A Christian Warrior`s Code?
By Chaplain (Major) Scott A. Sterling, U.S. Army[iv]
Note: Chaplain Sterling is presently serving as a Brigade Chaplain in Iraq. A graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Lutheran Southern Theological Seminary (STM), he did his Master`s thesis on Just War issues.
In the midst of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism, my fellow chaplains and I often talk with service men and women who are trying to make moral sense of their military service. This is an important quest on the part of these volunteer warriors who are fighting a different kind of enemy than did armies of the past. They must find their moral way through new applications of the laws of war, Geneva Conventions, and rules of engagement. Most chaplains are wise enough to not offer easy answers, and many join with their soldiers in an ongoing search for moral and ethical clarity in this controversial war. Some Christians, however, have found a biblical "smoking gun," a passage of Scripture that seems on the surface to clearly give soldiers a "moral code" of warfare. This text of choice is Romans 13:3-4. Without presenting an in-depth biblical analysis, in this article I will argue that the use of Romans 13:4 to forge such a moral code for soldiers is at best a misapplication of Scripture, and it can actually be ethically dangerous.
Romans 13:4 states, "For he [the governing authority] is God`s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God`s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
To be fair to this verse it is important that it be seen in its context. Romans 13 is part of the "therefore" discourse in Romans (chapters 12-15), which describes how believers are to conduct themselves in the world. The early believers were cautioned by Paul to live their everyday lives in such a way as to always bring honor to God; this included not flaunting civil law just because they were "free in Christ." Chapter 13 in particular addresses the Christian`s relationship with the State, and specifically calls individual Christians not to rebel against the law of the land, but to submit to it. Paul explicitly declares that the structures and institutions of government "have been established by God" (13:1). To rebel against the institutions of government, therefore, has severe consequences, including finding ourselves on the painful end of the government`s "sword." But Christians are to obey the law, Paul says, not only because of the legal consequences, but also because of "conscience" (13:5), i.e., simply because it is the right thing to do.
Most commentators see the sword in 13:4 as a reference to capital punishment, or at least to civil police actions, and this appears to be the obvious meaning. Yet I have heard a number of Christians extrapolate from this verse that the government is also God`s agent to bring punishment on international wrongdoers (KJV: "those that do evil"); that is, on national enemies. Those who would use this passage as a framework to derive a moral code for warriors also consider the sword to be the military arm of the government. The military, then, is "God`s servant" to punish those that do evil in the world. By extension, therefore, the individual soldier is also God`s servant to punish evil. Here is where the use of Romans 13 becomes ethically problematic.
Stephen Mansfield, in his book, The Faith of the American Soldier, calls on chaplains to assist soldiers in creating a warrior code. He states, "A true warrior code assesses the enemy in moral, even religious terms."[v] He further asserts that we need a Christian warrior code to counter the Muslim warrior code that our current enemy professes. He desires chaplains to clearly proclaim that we are fighting against a "system of evil" (quoting Theodore Roosevelt).[vi] Romans 13:4 is an attractive proof-text when appealed to from this perspective. But it doesn`t work; it`s not faithful to the context – and it`s ethically very troublesome for the following reasons.
First, to be consistent in our application we would have to claim that Paul is asserting that the military arm of every government is God`s servant to punish international opponents (so-called evildoers) with the sword, and this can get confusing. Thus the Roman military of Paul`s time was God`s servant, as are the massive armies of North Korea and Iran today, and of course, America`s military forces. Some leaders in Iran still consider America to be the "Great Satan." All this begs the question: if Iran wages war on America are they God`s servants against American evil, or is America God`s servant against Iranian evil? Neither? Both? Those who would use Romans 13 as a blueprint for a Christian Warrior`s Code will have trouble coming to a logically consistent application of the passage.[vii]
Second, Paul is writing to Christians in Rome, not Roman citizens in general. If Paul is indeed declaring that soldiers, as extensions of the government`s sword, are God`s servants of wrath, he must be referring to all soldiers, not just the Christian ones. While there are certainly times that God has used unbelievers to carry out his purposes in the world, still the letter to the Roman church is without a doubt addressed only to the disciples of Jesus in Rome, and only addresses their relationship with the state as part of his greater discourse on living as disciples of Messiah.
Leadership within the military (including chaplains) indeed has a responsibility to instill a moral framework for serving in the military and killing the enemy. But if the moral code comes from a Christian understanding of God, based on Christian Scripture, and this source is rejected by a non-Christian, can that non-Christian soldier fight ethically? (The answer is most certainly, yes.) Certainly soldiers must grapple with the moral and ethical ramifications of serving in the military and potentially taking human life, and chaplains are in an ideal position to walk with them through this journey.[viii] But our answers need to be more than parochial applications of particular proof-texts.
Finally, the question must be asked: Who is really the wrongdoer, the evil one? Jesus teaches us to look at the log in our own eyes before we address the specks in others`. This is not to deny that evil has been perpetrated against our nation in the form of terrorist attacks, nor that evil is ever present on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere where women, children and other innocents are blown up in markets, cafes, or on their way to school[ix]. Evil exists also in governments that starve their citizens for the sake of huge militaries, and in societies that accept (or commit) genocide or ethnic cleansing. Sometimes our nation will necessarily be aroused to fight those forces of evil where they exist, even if they do not immediately or directly threaten our own security. And Christians within
