Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics

This text was required reading for a class I took on The Bible and Peacemaking. It was my first exposure to Swartley's work, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. He carefully traces peacemaking themes through each author in the New Testament. The chapters on 1 Peter, John 4, and Revelation stand out in my memory as being most insightful. If you've read J. H. Yoder, Walter Wink, or Stanley Hauwerwas, Swartley shares many of their views but approaches peacemaking themes in this work more from a biblical studies perspective than from an ethics perspective. It's a thick read, but well worth the investment, a unique contribution to New Testament scholarship in an area that has generally been neglected in biblical studies.

If it seems as though concepts of peace, peacemaking, non-violence and pacifism have been consistently distilleded from, yet strangely absent from New Testament Theologies, well... they have. One could either argue that this is because these concepts (at least as understood by ethicists) are indeed not theologically apparent in the New Testament, or one could dare challenge, document, and illustrate the willful neglect of such concepts. The former has been no doubt attempted, yet the latter is precisely what Swartley does in "Covenant of Peace". Imbued with a lifetime of scholarship, Swartley prophetically challenges the western theological tradition (that which has enjoyed political power) with an honest and thorough look at the message of the New Testament. His treatment builds upon much existent scholarship but with new eyes open to the shalom-project of God. Finally, a NT Theology that boldly states what much of Biblical scholoarship (thank you, Yoder) has been implying for years.