cmbl wrote:Might this question highlight a difference between "happy dualists" and "sad dualists?"
Perhaps Dan Z or someone else could re-post those definitions, lost with the extinct forum.
As I understand it, the terminology was coined by Tom Yoder Neufeld in
Varieties of Contemporary Mennonite Peace Witness. This quote is from Philip Matthews in
Faith and Freedom: Christian Ethics in a Pluralist Culture (Commonwealth spellings regularised for clarity):
At the center, nonresistance is grounded in a 'dualistic' or 'two-kingdom' understanding of the world. Using the 'two-kingdom' language of Martin Luther, the 'public' and 'private' spheres of life became the rationale for traditional Mennonites to maintain their peace witness while giving de facto support to civil authorities involved in military conflict. Neufeld summarizes the variation within nonresistance by using the distinctive terms 'happy dualism' and 'sad dualism'. For Neufeld, 'happy dualists' are those who reject the use of force but support the participation of others, including Christians, in the exercise of 'legitimate' force; they believe that God has created the state and endowed it with responsibility to exercise force and violence. 'Sad dualists', on the other hand, regret that there is little one can do other than to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus, while calling others to faith and faithfulness.
Dan Z's successor at RBC, Jon Showalter, illustrates it this way:
It really isn't appropriate for two-kingdom dualists to watch smart bombs dropping down air shafts in Iraq and blowing up underground bunkers and celebrating and being happy about that, but there might be a place to watch that with great sadness, acknowledging somehow in the process that it is nonetheless what governments do.
Ervin Stutzman, in
From Nonresistance to Justice, describes the happy dualist position:
Two-kingdom theology allowed Mennonites [during the middle of the 20th century] to personally take a stance against participation in war, but at the same time, to ENCOURAGE the government to defend itself against Communist aggression... Two-kingdom theology was most clearly reflected in the most fundamental and conservative expressions of the Mennonite Church. Conservatives argued for a strong and orderly state that could employ WHATEVER methods it deemed appropriate, such as capital punishment, a strong military, or even nuclear weapons. They believed that some of the duties of government required a different set of ethics than the church would tolerate. Consequently, they felt free to SUPPORT the warlike affairs of state, even if they could not participate in them.
