The whole thrust of his teaching and life is against the use of violence and in favour of nonviolent resistance to powers gone bad. The fact remains that this is the one and only remembered incident in Jesus’ entire life and career where he used physical violence. Second, this incident does not sanction all uses of any kind of violence even for good ends. This wasn’t a “temple tantrum” at all, but rather a deliberate, symbolic act of religious, political, and social activism. But with this action Jesus served notice to the powers that be-the temple authorities, the watching Roman rulers-that their poor-oppressing and other-excluding ways were under God’s judgment.
Undoubtedly everyone picked up their tables, gathered their animals, and carried on with their business. Gospels scholars are pretty much united in recognizing that this incident in the temple was a kind of “enacted parable,” or maybe better, a kind of “prophetic symbol.” Jesus overturns tables and drives out animals in the temple courts not because that single action is actually going to halt temple commerce. They focus on purity over compassion, on strict adherence to the Law over mercy toward the needy, on maintaining their power and privilege over pursuing justice for the vulnerable and marginalized-and this really ticks Jesus off. You won’t find a single instance in the Gospels of Jesus verbally haranguing the poor or flipping the table of a widow-or a little child, or repentant sinner, or seeking Gentile, or any of those considered last, least, or lost in the eyes of the world. And, to be sure, this story, found in all four canonical Gospels, does provide a caution to pacifists against prohibiting all physical violence, much like the Matthean Jesus’ tirade against the scribes and Pharisees provides a caution against prohibiting all verbal violence.īut this caution comes with some rather large caveats.įirst, the point of both this instance of physical violence by Jesus and his uses of verbal violence recorded in the Gospels is the same, and it is crucial to grasp: in each case Jesus is sending a clear warning to the powers that be who are abusing their power over others. “Jesus advocated nonviolence, you say? Well, what about when he flipped over tables and drove the moneychangers from the temple? Sounds pretty violent to me!” It’s probably the story most people turn to when they want to throw a wrench in the gears of pacifism.
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