Not "Peace" but "Harmony"

A Personal Note: This article is written with hopes that we all are given personal peace, especially my nephew, Noah, who is currently bedfast, semi-conscious, dying of cancer. Your prayers are welcome.

It always bothers me when people find contractions in what Jesus says because of the way Christianity is taught. One such contradiction is between his saying that he brings peace to us, but that he doesn’t bring peace to the world. The problem here is not the Greek word for “peace” has been mistranslated as much as misunderstood and mistaught. Because of this doubter can point to all the wars and the wars among Christians a evidence that Jesus was false.

The fact that at Christmas we sing that Jesus’s birth heralded “peace on earth,” and we call him, the “prince of peace” implies a different kind of peace than what Jesus says he brought. As a fact, it is the opposite of what he taught. This is clear if we examine his words.

The Greek Word

Despite its importance in Christan teaching today, “peace” was not a common word for Jesus to use. It stands at number fifty-four on the list of most common nouns. Jesus uses it in only eighteen verses. The Greek word is eirene (εἰρήνη), which means "time of peace," "national tranquility," "peace," "personal tranquility," and "harmony."

This definition is not very different than the one we use in English today. Like our word, the Greek eirene means both inner harmony, harmony among individuals, and an absence of war among nations. It implies a general idea of safety, security, and even prosperity. It is the opposite of the state of war. In Hebrew, the word for “peace” was used in salutations and as an inquiry as to one's health. We know that as shalom.

But this leaves us the question: did Jesus also use it in those three ways? Not if we look at his words.

Inner Peace

Jesus uses eirene the most frequently, and perhaps always, to refer to emotional tranquility, or, perhaps more precisely, the absence of doubt, worry, fear, and shock. We see this most commonly in the common phrases he uses and the situations in which he uses them.

The most frequent phrase he uses is “go in peace,” which is used in six verses out of the eighteen verses in he uses the word out of his nearly two thousand verses in the Bible. He always uses this phrase after curing someone when he is sending them away. He often uses this phrase with another common phrase of his, “your faith has saved you.” A typical example is Mark 5:34:

NIV: Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.
Listeners Heard: Daughter, this trust of yours has saved you, go away in peace and be healthy from that scourge of yours. 

There are two things to notice here. First, Jesus attributes their healing to their faith, that is, their trust in the Divine and in Jesus’s words (more about the word “trust/belief” here). Second, he does this as he sends them away. His concern appears to be that, once they are away from him, their doubt and their fear of disease will return.

The other common phrase Jesus uses is “peace unto you,” (Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν). Again, he uses this phrase in a very specific situation. It appears only in the four verses after the resurrection where he confronts his apostles. The sense is that they are upset and probably terrified both by his recent death and sudden reappearance.

The Opposite of Worldly Peace

Jesus goes to a great effort to draw a distinction between the peace he gives and worldly peace. This difference is explicit in John 16:33, another time when his apostles were frightened because, after the Last Supper, Jesus predicted that they would abandon him. He says:

NIV: I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!
Listeners Heard: These things I have relayed to you in order that you might have peace within me.  You have pressure within this society. Instead, be brave.

The “peace” here is clearly inner, “in me.” And it is contrasted, in the typical Jesus style, with an opposite, “trouble/pressure” in the outer world.

He echoes this contrast between the world’s peace and his peace again, including the idea about not having fear, in John 14:27:

NIV: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
Listeners Heard:  A peace, I leave for you. A peace, this one of mine,  I give to you. Not as this world gives, I myself give to you. It must not be troubled, yours, this heart, neither must it fear.

Notice also the idea that peace is given. He expresses this in another verse, Matthew 10:34, but one which seems shocking and contradictory at first glance. However, by understanding how Jesus uses the word “peace,” any contradiction vanishes.

NIV:   Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Listeners Heard: You all might not want to get accustomed to the idea that I show up to toss peace over this earth. I show up not to toss peace but a sword.

Here Jesus is clearly referring to problems between people, and saying that this is not the peace he is bringing. The following verses explain about those divisions between people, parents and children, and so on. There are a number of interesting features in this verse, but the important one is that it is perfectly consistent with what Jesus means by the peace he offers. He does not mean worldly peace among people or nations.

In Matthew 5:9, Jesus may refer to a broader peace as well because the word appears in a verb, not the noun, eirenopoios (εἰρηνοποιοί). This is Jesus’s first use of the idea, and he only uses this word once. It literally means “those who make peace.” It is used in the context of his Beatitudes, the “blessed” phrases that begin the Sermon on the Mount.

NIV:  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Listeners Heard: Fortunate the peacemakers because they themselves will be called sons of a Divine.

So, the sense is that peace is made, created.

Conclusion

How many of us are turned off to Jesus because of poor translation. Even as a child, these types of contradiction about Jesus and peace bothered me. I have only been able to resolve them for myself in a concise way by studying the Greek If it were up to me, I would like to see most occurrences of eirene in Jesus’s words translated as “tranquility,” with his few references to a broader peace translated as “peace.”

There is no doubt in my mind that if our preachers today were more careful about describing these ideas, such confusion would be much more difficult,