DESCRIPTION: This course will examine violence in the New Testament and consider how the church is called to engage its presence in, among, and against us. While the course will touch on the violence of war, it will be concerned to develop a self-implicating description of violence that is thicker than the activity of war or killing. To that end, we will consider the relation between the God of Israel and violence as borne out in the New Testament drama of Jesus and his church, working from particular New Testament passages. From this drama and predominant ways it has been read by the modern church in the West, the course will develop insight into the subtleties of violence that have acquired names like race, nation, leadership, and freedom. The aim of the course's theological description and contemporary insight is to promote the Christian life as one of peacemaking by the Spirit of Jesus in and through the church.

SIGNIFICANCE FOR LIFE AND MINISTRY: The peace of oneness in Christ is at the heart of what it means to be the church of Jesus according to the New Testament. In a violent world the church is tempted to settle for a peace that is thinner than that of Christ. Christian ministers must therefore be able to draw from Scripture a theologically coherent vision of the peace the church is empowered to embody and proclaim.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: Students who successfully complete this course will have demonstrated the ability to

1. work with the New Testament in a synthetic way that takes seriously the particularity of its diverse voices while developing a coordinated New Testament witness on the matters of violence and peace;

2. wrestle intelligently with tensions between the Old Testament and the New Testament on the subject of violence (e.g., Israel's wars of conquest at God's command and Jesus' war of conquest as God's command in the flesh);

3. develop a theological argument exegetically;

4. articulate an imperative of peace that is coherently Christian.

The Bible in one of the following translations: CEB, NRSV, or TNIV.

Hauerwas, Stanley, and Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness. InterVarsity Press, 2008. ISBN: 0830834524. $15.00.

O'Donovan, Oliver. The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0521665167. $46.00.

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2d ed. Eerdmans, 1994. ISBN: 0802807348. $22.00.

Course Reader (e-reserves), including articles/chapters by (among others) Wendell Berry, Andrea Bieler, Richard Hays, Martin Luther King Jr., Elsa Tamez.

E.g., Bieler (and Schottroff), "The Body Politics of Eucharist," in Bodies, Bread, and Resurrection (Fortress, 2007), 127-56.

Berry, The Hidden Wound, 2d ed. (Counterpoint, 2010), 13-21.

Hays, "Violence in Defense of Justice," in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins, 1996), 317-46.

King, "A Time to Break Silence," in The Essential Writings of and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James M. Washington (HarperCollins, 1986), 231-44.

Tamez, "Cultural Violence against Women in Latin America," in Women Resisting Violence, ed. Mary John Mananzan et al. (Orbis, 1996), 11-19.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Touchstone, 1995. ISBN: 0684815001. $16.00.

Gorman, Michael. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. Eerdmans, 2009. ISBN: 0802862659. $24.00.

1. Online discussion groups (20%)

2. Critical book review (10%)

3. Exegetical paper wrestling with two New Testament passages in tension (40%)

4. Reflection essay on facing violence in the church according to the New Testament (30%)