Spring 2026 · Vol. 55 No. 1 · pp. 124–126
Book Review
A Revolutionary Jesus: Violence and Peacemaking in the Kingdom of God
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2024. 234 pages.
A brief review does not permit more than a cursory glance at this rich study, one that throws fresh light on many aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry but also touches on questions that have been and will continue to be foci of intense debate among both scholars and the broader public.
Jesse Nickel’s central thesis, growing out of years of scholarship, doctoral investigation, and teaching (presently at Columbia Bible College, Abbotsford, BC), is that Jesus was unequivocally opposed to violence and demanded the same of his followers. Reminiscent of John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus and my own Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament (published in the UK as Jesus and the Subversion of Violence: Wrestling with the New Testament Evidence), Nickel’s work spans the whole of the New Testament, even if he devotes greatest attention to the Gospels, particularly the Synoptics. In clear and accessible prose, beginning and ending with an extensive Introduction and Conclusion, five chapters explore Jesus in relation to (1) Violence and the Kingdom of God, (2) the Rejection of Violence, (3) the Way of Peace, (4) the Cross as Victory over Violence, and (5) Violence and Discipleship. The volume concludes with more than thirty pages of bibliography and both biblical and topical indices.
Nickel identifies the pervasive nature of violence in Jesus’ world, endemic in the imperial Pax Romana, as well as in the hopes and strategies of Jewish resistance by means of “eschatological violence” (Introduction). While Jesus shared in this intense longing for the “kingdom of God” and understood his calling and role as inaugurating it, chapter 2 shows that Jesus resolutely and consistently rejected the eschatological violence advocated by significant elements of Second Temple Judaism as a means to usher it in. Instead, he chose the way of suffering violence, rather than committing it. In doing so he resisted the expectations of his fellow Jews. p. 125 Over against the option of violence Jesus chose and propounded the “way of peace.” Nickel focuses in chapter 3 on the Sermon on the Mount, in particular the Beatitudes and the command not to resist (antistēnai) the evil(-doer), but rather to love the enemy. Chapter 4 is an intense discussion of the cross, the most violent element in the Gospels’ narratives. Nickel proposes that the cross both reveals the extent of Jesus’ willingness to submit to suffering and discloses at the same time the true nature of violence. Jesus died as one accused of being a lēstēs, whom Nickel identifies as one who has chosen eschatological violence as a means of liberation. Jesus’ death was thus a taking on the punishment of a lēstēs, but as one innocent of the charge. In doing so, he carried the punishment meted out to such violent liberators. As incomprehensible as this would have been to Jesus’ followers, his resurrection opened their eyes to the true nature of his “victory” in death. At the same time, they connected the centrality of the cross to their discipleship as both imitation of and participation in the nonviolent kingdom ministry of Jesus.
There is much to be learned in this study, both for scholar and general reader. Nickel’s uncompromising insistence on Jesus’ nonviolence and his “way of peace” is timely—most especially as violence is becoming an accepted feature of so-called Christian nationalism and dominionism, taking hold particularly in evangelical circles.
A few cautions and critiques. First, making “violence” the focus runs the risk of it becoming a litmus test that can skew or even silence essential aspects of the biblical witness. For example, Nickel hardly touches on the “violence” of judgment, present not only in the Old Testament, but throughout the New Testament, including in words attributed to Jesus. Paul, it should be remembered, places his demand for peaceableness alongside assurance that vengeance belongs to God (Rom 12). The insistence on the nonviolence of Jesus requires more of an accounting of judgment than Nickel’s book offers.
Second, caution must be exercised not to make Second Temple Judaism a foil for Jesus, where a Jewish eschatological pro-violence stance is contrasted with nonviolent enemy-loving Jesus. That can leave the impression that violence is endemic to Judaism and alienate Jesus from his own context and identity. The debate between Jesus and his witnesses, on one hand, and their opponents, on the other, was an intra-Jewish debate. After all, his followers came to understand and articulate his death via their own Jewish and scriptural traditions (as is shown by Nickel’s own treatment of Isaiah 53). p. 126
Third, the subject of atonement is a minefield and the debates fierce, and Nickel is to be commended for wading into the turbulent currents. The work of Joel Green, Mark Baker, and John Driver, who see substitutionary atonement as one among numerous ways of casting light on the meaning of the cross, could have provided a useful counterweight to Brad Jersak, Michael Hardin, Denny Weaver, and, hovering in the background largely unacknowledged, René Girard, who reject it as violent at its core. While Nickel cites the work of Jersak, Hardin, and Weaver appreciatively (118, n. 24), his own treatment of cross and substitution is more nuanced and generous.
Lastly, how or even whether to distinguish the words of Jesus from post-Easter memory and reflection, and how that impacts reading the Gospels, is notoriously difficult. This reviewer would have liked to see Nickel make that clearer, at least to indicate that it is an issue given the rich scholarship on which he depends.
That said, Nickel has written a book that will greatly reward close and reflective reading with a renewed sense of urgency as it relates to the violence engulfing our world, presently too often with the blessing of those invoking the name of Jesus.
