@coltenbarnaby: McCabe is not rejecting Jesus' nonviolence, nor is he calling Christians to become revolutionaries looking for a fight. For McCabe, Jesus is the perspicuous revelation of love. In Christ, love is perfectly visible because Christ lives wholly in the reality of the Kingdom. We do not. We live in the "already/not yet," where class antagonism and structural violence remain. That means violence is never a perspicuous expression of love, but in a fallen world it may sometimes be the tragic means by which love restrains or ends greater violence. That's fundamentally different from the violence of states and ruling classes, which exists to preserve exploitation and domination rather than overcome them. McCabe also explicitly rejects "adventurist" revolutionary violence. In the contemporary West, he argues that the real work is organizing, educating, building solidarity, and raising class consciousness. Premature violence only strengthens the ruling class and accelerates the dismantling of democratic freedoms. The point of this video isn't to glorify violence. It's to ask why Christians recognize violence immediately when oppressed people resist it, but rarely when exploitation, eviction, militarism, border regimes, and economic domination become the ordinary structure of society. #christiantiktok #politics #theology #faithtalks

monsiuer_Robespierre :

not a single war we've fought in the last 100 years have been qualified under St Augustine's just war theory

ECO > EGO :

Capitalism is class war is a banger

eric :

They should have taught me this in Sunday school and I would have stayed with the church.

BRGray1981 :

One of the best arguments/takes I’ve seen in a while.

Amidst The Daniel :

Damn I need to read some Herbert McCabe now. I love this ad someone who took Jesus’ call to be peacemakers seriously but could never understand how to work it out into pacifism. Thank you for the info!

Joshua Hays :

Who was this theologian?

jasonb230 :

P. Murray :

don't show this to the hawkish white male Catholics who think that what we're doing in Iran or Palestinenis in any way justified

c :

This isn’t a hate comment at all because I agree with a lot of your premises; however, I think that at least some of the way that you’re interacting with just war theory presupposes one of two options – either that state violence is assumed as The just war theory or pacifism is assumed as the position. Obviously, there’s not enough room in a TikTok for you to be able to go in to all the nuance here, but the just war theory perspective that I’ve heard (from the circles I frequent where this comes up) isn’t necessarily about state violence being the only ordained war. It’s about who’s empowered to enact acts of war in a biblical sense and under what causes– both the actor and the cause needing justified, not just one or the other. Just war theory under a Christian lens to me, has most often been explained as a transfer of power initially granted by God to magistrates, who then grant it to people either in text “empowering people to rise up against the government that would exploit them“ which then justifies them, or empowering them to fight“go fight this other person“ and then, under what terms is that call to action from the correct people acceptable and justifiable.

rianburrito :

We have to fight for and build systems that lead away from violence and towards reconciliation. This is a hard conversation that has to be happening in church. It’s not enough to collapse a corrupt system, we have to build alternatives that folks will buy into.

Bruv :

All wars are just, morality is subjective.

user7481293231868 :

I remember when Liberation theology was becoming popular and seeing pictures of Jesus holding a M16 in his arms with bullets strapped across his chest- salvation from the oppressors at the end of a gun. Or is this trying to overcome evil with evil? I remember when the movie, The Mission, came out and my friends and I were asking, which response was the right one? Then I realized that wasn’t the point of the movie, because they all died. Hopeless. The point of the movie was the ending when the kids were rowing away, picking up the broken violin ( the cross), and quote from John- the light shines in the darkness and the darkness won’t overcome it. There’s the hope- Christ is present with us giving us hope in our suffering and we are called to make our community and the world are better place to live in. So, there isn’t any just wars. Just wars.