by Anthony F. Buzzard
One of the most astonishing features of the debate about Christians and war is the unflinching way in which proponents of the “just war” admit that its origin is in pagan Greece and Rome. It appears as a concept developed on the basis of natural law by Cicero and “Christianized” by Augustine. Appeal is sometimes made also to the Old Testament. Jesus, however, specifically rejected the “lex talionis” as a proper basis for the New Testament community of the spirit, both in his teaching and example (Mat. 5:38, 39). The Old Testament itself deplores internecine war in Israel. Fratricide inevitably occurs when the New Testament “Israel” takes sides against itself in war. Moreover, pagan Greek and Roman philosophy is seen by the New Testament as a dangerous threat to the faith (Col. 2:8). The faith is essentially Hebrew in its main ingredients and should guard itself against invasion by philosophy. The point is made tellingly by Floyd Filson:
The primary kinship of the New Testament is not with this Gentile environment but rather with its Jewish heritage and environment. We are often led by our traditional creeds and theology to think in terms dictated by Gentile and especially Greek concepts. We know that not later than the second century there began the systematic effort of the Apologists to show that the Christian faith perfected the best in Greek philosophy . . . . The New Testament speaks always with disapproval and usually with blunt denunciation of Gentile cults and philosophies. It agrees essentially with the Jewish indictment of the pagan world.
Later he says:
“The modern church often misunderstands its relation to the Old Testament and Israel and often inclines to prefer the Greek attitude to the New Testament view.”
In the same vein Canon H.L. Goudge wrote:
“When the Roman and Greek mind came to dominate the church there occurred a disaster in doctrine and practice from which we have never recovered.”
Eberhard Griesebach in an academic lecture on “Christianity and Humanism” remarked:
“In its encounter with Greek philosophy, Christianity became theology. That was the fall of Christianity.”
The paganism which lies hidden in post-Constantinian Christianity (though its infiltration began in the early second century) is revealed also by Professor G.J. Heeringin his book, The Fall of Christianity. Luther, he maintains, derived his theology of the State from Stoic natural law. His successors in modern times have given absolute status to the relative authority of the State, which demands blind obedience. “The time has come for Christianity to disentangle itself from imperialism and war.” Referring next to the Roman Catholic church, he points to a systemic weakness which allows believers to be seduced into disobedience to the command of love:
Although an international church, Roman Catholicism shows little disapproval of the nationalistic State and its ways. The remarkable friendship of the Pope with the pagan Roman dictator of Italy whose God is the State and whose worship is law and might and war, and the obviously complete impotence of the Vicar of Christ over his national congregations whose members, nay whose “shepherds” even bayoneted each other in war – these things tell us more than enough.
An incisive theology of peace must relentlessly expose the falsehood of the foundation on which both Protestant and Catholic traditions about war are built. Luther’s tortured argument justifying Christian participation in war needs to be rehearsed and dismissed.
When a Christian goes to war or when he sits on a judge’s bench, punishing his neighbor, or when he registers an official complaint, he is not doing this as a Christian but as a soldier or a judge or lawyer. At the same time he keeps a Christian heart. He does not intend anyone any harm, and it grieves him that his neighbor must suffer grief. So he lives simultaneously as a Christian towards everyone, personally suffering all sorts of things in the world, and as a secular person, maintaining, using, and performing all the functions required by the law of his territory or city, by civil law, and by domestic law.
But on what New Testament basis may a Christian do some things as a Christian and others not as a Christian?
Judged in the light of the single standard demanded by Jesus most popular forms of Christianity stand condemned. For example, the theology of the Moral Majority conspicuously lacks the ethic of loving enemies in its “gospel.” It practically equates American foreign policy with the will of God. In the words of William Klassen, Love of Enemies, this form of the faith “has to be pronounced false and those who proclaim it designated as false prophets. The ease with which they identify America with Christianity and the fact that they do not follow Jesus in teaching release from hate, supports that judgement. In the Bible the true prophets soon found themselves expelled from the presence of the king, for they refused to ally themselves with the king or tell him what he wanted to hear.”
Equally unsatisfactory are the desperate attempts of some to justify the continuation of Christian participation in warfare on the grounds that the Christian ethic is inappropriate for deciding what Christians do in their “political” life. Some spokesmen for the “just war” appear to find the gospel ethic unacceptable:
The Gospel is one of the standards of our life, but not the only standard. Not our entire morality is rooted in the gospel, but only a part of it. Besides the Gospel there are demands of power and right without which human society cannot exist . . . . The state rests upon entirely different impulses and instincts from those which are cultivated by Jesus . . . . All constructions which attempt to explain the state from brotherly love to our neighbor are, considered historically, so much empty talk . . . . Not every doing of one’s duty is Christian . . . . Hence we do not consult Jesus, when we are concerned with things which belong to the domain of the construction of the state and of Political Economy.”
For an attempt to whitewash the horror of war the statement of E.I. Bosworth, Dean of Oberlin College, can scarcely be outdone. He spoke of the love and friendship with which a Christian soldier kills his enemy:
The Christian soldier in friendship wounds the enemy. In friendship he kills the enemy. In friendship he receives the wound of the enemy. He keeps his friendly heart while the enemy is killing him. His heart never consigns the enemy to hell. He never hates. After he has wounded the enemy, he hurries to his side at the earliest possible moment with all the friendly ministration possible . . . .”
Apparently he had not taken to heart the realistic view of war expressed by Lord John Fisher:
The humanizing of war! You might as well talk of the humanizing of hell! When a silly ass [the term is comparatively inoffensive as used in England] at the Hague got up and talked about the amenities of civilized warfare and putting your prisoners’ feet in hot water and giving them gruel, my reply, I regret to say, was considered totally unfit for publication. As if war could be civilized! If I’m in command when war breaks out I shall issue my order: – “The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility. Hit first, hit hard, and hit everyone.”
During the Second World War, the Bishop of London, in the name of Christ, adopted the same hard-hitting line:
Kill Germans – kill them not for the sake of killing, but for the sake of saving the world. Kill good as well as bad; kill young people as well as old; kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian Sergeant . . . . As I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who dies in it as a martyr.
The extraordinary confusion of voices in this matter of Christians and war forces one to ask: What is the nature of the religion we in the West have grown up to call Christianity? Does it truthfully reflect the teaching of the Bible? What has happened to the vital New Testament faith as distinct from this amalgam of various kinds of Greek philosophy, Platonism and Stoicism with a few selected Bible references? How may this worldly Christendom be matched with the community envisaged by Jesus as uncompromisingly non-violent (“By this [love] all men will recognize you as my disciples”) and often the prey of organized religion (“The time will come when those who think they are doing God a service will be killing you”)? After all, is the label “just war” anything other than a cover-up for disregarding the “hard sayings” of Jesus? Do not those who ask, “How shall we as a nation deal with our enemies?” betray their solidarity with the systems of this world? Do not the New Testament Christians speak rather of “them,” the world, and “us,” the Christians, a separated colony of ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20) dwelling as “resident aliens” (1 Peter 2:11) in a hostile world?
The underlying difference between the advocates of “just war” and the pacifists is simply this: the former believe it to be their duty to help “manage” the state now while the biblical pacifists believe that the state cannot be made peaceful this side of the second coming. The latter position maintains with Paul that Satan is still “god of this age.” It therefore holds that the church has “nothing to do with judging [i.e. managing] those outside [the church]” (1 Cor. 5:12). At the same time it has a clear eschatology, recognizing that Christians are destined, at the future establishment of the Kingdom, to “manage the world” (1 Cor. 6:2, Moffat). At that time the church will indeed be in charge of world affairs. Scripture is filled with promises that the believers are candidates for royal office with the Messiah (Mat. 19:28; Luke 22:28-30; 1 Cor. 4:8; 6:2, 2; Tim. 2:12; Rev. 2:26; 3:21; 20:4). Until that moment comes, the church must maintain a status of “resident alien,” suffering, if necessary, in a world hostile to the spirit of the Messiah.
