Violence and counter-violence

Milbank argues that, given its ontology of violence, paganism can only respond to violence with a counter-violence of its own. Political and social thus do not rest on peaceful donation or harmony but on the threat and actual practice of violence.

This view could be refined by introducing redemptive history. It appears that Torah is precisely an order of counter-violence that (in Hammerton-Kelly’s terminology) “constrained trespasses for the time being.” In this sense (and no doubt others), Torah was one form of the STOICHEIA, the “elementary principles” that organized the world under the old covenant. But with the coming of the Spirit, we are no longer under Torah, no longer meet violence (only) with counter-violence, and have a basis for the tranquillitas ordinis that exists within the non-violent community of the church.