The Sword and the Cross

The people most convinced of Christ’s failure were undoubtedly the radical zealots. Some of them had followed the revolutionary carpenter from Nazareth, believing he would lead an armed insurrection which would overthrow the Roman regime, establish the dictatorship of the chosen people, and bring about the advent of the kingdom of peace and justice, under the hegemony and splendor of Israel. When these revolutionaries saw that Jesus, instead of leading an uprising, let himself fall without resistance into the power of his enemies to be crucified ignominiously, they were enraged. What Jesus had done seemed to them the height of stupidity. This reproach of Christ made by his contemporary advocates of organized violence is the same one that reappears, under a different guise, through the present advocates of violence. They want to see Christ as a sentimental, romantic, low-spirited reformer, who failed because he did not want to impose his authority violently, nor lead the oppressed masses to victory through armed insurrection.