see in Christ.
The Father is exactly like Jesus.
That sounds simple, but the theological implications are enormous.
But Do I Really Believe in a Nonviolent God?
At this point you may be thinking, “Well, I don't believe in a violent God.”
Very few Christians would describe God that way. But I’ve increasingly wondered whether simply rejecting the idea of a violent God means we have actually removed violence from our theology.
Take Scripture. If our understanding of biblical inspiration flattens the text so that every verse carries exactly the same revelatory weight, what happens when a violent depiction of God sits alongside the crucified Christ forgiving his enemies?
For a long time, I think my instinct was to make Jesus fit everything else. Now I think it needs to work the other way around.
The same question arises around atonement. If our understanding of the cross requires, somewhere within the will of God, the need for Jesus to be killed in order to pay for sin or appease divine wrath, then I think we need to ask: Does God need violence in order to forgive? There are sophisticated versions of these theories, and I don't want to caricature them. But if God requires violence before forgiveness can be extended, then however carefully we phrase it, violence has found its way back into the heart of God.
Final judgement raises similar questions. We can speak beautifully about a loving and nonviolent God throughout history, but if our final vision requires part of humanity to exist forever in conscious torment, have we really escaped the violent God, or simply moved the violence to the end of the story?
Even some familiar ways of talking about salvation and a so called theory of justification can contain similar assumptions. In its classical Western form, the framework begins with humanity breaking God’s law and standing under condemnation unless we accept Christ and are justified by faith. While this is presented as “good news”, scholars such as Douglas Campbell have shown how its underlying logic can become structurally violent and, in some readings, even antisemitic. Grace can become transactional and conditional, rather than the unconditional gift revealed in Christ. At its worst, the “good news” can begin with a God from whom we need rescuing rather than the God who has come in Christ to rescue us.
And then there is war. Any theological or biblical justification of war as authorised, commanded or endorsed by God, whether in ancient narratives or contemporary conflicts, inevitably introduces divine violence into our picture of God. Once violence is accepted at the level of national or sacred warfare, it becomes difficult to prevent it reshaping how we imagine God in every other area of theology as well.
I don't raise any of this as a theological purity test. Most of these ideas are inherited. They are woven deeply into Western Christianity and can remain even when we have emotionally rejected the idea of a violent deity. For me, rethinking them has been a slow process.
One question led to another, and again and again I found myself coming back to Jesus.
Does this look like him?
Does this sound like the Father he reveals?
Can I really say that Jesus is the image of the invisible God and then attribute to God something I would struggle to imagine Jesus doing?
Those questions have become increasingly difficult for me to ‘un-ask’.
Because once violence is allowed into the identity of God, even in one theological category, it rarely stays neatly contained there. It begins to shape how Scripture is read, how the cross is understood, how judgement is imagined and ultimately how God's character is conceived.
Why the Nonviolent Gospel?
So this brings me back to the question we started with. Why call it the Nonviolent Gospel Network?
Not because nonviolence is a political ideology we are trying to attach to Christianity, or because it is a new theological trend.
It is because I believe the gospel reveals a God whose character is fully disclosed in the crucified and risen Christ, a God who overcomes violence not through greater violence, but through forgiving, self-giving love.
I have become convinced that Jesus doesn't simply reduce divine violence or show us a God who is less violent than we previously imagined. He reveals that the violence was never in God in the first place.
I realise that is a significant claim. It raises difficult questions about Scripture, atonement, judgement and Christian tradition. I don't pretend to have every one of those questions neatly resolved, and part of the reason for creating this Network is because I think they are questions worth exploring together.
But I know where I want to begin. With Jesus.
With the one who tells us to love our enemies because our Father loves enemies, who refuses the sword, confronts our scapegoating and is crucified by human violence while praying, “Father, forgive them.”
If this Jesus really is the image of the invisible God, then perhaps the gospel is even better news than we imagined.
That is why we speak of The Nonviolent Gospel.
Because to proclaim the Gospel faithfully is to bear witness to the God revealed in Jesus.
And that God is nonviolent.