Last month we observed Remembrance Day, the day on which individuals in Britain and elsewhere remember the tip of the First World War and honour the memory of those that died in that war, the Second World War and in other conflicts since. But what’s the Christian view of war? What is the Christian perspective on why wars occur? And is it right for Christians to take part in war?
Why do wars occur?
The Christian answer to the query ‘Why do wars occur?’ is that wars exist due to sin. In the words of C S Lewis, “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which may go either unsuitable or right.”
When God’s human creatures go unsuitable by acting in a way that’s contrary to God’s will that’s what Christians call sin. If we probe further and ask what’s involved in acts of sin, the reply is distorted desire resulting from a fallen nature. Because of the spiritual disaster that occurred originally of human history and which the Christian tradition calls the Fall (Genesis 3:1-24), we’re by nature creatures who desire, and due to this fact do, things that God has forbidden (as when Eve desired and due to this fact took and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of excellent and evil – Genesis 3:1-6).
As the nice Welsh Christian author Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains in his little book Why does God allow war?, warfare is solely a selected type of this pattern of wrongful desire resulting in sinful motion. Drawing on the words of James 4:1-2, “What cause wars and what causes fightings amongst you? Is it not your passions which might be at war in your members? You desire and do not need; so that you kill. And you covet and can’t obtain; so that you fight and wage war,” he writes as follows:
“…. The ultimate reason for war is lust and desire; this restlessness that may be a a part of us because of this of sin; this craving for that which is illicit and for that which we cannot obtain. It shows itself in some ways, each in personal, individual life, and likewise the life of countries. It is the basis reason for theft and robbery, jealousy and envy, pride and hate, infidelity and divorce. And in exactly the identical way it leads to private quarrels and strife, and likewise to wars between nations. The Bible doesn’t isolate war, as if it was something separate and unique and quite apart, as we are likely to do in our considering. It is but considered one of the manifestations of sin considered one of the implications of sin. On a bigger scale perhaps, and in a more terrible form for that reason, but still, in its essence, precisely similar to all the opposite effects and consequences of sin.”
We can see this continuity between war and other types of sin if we compare an act of armed robbery and an act of war. Imagine a gang of armed robbers breaking right into a bank and shooting people in the midst of robbing it. They have committed the sins of theft and murder due to their desire to acquire money. We call this act of sin a criminal offense. Now imagine a military attacking a rustic and killing its inhabitants so as to obtain the territory and other resources of that country. Like the armed robbers within the previous scenario, this army is committing the sins of theft and murder, but on this case we call this act of sin an act of war.
Is it right for Christians to take part in war?
Because the reason for war is sin it is rarely legitimate for Christians to precipitate warfare. It just isn’t right for Christians to attack other people, or other nations, as a part of a military out of a desire to kill them or to take what they possess. Down the centuries there have been Christians who would go further than this and say that Christians mustn’t ever go to war for any cause in any respect. However, this has not been the bulk Christian view. The majority view has been that although Christians may not start a war because of this of sinful desire, they could nevertheless engage in warfare. As Article XXXVII of the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles puts it, “It is lawful for Christian men, on the command of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and to serve within the wars.”
To understand why the vast majority of Christians have taken this view, now we have to to start with note that God in his mercy has ordained two ways of coping with the existence of sin.
Firstly, God has ordained that the Christian Church should proclaim the saving work of Jesus Christ through word and sacrament so that folks may receive forgiveness for the sins that they’ve committed and can also receive through union with Jesus Christ a recent type of existence wherein the illicit desire that results in sin, and due to this fact the commission of acts of sin, are eradicated, partially on this life and fully within the life to return.
Secondly, because not all people selected to simply accept the deliverance from sin that God offers through the Church and likewise because, as previously noted, even those that have accepted this deliverance are still liable to sin on this life, God has given to the ‘Magistrate’ referred to in Article XXXVII, that’s to say that political rulers of particular states, the responsibility to retrain the consequences of sin by acting on God’s behalf in taking judicial motion against acts of wrong-doing.
Paul makes this clear in Romans 13:1-4: “Let all and sundry be subject to the governing authorities. For there isn’t any authority except from God, and those who exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those that resist will incur judgment. For rulers aren’t a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you’ve got no fear of him who’s in authority? Then do what is sweet, and you’ll receive his approval, for he’s God’s servant to your good. But if you happen to do unsuitable, be afraid, for he doesn’t bear the sword in vain; he’s the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.”
As Paul notes, in exercising their God given authority those with political authority have the appropriate to make use of ‘the sword,’ that’s to say, they’ve the appropriate to make use of lethal force to counteract wrong-doing if no other option is on the market. Thus, within the case of armed robbery the police will probably be prepared to take the lives of the robbers so as to protect the lives of members of the general public or other members of the police force.
The right of those with political authority to make use of lethal force in this manner is underlined in an open letter written to Christians in Great Britain by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth in 1941. In this letter he declares that there’s a realm outside of the Church wherein God exercises his Fatherly care by giving the state the facility of the sword: “Where the lifetime of men won’t be governed by the preaching of the Gospel nor by prayer, nor by Baptism or the Lord’s Supper – in other words, where the bounds of the Church stop – there begins the realm inside whose bounds God’s fatherly care, which doesn’t fail even there, should be maintained and imposed, if vital, by the specter of the sword, and, within the last resort, by its use.”
As Barth goes on to say: “The State would lose all meaning and could be failing in its duty as an appointed minister of God, and it might be depriving men of the profit which God, by its function, had intended for them, if it didn’t defend the bounds between Right and Wrong by the threat, and by the actual use of, the sword.”
In these quotes what Barth is talking about just isn’t simply police motion, but resort to war, and this makes that time that the right option to see war from a Christian perspective is by way of its being what the Christian ethicist Oliver O’Donovan, calls “a rare extension of abnormal acts of judgement”. That is to say, just because the pollical authorities of particular states normally take motion by way of the policing and judicial systems of their countries to enact the justice of God in response to varied types of wrongdoing, so also, now and again, they need to resort to war for a similar reason. War is permissible as a method of looking for to realize justice in response to some type of wrongdoing attributable to sin that will otherwise proceed such, as for instance the threat to the inhabitants of a rustic from an external power.
In the words of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas: “… because the care of the common weal [i.e. the common good] is committed to those that are in authority, it’s their business to look at over the common weal of the town, kingdom or province subject to them. And just because it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, after they punish evil-doers, based on the words of the Apostle (Romans 13:4): ‘He beareth not the sword in vain: for he’s God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil“; so too, it’s their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies.”
Seeing war on this light means understanding that war just isn’t, as some societies have thought, an excellent in itself. No one should desire that even a just war should occur. It is at all times higher that war mustn’t happen since the wrongdoing that necessitates it doesn’t occur. War is barely ever justified as a final and lamentable resort when something has gone very seriously unsuitable because of this of sin.
Furthermore, the aim of war is to stop wrong-doing, to not kill the enemy as such. The only justification for killing enemy combatants is because they’re able to enabling wrongdoing to proceed and to triumph. If this is not any longer the case, their killing is unjustifiable. That is why the Christian tradition has insisted that the wounded who’re incapable of fighting and people taken prisoner mustn’t be killed because their ability to proceed to do harm has ceased (in the identical way that police mustn’t kill a surrendered armed robber). For the identical reason non-combatants among the many enemy population also needs to not be harmed and steps needs to be taken to make sure that that is the case.
In summary, from a Christian viewpoint war is considered one of the outcomes of the overall sinfulness of mankind resulting from the Fall. The justification for Christian participation in war is to serve the common good through the use of lethal force on the command of those to who God has given political authority so as to prevent serious acts of wrong-doing that can not be prevented in every other way. Understood in this manner war, is rarely desirable, but may sometimes be vital. However, the excellent news is that it is going to not be vital without end. The Bible teaches us that that when God’s kingdom is finally and fully manifested at the approaching of Christ in glory, then the nations “…shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and the spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Micah 4:3).
As sin ceases so will war. Amen, come Lord Jesus.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
