Non-Resistance, Justice, and the Peace of Christ

A Desert Reflection in Conversation with St. Thomas Aquinas

In a recent reflection I wrote on the Evergetinos, I tried to name the scandal many of us feel when we read stories of monks who refuse to defend themselves, who accept theft, insult, or even violence in silence, as if it were a blessing. Everything in our Western formation cries out that this cannot be right.

Someone then sent me a series of texts from St. Thomas Aquinas on peace, justice, rights, judgment, scandal, and fraternal correction. They are dense, precise, and wise. They also bring our discomfort into sharper focus.

So what happens when the Evergetinos meets the Summa?

Does the “folly” of non-resistance contradict the careful moral vision of the scholastics, or can they be held together?

What follows is a kind of spiritual commentary, an attempt to let Eastern Christian ascetical experience and Western moral clarity speak to each other rather than past each other.

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1. Two Languages Within One Church

When you place the Evergetinos beside Aquinas, you begin to see that they are often speaking two different but complementary languages.

• The Evergetinos speaks the ascetical and mystical language of the desert. It asks what happens when a human heart begins to live entirely out of the crucified and risen Christ. The question is not simply “What is allowed?” but “What is possible when grace burns to the depths of the heart?”

• Aquinas, in the texts that were shared with me, speaks the juridical and moral language of the Church. He asks what is due to whom, what justice requires, how peace is built in human communities, what authority may and may not do, and how sins like discord, contention, scandal and unjust obedience are to be understood.

If we try to make one language swallow the other, we will either:

• Turn the Evergetinos into a book of rigid moral rules that crush the weak, or

• Reduce Aquinas to a set of merely “earthly” principles that the “spiritual” can ignore.

The wiser path is to recognize that both voices are describing the Christian life, but at different depths and from different angles.

Aquinas helps us remain honest about justice, responsibility, and the common good.

The Evergetinos shows us what happens when a person begins to live the Sermon on the Mount without reserve.

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2. What Is Peace? Tranquillitas Ordinis and Hesychia

Aquinas, following Augustine, calls peace the “tranquility of order.” Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It is a well-ordered concord, without coercion, where the heart is not pulled in contrary directions and where people are united in the pursuit of a true good.

He notes that peace has two dimensions:

• Interior: the union of our own appetites, so that flesh and spirit are not at war, and our desires are not locked in endless competition.

• Exterior: concord among many, a shared willing of the good, without fear, compulsion, or hidden violence.

The Eastern Christian tradition would affirm this and then go further. It speaks of hesychia, the deep stillness of the heart that rests in God.

Peace in this sense is not primarily a social arrangement, but a state of the person whose inner movements have been healed and unified by grace. A heart in hesychia can remain at peace even when the surrounding “order” is anything but tranquil.

This is where the desert stories begin to make sense.

The monk who does not resist a thief or who accepts an insult silently is often not living in a well-ordered society at all. There is no stable “tranquility of order” around him. Yet something has become ordered within him. His desire is simple. He wants God alone.

So rather than being a denial of Thomistic peace, the Evergetinos is revealing what peace looks like when it is already sharing in the age to come. The external order is still unjust and violent, yet the monk lives from a deeper interior peace, rooted in Christ.

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3. Justice, Rights, and Voluntary Renunciation

Much of our unease about non-resistance has to do with justice and rights. Are the Fathers simply ignoring justice? Are they telling us that it is wrong to defend what is rightly ours or to protect those entrusted to us?

Here Aquinas offers some important distinctions that actually protect the Eastern Christian ascetical witness from being misused.

He teaches that:

• Justice is the firm will to give each person his due.

• There are different kinds of “right” that arise from different relationships: civic, domestic, paternal, and so on.

• A person can voluntarily give up what is owed to him, or suffer a loss willingly, without anyone doing him an injustice. One cannot do an injustice to oneself in the strict sense, because injustice involves harming another against their will.

• To do injustice in the strict sense is always a mortal sin, because it is directly contrary to charity and harms another in what is truly their due.

Seen in this light, the monk who lets himself be wronged is not committing injustice. He is freely renouncing a claim for the sake of Christ.

He is not saying “Justice does not matter.” He is saying “I place my case in the hands of God.”

This is very close to what the Eastern Christian Fathers would say. The ascetic is free to let go of what is his, to endure wrong without demanding satisfaction, because his treasure is not in his possessions or reputation.

But that same freedom does not give him the right to ignore the needs of others or to sacrifice someone else’s safety as if it were his own spiritual exercise.

When it comes to the innocent, both Aquinas and the Eastern tradition would insist that:

• There is a real duty of love and justice to protect those entrusted to us as far as we are able.

• If we intervene, the question is not simply whether we act, but how we act and from what spirit.

• It is possible, as Aquinas notes, to defend without hatred and to use force in a way that seeks the true good of all involved.

• It is likewise possible to refuse to defend oneself, not out of cowardice or confusion, but out of a heart so united to Christ that it accepts suffering as a share in His Cross.

The Evergetinos does not abolish the language of rights and justice. It shows what happens when a person, regarding his own rights, begins to share the mind of Christ who “did not grasp” but “emptied Himself.”

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4. Authority, Judgment, and “Judge Not”

Some of the most striking Thomistic passages concern judgment and authority.

Aquinas is very clear:

• Judgment, in the strict sense, is the authoritative declaration of what is just in a particular case.

• It belongs to public authority to make laws and to interpret them in binding judgments.

• It is unjust to usurp this role, to impose judgments where one has no true authority, or to apply the letter of the law in a way that violates the deeper equity and intent of the lawgiver.

• Obedience is a virtue, but not without limits. One must not obey a command that contradicts God, and one is not bound to obey in matters outside the superior’s true authority.

This might sound far from the Evergetinos, yet there is a deep kinship.

The desert Fathers constantly warn against judging one’s brother. They speak of the deadly subtlety of interior judgment, of the monk who takes upon himself the role of condemner of others.

At the same time, the Eastern Christian tradition does not deny the reality of ecclesial and spiritual authority. Bishops, abbots, and pastors must sometimes render painful judgments and corrections for the sake of the flock.

The tension is similar to what Aquinas names:

• There is a necessary, structured judgment that belongs to those entrusted with authority, exercised with prudence and mercy.

• There is also an inner posture of judgment, suspicion, and condemnation that the Gospel forbids and the desert combats relentlessly.

Non-resistance is not only about not resisting violence. It is also about the refusal to seize the judge’s seat in the heart.

The monk who “does not judge” leaves his brother’s fate in the hands of God and the Church. He does not claim for himself an authority he does not have. He will sometimes suffer injustice rather than force a judgment by his own power.

Here again Eastern mystical instinct and Western juridical clarity are not enemies. Aquinas helps us see the dangers of usurped judgment and of blind obedience. The desert helps us see how these dangers are not only external but interior and spiritual.

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5. Scandal, Truth, and the “Folly” of the Saints

A final area where Aquinas helps us is his treatment of scandal.

He defines scandal as something “less rightly” done or said that occasions another’s spiritual downfall. Importantly, he speaks of an “occasion” rather than a strict cause, since each person is responsible for their own decision to sin.

He also says:

• It is possible for someone to be scandalized by another’s good action. In that case the sin lies not in the actor but in the one taking offense.

• Spiritual goods are not to be abandoned simply because others might take scandal.

• One should not teach falsehood or suppress necessary truth to avoid scandal.

• Venial sin is not to be committed even to prevent another’s stumbling.

If we bring this back to the Evergetinos, it becomes sobering.

Many desert stories are, humanly speaking, scandalous. They seem excessive, imprudent, even dangerous by modern standards.

Aquinas reminds us that if the act itself is truly good, done with right intention and obedience, the scandal taken by others does not make it evil.

At the same time, we must avoid imitating the outward form of a saint’s action without sharing their interior measure or obedience. What was grace in their hands can become presumption in ours.

The Evergetinos reveals the upper limit of what is possible when grace consumes the heart. Aquinas helps ensure that these upper limits are not turned into new laws that crush fragile souls.

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6. A Path for Ordinary Believers

Most of us are not called, at least now, to give everything away to a thief or to endure violence without any defense. Some few may receive that measure of grace. Many will not.

What then can an ordinary Christian, standing between the desert and the Summa, take from this conversation?

1. Let justice be the floor, not the ceiling.

We may never choose injustice or harm another in what is truly their due. Aquinas is right to say that every real injustice violates charity. Yet the Gospel calls us beyond strict justice into mercy.

2. When you are wronged, ask first what God is offering you.

Sometimes you must seek redress. Sometimes God invites you to relinquish the need to justify yourself. This is delicate and requires prayer and counsel.

3. When others are wronged, remember that love is never indifferent.

The Evergetinos does not license passivity in the face of another’s suffering. To do nothing can itself be an injustice.

4. Renounce the inner violence of judgment even when you must oppose evil.

You may have to correct or confront. But the heart must remain free of hatred, fighting even interior judgment.

5. Do not let the holiness of the saints become a burden or an excuse.

Their radical lives are signs of what is possible in Christ, not new minimal standards nor romantic curiosities.

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In the end, the Evergetinos and Aquinas are not adversaries. They are like two elders in the same room:

one with precise distinctions, the other with calloused hands and desert-worn wisdom.

One guards us from naivety about justice and authority.

The other refuses to let us domesticate the Cross.

If there is a place for us to stand, it is beneath both.

Rooted in justice, we learn not to harm.

Rooted in the desert, we learn not to cling.

And slowly, through many failures, the faint outline of a peace appears that is more than order,

and a love that is more than fairness.

It is the peace and love of the One who did not resist evil in order to conquer it,

who surrendered Himself to restore us,

and who invites each of us, according to our measure,

to walk His strange and liberating way.