Why War is Incompatible with Christian Ethics

Previously, I have briefly made the case for Christian pacifism.  I have also responded to some of the most common theological objections to Christian pacifism.  Here, I will examine the logic of Christian just war theory and show why it is deeply problematic.

Just War and Christian Love

According to Christian just war theory, it is morally acceptable for Christians to fight and kill in a war as long as the war meets the following criteria: it must have a just cause, be declared by a lawful authority, be carried out only as a last resort, have a reasonable chance of success, be fought with just intentions, and use just means (violence proportional to the goals of the war that avoids killing noncombatants).  It is important to point out that this theory has no basis in Scripture or the teachings of the Church of the first three centuries.  It was created by pagan philosophers, and then adopted by Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries to justify the wars that Christians were now fighting on behalf of the “Christianized” Roman Empire.  

It is completely illegitimate for Christians to adopt such pagan ethical ideas.  For Christians, the only truly “lawful authority” is the Lord Jesus Christ, who commanded us to love our enemies and to follow Him on the way of the cross.  For Christians, the only “just means” are means that are compatible with the nature of God’s Kingdom, established through the cross of Jesus Christ.  Saying that we will follow Jesus and obey Him, but then being willing to abandon this as a “last resort” if obedience is difficult is the same thing as not being willing to follow Jesus and obey Him.

War can be fought out of an attitude of love.  It can be fought out of an attitude of love for those we are defending from injustice and oppression.  However, war cannot be fought with an attitude of Christian love.  This is because God’s love, Christian love, does not exclude anyone; it embraces all human beings, even the wicked and our enemies.  Christians cannot justify hating the “bad guys” for the sake of showing love to the “innocent” they are defending.  Christian love must embrace both the wicked and the righteous.  

Some Christian just war theorists have argued that killing our enemies in war can be done with an attitude of love for them.  We can love them by limiting the violence we use to the minimum necessary to win the war.  We can love them by fighting them as a kind of punishment or chastisement that will be for their own good.  And we can love them by fighting them with the desire that they will repent and establish peace and justice, rather than fighting them with the desire to destroy them.

All of these arguments fail.  Deliberately maiming and killing our enemies is the opposite of loving them.  Limiting the amount of maiming and killing we inflict on them to what is necessary to achieve our goals does not make it loving.  A smaller amount of hate is still hate.

It might be reasonable to argue that inflicting a small amount of harm on someone in order to “teach them a lesson” could be for their own good.  But it is absurd to claim that the violence of war, which maims, kills, and completely destroys the enemy, could be for our enemy’s own good.  Once someone is dead, there is no way that they can “learn a lesson” from the violence we have inflicted on them.  If they are truly a wicked evildoer, we have just sent them to Hell, which cannot possibly be for their own good.  If they are a fellow Christian who is in serious error, then we have just destroyed someone who is supposed to be our beloved brother or sister in Christ.  Even if we speculate that the enemy we have killed will then have a chance to repent after death, how is killing them supposed to convince them that they are wrong and we are right?  

Claiming that we can love our enemies while killing them as long as our inner desire is that they would repent is a sophistry.  Let’s say there is a wealthy businessman who oppresses the poor.  I try to persuade him to repent and to give his money to the poor, but he refuses.  Frustrated, I break into his house, kill him, take his money, and give it to the poor.  I cannot justify this murder by claiming that, even as I killed him, my inner desire was that he would repent so that I would not have to resort to violence.  If I decide to use violence against someone, I do not love them; I hate them.  The fact that I would refrain from using violence if only they would do what I want does not make the violence I actually do inflict on them “loving.”

Can War Be Just?

For argument’s sake, let us assume that the use of violence against the wicked is sometimes compatible with the demands of Christian discipleship.  It would still be the case that war is morally illegitimate.  When Paul says that governing authorities bear the “sword” as agents of God’s wrath (Rom 13:4), the reference clearly is to capital punishment, not war. The violence of capital punishment targets a guilty individual who is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty and deserving of execution. In contrast, the violence of war indiscriminately targets anyone wearing the uniform of the opposing army, even if we do not know for certain that they have any intention of using violence or acting wickedly.  In every war, a  significant percentage of soldiers refuse to fire at the enemy.  We cannot know for sure that any particular enemy soldier intends to kill us or other innocent people.  Yet, according to just war theory, it is morally legitimate for Christians during war to kill anyone wearing an enemy uniform, even in long-range, surprise attacks. 

Whenever a Christian encounters another human being, they must always ask, “How can I show God’s love to this fellow human being, for whom Christ died and rose again?”  In contrast, just war theory requires us to view our enemies as a faceless, collective abstraction, “the enemy.”  It requires us to dehumanize our enemies by refusing to regard them as individual human beings created in the image of God.  This is the only way that it can “justify” the massive use of violence in war.

Just war theory is a fantasy that does not take sufficient account of what actually happens in actual modern wars.  The theory was originally developed in the ancient and medieval worlds, in which wars were fought using hand to hand combat, and avoiding civilian casualties was relatively easy.  In contrast, modern wars are fought using machine guns, bombs, and drones.  In wars fought with modern weapons, it is simply impossible to fight wars without a significant number of civilian casualties.  (For example, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused over 185,000 documented civilian deaths from violence).^[1]https://www.iraqbodycount.org/  Military officials openly acknowledge this fact, and make estimates of the number of civilians they will kill with their military operations; they call this killing of innocent civilians “collateral damage.”  Even if Christian just war theory were legitimate in the abstract, it cannot be used to legitimize modern wars, since they cannot meet the criteria of using just means that avoid killing noncombatants.  

Some just war theorists argue that, even if it is known that a military operation will kill civilians, it can still be morally legitimate to carry it out as long as the intention is to destroy military targets, not to target civilians.  However, the contrast between targeting civilians and carrying out an attack knowing that it will kill civilians is a distinction without a difference.  In either case, one is deliberately killing innocent people.  Even by the standards of Christian just war theory, this is unjust, and all modern wars are unjust.  

What About Hitler?

When faced with arguments against the moral legitimacy of war, many Christians will object, “What about Hitler?  Didn’t we have to use war to stop the Nazis and the Holocaust?  This shows that it is absurd to claim that war is always wrong, no matter what.”

The first problem with this objection is that, at the time of World War II, the vast majority of Germans were Christians, members of the Church.  If “we” (the Church) had been faithful and obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ and refused to use violence in the first place, then Hitler never would have risen to power and World War II never would have started.  Thus, the question of how Christians should have responded to the threat of Nazism would have been a moot point.

That by itself is sufficient to refute this objection.  But for argument’s sake, let us assume that the German church was totally apostate and that American Christians were the true Church, wondering how to respond to the threat of Nazism.  Was fighting in World War II the good, moral, Christian thing to do?

Most American Christians believe that, because the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust, they were the bad guys and that Americans were the good guys fighting against this genocidal evil.  However, the fact is, America’s entry into World War II had nothing to do with the Holocaust.  America entered World War II only after it was attacked by Japan, in order to preserve its own geopolitical, economic, and military interests.  For most of World War II, it was not known that the Holocaust was happening, and the Allies did very little to prevent it.  Though the Allies’ victory stopped the Holocaust from going on even longer than it did, this was an accidental byproduct of the Allies’ victory, not their actual reason for fighting the Nazis.

Furthermore, in order to defeat Hitler, America allied with Stalin, who was an even more murderous tyrant than Hitler was.  The allies then handed control of Eastern Europe over to Stalin at the end of the war, giving him the opportunity to murder millions more people than Hitler did.  The Allies’ victory in World War II did not prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians; it had the opposite effect.

Furthermore, during World War II America itself murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians with bombs.  If the Holocaust had “only” killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, would we call the Nazis the “good guys”?  The fact that the Nazis murdered millions of innocent civilians, while Americans murdered “only” hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, does not make Americans the “good guys.”  Relatively speaking, America may have been “better” than Germany during World War II, but that does not make the actions of the American military good and moral by Christian standards.

So we see that, even the American war that most American Christians consider to be most obviously just does not come anywhere close to meeting the moral standards of Christian just war theory itself, not by a long shot.  No modern war does.  And it is certainly the case that no modern war meets the moral standards of the demands of discipleship to a crucified Lord who taught us to love our enemies. The ends do not justify the means. Even if the world says that war is the only way to prevent some great evil, Christians should refuse to participate in such morally illegitimate means. Instead, they must remain faithful and obedient to their Lord, the Prince of Peace.

Series Navigation

Why Capital Punishment is Incompatible with Christian Ethics >>