Suffering Violence, Suffering Injustice: The Visibility of the Kingdom

Is Persecution the Capstone of the Christian Life of Virtue?

In this installment, we’ll continue teasing out this question of what it means that, for Augustine, suffering injustice is the summit of the Beatitudes. This brings up a lot of questions, to be sure, particularly as we consider what it means for the Christian to bear witness in an unjust world. —The Management

Making the Righteousness of God Visible

In the previous installment, we looked briefly at the way in which Augustine treated the Beatitudes, which in turn affect how he understands the teaching on turning the other cheek. When you read commentary on this, one of the things which frequently turns up is how Augustine identifies a parallel between the Beatitudes and the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer later in Matthew 6: both contain seven lines/petitions, are concerned with the Kingdom’s visibility, and are summations of the rightly-ordered life of the disciple. So far, so good.

But what the commentaries on this seem to be missing entirely is the way in which Augustine explicitly points to the 8th beatitude—the suffering of the just on behalf of the Gospel, for the sake of the unjust—as the way in which the Kingdom is made known. Augustine is famous for emphasizing the internal work of the soul, and for describing the formation of the loves we have for God and neighbor; here, as elsewhere for Augustine, this dimension of the moral life remains fundamental. But any law—any command of God—must be promulgated, made known in some way, and the life of virtue is made known through the suffering of the just for the unjust.

The final beatitude builds on the first beatitudes toward this grand admonition:

On the contrary, it will be so moved by compassion for the weakness of the offender that it will be prepared to bear with even greater injuries, and it will not neglect any corrective remedies that it may be able to apply through counsel, influence, or authority (93).¹

For the sinner to be drawn into the Kingdom, unjust suffering proves to be not only that action which most closely mirrors the work of Christ, and most clearly identified with the work of the Spirit in Acts. Unjust suffering appears as a surd: why would a person not just suffer injustice, but prepare for it? What would move a human like this?

The unjust are always to tarry with the unjust, but how they tarry with them varies, as seen in this list. On the one hand, in the case of being forced to go an additional mile (Mt. 5:40), counsel and admonition to the wicked fits the bill. But in the case of the one who takes you to court (Mt. 5:25), authority comes into play in terms of addressing injustice. In the first, the Christian mirrors Christ in the dock, silent before his accusers, and the last, the Christian mirrors Christ the patient judge, speaking with authority about the injustice of persecuting the faith. But in both cases, the fate of the unjust persecutor is premium, and even when they are punished, it is with their restoration and repentance in view, and never revenge or punitive measures.

The Red Right Hand of Justice

Whose Suffering? Which Injustice? What Violence?

This brings us to the big question raised by the final item in this list: can violence be used in service to this basic function of bearing witness to the unjust, that they might repent? Can violence be used as consistent with his admonition that suffering persecution is what makes the Beatitudes visible?