Isaiah by Daniel Berrigan

First published: Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1996

Genre(s): Nonfiction; poetry

Subgenre(s): Biblical studies; lyric poetry

Core issue(s): Conscience; contemplation; faith; hope; nonviolent resistance; peace; scriptures

Overview

Isaiah, a mixed-genre work, combines Daniel Berrigan’s modern poetic rendering of selected passages from the book of Isaiah with personal reflections on the text. Berrigan is a Jesuit priest and longtime activist and war resister, and his commentary originates in scripturally based contemplative prayer, formal and informal scripture study, and his experiences as a war resister and prisoner for peace combined with the impressions of an accomplished poet.

To fully savor Berrigan’s insights, familiarity with his biographical background is essential. The introduction, accompanied by one or more of the suggested readings, fulfills this need. As a Plowshares movement activist, he has engaged in liturgically influenced damage to components of nuclear weapons, which launched an international movement of more than fifty civil disobedience actions since 1980. From Isaiah’s time to the present, he sees war as a constant situation, a practice that denies God. Trust in weapons and murder, he argues, directly disrespects God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer. Isaiah briefly enjoyed a measure of popularity, but prophets are discarded by governments when their message challenges conventional power, an experience shared by Isaiah, Jesus, and the Plowshares activists, many of whom profess a radical Gospel Christianity grounded in Christ’s command to love God and each other, including enemies.

In chapter 1 Berrigan explains that God teaches ethics through visions and pronouncements of prophets, who express the highest standard of love. God speaks through the powerless, the poor, and outsiders because the powerful confuse their evil designs with justice and goodness. Isaiah’s clarion call to remake swords into plowshares maintains its validity over the centuries for people of faith because war making repeats the crime of Cain: killing one’s sibling. The Ten Commandments, Christ’s law of love, and Paul’s understanding of the church as the mystical body of Christ reinforce the continued relevance of Isaiah’s message of nonviolence for Christians.

Berrigan observes in chapter 2 that the prophets acknowledge their sinfulness. God uses these flawed humans as divine messengers. When prophetic words challenge established power and conventional wisdom, prophets find that God’s favor does not always guarantee freedom from rejection or worse. Constant in their faith, the prophets share their vision regardless of the consequences. Faithfulness to God—not measurable results—counts. Although the Israelites are God’s chosen ones, their resorting to war displeases God, who refuses to bless their war efforts. The God of life counters war with the gift of children. Later Christ reminds all to be like little children, innocent of the ability to plan war. Isaiah 11 describes an ideal place of peace, which Berrigan links to Jesus, the prince of justice and peace.

Idolatry of the war-making state in opposition to God continues in the Isaiah commentaries in chapters 3 and 4. Isaiah’s God—Yahweh—is just and compassionate, although God’s ways are not always visible to believers. In an idolatrous culture, God calls Isaiah or other prophets to speak the hard truths. Berrigan names modern idols, which include war, racism, sexism, and destruction of the environment—anything destructive of human life. For Berrigan, Isaiah’s thinking suggests that when people truly honor God as when they engage in peacemaking, the idols decay, but when the idols such as nuclear weapons are respected, then moral decay kills the culture even in a Christian nation. Nuclear weapons are idols for their obvious deadliness and for the resources they sap from building a community of justice and peace. That Isaiah’s message of peace applies to Christians, Berrigan argues, is evident from Christ’s trajectory from proclamation of the Sermon on the Mount to death at Calvary. Hope in God prevents a resort to murder and war. Such faith in God does not translate into lives of ease and freedom from suffering for the people or prophets, as suggested by Jesus’ example.

The Isaiah texts, Berrigan observes, span centuries and were written by multiple authors and convey different emphases, which do not undermine the message of the nonviolent prophetic visions in the early chapters. Isaiah 40, covered in chapter 5, presents another face of God: gentle and promising renewal. Yet nations play God by resorting to war, thus dooming many to destruction and themselves to moral self-destruction. While Isaiah relies on patriarchal imagery to describe God, Berrigan suggests that feminine imagery might better convey the goodness and value of creation.

The concluding chapter explores the themes of servanthood and betrayal in later Isaiah texts. Berrigan defines servanthood as hearing the word of God and living by it, with Jesus the ideal example. Rather than perform great deeds, the prophet is a servant, proclaiming hard words when needed. Servanthood accepts human limitations and rejects the paralysis of perfectionism. The little acts, faithful to God, performed regularly—these are the traits of faithful servanthood. Servants discover hope and courage in the word of God regardless of events.

Christian Themes

At the heart of Berrigan’s Isaiah, prophecy, faith, and hope—leading to a nonviolent confrontation with the war-making state—provide Christians with a compelling and challenging interpretation of how to live authentic Christian love. During the 1960’s Berrigan shifted from liberal dissent against war and racism to a controversial nonviolent resistance to war. A member of the emerging Plowshares antinuclear movement from the 1980’s, Berrigan, a modern Isaiah, justified the destruction of the means of war, such as nuclear warheads, as a way for ordinary people of faith to counter the Western powers’ reliance on war and a nuclear arsenal to provide security for their states. Such governments and their laws value property over persons. For Berrigan, Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor, even one’s enemy, precludes a resort to war or complicity with war makers. To love human life is to love and obey God. Although his antiwar stance has pleased many on the political Left, his antiabortion beliefs offend pro-choice sensibilities in the Left as his antiwar actions alienate the Christian Right. An iconic figure in protests against the Vietnam War, Berrigan wrote books that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but since clarifying his “seamless garment” stance on protecting all life, his following has predictably diminished.

Berrigan has spent a lifetime engaged in contemplation of Scripture complemented by engagement with the world through nonviolent activism, teaching, and writing. He believes that one cannot be a Christian concerned only with working out one’s personal salvation through “Jesus and me” piety, a theme prefigured in Isaiah. Jesus’ command to love requires service to others. When governments and institutions interfere with this requirement, their evil plans and actions must be confronted. Radical Christianity ultimately leads to Christian anarchism: the belief that the great powers idolize military might at the expense of core Christian teachings. Christian communities, including the base communities throughout Latin America and Catholic Worker communities that advocate voluntary poverty, hospitality to the poor, and dedication to nonviolent resistance to injustice and war, illustrate alternatives to conventional middle-class Christianity.

Love cannot be compelled but must be freely chosen by the Christian. Berrigan remains within the Catholic faith tradition while observing freedom of conscience, clarified for Catholics at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Following the lead of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, on the issue of obedience to government versus obedience to God, Berrigan agrees that when one renders God’s dues, precious little is left for Caesar, the modern Western powers.

Sources for Further Study

Berrigan, Daniel. No Bars to Manhood. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. A classic introspective account of Berrigan’s shift from liberal dissent to nonviolent resistance to war. Includes the author’s reflections on Scriptures, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, and others.

Berrigan, Daniel. Testimony: The Word Made Flesh. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004. An essential collection of poems, essays, and sermons that explore Christianity in a “war-making state.” Includes Scriptural reflections and portraits of modern peacemakers.

Dear, John, ed. Apostle of Peace: Essays in Honor of Daniel Berrigan. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996. Celebratory essays by Berrigan’s friends and family. Most pertinent are the religiously revealing essays by John Dear, Molly Rush, Walter Wink, and Peter-Hans Kolvenbach.

Klejment, Anne. “The Berrigans: Revolutionary Christian Nonviolence.” In Peace Heroes in Twentieth-Century America, edited by Charles DeBenedetti. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. A useful brief analysis of social and religious influences on the brother peacemakers, the evolution of their activism, and their influence on American society.

Labrie, Ross. The Catholic Imagination in American Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Includes an essay on Berrigan’s earlier writings, especially his poetry. Credits his emphasis on Christian engagement with the world and his challenge to uncritical patriotism.

Labrie, Ross. The Writings of Daniel Berrigan. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989. An insightful analysis of Berrigan’s evolution as a poet, writer, and activist. Uses biographical context to flesh out the meaning of Berrigan’s works.