Commentary
War and peace
Tina Beattie, a professor of Catholic Studies, and Michael Snape, a military historian, discuss Luke 6:27 - 31.
TINA BEATTIE: This passage profoundly challenges us about when and how, if ever, Christians might be involved in war. If we stop short of absolute pacifism, then we would have to recognize that love of the enemy would require that we are indiscriminate in our mourning for victims of war, so that the death of an enemy soldier or civilian would move us as profoundly as the death of one of our own.
It would mean recognizing, with St. Augustine, that war always involves blame as well as justification on both sides, so that any idea of victory or honour would yield to a stark awareness of what a tragic and sinful business war is for all those involved, even if it is necessitated by the need to defend an innocent party from an aggressor. It would mean not only an assiduous determination to avoid unnecessary killing, but acting out of concern for the future of our enemy's society, freedoms and institutions, to minimise the long-term impact and human cost of war. These are some of the criteria enshrined in the Christian just war tradition.
Given the vast destructiveness of modern war in its weaponry, its economic impact and its social consequences, the corrupting influences of the arms trade and the threat of nuclear war, I do not believe that Christians can justify active participation in modern armed conflict and its related industries, and I do not think the military should have access to Christian schools for the purposes of recruitment except perhaps for non-combatant roles such as administrative and medical duties. It might also mean Christians serving in UN peacekeeping forces, where the carrying of arms is only for the purposes of defending the innocent.
MICHAEL SNAPE: Jesus' teaching is often much more ambiguous than may appear from certain well-known texts, and nowhere is this more true than in the question of the moral legitimacy of political violence. If we focus only on the Gospel of Luke we can read how Jesus warned that he had not come to bring peace on earth (12:51), how he drove the dealers out of the Temple (19:45-6) and, more strikingly, how he told his disciples 'But as for my enemies who did not want me for their king, bring them here and execute them in my presence.' (19:27). These passages cast much doubt on the claim that absolute pacifism is the only position a Christian can adopt in relation to armed conflict.
However problematic it has proven to be in application, for more than 1,500 years the just war tradition has helped to resolve these tensions in Christian teaching and still provides a bulwark against the dangers posed by unbridled militarism on the one hand and, more implicitly, by absolute pacifism on the other. I cannot accept the rather scattergun argument that the tradition only had validity in times past; that it became redundant with the dawn of the nuclear age, as a result of the contemporary arms trade, or in consequence of recent wars. The arms trade is as old as commerce itself and war is never less than appalling in any age.
From his dealings with the centurion in Luke 7:1-10, I see no evidence that Jesus shared your antipathy towards the military, even when it was represented by the pagan forces of an occupying power; indeed, Luke's portrayal of the centurion at the foot of the cross (23.47) highlights the spiritual growth that has often issued from the military life, a life that has been the stuff of Christian metaphor since St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 6:10-18).
TB: I was careful not to suggest that 'absolute pacifism is the only position a Christian can adopt'. However, with the appropriation of Christian just war theory by secular politics in the post-Christian nation state, with the technological capacity of modern warfare to inflict global rather than local damage on the earth and its peoples, and with the effects of the arms trade and war on the lives of millions not directly involved in conflict, it is questionable when, if ever, Christians can justifiably take part in modern warfare.
Yes, war has always been appalling, and it is questionable whether the term 'just war' has ever had more than theoretical applicability. It is probably more accurate in terms of Augustine's position to speak of a hypothetically justifiable war rather than an actual just war. However, the fact that something has always happened is no argument that it should continue to happen. The arms trade is as old as commerce itself, but so was the slave trade and Christians led the campaign for its abolution, just as Christians are in the forefront today of campaigning for the abolition of the arms trade.
MS: Not so careful, perhaps. You imply this in stating that you do not believe 'that Christians can justify active participation in modern armed conflict and its related industries'. While you seek to qualify this with a consideration of the non-combatant roles that Christians might play, I find this gloss unconvincing. As the Srebrenica massacre demonstrates, peacekeeping forces (UN and otherwise) have too often failed to protect the innocent. Furthermore, given the complexity of modern war, where does 'active participation' begin or end? Finally, if the military does have a legitimate role to play in human affairs and Christians can work in its orbit, why should you wish to shield our children from it? You also speak of the contemporary abuse of just war tradition by 'the post-Christian nation state'. However, this is another claim that is easier to make than to sustain. I would hesitate to apply this label to the USA (or even to the UK for that matter) and I cannot concur with the implication that things were somehow better when, in the not so distant past, supposedly Christian rulers and governments exploited this tradition to create mayhem of their own.
The arms trade, like just war tradition, is certainly open to terrible abuse. Nevertheless, I am not persuaded that it is invariably evil. If one accepts that a certain cause is legitimate, should not one be prepared to supply it with the means to prevail? President Roosevelt's lend-lease arms deal saved Britain from defeat in 1940/1; would you seek to condemn him? You also make an interesting comparison with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As you imply, in Britain its abolition was championed by evangelical Christians such as William Wilberforce. However, its (armed) suppression was the work of the Royal Navy. More to the point, it is ironic to note that leading Christian abolitionists in the US were deeply implicated in the arms trade. The Congregationalist minister Henry Ward Beecher shipped hundreds of repeating rifles to beleaguered abolitionists in order to prevent the westward expansion of southern slavery. Given the danger this posed of perpetuating the enslavement of four million black Americans I would not decry him for doing this.
TB: To go back a step, isn't your selective choice of references as 'scattergun' as you accused my arguments of being? Luke 19:27 is not as direct an instruction to Jesus' disciples as 'turn the other cheek' ('I say to you that listen'). It is part of a cryptic parable about the eschaton, constituting the instructions of a despised king to his subjects. Woe betide us when we mistake eschatology for politics, as Ronald Reagan did when he suggested that a nuclear apocalypse might hasten the second coming of Christ. The military life may be an opportunity for spiritual growth, God's grace being operative in every situation, but there is significant evidence that until the third century Christianity was overwhelmingly pacifist and soldiers who sought baptism were expected to refrain from killing.
The metaphors of warfare which informed the early Church gained their power because they subverted the military language of the Roman state to describe the Church as 'an army which sheds no blood' (Clement of Alexandria). Until the idea of the holy war emerged, participation in war was regarded as spiritually dangerous for all involved.
MS: Not guilty! I simply offered a collection of texts to illustrate the problems of paradox in which the Bible abounds. If anything, your exegetical shift (in which we move from a literal and all-exclusive interpretation of Luke 6:27-31 to a far more cautious, contextual and nuanced exposition of Luke 19.27) simply proves my point of the dangers involved in taking favoured scriptural passages in isolation and at face value. With reference to the early church and the military, it is generally agreed that its problem with the Roman army stemmed more from its institutionally pagan culture than from humanitarian qualms over killing. In this respect, it is perhaps significant that the idea of a Christian holy war appeared much earlier than you imply for there is compelling evidence that it was present as early as the reign of Constantine.
TB: I agree that we must read scripture contextually rather than literally, and it is in the overall context of Christ's teachings and example that I find it difficult to reconcile war and its industries with faithful Christian discipleship. Having said that, one can be subjectively free of guilt when participating in an objective wrong, for instance a soldier who fights an unjust war as an act of political obedience (though Nazism made us aware of the limits of such acts). This is all the more reason why Christians have a collective responsibility to reflect on the relationship between faith and politics, never forgetting our discipleship of the Prince of Peace.
MS: Of course. However, we must also recognise that there is a legitimate (and healthy) plurality of Christian opinion on this score. It is axiomatic that peace without justice is meaningless and we must accept that in certain situations the latter can only be achieved through the use of armed force. To conclude, I would endorse the verdict of the late John Macquarrie, who as a young man was both a pacifist and, later, a British army chaplain: 'There is no clear universally accepted Christian teaching on the subject. There has been on the one hand a long Christian tradition of pacifism and non-violence, but alongside it there has been another tradition, not, indeed, encouraging violence, yet deeming it to be permissible and even necessary in certain circumstances... Christians are still divided on the question of whether their faith commits them to refrain from any forms of war and violence, and one finds sincere and able men [and women] taking different sides on this issue.'
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