Spring 2026 · Vol. 55 No. 1 · pp. 75–88
Resist Not: Giving Up on Winning to Make Space for Something Better
Humans are creatures shaped and constrained persistently by toxic rivalry, a pattern from which God is liberating us. Rivalry shows up on personal and communal levels. Rivalry entices us to personally obsess on our perceived enemies and how we can show them up and put them down. Communally, the churches of North America have been socialized into the “culture wars.” This entails a deep assumption that resisting and overpowering one’s opponents will make life better for all. That once “my side” wins or controls the territory of concern, we will have arrived somewhere better. Even if the visions are different, this assumption is shared alike among Left-leaning and Right-leaning churches as p. 76 an ongoing, energizing motivator, often overlaid with “kingdom of God” language. And, while Anabaptist types will often emphasize that Jesus’ kingdom-centric Sermon on the Mount majors in themes of peace, how often is our vision of peacemaking a tawdry cover for a deeper desire to overpower our opponents? To what extent is our peacemaking infused with the assumption that a just peace entails resisting evildoers, fueling a belief to keep fighting if we are to make peace?
What if Jesus is pointing toward a peacemaking comprised of unlearning rivalry and becoming animated by a Spirit that tutors us to relate to other humans in ways totally uninterested in resistance?
Some readers may retort, “Peacemakers fight with appropriate means: with the tools of creative nonviolence. This form of resistance to evildoers is surely blessed by God.” I have often agreed. Yet, I am scandalously confronted afresh by Jesus’ instruction: “Do not resist an evildoer.” What if Jesus is pointing toward a peacemaking comprised of unlearning rivalry and becoming animated by a Spirit that tutors us to relate to other humans in ways totally uninterested in resistance?
Let me start by foregrounding the text alluded to above, with Jesus speaking:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Matt 5:38-42 NRSVue, passim)
In my own peacemaking journey, Walter Wink’s exegetical work with this passage has been formative. However, Wink’s reading is based in a commitment to resist the evildoer. This deserves fresh consideration. Thus, after reviewing his reading and considering several critiques, I propose that Jesus truly meant “resist not” as training in the unlearning of rivalry.
Rehearsing Wink’s Explication
After writing Naming the Powers (1984) and Unmasking the Powers (1986), Walter Wink provided the capstone to his trilogy with Engaging the Powers (1992). Wink seeks to advance his cumulative thesis that the powers are good, the powers are fallen, and the powers can be redeemed. Toward this end, he argues that in a biblical view, the powers are “both visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and institutional.” 1 The life of Jesus of Nazareth is explicated by Wink as an ongoing engagement with the powers arrayed as a “Domination System.” Jesus—in embodying the inbreaking reign of God that eschews domination—puts the powers on p. 77 notice that their system has been judged and found wanting. More pointedly, Wink shows how Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:38-42 exemplifies Jesus pointing his disciples toward creatively resisting the Domination System, which confounds so many relationships with threats/enactments of violence and coercion. 2 To such threats, Wink argues, humans react in fairly typical ways: violently fight the domination on its terms (fight) or passively acquiesce to its terms (flight).
Jesus’ Third Way
Wink proposes that Jesus offers a third way beyond this binary: nonviolent action, which aims to respond to threats in creative ways that open new, relational possibilities. 3 To understand how this is so, Wink explores the social context of ancient society in Jesus’ time. Matthew’s language is notably specific: “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Wink argues that this refers to a backhanded slap, the kind of strike a superior uses to humiliate and remind an inferior of their lower status (thereby perpetuating a relationship of domination). 4 In ancient social context, Wink contends, to retaliate against a superior who backhand-slapped you was to invite a severe social penalty, maybe even execution. The “flight” option for the victim of an insulting slap would look like undergoing the humiliation and stuffing it down inside, tacitly upholding the domination proffered. However, Wink contends, to offer one’s left cheek to the person seeking to reinforce their superiority, would communicate, “Hit me with your right hand/fist on my left cheek, the way that you strike someone who is equal to you, because I am a human with dignity, too.” Such left-cheek-offering action nonviolently resists the hierarchical power relations that the humiliating superior offers. Rather than Jesus teaching “turn the other cheek” as a signal of acquiescence to lower status or submission to abuse, Wink sees Jesus offering a creative response to unmask the Domination System and invite a different mode of human relations.
The next scene and instruction follows similar lines, Wink argues: If sued for one’s shirt, “give your coat as well.” The two pieces of clothing named are typical peasant garb in the ancient world: a tunic shirt (undergarment) and a cloak (outer garment/coat). What is this about court and clothing? For many loan-seeking peasants, they might only have clothing to offer as loan collateral, namely, one’s outer cloak because one worked in the undergarment. In Exodus 22:25-27 and Deuteronomy 24:10-13, Torah speaks to situations of money lending: Do not keep the collateral overnight; always return the cloak for the night. The outer garment was p. 78 blanket as well as coat. To skirt this justice instruction in Torah, Wink argues, creditors were seeking to recoup their financial losses by suing for a poor debtor’s tunic.
Similar to the scenario above, the creditor is in a position of superior status/power and seeking to reinforce humiliating relations with a debtor of lower status/power. Wink notes that fight/flight reactions remain as normative options for the debtor. Again, Wink argues, Jesus suggests a nonviolent response: If the lender is so concerned about money that they are willing to sue for your undergarment, then give the creditor your outer garment as well. Seize the opportunity of the lender’s power play to expose the injustice of the Domination System that credit/debt relations perpetuate. This unexpected form of resistance might serve to jolt the creditor out of his greed (and into his humanity) when the public observing the court proceedings see the creditor as the cause of a poor debtor’s nakedness. 5 By giving the outer garment as one is losing one’s undergarment, the person of lesser power takes the initiative to kindle a more wholesome mode of relations between creditor and debtor, in place of toxic domination.
The third scenario involves compulsory travel: If someone forces you to walk one mile, “go also the second mile.” As with the preceding examples, Wink argues that the everyday peasants hearing Jesus would have known exactly what he was talking about. Roman soldiers had the power/authority to temporarily conscript a conquered civilian to carry a soldier’s pack while on official march. 6 Roman military policy limited this arrangement to one mile of forced labor. A continual temptation for Jewish people was violent resistance, to refuse to carry the Roman pack and lash out with one’s dagger or fists. Experiencing such violent resistance, soldiers would have every justification for ending a rebel life on the spot. As in the other examples, the “flight” option consisted of enduring the humiliation, seething in the resentment and shame of being treated like a pack animal. Jesus, in Wink’s reading, offers a creative alternative of nonviolent resistance: Carry the soldier’s pack a second mile. The idea is that when the forced laborer goes beyond the mile marker on the Roman road, the power dynamic shifts. The farther the forced laborer walks with the pack beyond one mile, the more uncomfortable the Roman soldier becomes because he is now in violation of military regulations and his commander may look dimly on his behavior. The unexpected nonviolent resistance thrusts the soldier from control into uncertainty. Jesus does not counsel aiding the Roman occupiers. He shows how, argues Wink, the powerless can find ways to resist some of their degrading oppression in the Domination System and reclaim their humanity. 7 p. 79
Challenging the Domination System
Following these three scenarios, Jesus offers the final imperative in this passage: “Give to/do not refuse the borrower.” The logic, Wink argues, is essentially twofold. First, if people resist oppression in nonviolent ways, the Domination System will predictably respond with more violence and more domination to preserve its status quo. Thus, the practitioners of nonviolent direct action will need to rely on mutual aid to survive. 8 Second, the call to forgive debts and live generously is a prophetic reaffirmation of Torah, consistent with Jesus’ message to live faithfully in God’s covenant. Wink suggests that Jesus is being imminently practical with this imperative to give and lend freely while resisting the Domination System. 9
Strikingly, having worked with the passage to this point, Wink circles back to the lead imperative in the pericope and denounces the traditional translation: “Do not resist an evildoer.” He argues that the word for “resist” most often appears in military contexts and metaphors. 10 Thus, Jesus is not advocating “never resist” but “put aside lethal violence as your resistance response.” Wink contends that “Do not repay evil for evil” is a most fitting translation of Matthew 5:39, largely because it coheres with the direction of the subsequent conditional examples and with other New Testament teaching to resist death-dealing oppression but not to mirror evil. 11 I have tended to agree.
Critiques of Wink
Over time, some have critiqued Walter Wink’s approach to theology and his interpretation rehearsed above. In broad terms, some have been unsettled by Wink’s interdisciplinarity and his tendency toward cavalier exegesis. More to the point for this article, some have raised questions regarding Wink’s cultural homework and whether his claims about ancient Near Eastern customs are entirely accurate to support his reading. Others have wondered if his activism in South Africa with apartheid-oppressed populations overwhelmed his interpretation of this passage in the Sermon on the Mount. Modern, Western concerns over abuse, equality, and individual rights may have overdetermined the possibilities open to Wink in his exegeting of this passage.
Joseph Scrivner
Joseph Scrivner argues that Wink is making historical claims that need scrutiny and that Wink “erects a straw man when he presents passivity as one of the two options to be rejected.” 12 There are merits to these critiques, particularly in the intervening years since Wink wrote his book. While p. 80 Wink relied upon available cultural analysis to understand the context of being slapped in the face, losing one’s shirt in court, and being forced into labor, we now benefit from scholars who have further explicated the context of honor-shame society for these scenarios. I draw upon some of this research below. Scrivner also critiques Wink for not recognizing adequately Jesus as “a first-century Jewish apocalypticist . . . [who] teaches a passivity that is in fact a form of political resistance to human evil because God’s intervention is imminent. God will soon usher in redemption and justice.” 13
This may be a relevant critique insofar as Wink is convinced that resistance is proper, just not in a violent mode. Yet Scrivner’s critique suffers from consigning Jesus’ instruction on passivity to one of linear expectation, whereby the kingdom at hand must signify movement in time (i.e., shortly arriving). To be “at hand” can also be a spatial metaphor, rendering any moment open to immediate, new realities. Thus, Jesus might not fit neatly into the framework of a Jewish apocalypticist as envisioned by Scrivner.
Kevin Carnahan
Kevin Carnahan is another scholar who critiques Wink’s project. Carnahan argues that Wink does poor historical-critical exegesis. 14 Wink advances a never before seen/understood interpretation but does not provide a strong case on historical and cultural grounds. Carnahan grants that Wink seems to have a sound moral argument to make about the power of nonviolence to resist in new and creative ways. However, Wink’s insistence on his reading of this passage demands much of the text, and Wink does not sufficiently demonstrate that his reading can be supported with historical research.
Carnahan’s critique also holds some validity. Wink can, at times, link cultural elements in the text without adequately showing his work. At the same time, Wink’s interpretation has garnered support for its deployment of cultural information to illuminate opaque, ancient scenarios, easing reader bafflement.
Honor-Shame
The appearance of further cultural research applied to biblical texts provides additional perspectives that can speak to or add to critiques of Wink’s exegesis of Matthew 5:38-42. For instance, several years after the publication of Wink’s Engaging the Powers, Jerome Neyrey produced his study, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew. Neyrey propounds, p. 81 “It is becoming an accepted fact that honor and shame were pivotal values in antiquity that structured the daily lives of peoples around the Mediterranean, including Jesus and his disciples.” 15 In the ancient Near East, honor connotes concern with status, value, and reputation in the eyes of others and was perceived as a limited good, a zero-sum reality. 16 Honor-shame sensitivities were deployed as mechanisms of social control. 17
While Wink exhibits some understandings of the prevalence of honor-shame culture, arguably he does not give sufficient weight to its contextual role in the pericope under consideration. He is able to recognize the zero-sum game that the Domination System assumes and points toward its transcendence in Jesus’ third way. However, to equate honor-shame culture and domination seems a mistake, flattening out the contours of a complex cultural tradition in favor of a singular dynamic.
Honor can be ascribed or achieved. When it is ascribed, it derives from kinship relations. When it is achieved, honor accrues from merit. Ancient public life (largely for males) was infused with struggles to preserve ascribed honor and gain achieved honor. Public challenges to honor required adequate responses (ripostes) lest shame fall on the challenged one’s family. 18 The body (especially one’s face), clothing, and deeds were carriers of honor and shame. 19 Neyrey contends that “the statements in Matt. 5:38-42 are best viewed as prohibiting ripostes to honor challenges. When challenged, disciples may not defend their honor.” 20 Eye for an eye assumes a system of retribution, of compensation for injury and insult, to ensure honor was defended for the one being challenged. Revenge was “broadly approved in the ancient world,” and everyone in that culture knew that satisfaction occurs when insult is met with insult. 21
While the contemporary Western world—the context of this writer and assumed context of most readers—does not operate in the honor-shame worldview to the same extent as ancient and modern Eastern cultures, this inheritance is still integral to Western cultural fabric. Concern for reputation and status have not dimmed, only morphed. We continue to be embroiled in rivalries and power struggles. Thus, the insights from attending to honor-shame sensitivities shed light for discipleship today.
Employing a More Robust Honor-Shame Reading
Given my own commitments to peacemaking, Wink’s overall direction appeals to me: Jesus is inviting disciples to forsake mirroring evil in their resistance to oppressors and to learn to resist injustices in creative, nonviolent ways that unleash potential for more just social relations. This certainly p. 82 appears as a noble and active embodiment of a higher righteousness. However, I also recognize how—to underscore the power and possibility of nonviolent resistance—Wink must stretch the text exegetically to make Jesus say, “Do not resist an evildoer violently” rather than advocating the straightforward translation: “Do not resist an evildoer.”
What if Jesus truly did mean “resist not the evildoer”? What if, in his honor-shame world, Jesus clearly prohibits disciples from playing the honor-shame game; when challenged, they are not to riposte? 22 What would that mean then, and what does it mean for us now?
In terms of cultural context, Jesus addresses common debates and concerns of his day and time. 23 The examples in the Sermon on the Mount are often quite concrete and down to earth, situations that his immediate hearers would have recognized as contests of honor-shame.
The Lex Talionis
The saying that Jesus quotes—An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—issues from the Law (Exod 21:23-25; Lev 24:15-22; and Deut 19:21) and has come to be known as the lex talionis. The law on this point is mostly concerned with compensation for injury and judicial equity. 24 One who harms another’s tooth should not be punished more than a similar harm to his or her own tooth. This Hebraic code (also found elsewhere in the wider culture) appears more concerned with curbing or limiting retaliation, in recognition of the escalatory nature of human reactions to harm. Such limiting of retaliation represents progress in human flourishing. Left unchecked, retaliation against rivals spirals out of control. Yet, unsatisfied with simply limiting this retaliatory calculus, Jesus offers his own authoritative directive: “But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer” (v. 39).
If the inbreaking kingdom is assumed as catalyst for the vision and practices of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus implies that when disciples engage in resistance, they allow another kingdom to dictate the terms of their actions. But this is incompatible for disciples who are seeking first God’s kingdom and righteousness (Matt 6:33). Thus, to make space for receiving the kingdom of God (and its honor), disciples must forsake or unlearn their conventional honor-shame commitments, a way of life grounded in rivalry.
The imperatives Jesus provides in Matthew 5:38-42 are jarringly specific: each one contrasts with conventional expectations to defend honor in that day, plunging disciples into shame and wrecking the pursuit of honor they were socialized to pursue. “Complete vulnerability and total shame are envisioned, a shame which the challenged man will not seek p. 83 in the least to deflect, much less avenge.” 25 The gravity of the expected outcome is brought into sharp relief by observations of contemporary Arab cultures, where the honor-shame dynamic has been largely preserved. 26
The Four Scenarios
Jesus outlines four conditional scenarios in which an evildoer offers terms of rivalry (challenge/shaming) and he counsels disciples to take unexpected action: to accept the shaming and lean into it more fully. To be struck in the face in the honor-shame context is a challenge to the honor of the family the male represents. A slap to the face is primarily insulting, not really about pain or assault. Jesus prohibits disciples from seeking to win the honor-shame game and instructs disciples to “turn the other cheek,” which would encourage further insult and shame. In a sense, “you insulted me once, feel free to do so again (and again) as I will not be riposting.” 27
Because honor and status were conveyed in one’s clothing, to lose one’s clothing in the local court (outdoors, before elders) would have been another honor challenge, damaging the reputation of one’s person and family. Disciples are forbidden to give riposte to this insult and directed to lean into absorbing the shaming dynamic: Strip down in this public venue, occupy a place of shame and vulnerability as Jesus followers.
Soldiers or aristocrats in the ancient Mediterranean world could commandeer peasants into service without pay, as power plays that would bring honor to their status and shame to the one compelled to serve. “Jesus tells disciples not to resist displays of power and so not to give a riposte to the shame of them. On the contrary, disciples are to take on more shame by ‘going with him two miles.’ ” 28
The fourth scenario Jesus invokes moves in the same honor-shame orbit but in a different key, if you will, which Wink misses entirely. Entreaties for financial assistance put pressure on the receiver to comply involuntarily, and any coerced compliance entails a loss of honor. Further, if “a man gives to all who ask him, he will be seen as failing to defend what belongs to his family or be seen as a man who is easily taken advantage of.” 29 Again, the conventional response to such requests would be ripostes that resist the imposer threatening one’s household’s honor and resources. Jesus prohibits such resistance moves and enjoins disciples to vulnerably embrace shame when they unrestrainedly “Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (v. 42).
This is hard to stomach and seems to lead nowhere promising in any standard logic. What could be the point of leaning into shame, to being a loser? What is accomplished by not resisting the evildoer? Perhaps these p. 84 questions point to our own addiction to rivalry as the structuring dynamic our lives. We are so thoroughly ensconced in ways of relating that depend upon winning and defending that we can scarcely imagine another way to see each other and to live together. Jesus beckons to a higher righteousness that socializes disciples in reign of God patterns. To “resist not the evildoer” fosters unlearning the deeply ingrained ways of rivalry. Unlearning is painful and scandalizes us because it is always a letting go of the familiar for the unknown. Indeed, unlearning rivalry is another version of enacting Jesus’ call to followers: “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24).
Discipleship that Does Not Resist Dishonor
Wink insists that Jesus must mean, “Do not violently resist an evildoer.” For Wink, as for many of us, it is unconscionable to hear Jesus flatly directing his followers to not resist an evildoer. Isn’t resisting evildoers precisely what people of God ought to be doing? Aren’t disciples involved in a conflict between good and evil, such that good must win and the only way to win is to resist evil? Moreover, if resistance to evildoers is off the table, then the passage seems to advocate for disciples to welcome abuse and shame from any bully who slaps faces, sues for possessions, forces unwelcome service, or insists on receiving a gift/loan.
Rejecting a Zero-Sum Worldview
Nonetheless, I propose that Jesus really does mean, “Do not resist an evildoer” as an authoritative imperative. To resist entails responding within the relational parameters offered by a provocateur (rival). The “evildoer” Jesus imagines is operating within a zero-sum worldview: a dog-eat-dog world of honor-shame rivalry. Rivals compete for scarce resources and see one another as obstacles to goals. To resist an evildoer implicitly means to accept their terms of rivalry as sufficient for defining and conducting relationship. But what if a zero-sum worldview is dreadfully insufficient when one’s life is about receiving and cooperating with the lavishly abundant reign of God?
Further, as we know from weight training, resistance is what builds muscle, strengthening that which is being resisted. Thus, resisting the evildoer serves in some way(s) to strengthen the evildoer, to reinforce and perpetuate the terms of rivalry that the evildoer is offering. But Jesus did not bless rivalry as a way of life that is viable in God’s kingdom. Everyday logic might suggest “blessed are the winners for they shall call the shots and get their way.” If Jesus followers are living into the blessed life that p. 85 Jesus outlined, then they are learning to value humility, desiring justice, showing mercy, and making peace. This may look a lot like losing. These patterns of living do not align with the logic of rivalry; they do not drink from that well.
Most of us know the truism: We become like that which we worship. In a likewise but inverse way, we come to resemble that which we resist. Resistance is an inverted form of imitation but participates in the mimetic dynamic nonetheless. 30 For, in resistance, one reflects and utilizes the patterns of the model/rival, meaning that one is bound up in the relational terms being offered. Indeed, as we observe in teenage rebellion that vows, “I will never be like my father,” even in modes of defiance and opposition, the underlying patterns that were despised in the father surface in different but recognizable forms in the child eventually.
Unlearning Rivalry
In prohibiting resistance to evildoers, Jesus invites disciples to unlearn rivalry as a structuring or controlling dynamic in our way of life. It is an invitation into freedom, though it sounds like an invitation to die. Given that the honor-shame frame was the default structuring dynamic in the ancient Mediterranean world, Jesus’ instruction becomes dangerously stark: Stop playing that game. Free yourself from its chains by ruthlessly choosing shameful responses when your previous socialization says to defend your honor and resist the attack. He directs disciples to disengage completely from the dictates of the conventional honor-shame dynamic that justify riposte, revenge, and retaliation in defense of one’s family and status. Such an embrace of shameful actions would cause disciples to become alienated from their families and kinship networks. It would be like undergoing death because to no longer pursue honor would be to lose one’s reputation, to become of no account in the eyes of society and one’s family. Instead of offering “three easy steps for success,” Jesus bids disciples to step into an abyss of dishonor. Disciples would be pariahs, unwelcome in traditional structures of society, cut off because of their following of Jesus. (Astoundingly, a happy place as described in Matt 5:10-12.) In place of lost family ties, Jesus offers a new basis for honor: kinship in the non-rivalrous reign of God (Matt 12:46-50).
Said another way, Jesus is pointing toward a transcendence of the honor-shame dynamic. Rather than proportional retaliatory justice for direct and indirect challenges to one’s honor, Jesus urges going in an unheard-of direction. 31 Jesus reveals that the only way to unlearn rivalry is to give up on winning, indeed, to lose intentionally. Somehow, the p. 86 absurd welcoming of dishonor unlocks a life-giving dynamic that cannot be accessed when we remain in the familiar confines of resistance to our rivals. Dying to the defense of honor uniquely breaks the hold of rivalry and opens up space for cultivating the gracious, non-rivalrous relations offered to humanity in the Holy Spirit. And, if Jesus is inviting disciples into unlearning our addiction to rivalries, then it would make sense that the next instruction in the Sermon has to do with unlearning hate of enemies (rivals) through the practice of love.
Conclusion
While it is difficult for me to entirely reject Wink’s nonviolent resistance as Jesus’ creative third way for peacemaking, I conclude that something else is afoot in Matthew 5:38-42. Where Wink advocates a different form of resistance, it remains as life organized around resistance, which assumes rivalrous relationships bent on winning. The scandalous instruction of Jesus to “resist not evildoers” tutors disciples to absorb shame, to occupy reputations of dishonor on his account. This is how disciples unlearn rivalry and learn to imitate their Father in heaven.
Jesus embodies this lesson in his intentional going to the cross, occupying a place of enormous shame without being driven by riposte and revenge toward his persecutors. In place of outrage and resentment for the shaming, Jesus offers liberating forgiveness to those who are trapped in rivalry’s constraints. The abyss of dishonor has been disarmed because Jesus has been there and has unleashed his redemptive presence. As Jesus demonstrates, choosing to suffer is the way of sacrificial love, but suffering per se is not the goal.
Likewise, “resist not” is not the end goal but a means toward something else. What looks like the intentional choosing of dishonor when reputation is under attack generates new identities and new relationships beyond rivalry. Such transformations could mean the culture wars (and other rivalries that bind us) become irrelevant noise as disciples give up on defeating rivals to receive something better, albeit not something fully comprehensible on this side of that unlearning. p. 87
Notes
- Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), 3.
- Though he does not use the term “Domination System,” Bruce Malina supports Wink’s sense of the role of power in ancient Mediterranean life. Broadly, politics was about exercising power/control over others, making them do what you wanted. See Bruce J. Malina, The Social Gospel of Jesus: The Kingdom of God in Mediterranean Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 26.
- Wink, 175.
- Wink, 176. Malina concurs that social status concerns governed ancient Mediterranean culture. Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), ch. 4.
- In ancient Judaism, the shame connected to nakedness did not belong to the one who was naked but more to the one who caused the nakedness to occur (Wink, 179).
- Wink, 180. Wink shows how the proliferation of regulations to curb the behavior of Roman soldiers testifies to the rampant abuse of military authority in occupied territory.
- Wink, 182.
- Wink, 183.
- Wink, 184.
- Wink, 184.
- Wink, 185–86.
- Joseph Scrivner, “Walter Wink’s Blind Spot: Passivity as Resistance,” Political Theology Network, November 4, 2021, https://politicaltheology.com/on-walter-winks-jesus-and-nonviolence-a-third-way.
- Scrivner.
- Kevin Carnahan, “Jesus Did Not Teach Nonviolent Resistance in the Sermon on the Mount,” Political Theology Network, October 14, 2021, https://politicaltheology.com/jesus-did-not-teach-nonviolent-resistance-in-the-sermon-on-the-mount.
- Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 3.
- Neyrey, 5, 18.
- Ferdinand E. Deist, The Material Culture of the Bible: An Introduction (New York: Sheffield Academic, 2000), ch. 9.
- Neyrey, 16. p. 88
- Neyrey, 24–25.
- Neyrey, 203.
- Neyrey, 203–4.
- Neyrey, 204.
- James F. Davis, Lex Talionis in Early Judaism and the Exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 5.38-42 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 99–100.
- Bernon Lee, “Unity in Diversity: The Literary Function of the Formula of Retaliation in Leviticus 24.15-22,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 38, no. 3 (2014): 310.
- Neyrey, 205.
- Robert Muller explains how, in Arab culture, shame must be avoided at all costs. If it strikes, it must be hidden. If it is exposed, then it must be avenged. At all costs, honor must be restored. This is a structuring and enduring force in Arab life. See Robert Muller, “Honor and Shame in a Middle Eastern Setting,” NABATAEA.net, https://nabataea.net/explore/culture_and_religion/honorshame/.
- As noted before, Wink suggests that turning the other cheek would have been a counter-challenge, answering the challenge of violent domination with a nonviolent challenge toward more equitable treatment. However, Neyrey contends that turning the other cheek, done as a provocative challenge to the insulter, keeps disciples firmly engaged in the honor-shame game (205).
- Neyrey, 206.
- Neyrey, 207.
- René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), ch. 2.
- Davis, 150, 167.
