Month: February 2005

One of the problems with the debate between pacifism and just war theory is that it often strays into a theoretical argument totally untethered from the biblical texts (Camassia’s complaint), or it gets mired in pulling out various bits of Scripture and using them as proof-texts.

Proponents of Just War Theory often appeal to John the Baptist’s exhortation to the soldiers in Luke 3:

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”
He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely–be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:14)

From this it is sometimes inferred that John must have approved of the soldiers’ occupation, and, therefore, that a Christian can licitly be a soldier and engage in war-making. If John was a pacifist he would’ve told the soldiers to give up soldiering!

St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine to this effect in his article on whether war can be just:

Objection 1. It would seem that it is always sinful to wage war. Because punishment is not inflicted except for sin. Now those who wage war are threatened by Our Lord with punishment, according to Mt. 26:52: “All that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Therefore all wars are unlawful. […]

On the contrary, Augustine says in a sermon on the son of the centurion [Ep. ad Marcel. cxxxviii]: “If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether, those who sought salutary advice in the Gospel would rather have been counselled to cast aside their arms, and to give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary, they were told: ‘Do violence to no man . . . and be content with your pay’ [Lk. 3:14. If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering.” (ST, Part II, Q 40)*

G.E.M. Anscombe makes a similar appeal:

To extract a pacifist doctrine–i.e., a condemnation of the use of force by the ruling authorities, and of soldiering as a profession–from the evangelical counsels and the rebuke to Peter, is to disregard what else is in the New Testament. It is to forget St. John’s direction to soldiers: “do not blackmail people; be content with your pay”; and Christ’s commendation of the centurion, who compared his authority over his men to Christ’s. On a pacifist view, this must be much as if a madam in a brothel had said: “I know what authority is, I tell this girl to do this and she does it…” and Christ had commender her faith. A centurion was the first Gentile to be baptized; there is no suggestion in the New Testament that soldiering was regarded as incompatible with Christianity. The martyrology contains many names of soldiers whose occasion of martyrdom was not any objection to soldiering, but a refusal to perform idolatrous acts.

These seem like thin reeds on which to hang a doctrine of just war. First of all, many soldiers in the Roman army were not engaged in fighting, but were little more than bureaucrats administering the vast machinery of empire. So, it seems to read a lot into the Baptist’s comments to say that he was commending war as such. This is reinforced by his admonition not to falsely accuse people – it suggests that these soldiers were acting more like military police.

Secondly, we have to reckon with Jesus’ own statements on the matter, and certainly they carry more weight than those of St. John.

But more fundamentally, it seems to me that we need a kind of overarching hermeneutic for how we extract moral norms from the New Testament. That is, a rule of interpretation for deciding which pronouncements carry the most weight, how to deal with inconsistencies (real or apparent), etc.

To make an analogy, it is often said that debates about homosexuality pit those who adhere to the “authority of the Bible” against those who don’t. A more charitable way of putting it, I think, is to say that the two sides emphasize different aspects of the Biblical witness. Those who oppose the acceptance of homosexual behavior point to Paul’s statements in Romans and elsewhere that seem to condemn same-sex relations and appeal to the creation account to argue that marriage between a man and a woman expresses the will of God. But those who argue for acceptance point to the inclusion of the Gentiles as a kind of moral precedent for not letting what they regard as outmoded “purity” regulations be the norm in the church (I realize I am not presenting these positions in all their sophistication; this is for illustrative purposes only).

The upshot is that, whatever position we take, it should be informed by a coherent account of how the Bible should function as a guide our moral life, not just by adducing texts plucked out to support a predetermined position.
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*To avoid misunderstanding I should point out that Aquinas offers much more in the way of an argument than just this one text. He goes on to say:

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. Moreover it is not the business of a private individual to summon together the people, which has to be done in wartime. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Rm. 13:4): “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil”; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority (Ps. 81:4): “Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner”; and for this reason Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 75): “The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority.”

Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says (QQ. in Hept., qu. x, super Jos.): “A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. [The words quoted are to be found not in St. Augustine’s works, but Can. Apud. Caus. xxiii, qu. 1): “True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.” For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): “The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.”

Robert Higgs questions the usual rankings of presidential “greatness”:

One need not ponder the rankings long, however, to discover a remarkable correlation: all but one of the presidents ranked as Great or Near Great had an intimate association with war, either in office or by reputation before taking office. Of the top-ranking “nine immortals,” five (Lincoln, FDR, Polk, Wilson, and Truman) were commander in chief when the nation went to war, and three (Washington, Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt) were best known prior to becoming president for their martial exploits. The one exception, Jefferson, confined his presidential bellicosity to authorizing, with Congressional consent, the naval engagements against the Barbary pirates. (Of course, he had been a revolutionary official during the War of Independence.)

In contrast, of the eleven presidents ranked as Below Average or Failure, all but one (Nixon) managed to keep the nation at peace during their terms in office, and even Nixon ultimately extracted the United States from the quagmire of the war in Vietnam, though not until many more lives had been squandered.

The lesson seems obvious. Any president who craves a high place in the annals of history should hasten to thrust the American people into an orgy of death and destruction. It does not matter how ill-conceived the war may be. Lincoln achieved his presidential immortality by quite unnecessarily plunging America into its greatest bloodbath–ostensibly to maintain the boundaries of an existing federal union, as if those boundaries possessed some sacred status. Wilson, on his own initiative and against the preference of a clear majority of the American people, propelled the country into a grotesquely senseless, shockingly barbarous clash of European dynasties in which the United States had no substantial national interest. On such savage and foolish foundations is presidential greatness constructed.

(via The Ivy Bush)

Last week I mentioned that philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe condemned President Truman as a war criminal on account of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Historian Ralph Raico has an article today that mentions Anscombe’s critique:

Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis – innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen – might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules. When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested. Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?

Anscombe’s point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is that different from the atomic bombings?

Raico concludes:

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.

Cathy Young writes that red-staters aren’t as scary as they’re made out to be, nor does the right have a monopoly on “moral bullying.”

Here’s a point that could stand to be made more often:

In many ways, the cultural conservatives want to do no more than roll back the clock to a fairly recent American past (on such issues as abortion or prayer in public schools) or to stop impending change (on same-sex marriage).

Liberals sometimes say that conservatives want to institute a “theocracy” (some of the more hysterical ones say they already have). But was the America of the 1950s a theocracy? (Hint: that’s a rhetorical question.)

No, not that GW, the first one, as in “First in War, First in Peace and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen.”

UPDATE: William Marina at Liberty & Power questions the characterization of GW as “anti-imperialist.”

Blogger emeritus Peter Nixon in Commonweal:

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the distinct voice that Catholics once brought to the public square is gradually being lost. In its place, we see the emergence of two separate Catholic political cultures, each serving the needs of one of the two major parties, and each with its own “magisterium.” Those wishing to embrace the church’s social-justice tradition while evading the moral force of its teaching on abortion can cite the speeches of Mario Cuomo, while those seeking a Catholic apologetics for libertarian economics or preemptive war can consult the encyclicals of Michael Novak and George Weigel.

The fact that Catholics are divided between the two parties is not the problem. There is no reason why Catholics must be of one mind on all matters of public policy. But there is still something disturbing about seeing Catholics become so completely conformed to the ideologies of their chosen political parties or movements. The recanting of earlier prolife views by so many prominent Catholic Democrats is one example of this. The unwillingness of many Catholic Republicans to offer any criticism of the Gonzales nomination-to say nothing of the war in Iraq-may be another.

Seems to me much the same could be said of Protestants, except it tends to break down along evangelical/mainline lines with the former tilting heavily towards the GOP and the latter towards the Dems.

Or, more precisely, in what sense can we say the church “created” the canon of Scripture (since “the church” obviously preceded the NT)? And what does this mean for the Protestant principle of sola scriptura? The age-old debate is revisited at Here We Stand and Pontifications. See here, here, and here.

I think all parties agree that the church does not confer but rather recognizes the authority of the canonical books. What seems to be at issue is on what basis the church(es) selected the books it (they) did. That is, does the authority of the books of the NT reside in their apostolic content, their (alleged) apostolic authorship, or both?

Go here and find out.

Eric Lee asks how a non-pacifist interprets such Biblical passages as Jesus’ commendation of nonresistance in chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel. Now, not only am I not a biblical scholar, I’m not even a particularly well-versed or frequent reader of Scripture! So, hopefully someone with a real theological education will jump in here.

Nevertheless, bloggers rush in where angels fear to tread, so here goes.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matt. 5: 38-42, NIV)

Now, some have interpreted turning the other cheek to mean simply that we should shrug off casual insult and slander. While there may be something to this interpretation, I agree with those who take the pacifist line that it doesn’t do justice to the radicalness of what Jesus is saying, nor is it borne out by the rest of the passage.

What I would suggest is that what Jesus is saying here is that Christians must renounce retribution, retaliation, and even sticking up for our “rights.” No more looking out for number one. I must surrender even what seems due to me according to justice (“an eye for an eye” is not some barbaric primitive code, but rather the baseline of most systems of justice: you get what’s coming to you).

C.S. Lewis put it better than I ever could:

[I]nsofar as the only relevant factors in the case are an injury to me by my neighbour and a desire on my part to retaliate, then I hold that Christianity commands the absolute mortification of that desire. No quarter whatever is given to the voice within us which says, “He’s done it to me, so I’ll do the same to him.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p. 86)

However, along with Lewis I find it difficult, bordering on impossible, to believe that Jesus’ hearers would’ve taken him to mean that they shouldn’t, e.g. resist someone bent on murder:

Does anyone suppose that Our Lord’s hearers understood Him to mean that if a homicidal maniac, attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of the way, I must stand aside and let him get his victim?

What’s key here is the distinction between retribution or revenge and restraining someone bent on doing evil (even, as a last resort, to the point of killing them).

I think this leaves it an open question whether the command not to resist an evil person on our own behalf means even unto our own death. The example of Jesus and the martyrs indicates that this may be what is meant. Or maybe only some are called to that kind of witness.

I’m completely open to correction on whether this is the right interpretation. But I do want to point out that, even if this is right, it’s still a very radical teaching (not for nothing has it been considered one of Jesus’ “hard sayings”).

For instance, imagine what the foreign policy of a people who had given up on seeking retribution or even looking out for their own “interests” would look like. Or what our individual lives would look like if we gave to everyone who asked of us! Or if we refused to stick up for our rights in court when someone wanted to sue us!

In any event, that’s my rather tentative take.

I’m going to reply to a couple of points Camassia made about just war theory (hereafter JWT) starting with what I thought were two particularly incisive questions of hers that I mentioned here.

Camassia writes:

When I read the people Lee quotes, or the article I linked last week, the arguments remind me of Martin Kelley’s “I’m a Quaker” phenomenon. This is a form of theologizing where the individual says, “I’m a Quaker and I believe X, therefore that’s a Quaker belief!” A lot of the just-war theorizers similarly seem to be thinking, “I’m a Christian, and my God-given moral reasoning leads me to believe this, so this must be Christian!” I mean, look at that First Things article again. Where’s Jesus? Where’s the Bible? The whole thing is built on one line from Paul, and it’s a line that, in isolation, could just as well have come from a pagan.

While I think this is true of some contemporary JWT thinkers, I think it’s important to remember that JWT arose out of Christians’ encounter with the realities of political life in the Roman Empire. People like Ambrose and Augustine were trying to formulate a distinctively Christian approach to the problem of warfare. Now, you can say that in doing so they hopelessly compromised the Christian witness, but that’s another matter.

What I think makes JWT distinctively Christian is that it treats violence as inherently suspect (last resort), it demands that if violence is going to be deployed it can only be in order to defend the innocent neighbor from aggression (just cause), and it insists that violence, when deployed, must be strictly limited (discrimination, proportionality).

All of these characteristics could be subsumed under the rubric of “care for the neighbor.” JWT shifts the emphasis from protecting me and mine (or us and ours) to the needs of the neighbor. That is, I think, its distinctively Christian note (as people like Paul Ramsey have contended). Having been justified by the grace of God, the Christian is freed from concern for his own well-being and self-recognition and can focus on the concrete needs of his neighbor.

Here’s Camassia again:

Jesus does a very interesting thing in that part of the Sermon on the Mount: he takes an ancient theodicy problem and turns it on its head. The good suffer and the wicked prosper, we say, so how can God be good? Jesus flips the question around: forget whether God’s conduct measures up to your standards — does yours measure up to his? If he’s good to the wicked, why aren’t you? […]

So while this doesn’t relate to pacifism per se, I think that most anti-pacifist arguments don’t really work for me because they don’t take that into account. They make it sound like the world is orderly and fair, and we imitate God by rewarding the good and punishing the bad. And yet, Jesus makes clear, we really don’t.

Some versions of JWT do have a punitive aspect (e.g. Aquinas’), but I would contend that it’s not essential. A better way to think about it is that a just war is fundamentally about protecting the innocent by restraining evil.

On this view, the purpose of war is not to dispense God’s judgment, but to maintain such order as there is in the world. This is what Luther referred to as God’s “left-handed” work (his “right-handed,” or proper, work being the redemption wrought through the Gospel) – maintaining the conditions necessary for human society to continue and flourish. Even most pacifists admit that there is a need for some kind of coercive authority for this purpose.

I think there is actually a large overlap between JWT and pacifism in that JWT raises the bar dramatically for when it is permissible to go to war. It’s doubtful that many wars in the modern era would pass the test of JWT, and it could be argued that JWT takes pacifism to be the norm, with JWT providing a way of identifying certain exceptional cases.

(I realize that there are some conservatives who’ve argued that JWT doesn’t have a “presumption against violence,” but that seems clearly wrong to me. What else can the “last resort” criterion possibly mean? If there’s no presumption against violence, why require that non-violent options be explored first?)

And this is not to say that I don’t think pacifism is a legitimate stance. What makes me uneasy is when people like Yoder and Hauerwas seem to set up pacifism as constitutive of the Gospel – threatening to introduce a new law in the guise of a praxis that purports to be an identifying mark of the church. This seems to make the inbreaking of the Kingdom dependent on something we do, which makes me nervous. (Though, let me say that I am less than fully confident in this judgment.)