We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

The Principle of Non-Violence

The Principle of Non-Violence

Several years ago, Woodland Hills Church hosted a Q&A with Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy to answer questions that arose from their exploration of Anabaptism. In this short clip, they address the Anabaptist principle of non-violence, and point out that this principle goes far beyond refraining from external violence. The call to non-violence is grounded in our call to love and involves our hearts and minds. So the challenge is to cultivate peace in our thoughts and words as well as our deeds. Purging ourselves from all internal violence (toward God, ourselves, and creation) is the deeper work of peace.

Related Reading

God’s Non-Violent Ideal in the OT

While God condescended to working within the violent-prone, fallen framework of his people in the Old Testament—as I argue in Crucifixion of the Warrior God—the OT is also full of references to how God worked to preserve his non-violent ideal as much as possible. He did this by continually reminding his people not to place…

Does Hebrews 11 Praise Violence? A Response to Paul Copan (#2)

Once or twice a week, as time allows, I will be responding to criticisms of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG) that were raised by Paul Copan in a recent paper that he delivered at the Evangelical Theological Society. In my first post in this series I responded to Copan’s claim that Paul’s quotation from…

Join the Revolution!

We are living at a very important, and very exciting, juncture of history. The old religion of Christendom that has been identified with “Christianity” the last 1600 years is dying, and out of its ruins is arising a new tribe of kingdom revolutionaries. All around the globe people are getting the revelation that the kingdom…

Are You Anti-American?

Greg answers the frequently asked question of whether he is anti-American. What’s your best guess? Watch the video and find out!

Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 5

This is the fifth of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? In this segment, Greg points out that none of Bart’s material are new discoveries. Even the most conservative scholars in this field are aware of them, and yet, none of them…

A Non-Violent Creation

A biblical teaching that we often overlook regarding the centrality of non-violence concerns God’s original vision of creation. We have grown so accustomed to the violence we experience as a part of nature that we don’t even question whether it is supposed to be the way it is. However when we see God’s vision for…