War and Peace

From the earliest days of the gospel proclamation, the Christian response to war has ranged from the total pacifism of some in the early church and the Anabaptists of the radical reformation, to business-as-usual compromise with the war-making world. For most of the church's life, the most popular view was a middle way: the 'just war' theory, which discourages aggression but allows war-making in self-defense. Jesus laid down commands for his followers:

How you get pacifism from the Lord's teaching is self-explanatory: what Jesus plainly intends His followers to do in their own private life, they are also to do in their public life as citizens or magistrates: as members of a community owing certain obligations to their compatriots, including mutual assistance against external threats. The 'just war' theory, and the more bellicose contemporary idea of 'war for idealism's sake,' separate the individual believer's private life, in which he must not return evil for evil, from his public life, in which he may, if the public interest is served thereby.

Pre-Emption

The Bush administration's enthusiasm for war as a solution to all the world's ills sadly proved infectious. This called forth some heavy lifting in the Bible reading department, as Jesus' teaching in this area gives little encouragement to war boosters:

Can the sought-for Warrior Ethic be found in the Bible by simply paging back, before all that inconvenient preaching by our Lord? Some think so:

"Why is just soldiering a holy vocation? And why are those who reprove just soldiers guilty of blasphemy? The answers are connected. Just soldiering is holy because those who justly restrain evil are acting in a God-like fashion. Just soldiering, in this view, is consonant with holy Christian living. . . Just soldiering is God-like simply because God does this sort of thing. That's why it is blasphemous to reprove just soldiering: That which is reproved--the use of force to restrain evil--is something God does Himself. To reprove the use of force in the restraint of evil is thus to reprove God." (Darrell Cole, When God Says War is Right, p. 47).

To be sure, "God does this sort of thing," in Noah's flood for example. He has even commissioned men to act as the instrument of His judgment, as against the Canaanites who practiced child sacrifice. And to be sure, men are urged to be like God:

"Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.’" (Leviticus 19:2).

"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48).

But, before we clamber onto God's throne following the principle, 'if God does it, so can we, for thus we will become "God-like,"' caution must be raised. God demands worship:

"All flesh shall come to worship before Me, says the LORD." (Isaiah 66:23).

Certain men have followed suit, seeing it is "God-like" to demand worship. But God does not reward them:

"Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your heart is lifted up, and you say, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods, in the midst of the seas,’ Yet you are a man, and not a god,. . . Behold, therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom, and defile your splendor. They shall throw you down into the Pit, and you shall die the death of the slain in the midst of the seas.’" (Ezekiel 28:2-8).

In this case, the ambition to be "God-like" has proven a snare, and a lie just like,

"For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:5).

Certain functions God has reserved for Himself, such as vengeance:

The Sword

The Christian defense of war notices that God placed the sword in the magistrate's hand:

Therefore, the argument goes, a Christian magistrate may find his duty calls him to do, in his public capacity, what he is commanded not to do in his private capacity, that is, recompense evil for evil (Romans 12:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:15, 1 Peter 3:9). This argument bears weight while Genghis Khan and his merciless hordes are sweeping across the plain, bent on genocidal destruction. But it evanesces into absurdity as Christian radio personalities howl for war against socialist Iraq on grounds this nation may, conceivably, someday attack us, though they had avoided so doing thus far into the history of the world. More consistent is the perennial Christian witness against war. Every warring nation claims to be acting in self-defense, so at least 50 per cent of the time this claim must be simply false:

Southern Baptists

Whatever happened to the Southern Baptists? Those who overheard their blood-curdling war cries in the aftermath of President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq for no good reason must wonder. How is it that they knew the mind of Christ so well in 1940, then forgot what they knew?:

Christian Zionism

One group which has emerged in recent years as a vocal advocate for war is the movement known as 'Christian Zionism.' Though the modern-day state of Israel includes a large population of self-identified atheists, and another large group of theists who profess no religion—right off the bat, a very large segment of the population is violating the first commandment—Christian Zionists nonetheless identify this modern-day state with Biblical Israel. Of the current crop of candidates, Michele Bachmann is in thrall to this viewpoint, which is a shame because her positions on the social issues of gay marriage and abortion are very strong and attractive:

Terrorism

Small-time criminality and war are two different things. Under the classical Christian just war theory, the only war in which Christians may participate is one called by duly constituted authority. At times, as during our Revolutionary War, different entities make competing claims to legitimacy; but an Army of One like Timothy McVeigh or Theodore Kaczynski is not a soldier but a criminal. This distinction is often overlooked by media personalities such as Bill Maher, who cannot see any difference between the Crusades and Anders Behring Breivik's murder spree. Contrary to what some people seem to think, Islam likewise does not generally allow any random individual to declare war. The difficulties of this program ought to be apparent. Ahmad will seize command and order a march to the mountains; Amin will stand up and shout, 'To the sea!' The two armies marching in opposite directions will trample each other, not prevail over the enemy. . .if they can even agree who the enemy is. It is more efficient to define a chain of command. Muslims agree that there is one, though they disagree on what it is:

During the twentieth century, the census of how many, or rather how few, boots you could place on the mountain parade grounds of guerilla war before forfeiting the assumption you were acting for the 'people' steadily declined as a courtesy to Marxism, never popular. There is a floor: the number cannot decline below 'one.' When the New York Times sent a reporter to interview Fidel Castro campaigning in the Cuban mountains, Mr. Castro led a handful of followers; yet the gullible readers of the New York Times were assured he was the speaking voice of the Cuban people. If the Cuban people supported him, why did they not send him their sons? But now that we have got down to one-man popular uprisings, even readers of the New York Times must reject the absurdity.

European governments have a long history of caving in to terrorist demands. But Anders Behring Breivik's demands are not achievable without civil war: "Demographical research is necessary in order to explain to people why mass deportation of Muslims is the only viable alternative." (2083 Manifesto, p. 576). If this depraved child-murderer does after all speak for anyone other than himself, then God help the Muslim residents of Europe escape the coming pogrom.

Truth to tell there is a resemblance between private criminality and state-sanctioned violence which did not escape the notice of Augustine:

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.'” (Augustine, The City of God, Book 4, Chapter 4).

Still there is a meaningful moral difference. Timothy McVeigh could not fathom why he was criticized for doing, in his private capacity, what he had been trained to do in the Army. That the United States of America, through its duly elected Commander-in-Chief, directs the Army does matter. Political theories differ in where to ground legitimacy, whether in the sovereignty of the people, or some other source. A private individual, a Timothy McVeigh or Theodore Kaczynski, who locates popular sovereignty between his own two ears, is a madman.

The Crusades

The Crusades of the Middle Ages are often portrayed as naked Christian aggression, as if the peaceful Muslims were minding their own business at the time, when the Christian West up and decided to invade the Holy Land for no particular reason. The reality is that four hundred years of Muslim aggression had reduced the Christian population of the Near East, formerly the majority, to a weak and pitiful remnant crying out for relief. Certainly no Christian can celebrate the way the Crusades bent and distorted Christian doctrine, nor the fact that the bishop of Rome emerged at that time as a sort of anti-Caliph, nor the atrocities committed during those wars, including the sack of Constantinople, a friendly Christian city, during the fourth Crusade. However any such criticism should be based in reality, not the never-was fantasy of a Muslim community seeking peaceful co-existence.

The unimaginable suffering endured by the conquered Christian peoples of what once was the heartland of the Christian church, under the boot of the Muslim imperialists, cried out for justice; would that the Western response had been less fitful and more effectual. The Muslims wanted only as much peace as the conqueror ever wants: "A conqueror is always a lover of peace (as Buonaparte always asserted of himself); he would like to make his entry into our state unopposed; in order to prevent this, we must choose war. . ." (Karl von Clausewitz, On War, Book VI, Chapter 5).

There was a process of mirroring that went on in those years. Muslims who died in battle were promised paradise; so Christians who died in battle were promised, by the Pope, a special dispensation. But there is no such provision in the Bible! Once the Pope discovered he could invent new salvation plans not known to the apostles, there was no stopping him; it took a Reformation to call a halt to these innovations. Christendom watched the relentless Muslim advance and thought, evidently, 'To beat these people we must become like them.' That was a real shame; but still some unified military response was necessary. It should have been under secular auspices, because no bishop has any calling to declare war; but it was necessary to slow down the tidal wave of aggression that was inundating Christendom, and the Crusades did accomplish that goal.