A year ago, I made the case for Christian pacifism. Here, I revisit this topic, responding to some of the most common theological objections made against Christian pacifism.
Old Testament Violence
The Objection: In the Old Testament, God not only allowed His people to use violence, but He actually commanded them to use violence on numerous occasions. God would not command His people to do something immoral, and so it cannot be morally wrong for Christians to use violence in war.
Response: All Christians acknowledge that there is some degree of ethical discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. As I argue here, what is ethical has changed over time, as God’s plan of salvation history has unfolded and God’s ethical demands on His covenant people have changed. Just because God commanded His people to use violence during the Old Testament period, that does not mean that it is ethical for Christians today to use violence. Christians, as disciples of the crucified Prince of Peace who taught them to love their enemies, must reject the use of violence.
But for argument’s sake, let us assume that the violence of the Old Testament provides support for Christians using violence today. This would still provide no support for the moral legitimacy of the wars of nation states. This is because the correct parallel is not between Old Testament Israel and modern nation states; the correct parallel is between Old Testament Israel and the Church. If Old Testament violence were to justify Christian violence today, it would provide support for the Church using violence to further its mission, for example, in the Crusades and the Inquisition. Yet all modern Christian just war theorists believe that the Church using violence in such a way is morally illegitimate. Old Testament violence provides no support to the legitimacy of Christians participating in war today.
Romans 13
The Objection: In Romans 13:1-7, Paul teaches that the governing authorities have been “established by God” and that “they are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Therefore, the just use of violence by government agents cannot be immoral, and Christians may legitimately be agents of such violence.
Response: I have already dealt with this passage at length in this post, so here I will just provide a brief summary. According to the political teachings of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus alone has legitimate political authority. The fact that the governing authorities are “established by God” does not mean that their actions are morally legitimate, any more than God calling the evil pagan Persian emperor Cyrus His “anointed one” (Isa 45:1) means that Cyrus’s actions were morally legitimate. It just means that God uses the governing authorities to accomplish His purposes, holding back the greater evil of chaotic anarchy. Since Paul has literally just said that Christians should “not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath” (Rom 12:19), it is absurd to conclude from his teachings in Romans 13 that it is morally legitimate for Christians to use violence as agents of God’s wrath in service to the governing authorities.
Soldiers in the New Testament
The Objection: When soldiers asked John the Baptist, “What should we do?”, he did not tell them to quit; he told them, “Be content with your pay” (Luke 3:14). When Jesus encountered a centurion, He did not condemn the centurion’s profession; on the contrary, He praised the centurion as having “great faith” (Matt 8:5-13). In Acts 10, the centurion Cornelius becomes a Christian and is baptized into the Church, and there is no indication that he was expected to give up his military profession. Therefore, it must be morally legitimate for Christians to serve and kill in the military.
Response: John the Baptist was not a Christian. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets. John did not come telling people how to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. He merely came telling people how to prepare for the coming of Jesus. In Matthew 11:1-6, we see that Jesus’s ministry did not line up with John’s expectations about the Messiah, leading John to have doubts about whether Jesus was the Messiah after all. John did not fully understand what Jesus’s mission would be, and so he was not in a position to understand what the ethical implications of being a disciple of a crucified Messiah would be.
Jesus did praise the centurion’s faith. But this should not be understood as saving, justifying “faith” in the Pauline sense. Jesus is merely referring to the centurion’s faith in Jesus’s ability to heal his servant. The centurion was not one of Jesus’s disciples, so it is completely illegitimate to point to the centurion as an example that shows that war is compatible with the demands of Christian discipleship. Jesus praising a man’s faith does not in any way imply that the man was morally perfect and that Jesus approved of every aspect of his lifestyle.
In Acts 10, we do have a case of a member of the military becoming a Christian and being baptized into the Church. But the text says nothing one way or the other about whether Cornelius was expected to give up his military profession or not, so using this passage to argue for the legitimacy of Christian participation in war is a very weak argument from silence. If anything, Luke’s silence about whether Cornelius was expected to give up his military profession points in the opposite direction. Roman centurions were required to regularly offer sacrifices to the pagan gods of the Roman Empire as part of their duties. So it went without saying that Cornelius would not be able to continue being a Roman centurion after his conversion. Luke’s audience knew this very well, and so Luke did not need to mention the obvious fact that Cornelius would have to give up his military profession now that he was baptized.
The Cleansing of the Temple
The Objection: Jesus Himself used violence when He cleansed the temple. He “made a whip of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15; also, Matt 21:12, Mark 11:15-16; Luke 19:45). Therefore, it cannot be morally wrong for Christians to use violence in war.
Response: In describing how Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple, all four Gospels use the Greek word ekballo, which is the same verb Mark uses to describe Jesus “sending away” a man He had just lovingly healed of leprosy (Mak 1:43). The term does not in any way imply inflicting physical harm on someone. Jesus expelled the merchants from the temple, but there is no reason to think that He used violence in order to do so. The whip that Jesus made likely was used to drive the animals out of the temple, not to actually strike anyone. Even if we assume that Jesus did strike people with the whip, it is certainly the case that Jesus did not use lethal violence against anyone, so this would provide no support for the legitimacy of using lethal violence in war.
Jesus’s use of nonviolent force to expel the merchants from the temple was a unique act of prophetic judgment. It does not provide a general model for the use of force by Christians in their daily lives. The purpose of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple was to prevent the desecration of God’s holy temple. Even if, for argument’s sake, we assume that Jesus did use violence during the cleansing of the temple, this certainly would provide no support to the idea that Christians should use violence for the sake of secular nation states.
Jesus’s Command to Buy a Sword
The Objection: In the Gospel of Luke, we have the following conversation between Jesus and His disciples: “He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.” “That’s enough!” He replied.” (Luke 2:36-38). If Jesus was completely opposed to the use of violence, He never would have told His disciples to acquire swords, nor would He have tolerated His disciples already possessing them. Therefore, it must be legitimate for Christians to use lethal violence during war.
Response: Jesus could not possibly have meant His directive to buy a sword literally. If He had meant it literally, there is no way He could have considered just two swords among His twelve disciples to be “enough.” Jesus’s point was to tell His disciples, “You are going to be treated like outlaws, so you might as well get prepared and look the part!” It is an ironic statement. His disciples mistakenly believe that Jesus literally wants them to gather weapons. It is possible to interpret Jesus’s response, “Enough of this!” as a rebuke to the disciples’ lack of understanding. The other possibility is that Jesus was saying that two swords among His disciples are “enough” for Him to be regarded as a criminal in fulfillment of the prophecy He quotes.
In any case, Jesus could not possibly have intended that His disciples acquire swords in order to kill their enemies. During Jesus’s arrest, Peter drew his sword and struck one of the high priest’s servants. Jesus’s response was a rebuke: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matt 26:52). If there would be any time when the use of violence would be justified, it would be to prevent the unjust arrest, torture, and execution of the King and Lord of the whole world. Yet Jesus forbade His disciples from using violence to prevent this. On top of that, Jesus added to this a clear repudiation of the use of violence in general as wrongheaded and self-destructive. Thus, the question of why Jesus would have tolerated His disciples having swords if He was opposed to violence is a moot point. When one of His disciples did use a sword for violent purposes, Jesus immediately rebuked Him and explicitly repudiated the use of violence in general.
Christian Realism
The Objection: It would be great if we could always follow the moral teachings of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and love our enemies. But as long as we live in a Fallen, violent world, it is sometimes necessary to use violence in order to establish justice. Therefore, we must adopt a “Christian realism” that recognizes that sometimes it is necessary to set aside Jesus’s high ethical ideals in order to show love to our neighbors who are suffering injustice.
Response: Deliberately rejecting the clear ethical commands of our Lord as naively idealistic is not true “Christian realism.” True Christian realism consists in actually believing that Jesus really is the Lord and Savior of all of creation. True Christian realism consists in actually believing that Jesus really has already defeated all the powers of evil by His cross and resurrection. True Christian realism consists in actually believing that God really is making all things new in and through Jesus. True Christian realism consists in actually believing that Jesus really knows what He is talking about when He commands His disciples to love their enemies and to follow Him on the way of the cross. True Christian realism consists in actually believing that, by following the nonviolent way of Jesus, the body of Christ really is carrying out God’s plan of building His Kingdom and bringing salvation to the entire world, even when it is difficult to see how that is possible. That is true “Christian realism.”