Consider the abysmal problem of the relation between
God's Kingdom and earthy power... whether, for example, a
call to arms by the Church, a blessing of weapons, or
taking up the sword of this world is an expression of
the courage of the Christian faith or, on the
contrary, the symptom of an unchristian and faithless
anxiety; whether something that can be defended and
justified in a hundred ways with penultimate reasons
drawn from faith (quite apart from the lessons of
Church history - but then what does Church history
teach?) will collapse miserably before the throne of
judgment of the ultimate reason - because what of
course appeared to be God's weapon in the hands of
God's warrior against God's enemies is now suddenly
exposed as Peter's desperate sword-waving against the
high priest's servant, whose side Jesus takes in order
to expose such brandishing of weapons for what it was:
anxious betrayal.
No, it doesn't solve anything, but it certainly articulates the problem perfectly, doesn't it?
