Wars, Just and Unjust
The current discussion of war against civilians, inspired by Anthony McCarthy's excellent commentary on the Hiroshima celebrations, has encouraged me to post some passages from the last two chapters of my forthcoming sequel to The Reign of Love. I begin with a passage from near the end of the first chapter.
Legitimate Christian Violence
The New Testament does not instruct soldiers to desert from the army or executioners to abandon their useful profession, and neither Jesus (Mat. 8:5-13) nor Peter (Acts 10) displayed any reluctance to associate with military men. Peter’s anxiety about meeting Cornelius the centurion concerned the prohibition on eating with gentiles. Although Christ certainly preached peace and told Peter to put away his sword, He also said that He came not to bring peace but a sword, and on leaving his disciples, he instructed them: “But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip, and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” [Luke 22:36] Early apologists, such as the author of the “Epistle to Diognetus” and Aristides the Athenian, single out Christians only for their comparative moral purity. Otherwise, Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by country, speech, or custom, and, although they are treated as aliens by pagan neighbors, they shoulder the burdens of citizenship.
St. Augustine, who argued strenuously against particular applications of the death penalty, did not repudiate the right of the ruler to inflict it. Christian pacifism, he insists, is a slander used to discredit Christians as loyal Roman citizens. In a letter to Marcellinus, an imperial administrator whose queries helped to prompt the writing of the City of God, Augustine argued that the admonitions to turn the other cheek and not repay evil with evil have to do with the Christian’s mental disposition and not with the need to correct, with charity, an erring son, a criminal, or an invader. [Letter 138]
John the Baptist, after all, did not tell the soldiers to lay down their weapons and desert but was content with instructing them to “do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.” [Luke 3:14] John's barbs were aimed at soldiers who augmented their incomes by collaborating in the extortions of the publicani, private contractors who collected the taxes.
When a Christian engages in lawful homicide, either as executioner or soldier, it is the ruler and not the individual who is morally responsible for the killing. The soldier or judge is merely the instrument of a ruler whose power comes from God, as Christ informs Pilate during the interrogation. [John 19.11]: "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.” In Romans 13 St. Paul sums up the Christian position succinctly, “Not in vain does he [the ruler] hold the sword.” Vengeance belongs to God, who then delegates that power to the ruler. Christians, then, are to foreswear the right to vengeance, though in exchange the ruler must protect the innocent from violence. The ruler must not only punish malefactors but defend his kingdom or empire against invaders. His subjects or citizens, correspondingly, have a duty to pay their taxes, obey the laws, and defend their country.
This, then, is the Christian social contract: not the fantasies of an imaginary state of nature dreamed up by abstracted philosophers, but a polity in which the members are expected to treat each other as kinsmen, at least honorary kinsmen. The Christian political reasoning depends on an important premise, that the commonwealth—whether it takes the form of city republic or kingdom or empire—is a legitimate human institution that requires the power to defend itself. In the high Christian Age, Thomas Aquinas would make it clear that Christians owe a primary moral duty to their family and a civic duty to their commonwealth.
Other more radical interpretations, when applied to everyday lives, can lead to pernicious consequences. The greatest Catholic moral theologian, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, while laying down conditions for a just war, is careful to explain that a conscripted subject does not sin even by fighting in what turns out to be an unjust war. “I was only following orders” may not be an excuse for a war criminal, but it is a justification even for the citizens of a republican government that has decided to go to war on patently unjust grounds, such as the enemy’s possession of imaginary weapons of mass destruction. It must be said, however, that soldiers who enlist or reenlist, knowing full well that they shall be called upon to kill civilians in an unjustified conflict, would seem to have assumed responsibility for their own unjust actions and those of their commanders.
Christian Self Defense
The license to defend one's life is not without limits either in Christian moral theology or in pre-Christian customs and law, but certain actions were generally justified or even approved. In the Pentateuch, a householder could kill a thief in the night without facing retribution: “If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall be no blood shed for him.” [Ex 22,2:]. The Book of Esther [8-9] recounts approvingly a Persian decree permitting Jews to use armed force to repel attackers. Samson, judge and hero, had few qualms about killing Philistines, a divine mission which he was born to carry out. The Old Testament, in fact, is filled with stories of executions, wars, homicides, and even human sacrifices that were carried out, so it is claimed, in response to divine instruction.
It goes without saying that Christians interpret such passages of the Old Testament in light of the New Testament's emphasis on kindness and mercy, and they are cited here only to show that pacifistic interpretations of Scriptures are a distortion for any Christian who is not a Marcionite, that is, for anyone who respects the Old Law. Nonetheless, as I observed above, there are limits, and anyone who interprets Old Testament violence as a justification for bombing the civilian subjects of a ruler who has been declared “evil,” or persecuting inconvenient minorities, such as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, sins against the Second Great Commandment.
If Jesus really had intended us never to resist evil and violence, He would have been repudiating the authority of the Law at its most fundamental level and writing a blank check to the powers of evil, both natural and supernatural. Even in the context of the New Testament, the instruction to turn the other cheek is one of the many passages in which Jesus is advising Christians not to seek revenge from each other or take their brothers to court. Elsewhere, however, in warning the disciples of his imminent departure, He instructs them to buy weapons for their protection. In the past he had taken care of their needs, but once He is gone, they should carry luggage, and, if they do not have a sword, they should sell their cloak to buy one. [Luke 22:35-38] Attempts to interpret this passage ironically are among the usual bad-faith efforts to cut and trim the Scriptures to fit the fashion of the day.
Even the rather liberalized Catechism of the Catholic Church currently in force acknowledges the right—or rather the duty—of self-defense:
2263: “The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing.”
2265 “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the state.”
2266 ”Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged a well-founded right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”
It should not be necessary to continue to beat this dead horse of Christian pacifism. In the main streams of Christianity after the Gospels—Paul and Peter's epistles, the earliest apologists, the great doctors of the Church, the leading Reformers—few authorities have taken Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek as an absolute and unqualified prohibition on violent acts of self-defense and just warfare any more than they have taken Christ’s instruction to let the dead bury the dead as an excuse for not attending their fathers’ funerals. It is true that serious Christians have generally sought the most peaceful means of protecting themselves and their neighbors: We know that the disciples did not resist arrest or persecution, though it must be admitted that all resistance was in any case futile.
There is, however, a limit to non-resistance. To show how alien pacifism is to the Catholic tradition, we need only read the edifying tales of saints, who defended themselves or their people. Even the meek St. Francis de Sales had studied fencing and applied his skill to fending off a set of dissolute young men who attributed his mildness to effeminacy. I cite this story not as an unquestionably accurate historical account but as an indication of the long-standing Catholic attitude toward self-defense.
