[caption id="attachment_5180" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Source: Wikimedia Commons - Delacroix&#039;s Christ on the Cross"]<a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/360px-Eugène_Delacroix_Christ_on_the_Cross_sketch_1845.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-5180" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/360px-Eugène_Delacroix_Christ_on_the_Cross_sketch_1845-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas begins his recent book <em>War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity</em> with the following typically Hauerwasian statement:
<blockquote>This is a modest book with an immodest purpose: to convince Christians that war has been abolished. The grammar of that sentence is very important: the past tense is deliberate. I do not want to convince Christians to work for the abolition of war, but rather I want us to live recognizing that in the cross of Christ war has already been abolished (Kindle 98)</blockquote>
Is it really to that war has been abolished? Clearly much depends on what Hauerwas means by "already been abolished". However, reading this I could not help but be reminded of my own experience of encountering such teaching.  I began my Christian life within pentecostalism, even to the point of attending a pentecostal theological college (seminary for US readers). As is well known pentecostalism is an expressive form of Christianity and one in which God was seen to be very active in the day to day affairs of her followers. Miracles were regularly claimed to have happened and, following the interpolated end of Mark's gospel it was thought divine healing, after the fashion of Jesus' own ministry, would be a regular feature of the believers' life.

Belief in divine healing, or at least the possibility of divine healing, is widespread across the Christian church but where a lot of pentecostalism (not all) differed was in the belief put forward in precisely the same terms set out out by Hauerwas. In the atonement Jesus made provision for the healing of all sickness. Taking their cue from Isaiah 53 teachers would proclaim that 'by his stripes you have been healed' (i.e., the death of Christ provided for the healing of the body in the here and now).
<blockquote><img class=" guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq guqmleqgnbrgvrovzzzq" style="border: none!important;margin: 0!important" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=nicodemist-21&amp;l=as2&amp;o=2&amp;a=0801039290" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></blockquote>