Spring 2023 · Vol. 52 No. 1 · pp. 69–71
Book Review
Secular Nonviolence and the Theo-Drama of Peace: Anabaptist Ethics and the Catholic Christology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Layton Boyd Friesen. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 264 pages.
In this book, Layton Friesen addresses what might be described as the current theological poverty of Anabaptist understandings of pacifism, what he prefers to call “gospel pacifism.” He suggests we might find theological and spiritual help in the Catholic theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Balthasar (1905–1988) is not exactly a household name. More familiar is his fellow Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, to whom he is sometimes compared. Both theologians were attempting to inject fresh theological life into their own theological traditions. But before we turn to the content of Balthasar’s theology, we need to begin where the book begins, with Mennonites and secular nonviolence.
The first two chapters offer a declension story regarding the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. According to Friesen, in the sixteenth century the earliest Anabaptists saw their commitment to defenselessness arising out of their personal (mystical) union with Christ. One can see this in writings by leaders such as Menno Simons as well as the martyr stories told in Martyrs Mirror. As Friesen puts it, “nonresistance was the result of a determination to be drawn up into the very actions and postures of the Incarnate Christ” (84). But also, from almost the beginning, there were temptations to embrace peacemaking mostly for pragmatic reasons. For in the Early Modern world, filled with brutal barbarity, including religious wars, the pacifistic way of life of the Anabaptists was appealing. Friesen then jumps from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, describing chronologically the move from what he refers to as “historic nonresistance” (Harold Bender and Guy Hershberger) to “Messianic-community pacifism” (John Howard Yoder) to “progressive realist pacifism” (whose category reaches back to earlier Dutch/Russian as opposed to Swiss traditions, as well as being manifested in recent decades). However we got here, suggests Friesen, Mennonites are now at a place where our commitment to nonviolence is not funded by rich, textured, orthodox Christian theology; it typically looks like secular (pragmatically justified) nonviolence.
With a series of books with titles like The Glory of the Lord and Theo-Drama: Dramatis Personae, Balthasar understandably looks like a good candidate from whom to draw theologically for our present moment. Friesen captures some of the vibrancy of Balthasar’s approach to theology: “Theological ethics cannot understand dogma to be merely a series of static propositions, granitized into timelessness. What the church confesses [through creeds/confessions] is the glorious mystery of God, acting. Our convictions are like adverbs describing the action of God in perfect love. God is revealing, moving, creating, sustaining, {70} judging, saving; theological speech is our God-breathed attempt to keep up with God, to match with our words, in an analogous way, the drama of God in himself and in our world” (10). Thus, properly understood, the doctrine of incarnation, for instance, “draws the church into participation with Christ.” This means “that when the incarnation is interpreted and entered into according to the Chalcedon tradition of the church, it is deeply twined with gospel pacifism, or a Christ-formed intent to address evil without violence, through love” (5).
More specifically, Friesen draws from Balthasar through three images that he believes can help Mennonites (and others) see how to live the life in Christ in the midst of the world that will involve risk but hopefully avoid secularization. The first of these is “bidirectional nonresistance.” This involves nonresistance to God, which includes an inner disposition of yieldedness and watchfulness regarding God’s ways in the world. It also entails an involvement in the world “directly ‘nonresistant’ to Christ and, through this, nonresistant to the condition of the world in all its beauty and wretchedness” (93). Such a life is as much about spirituality, prayer, and adoration as about gospel pacifism. In other words, it should “open the person to the mystery of God’s involvement in daily life” (93). The second image is “Provocation: Violence in the Theo-Drama.” Drawing especially on the book of Revelation, this chapter focuses on the fact that those who embody gospel pacifism may very well provoke violence. And thus, they need to be spiritually prepared to endure suffering for the sake of the gospel. Through an elaboration of Balthasar’s theology of love and provocative reflections on the aesthetics of life together in Christ, Friesen names the third image, “Convocation: The Church and the Lamb.” Summarizing, he says: “Christ-figured fraternal love between enemies, we might say, is the epistemological condition established by God for his own reception in the world. As the church is formed in this way through contemplation, the church has a divine consonance with its Lord. The world will know the glory of God as it is lived out as enemy love in the church’s I-Thou-We” (201).
In some ways I understand why Friesen would see Balthasar as someone who might help us enrich our understanding of an Anabaptist approach to nonviolence. But my questions still leave me mostly unconvinced. First, Friesen leaves me with the impression that it would be difficult to make Balthasar’s complex Christology accessible to non-academics. Second is the crucial question that Friesen acknowledges is raised by Catholic theologian Frederick Bauerschmidt, namely, that despite his theology’s apparent promise, Balthasar does not really seem to describe a theology that is “in fact livable—albeit stumblingly—in this world, and livable not just for individuals, but for the community of disciples as a whole.” {71} Bauerschmidt argues that Balthasar “does not really pursue the opening that his own theo-dramatic approach makes for a new political theology” and that “Balthasar’s comments on the political significance of the cross seem, frankly, banal” (177–78). These comments appear consistent with the fact that, in this whole book, Friesen does not offer any quotations from Balthasar that would relate to violent conflicts he lived through (including World Wars I and II!). In addition, Friesen acknowledges that though Balthasar did not specifically justify violence, he was not a pacifist.
I certainly agree with Friesen that a theological poverty plagues our tradition (and is now largely captive to pragmatism and ideologies more than central theological tenets). However, it seems that Friesen has underappreciated the ways in which John Howard Yoder’s theology was attempting to address this condition. But realizing that many are unwilling to draw any longer from Yoder’s theology, it is important to note that the theological trajectory of his book, The Politics of Jesus, has yielded much fruit. Writers such as Michael Gorman, Emmanuel Katongole, Richard Hays, Marva Dawn, Stanley Hauerwas, William Cavanaugh, and N. T. Wright, among others, display such fruit. Even among systematic theologians, however, Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Joe Jones would be among those who would be more obvious candidates for help today. These writers wrote/write orthodox theology intended to invigorate a livable faith, including a strong commitment to peacemaking in the real world.
