The tensions held by Christians are prevalent throughout Christian thought, practices and theology. We hold in tension the realized kingdom of God, inaugurated by the passion of Jesus Christ, but that kingdom is also not yet realized for Christ is yet to come again to judge the living and the dead. This is but one example of the kind of tension that Christians live in. In many other places throughout scripture and in the traditional practices of the church we run into tensions between not only how things ought to be, but also contradictory messages and practices in institutional structures and in Holy Scripture also.

This contradiction is intimately present in post-enlightenment western states where there is a distinct separation between church and state. This separation became a necessity, philosophers and political theorist thought, in order to prevent the kind of religious wars that was sweeping through Europe between Protestants and Catholics just prior to and during the enlightenment. Yet this separation creates another tension that Christians have yet to resolve.

Paul was aware that Christian needed to be part of the collective whole of a society, if they were going to speak to society about the kingdom of God and the injustices present within it. This is abundantly clear in Romans 13:1 where he writes, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” Yet, if we follow the directive of Paul to its natural conclusion then we run the risk of losing the very prophetic tradition that Jesus himself belonged to. This tradition is ripe with examples of prophets and martyrs calling society back into relationship with God through the covenant, whether that is the Old Testament covenant or the New Covenant inaugurated by Jesus Christ. Without this prophetic voice, society runs the risk of straying from the will of God and being totally unaware that they have strayed.

Therefore if Christians hold themselves accountable to the state’s laws as suggested by Romans 13 they run the risk of losing the prophetic tradition and being unaware of the new movements of the Spirit in the community. Yet Christians cannot simply remove themselves from the social contract of any given nation state; they still must be held accountable and subject to the laws of that state. This tension, like so many other tensions in Christianity is between the realized and the not yet, and it can have adverse effects on the church as a whole and specific denominations within the body of Christ.

So when do Christians ignore the laws of a nation state for the sake of justice and when do they adhere to those laws? Furthermore, is there a time for violence to overthrow unjust political structures and if so, what kind of violence? Is there a time when it becomes necessary to over turn the nation state in the creation of something new, something that furthers the kingdom of God? In other words, doing the right thing according to established law is precisely what must be suspended in order to dissolve a body of established law that is unjust.

This tension is nothing new in many ways, for this question of suspension of law to dissolve a body of established law that is unjust rings with echoes of Luther. Therefore the question becomes, when does violence, and what form of violence, becomes a necessity of the Christian community and can those actions be done within the confines of the Christian tradition?

Politically, the threat of violence is held by the state. This violence is held by the state to help create and preserve order. This is the basis of the social contract for Hobbes and in many ways it rings true for many nation states in the world today. The state has two kinds of violence according to Walter Benjamin, which he elaborated upon in his essay, critique of violence, written in 1921. They are law-instating violence and law-preserving violence. In both cases the state uses violence to bring about a state of a peace between citizens within a certain geographic boundary.

Law-instating violence is done when a polity comes into being, but it can also be done by a military in innovating coercive action to handle an unruly population. As an example of this we have to look no further than the current unrest in Libya. The Libyan government is using this kind of violence against its citizens in an effort to maintain control and keep the current legal framework in power. The second kind of state violence, law-preserving violence, is the kind of violence used by the state to preserve peace amongst its citizen. This is exactly the kind of violence that Hobbes envisioned in Leviathan. The police and courts use the threat of violence and violence itself to maintain the institutional structures of society.

Neither of these two types of violence are Christian in any way, although they may have been done in the name of Christianity, that is for sure. For Christians, these two types of violence represent earthly ventures and do not reflect the Kingdom of God, whether that Kingdom is realized or not. Because these types of violence are not grounded theologically it is extremely difficult to accept them within the bounds of Christian doctrine, although many have sought to use portions of scripture to justify these types of violence. Christians therefore need a third type of violence if they are to exercise some level of political will upon the nation state. (I want to state at this time that violence does not have to be physical to be violence. What is being sought is the end of unjust laws, therefore the destruction of law and possibly the government that imposed the aforementioned law, is violent; but physical harm may never occur.)

Benjamin puts forward an interesting proposition, divine violence as a third type of violence used and unleashed against the coercive force of a legal framework. This does not mean that God acts directly with humans as passive observers. It means that through the body of Christ in this world, the church, Christians can engage in the prophetic tradition as a means of correcting unjust structures within society.

We have recently seen examples of this type of violence against legal frameworks that are unjust in our world. The general strikes and protest in Egypt are precisely the kind of violence that needed to occur against an unjust political regime. The outright destruction of the laws of the previous Egyptian government was a requirement. And from this death the new Egypt is reborn.

Political action and violence therefore allows for the continued act of creation through the body of Christ. Although, it should be noted that I believe the kind of political action that usurps unjust political structures fully cannot at anytime resort to classical violence, the first two kinds that Benjamin spoke of. The kind of violence that is required is a divine violence that subverts the current political structure much like the sacrifice of Christ subverted the need for a physical revolution. Simply being willing to stand and say no more, becomes in essence joining with Christ upon the cross to break the cycle of the first two kinds of violence and join with Christ in inaugurating the Kingdom of God.

In conclusion, I believe that Benjamin’s divine violence shatters and destroys are pre-conceived notions of violence. The concept of violence is subverted through the sacrifice of Christ allowing Christians to stand in the shadow of the cross and face unjust structures of society knowing that there sacrifice will lead to new life, to resurrection.