This is the time of year we honor our military veterans. I have a lot of veterans in my family and five sons who currently serve. I celebrate Veteran’s Day proudly on November 11th. But as a defender of the Christian worldview, doing so also brings up a difficult tension in my thinking. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors. But supporting war and those who fight it presumes a national right to kill our neighbors. That seems like a horrendous contradiction. Shouldn’t I be a Christian pacifist? And how should a thoughtful believer understand the relationship between Christianity and war?
Just War Theory
For starters, it is a fact of history that Christians have always been concerned about this issue. Augustine of Hippo began formulating a Christian response to war in the 4th century A.D.:
“We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.”
~ Augustine
Later, St. Thomas Aquinas formalized that thinking into what we now call Just War Theory. I have addressed this issue elsewhere in the context of modern, high-tech, remote warfare. You can read my article on that subject at the Christian Research Journal website here:
“Justice and Assymetric Warfare”
That’s great. But the Christian pacifist position sees things in a completely different way.
Christian Pacifism
Many Christians believe that we have no business engaging in, or supporting, war. These folks insist that there should be no tension in our thinking. If you’re a Christian, you should also be a pacifist.
One writer put it this way:
“Rome terrorized Christians by arresting them, imprisoning them, crucifying them, feeding them to wild animals and impaling and burning them to death. In the minds of many Christians today, those early Christians has every right to fight back. Curiously enough, they didn’t. In the face of imminent threat, the early church chose to abandon the very thing that could have kept them safe.”
He goes on to quote the first-century Christian, St. Justin, who said:
“We who were filled with war and slaughter and wickedness, have each throughout the earth changed our weapons of war—our swords into plowshares, and our spears into tools for tilling the soil—and we cultivate righteousness, generosity, faith and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”
Was Paul A Pacifist?
And it’s not just the early Christians who defend Christian pacifism as the standard. The Apostle Paul appears to expect the same thing in Romans 12:17-20:
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse … Do not repay anyone evil for evil … If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends … On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
How can we defend Just War Theory against what seems to be the obvious teaching of Paul that engaging in war is unacceptable?
Descriptions Are Not Prescriptions
I understand the motivation for the Christian pacifist point of view. That’s why I admit there’s a tension in my thinking. But addressing the tension requires that we be precise about what the Bible teaches — and what it doesn’t.
The pacifist position fails to distinguish between description and prescription.
Yes, the early church eschewed retaliation and did seem to practice Christian pacifism. But Justin, the Roman historian quoted above, is simply giving a description of what they did. There is no biblically-based moral mandate that required them to do it.
Intramural Bickering Is Not War
At the heart of the difference in thinking lies a failure to distinguish between personal defense and national defense. The quote from Romans is actually taken out of context. It sits right in the middle of a passage that actually makes the opposite point.
Remember, Paul wrote his letter to the Romans while he was in Corinth. It was meant to address division between fellow Christians within the Roman church. In fact, Paul was with a couple (Priscilla and Aquila) in Corinth who had been forced to leave Rome for that very reason.
The Government: God’s Agent Of Wrath
If you read the entire passage that begins at Romans 12:1, you will find that the paragraph quoted (vss. 17-20) is at the end of an explanation about why disagreeable factions in the church should be more kind and tolerant toward each other. This is about an intramural conflict. It has nothing to do with how the church should respond to Roman oppression from the outside.
In fact, in the very next paragraph, (Romans 13) Paul goes on to talk about how God establishes the institution of government. One of the reasons he does so is that government is the instrument he uses to deal with evil. Specifically, Paul warns that:
” … if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [the government authority] does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment to the wrongdoer.”
~ Romans 13:4
Governments wage war. Individuals don’t. It’s an important distinction.
Valuing Life
The Judeo-Christian tradition sees life as a sacred and valuable thing. But that does not prohibit Christians from defending themselves and their families from the evil assaults of others. This is not a license for vigilantism. But it does allow for the use of deadly force as a last resort against evil people who threaten to take innocent human life without cause.
Self-defense is not a sin. And this applies to persons as well as nation-states. It is a greater moral wrong to allow defenseless human beings to be killed by evil regimes than to stop them if we have the power to do so. That is one of the tenets of Just War Theory. War is a contingent evil. But it may result when we make rational, ethical decisions to engage in the contingent evil of war in order to stop another intrinsic evil.
Turning The Other Cheek
Another concept that is misused in defense of Christian pacifism is Jesus’ mandate to “turn the other cheek.” It’s one of his most famous lines.
“Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also …”
~ Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29
There is a cultural norm in play here. Most people are right-handed. So, hitting someone on the right cheek requires a backhanded slap. And a backhanded slap was a blatant form of insult to a first-century Jew.
What Jesus is actually addressing is a reaction that returns insult for insult. He’s admonishing his followers to not respond to someone who insults them with the same kind of insult.
In fact, it is interesting to note that at his own trial, when Jesus was struck by the Jewish authorities, he did not turn the other cheek. He responded by demanding an accounting for why someone struck him unjustly.
Different Testament, Same God
Those who argue for Christian pacifism are also quick to separate the Jesus of the New Testament from the God of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament directed the Israelites to wage war on the evil empires of their day. Jesus told us to love our neighbor.
This apparent dichotomy is difficult to rationalize but it can be done. Paul Copan’s, Is God A Moral Monster, is an excellent resource for that. But the important thing to understand is that God is not schizophrenic. The first and second Persons of the Trinity are the same God. We can’t claim that one commanded his people to wage war while the other is a pacifist.
Justifying War
The contrasts between Christian pacifism and Just War Theory are real and rational. There are no easy answers. Nobody likes war, least of all those who are called to fight it. So, please don’t take my defense of Just War as an endorsement of the seemingly endless wars in which our nation is involved.
The simple point is that the entire Just War tradition was developed by Christian thinkers who saw the use of violence as a last resort. Just War thinking is actually meant to avoid war. It demands that any decision to wage war must meet ethical criteria that are agreed upon beforehand.
The fact that politicians have misused Just War Theory to pursue dishonorable goals says a lot about them. But it says nothing about the tenets of Just War Theory itself.
Contrasting Implications
Reasonable people can disagree about the proper relationship between Christianity and war. But whatever one’s position, the fact that our national policies are grounded in the tenets of Just War Theory is important to know. It means that those who fight our wars do so for noble reasons. And it makes their service even more admirable.
Subscribing to Just War means that the decision to go to war is not the end of the story. It also requires that we impose “rules of engagement” on our military as they fight. Our enemies do no such thing.
Rules of Engagement
They torture captives, burn them in cages, and video their beheadings. We argue about their human rights and accommodate their religious demands.
They hide inside Mosques and hospitals because they know we will not attack them there. We develop weapons that allow us to avoid damaging the same places.
They shield themselves from innocent civilians. We delay or discontinue attacks if we know civilians are in danger.
In other words, they know the ethical limitations we impose on ourselves. And they use the moral high ground we cherish against us. Our troops are hindered and sometimes suffer as a result.
Christianity and War
These are not complaints. They are the ramifications of seeing war as a necessary evil and taking it seriously.
The decision to be a Christian pacifist is emotionally understandable. Waging a just war is rationally tenable. Both can be biblically defensible.
We should pray for peace. And we should prepare for war. Doing the latter is actually a way to pursue the former. And Christians who hold differing views on war can, and should, do both.