Christian Ethics Today

The Christian Tradition on War and Peace: Reflections on the Current Crisis

David P. Gushee

The Christian Tradition on War and Peace: Reflections on the Current Crisis
By David Gushee, Union University

The shocking and horrifying terrorist attacks of September 11, and current US mobilization for what appears to be an imminent military response, raise the perennial issue of the Christian stance on issues of war and peace. This is not only a fascinating historical moment, and a tragic human moment, but an instructive ethical moment-an opportunity to think deeply, to think christianly, about the most pressing issue of our day.

We need to think deeply, and christianly, about two things: the shape of Christian moral convictions about war-fighting and peace-making, and the methodological issue of how we decide what those convictions will be. So this article is an exercise not just in articulating Christian moral norms, but also being self-conscious in reflecting on the methodology by which we arrive at such norms.

The Scriptures
Nearly every branch of the Christian family tree claims that the Bible is somehow significant for shaping how Christian people are to live and think. Evangelical Christianity is distinctive, however, in claiming that the Bible is the single authoritative source for Christian faith and practice. Let us attempt to be true to this methodological distinctive by exploring the Scriptures as they stand before moving to moral traditions about war that the church later developed.

God`s written Word does not speak with the simplicity and obvious clarity on the issue of war that it does on, say, the issue of adultery or honoring father and mother. At the root of our challenge as people who take biblical authority seriously is the undeniable complexity of the biblical witness on this issue.

The Old Testament witness begins with the story of God`s creation of the world and of humanity. Made in the image of God, placed in a creation declared good by its Creator, the primeval man and woman enjoyed harmony at every level-with God, with each other, and with all other creatures.

The turning of Adam and Eve away from obedience toward disobedience, their foolish decision to reject God`s will, introduces sin into God`s good creation and destroys the primordial harmony. Now alienation characterizes relationships between people and God and among people. Among the most distressing and disastrous effects of the introduction of sin into the world is the resort to violence, beginning with Cain`s fratricidal murder of his brother Abel and moving to a broader reality of violence, mayhem, and murder as characteristic of the human condition. God meets human violence with revulsion, outrage, and divine judgment in the form of the Flood: "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them" (Gen. 6:13a). After the Flood, God makes a covenant with Noah that includes provisions demanding reverence for life and a "reckoning" from any human being who spills the blood of another (Gen. 9:5).

God`s calling of Abraham begins the long journey of redemptive history with the people who will come to be called the Jews. The patriarchal narratives involving Abraham and his kinfolk are largely free of warfighting, with an exception depicting Abraham as a defensive warrior in Gen. 14 (rallying troops to rescue Lot and his family and goods from invaders who had snatched them).

God`s liberation of the Hebrew slaves in Exodus is by no means free of death, and yet is distinctive in that the Hebrews themselves do not lift a finger or a sword in their own behalf. Israel always remembered and celebrated that it was God alone who rescued them from the Egyptians: "Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians" (Ex. 14:31a). Yahweh is the warrior.

The height of military violence in the Old Testament is reached in the accounts of the conquest of the Promised Land. These stories, told in the book of Joshua, depict a divinely ordained destruction of Canaanite towns and "everything that breathed" (Joshua 10:40), in most cases including not only warriors but women, children, and animals. This holy war motif would have fateful echoes in the long history of the people of God, both Jewish and Christian.

Once established in the Land, warfighting does not end. In fact, the entire book of Judges tells numerous tales of defensive military actions required by threats from Philistines and others. The united monarchy under David and Solomon, and then the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, also saw plenty of war as well, sometimes with each other. The texts at times celebrate the prowess of Israel`s warriors, but yet reveal an ambivalence about violence and its costs. The later Old Testament tells the sad story of first Israel`s and then Judah`s vicious destruction at the hands of foreign enemies, as well as the sometimes violent persecutions wreaked upon Jews in the Babylonian and Persian diaspora, as in the books of Daniel and Esther. The prophetic writings mix sometimes violent warnings of coming divine judgment with the dream of a restored Israel, a messianic future, an eschatological age in which peace at last prevails and spears are beaten into pruning hooks-even the animals live in peace.

The New Testament depicts Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfillment of all strands of the Old Testament and as the long-awaited messianic king. And yet despite echoes in the birth narratives of the theme of a militant kingly messiah (Lk. 1:46-55), Jesus explicitly rejects recourse to violence, despite opportunities and invitations to take that path. When quoting Old Testament texts and prophecies, he consistently omits references to vengeance and war (Lk. 4:18-19; cf. Isa. 61:2). He proclaims peacemakers blessed sons and daughters of God. He teaches practices of peacemaking such as seeking reconciliation with those one is estranged from, and surprising oppressors with potentially transformative initiatives (go the second mile, turn the other cheek-Mt. 5:21-48). He enjoins the love of enemies and prayer for persecutors. He weeps over Jerusalem and laments that she did not know the things that make for peace. He comes not as a rebel ready to kill for a cause but as a suffering servant ready to die for one. He proclaims God`s kingly rule but exercises it via powerlessness on the Cross, where he is mocked for his trust in God. The rightness (and righteousness) of his path is vindicated by the Resurrection after the savage but salvific indignity of the Cross.

The rest of the New Testament documents the spread of the Jesus-movement, empowered by God`s Spirit. Clear echoes of Jesus` teaching on love, suffering, sacrifice, peacemaking resound throughout New Testament books (cf. Rom. 12:14-21). This group is courageous, committed, zealous, and nonviolent-they are victimized by the violence of others, but teach and practice patience under persecution. They respect legitimate government authority (Rom. 13) but are also wounded and eventually deeply aggrieved by the violent misuse of Roman power (cf. Rev.). The New Testament ends with a vision of a cataclysmic day of reckoning for Christ`s enemies but that vision itself ends with perfect peace, with all tears wiped away at last.

The Traditions
Scripture`s witness on this issue is so multifaceted and complex that it has perhaps inevitably produced multiple traditions. Varying theological and ethical traditions in Christian thought-at least, those that fall within orthodox boundaries-are best understood as responses to and developments of diverse strands within Scripture.

Christians tend, unconsciously or consciously, to read the diverse biblical witness as a whole, or on particular issues, through the refracting lens of tradition.

There is a critical methodological point to be made here. Unless we take the Catholic view that church tradition carries biblical-level authority because its correctness is guaranteed and its content God-breathed as Scripture is, then these traditions do not carry any intrinsic authority. They may prove to have great value, but they can never be viewed as the final court of appeal in an evangelical theology or ethic. And we must be acutely aware of the dangers or errors that are always possible when dealing with traditions. Jesus juxtaposed the commands of God with human traditions (Mk. 7). We dare not confuse them either.

As we then go ahead and survey the Christian tradition pantry on war and peace, seeing what`s in there, we find five options. Each has at various points and in various contexts been employed by Christians. Most presentations name two of these traditions. I think there are five. Let`s survey them briefly.

Pacifism

Pacifism is, essentially, the refusal to participate in and/or support war. Christian pacifists almost invariably ground their position primarily in the life and message of Jesus. Jesus taught enemy-love and nonresistance, or nonviolent resistance, to evil. How can his followers then kill or support killing? At a deeper theological level, Christian pacifists such as J. H. Yoder argue that the Christian narrative of Cross/Resurrection reveals that the real power in the universe is found in redemptive suffering rather than redemptive violence. We resort to force because we yearn to make history come out right; but, it is argued, Jesus already demonstrated that the way you make history come out right is through laying down your life rather than taking the lives of others. A new kind of power is visible in the universe, revealing that all other kinds of power are ultimately illusory.

Besides being grounded in Jesus` teaching and this understanding of the Cross, Christian pacifism ultimately has an ecclesiological foundation as well. Christians, as was so often argued in the early church, are citizens of heaven and of the church; not citizens of this earthly realm and its various governments. As resident aliens, the best service we can render Rome or Washington, whether they appreciate it or not, is our prayers, our life of love, and our nonviolent witness.

Three variations or issues within pacifism are worth noting briefly:

  1. Some pacifist Christians have seen no legitimate role for force or violence by states; others, including most of the leading pacifist voices in the Christian tradition, have seen a carefully constrained role for the state related to coercion and violence but have simply said that the Christian cannot participate due to his or her identity as a Christ-follower.
  2. Some pacifists have interpreted Jesus as requiring nonresistance to evil. But others, looking at Jesus` whole life, including the Cross itself, view him as offering nonviolent resistance to evil. He did battle, he waged war against evil, one might say, but he did not resort to evil to wage war against evil. "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Rom. 12:21).
  3. A final, rather practical variation under wartime conditions has been the distinction between not participating in any war-related activities vs. refusing to participate only in frontline soldiering and killing. Differences over this issue help to explain the varying ways pacifists have responded to military drafts and wars in the past.

It is common for non-pacifists to express a grudging respect for pacifists, but then to ignore and reject their views. Pacifists ask for more than that. They say, show us, from Scripture, how you can claim that Jesus is Lord and yet not follow his teachings or the example of the early church, which was overwhelmingly convinced that participation in war is simply incompatible with fidelity to Jesus Christ.

Just War Theory/Tradition
Just War Theory (JWT) is the view that some wars are just, or at least justifiable, and that justifiable wars merit full Christian support and participation.

JWT has classical origins. Rudiments of this tradition can be found in Plato and Aristotle. The Roman Stoics developed a natural-law version of just war theory. Cicero`s formulations were influential as a code of conduct for the Roman Empire.

In its origins, JWT is essentially an argument from reason. Reason shows that war is an evil, but also that sometimes self-defense is required. Criteria are needed for determining when war is necessary, how it should be fought, and in what spirit. Just war theory, or theories, address such concerns.

Christian just war theory takes over classical approaches but adds several distinctive notes. The role of government in promoting order, advancing justice, and protecting the innocent is emphasized, grounded especially in Romans 13. The norm of peace, and the understanding of war as an evil, though at times a necessary one, takes root in the broad biblical narrative outlined earlier. The mournful spirit about war, rather than any celebration of war, is grounded in that same norm as well as in a sense of the sacredness of human life and the tragedy of killing.

JWT emerges after the official christianization of the Roman Empire as an ethic for Christian political leaders and those advising them. It is an effort to synthesize the full range of biblical materials with reason and the best of pre-Christian philosophy. What results is an approach that makes room for war, but not much; there is a strong presumption against war, and the burden of proof is on the prospective war-maker to demonstrate why this or that war is necessary. It also is an approach that places Christian clergy and theologians in the powerful position of critically assessing both the decision to wage war and how war is waged. It was not designed to be a blank check for any government.

The criteria for just war theory vary with different authors, but there is much internal discussion about these within the tradition. A basic summary would include the following (from Challenge of Peace):

Jus ad Bellum (just entry into war)

Last resort: all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted.

Jus in bello (just conduct of war)

JWT has played a unique role in the development of international law and codes of military conduct. It is one of the most visible legacies of the Christian moral tradition to the life of nations in the 21st century.

Pacifism can be critiqued for ignoring the full range of biblical texts outside of the Gospel accounts. It can also be critiqued for not taking seriously the continuing reality of sin. It may fail the test of reason related to how earthly power works and how the vicious and evil respond to vulnerability and nonresistance. It may be seen as demonstrating an indifference to the needs of the innocent neighbor.

However, JWT is not immune to criticism. It can be challenged for not paying enough attention to Jesus and his way, or for paying attention but finding ways to bracket off Jesus` teachings by confining them to interpersonal relations, the future eschatological age, or the lofty heights of unrealizable high ideals. JWT is open to the challenge that in its deep desire to avoid victimization and loss of realism it may miss the redemptive possibilities that await Christians prepared to consider daring and creative alternatives to "reasonable" ways of thinking in a perverse world.

JWT also represents a shift in positioning for the church. When we assess government policy options and at times endorse war, we normally do so from a stance of being deeply invested in the well-being of our nation-state. We want history to come out right, from our own national perspective, and we are willing to endorse bloodshed to do it. It is hard to take this approach and end up retaining much of that flavor of being "resident aliens." Instead we are fully invested national citizens and this poses the potential of threatening the integrity of our primary allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Historically, it is simply a fact that JWT has proven easily manipulable. During WWI and WWII, for example, culturally Christian nations on all sides (and most of their clergy and theologians) viewed their nations` cause as just. The unleashed passions of national loyalty and aggrieved anger make rational JWT analysis extremely difficult. J.H. Yoder is right to say that most Christians actually operate out of an implicit 3rd option-national interest wars-that is, we support and fight whatever wars our government chooses to fight, finding in JWT the convenient conceptual grounds needed, or not bothering with the theory at all.

One final practical critique-the rules and spirit proposed by JWT have been regularly ignored since at least WWII. JWT would clearly have ruled out not only the bombing of London and the starvation of Russian POWs, but also the firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One could add the Cold War targeting of atomic weapons at hundreds of civilian population centers. If they had even once been unleashed, the effect of even one nuclear weapon over, say, New York, would dwarf what happened September 11.

Crusade

A third historic Christian option is the crusade, which be defined as a war for what is deemed a transcendent or holy cause. Whereas pacifism and just war theory each retain ecclesiastical sponsors and widespread respect today, no such status exists for the crusade. For Christians, the moral repute of this position was shattered by the Crusades themselves, as well as by the wars of religion.

Grounded especially in a peculiar convergence of tendencies in Joshua and Revelation, the crusade ethic slips the constraints against violence offered by both pacifism and just war. In the crusade ethic, the cause is literally holy; it has a transcendent validation (it goes beyond mere politics and interest). This transcendent validation is known not by reason but by revelation, often mediated through a prophet or religious leader. The adversary has no rights, and restraint is no virtue because the enemy is not just our enemy, but God`s enemy. The criterion of last resort does not apply and the war need not be winnable–to fall in a holy cause is a moral victory, the surest path to heaven and blessedness (see Yoder, Just and Unjust Wars).

Going through this list we come face to face with the very jihad-mentality that appears to have motivated the attack on our nation on September 11. For the Muslim tradition, like the Christian, has the holy war in its ancient pantry. The tragic reality is that some in the Muslim world have pulled jihad out of the pantry and are now teaching and practicing it.

But we need to be aware that crusade or holy war tendencies are not entirely absent from our own Christian and American vocabulary even today. The language of crusade was characteristic of US rhetoric during WWII, the Cold War, and the war against Saddam Hussein. President Bush`s first rhetorical forays in the current conflict had crusade-like overtones: "we will rid the world of evildoers." Perhaps it is hard to gear up to kill people without investing our cause with holiness and theirs with evil. Crusade thinking must be viewed as a perennial and dangerous temptation rather than an ancient vestige of the Christian past.

Just Peacemaking Theory
Just Peacemaking Theory (JPT) is an approach to war focusing on developing creative and concrete initiatives that can reduce international or civil tensions and move the nations toward justice, reconciliation, and a secure peace. I find it a very helpful complement to just war theory. The two positions together best approximate my own view.

Pioneered by Glen Stassen of Fuller Seminary, and now embraced by a significant number of ethicists and political scientists, JPT was born out of an impatience with both the practical and the biblical limits or blind spots of the other views we have been considering. Both JWT and pacifism ask the question, "Is it okay to make war?" JPT attempts to shift the question to "how do we obey Jesus by taking initiatives that bring the potential for peace?" JPT is in one sense an expansion of the last resort criterion of JWT. It keeps JWT honest by considering quite seriously the possibilities for peace before war is waged. JPT is activist, politically engaged, and realistic about international conflict and the implications both of war and tyranny or injustice. It refuses to bracket the actual teachings of Jesus and believes they do have application to public life.

JPT is not pacifism. It does not reject the possibility that violence might be necessary under grave circumstances in a fallen world. But it understands the Christian`s primary obligation to be serving as an ongoing witness for creative peacemaking even while accepting the legitimacy of just war theory when peacemaking has failed.

The ten practices of just peacemaking can be summarized as follows (adapted from Stassen, Just Peacemaking, Pilgrim 1998):

  1. Nonviolent direct action: including boycotts, marches, strikes, public disclosure, and other strategies to achieve change without resort to violence.
  2. Independent initiatives: these decrease threat perception and distrust, are independent of the slow process of negotiation, and often lead to reciprocation and an accelerating "peace race."
  3. Cooperative conflict resolution: the shared enterprise of becoming partners in problem-solving in order to devise mutually beneficial outcomes.
  4. Acknowledgment of responsibility: practicing empathy, repentance, and forgiveness in addressing past grievances, including one`s own responsibility for problems.
  5. Democratization: encouraging democratization of states and the legal/political order that goes with democracy, which reduces the threat of war.
  6. Economic development: fostering just and sustainable economic development addresses the cause of many wars and conflicts at their roots.
  7. Working with emerging cooperative forces: the international system offers several features that enhance the possibility of just peacemaking, including a decline in the utility of war, the rise of the trading state, and the ascendancy of liberal democracy.
  8. International efforts: collective international efforts for peace and human rights, including but not limited to the United Nations, need to be strengthened.
  9. Reduction of offensive weapons and arms trade: the massive arms bazaar that characterizes world trade must be restrained, especially the trade in offensive weapons.
  10. Grassroots peacemaking groups: citizens organized in grassroots groups and voluntary associations independent of government organizations are an important factor in peacemaking and should be encouraged.

Applications to the Current Crisis

Much of moral decision making hinges on the perception of the situation we face. Ordinary Christians often lack the information to arrive at a fully informed independent judgment on major public events. We must rely on government information as it is doled out to us, and the research of a free press that, nonetheless, operates under its own constraints. This is called the problem of information integrity and it is a critical one in wartime.

We are being told that the heinous acts of terror visited upon us on September 11 were the work of a shadowy international consortium of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. Evidence about this group, as reported in the press, reveals it to be deeply invested in a holy war mentality and strategy, and it is capable of perpetrating further acts of war in our nation and around the world. If this is the case, then it appears clear that direct negotiation or any kind of peacemaking with this particular group is impossible.

A classic pacifist will review this evidence with sorrow. But he will reject Christian participation in a military response to this unique kind of enemy. He might be willing to offer guarded support for government efforts but will refrain from direct participation. Pacifists will say that Christians simply are to engage in a different battle, with different weapons, for the cause of he who alone is Lord, Jesus Christ. In this stance the pacifist will be deeply unpopular. He or she always is.

Christian just war theorists will run this conflict through the JWT grid. Doing so yields the judgment that the cause is both just and comparatively just: worth both killing and dying for. JWT will likely push for a clear declaration of war from Congress to meet the competent authority test. They will remind government and American citizens that the goal of a just war is not vengeance but the restoration of a secure peace. They will exhort government to be proportionate in its use of force and to minimize civilian casualties. They will try to tamp down any Crusade language and mentality. But they will urge Christians to support and if necessary participate in this fully legitimate war, though not to celebrate war in any way.

Those tempted to the crusade position will see this conflict as a clear-cut struggle of good against evil. They might suggest expanding the war to other nations that harbor similarly anti-American sentiments. Their rhetoric and policy advocacy will tend to be unrestrained.

Just Peacemaking theorists will look at the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, the hatred of the United States, and the politics of the Muslim world, and will seek long-term initiatives that address problems in each of these areas. They will press for the advance of democracy and religious liberty in the Muslim world, economic development and strides toward justice in the most impoverished and unjust Muslim nations, and the strengthening of civil society in those nations.

JPT will look for ways to take initiatives to reduce hostility and the tensions that have existed in the entire middle-eastern region. They might support a US-Islamic world summit intended to be a forum for a genuine exchange of views. They will urge the US government to be open to criticisms related to our foreign policies and acknowledge legitimate grievances from the past. They will also urge the government to consult as broadly as possible, including with the United Nations, both to attain international support for what we do and also to check our perceptions against those of other nations.

They will not rule out the legitimacy of war in this case; at least, I do not rule it out. If we are really dealing with an international Islamic jihad conspiracy there does not appear to be any other option but to attempt to destroy it. But they will urge that any war be conducted strictly according to JWT criteria and remind government leaders that how the war is conducted will have everything to do with whether a secure peace can ultimately be maintained. And they will focus on the ongoing diplomatic, political, and economic initiatives that are as likely to allow us to get on airplanes in peace again as finding Osama bin Laden will be.

Conclusion

I believe it was Tertullian who called the church "the soul of society." In a violent and miserable world, we are the stewards of the very words of life, of the hope of the world. We are also that community that at its best catches a glimpse of the ebb and flow of human events from a God`s-eye perspective. We have the biblical and spiritual resources to see the whole, not just the current moment and not just our nation. We are a priestly people, interceding before God for the whole world, even terrorists; and a prophetic people, courageously speaking truth where truth needs speaking.

This imposes upon us as American Christians an awesome responsibility-and opportunity. If our response to this grievous evil can, despite everything, retain a christlike beauty and dignity, forbearance and mercy, courage and creativity, love and justice, then we will really serve as the soul of a deeply wounded and grieving nation. May it be so.

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