Chapter Ten ReadingsRead the following excerpts from Lonsdale’s Removing the Causes of War  and Is Peace Possible? Then submit Exercise 10  (or an Essay) on Lonsdale. Where would you place her on the grid? Why? What is her attitude to political authority? Does she see many goals shared by Christianity and the political authority? Does she call on Christians to reject it, live apart from it, engage with it or seek to perfect it? What is her attitude to political violence? Is she a pacifist, a Just War proponent or a Holy War proponent? If the former, is she against war, against killing, against violence, against coercion, or against resistance? If a proponent of Just War, are her limits on war strict, moderate or permissive?

Reading 1: Removing the Causes of War (1953)[1]

Chapter VII

Jesus Christ was regarded by the religious hierarchy of his day as a dangerous revolutionary, has indeed he was. He rejected the conventional religious standards of that time and so changed his disciples that they also became “men who have turned the world upside down”. He sent his followers out to preach and teach and heal, “as lambs among wolves”; they were to travel light and expect no comfort, no security, though they should except with simplicity what they were given. No wonder that they returned filled with joy and amazement at the power that they found they had. There was no talk of them of the impossibility of being Christian in an unChristian world. That was their job.

Jesus deliberately attacked the religious standards of his time, with... his rejection of formal observances and insistence on a religion which meant feeding the hungry, taking in strangers,

clothing the naked, visiting the sick and ministering to those in prison, his selection of a Samaritan instead of the priest or Levite as an example of a man who loved his neighbour, his deliberate choice of the company of sinners. Yet it was not only in these respects that Jesus was unorthodox. His economics were revolutionary also and since one of the most powerful causes of war is the desire of one nation to expand, or to improve our maintain its standards of living at the expense of its neighbours, and the resistance offered to that expansion or improvement by others who may stand to lose in the process, this aspect of Christ's teachings is particularly relevant.

He told his disciples to take no thought for the morrow; they were not to seek physical security nor to allow their actions to be governed by fear. In his parable he sent the poor man to heaven and the rich man to hell; he approved the behaviour of the employer in his story who paid the same wages to labourers who, through no fault of their own, were unemployed most of the day, as to those who had had full employment. He refused to see any difficulty and the problem of feeding large numbers of hungry people; if what they had was shared, it would certainly go round and leave some over. In a country of strongly nationalist a feeling he selected for special commendation a Roman centurion and a Greek woman; he spent some time talking seriously to a Samaritan woman of doubtful character in an age when men did not in any case speak to women as equals. He was deliberately challenging and provoking.

Wherever and whenever a man or woman, or a community, has caught something of Christ’s spirit, it has acted like dynamite in blasting away that smug and self-satisfied complacency that so often accompanies worldly success. Jesus himself you very well that those who followed his teachings would find themselves in conflict with existing standards…In his life, as well as in his words, he set an example of the way in which evil and oppression should be met and conflict resolved, an example which appeals to the oppressed, but which is more often forgotten by those who call themselves by his name.

Chapter VIII

Friends throughout their three hundred years’ history have maintained that the teaching and spirit of Jesus Christ, by which they believe they are guided, leads to a rejection of war in all circumstances, whether as a means of defence, or of the promotion of justice. They are convinced that war is wrong and itself and wrong in the sight of God. They dissent from the judgment of Augustine and of the official church since his time and they deny that there can be such a pain thing as a just war. Even if ordered by governments and justified by jurists and theologians, for his and must be contrary to the will of God, who is the father of all man; it is wrong therefore for men to engage in it are for the church to sanction it.

This belief is not based merely upon horror at the destructiveness and ruthlessness of modern war; it is a recognition of the fact that all war, even cold war, is an expression of hatred and enmity. Men do not instinctively hate one another; modern wars are preceded by a campaign

of vilification, through the press, the radio, through books, through speeches, sometimes even through the pulpit, which aims at or results in the conditioning of the man in the street to fear and dislike a large number of his fellowmen whom he has never met and whom, since modern war is essentially impersonal, he probably never will meet even though he may kill them. Modern wars, including such preparations for war as Civil Defence, are based on fear, and fear is an emotion which should have no place in Christian living. The fear is not necessarily that of physical suffering or of a reduced standard of living, although it may include both these, but of all those barbarisms which are essentially part of war itself. Thus war is self-perpetuating. It “leads to a vicious circle of hatred, oppression, subversive movements, false propaganda, rearmament and new wars”* None of these have part or place in the gospel, the good news, of Jesus Christ. They should have no place in the life of Christians or of a Christian nation.

Chapter IX

The suggestion that economic inequalities are a major cause of war has frequently been taken for granted… But it is not necessarily the poverty-stricken nations which are the most likely to initiate wars. Rich nations may fight because they are rich, because they are able to pile up arms and because the very possession of arms makes them truculent and belligerent. They may be so anxious to keep their riches and the position that their riches have gained for them, that they look upon any other nation that is slowly improving its own position as a possible rival, a possible “aggressor”, that had better be suppressed before it becomes too powerful. They may tend therefore to follow the demagogue who offers them the best chance of maintaining their position of supremacy, or of regaining it, if it has been temporarily lost. They may look upon any murmurings of discontent from those who have legitimate grievances as due to subversive agencies or as indications of dangerous political aspirations to be ruthlessly suppressed.

This is not necessarily a conscious attitude. It is the almost inevitable result of wealth tenaciously held, even when the holder believes him elf to be the guard of a “sacred trust”. Jesus emphasized that it was difficult, though not impossible, for a rich man to “enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. Selfishness and covetousness are reverse sides of the same medal; both are causes of enmity, suspicion and ultimately of war, even if they are not the sole cause of any particular war. They are expressions of the lust for power.

Chapter XI

THE political causes of war are perhaps the most serious of all, though they may be preceded by economic injustice and rivalry or stimulated by vested interests. Few people would now consciouslyfight to maintain their own standard of living at the expense of their neighbours’. Few could be found consciously to fight in order to gain control of some source of raw material. Many, however, would fight in order to avoid the imposition of a political system

which they detest and others would fight in order to promote one which they believe to be superior to that under which they live; at least they would do so if there were any reasonable chance of success. The Germans followed Hitler because he encouraged them to believe themselves a master race instead of being, as they had been forced to declare themselves, the guilty member of the family of Europe. But wars of self-defence (and in the present arms race both sides claim to be acting in self-defence) are popularly supported because most people would feel it to be shameful that they should be ruled by foreigners who have gained power by force, and who will try to force ideas upon them which they do not wish to accept.

Any attempt to get rid of war must deal with this situation. The fact that suspicion may be unfounded does not make it any less real. And it may indeed be justified. Is peace worth having at the expense of loss of liberty? It is possible to answer this by pointing out that Jesus was a member of a subject nation, and that he rejected all attempts to make him the leader of an insurrection.

Friends believe that complete world disarmament is the right solution to aim at and that this is not impossible if at the same time we recognize the right of each community to decide for itself what government it desires, together with the responsibility of all men for the well-being of others. They recognize, as men generally have refused to recognize, that military security in an age of modern weapons is an impossible aim. To love one’s neighbour as one’s self is the only practical politics; it is, indeed, a condition of survival. “This do and thou shalt live.” In. a world where God reigns, be an idealist is to be a realist. The dreamers are those who suppose that they can avoid war by preparing for it on an ever-increasing and fantastic scale. Partial disarmament would be good in that it would release resources for better purposes; but the danger would be that ever greater demands would be made for continuous inspection, controls and enforcement. Complete disarmament means abandonment of military organization, military research establishments and general secrecy regulations and it would be automatically safeguarded by the open access implied.

Chapter XIII

Jesus had no illusions concerning the evil in the world. No one has who really faces it. Slavery, tyranny and terrorism still exist. The illusions are in the minds of those who think that evil can be overcome by force, that one devil can cast out another.

The underlying object of passive resistance, whether in the form of civil disobedience, or of strike action or in more personal relationships, may be only to harass one’s opponent and to force him to take a particular course of action. Love may have no place in it; it need not include constructive activity and cannot then be the expression of a whole philosophy of life. It is a weapon of the weak, and can be very successful, but its aim may be one of expediency rather than of principle. It can be a substitute for violence in the hands of those who would use violence if it were likely to be more effective, and those who use it may, in spite of their non-

violence, rejoice in the discomfiture of those whom they regard as their enemies or oppressors. George Fox was not above this human failing; nor perhaps are any of us. In the form of strike action passive resistance is a legal type of coercion in certain circumstances in economic disputes. It is better than violence because its effects are in general more directly limited to its objectives, but it is a political and material, rather than a spiritual weapon. Although it may involve personal suffering, it does not necessarily attack and remove the roots of conflict.

All forms of non-violent resistance are certainly much better than appeasement, which has come to mean the avoidance of violence by a surrender to injustice at the expense of the suffering of others and not of one’s self, by the giving away of something that is not ours to give. This meaning of appeasement, the buying of peace for ourselves temporarily by pandering to international blackmail, has rightly come to be despised and to be regarded as an encouragement to aggressors and despots. It should be distinguished sharply from the admission, which personal or international integrity might sometimes demand, that we have made a mistake or have ourselves done wrong, and are ready to make open amends or to reverse our policy. No considerations of national or individual prestige should prevent the correction of error when it is realized. This is a sine qua non in the search for truth, and is evidence of strength and not of weakness of personal or of national character, even when it means temporary humiliation.

When, however, our own hands are clean, oppression should be met by a truly non-violent campaign, which even though it may involve civil obedience under Divine compulsion, must not involve any hatred or bitterness. The aim is to prevent oppression or despotism, by changing the heart of the oppressor; and therefore the one essential axiom involved is that in human nature there is something inherently good, that there is, as Friends put it, “that of God in every man”, to which an appeal may be made. It was this belief that constituted the power of Gandhi over his fellow countrymen as well as over those whose actions and attitude he wished to change. It was a partial understanding of this belief that enabled more than 300,000 Indians to suffer undeserved imprisonment rather than to obey unjust laws. Not many of them, of course, realized as clearly as Gandhi did the fundamental aim of their action even when he had explained it to them, but it was nevertheless an appeal to the better nature of those who had made the laws and it succeeded to the extent that India was freed from British domination without revolution, though it took about 25 years to do it.

Friends are not naïve enough to believe that such an appeal to “that of God” in a dictator or in a nation which for psychological or other reasons is in an aggressive mood will necessarily be successful in converting the tyrant or preventing aggression. Christ was crucified; Gandhi was assassinated. Yet they did not fail. Nor did they leave behind them the hatred, devastation and bitterness that war, successful or unsuccessful, does leave. What can be claimed, moreover, is that this method of opposing evil is one of which no person, no group, no nation need be ashamed, as we may and should be ashamed of the inhumanities of war that are perpetrated

in our name and with our support. To resist evil by suffering, as Jesus did, takes a strong man, one who is not afraid to die. A soldier, if he is alone, has no chance against an army; but the effect of opposing the law of love to the powers of darkness cannot be measured by numbers.

It is often suggested that those who believe in the power of good to overcome evil are idealists, Yet the liberty we so much cherish in our own country was won not by revolution but by the sturdy non-violent resistance to tyranny of men such as George Fox and William Penn, and our relatively humane treatment of criminals and the mentally sick by the creative and non-violent experiments of Elizabeth Fry, Samuel Tuke and others of like mind. If our liberties are taken from us by aggression from abroad or by the tyranny of fear or greed at home we shall only win them back in the same way that they were first won. Ideals cannot be destroyed except by the weapons in our own hands, nor can aggression be expected to disappear from the world while successive generations of young people are deliberately trained in methods of violent resistance.

Reading 2: Is Peace Possible? (1957) [extract]I am a member of the Society of Friends, sometimes called Quakers, and I am a convinced pacifist, but I find it very hard to convince other people.

The one subject I do know something about is science. Even from the scientific point of view, it seems clear that absolute national sovereignty cannot be maintained in a world that wishes to avoid slow but certain deterioration of human health and well-being. No nation can claim to do what it likes, even with its own. The air above it will move to other parts of the world. The water around it will be exchanged gradually, not only with surface waters elsewhere, but also with waters in the depths of the ocean. “No man is an island”, indeed. To be internationally-minded is a matter of enlightened self-interest rather than of morals. Its pays to come to an agreement with other nations whom you may harm and who may harm you, or with whom you might share certain benefits. Enlightened self-interest is not morality, yet morality would have come to the same conclusion, perhaps by a quicker or less painful route… Honesty was, and is, the best policy. So is international co-operation.

One thing is quite sure: and any would-be reformer must face it. It is not possible for the world population to expand indefinitely and not starve. Simple arithmetic is convincing. Man must not outgrow his living space, and if he has an average of more than two healthy child-bearing children he soon will. The nations must act together to attain these ends. They have acted together to a limited extent.

I can’t leave this question of population… It is just not possible to freeze the status quo, either nationally or internationally. The present inequalities of living standards are too great to be frozen-in: and the present inequalities of population densities will soon be greatly accentuated.

As I see it, this world is doomed unless it abandons war as a means of enforcing peaceful co-operation and other forms of good national and international behaviour. Still more if it attempts to use war as a pseudo-legal means of preventing inevitable adjustments of populations and if standards of living.

What should now be faced is the fact that new ways of dealing both with old conflicts and with new situations must be urgently sought, and that these new forms of action will involve new thinking.

People do not generally like to think in new ways. Yet change does come. Some of these are due to scientific advance. Others have been due to the inspiration of men and women who have initiated change from within the community: natural leaders who have formed the public opinion that changes government policies.

Democracy is government by discussion, not government by majority. Many dictatorships do have the support of a majority of the people, but they are bad if they eliminate or suppress the rights of minority opposition.

We need to think far more clearly about the obligations of citizenship, and to realize that any form of government is a mechanism and not a master. 

Exercise 10 Grid – *use Grid for exercise 4*

Chapter Eleven ReadingsRead Niebuhr’s ‘Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist’ and Angus Dun & Reinhold Niebuhr, “God Wills Both Justice and Peace”. Then submit Exercise 11 (or an Essay) on Niebuhr. Where would you place him on the grid? Why? What is his attitude to political authority? Does he see many goals shared by Christianity and the political authority? Does he call on Christians to reject it, live apart from it, engage with it or seek to perfect it? What is his attitude to political violence? Is he a pacifist, a Just War proponent or a Holy War proponent? If the former, is he against war, against killing, against violence, against coercion, or against resistance? If a proponent of Just War, are his limits on war strict, moderate or permissive?

Reading 1: Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist” (1940)1

WHY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS NOT PACIFIST

Whenever the actual historical situation sharpens the issue, the debate whether the Christian Church is, or ought to be, pacifist is carried on with fresh vigor both inside and outside the Christian community. Those who are not pacifists seek to prove that pacifism is a heresy; while the pacifists contend, or at least imply, that the church's failure to espouse pacifism unanimously can only be interpreted as apostasy, and must be attributed to its lack of courage or to its want of faith.

There may be an advantage in stating the thesis, with which we enter this debate, immediately. The thesis is, that the failure of the church to espouse pacifism is not apostasy, but is derived from an understanding of the Christian gospel which refuses simply to equate the Gospel with the “law of love.” Christianity is not simply a new law, namely, the law of love.

The finality of Christianity cannot be proved by analyses which seek to reveal that the law of love is stated more unambiguously and perfectly in the life and teachings of Christ than anywhere else. Christianity is a religion which measures the total dimension of human existence not only in terms of the final norm of human conduct, which is expressed in the law of love, but also in terms of the fact of sin. It recognizes that the same man who can become his true self only by striving infinitely for self-realization beyond himself is also inevitably involved in the sin of infinitely making his partial and narrow self the true end of existence. It believes, in other words, that though Christ is the true norm (the “second Adam”) for every man, every man is also in some sense a crucifier of Christ. The good news of the gospel is not the law that we ought to love one another.

The good news of the gospel is that there is a resource of divine mercy which is able to overcome a contradiction within our souls, which we cannot ourselves overcome. This contradiction is that, though we know we ought to love our neighbor as ourself, there is a “law in our members which wars against the law that is in our mind” (Rom. 7:23), so that, in fact, we love ourselves more than our neighbor.

The grace of God which is revealed in Christ is regarded by Christian faith as, on the one hand, an actual “power of righteousness” which heals the contradiction within our hearts. In that sense Christ defines the actual possibilities of human existence. On the other hand, this grace is conceived as “justification,” as pardon rather than power, as the forgiveness of God, which is vouchsafed to man despite the fact that he never achieves the full measure of Christ. In that sense Christ is the “impossible possibility.” Loyalty to him means realization in intention, but does not actually mean the full realization of the measure of Christ. In this doctrine of forgiveness and justification, Christianity measures the full seriousness of sin as a permanent factor in human history. Naturally, the doctrine has no meaning for modern secular civilization, nor for the secularized and moralistic versions of Christianity. They cannot understand the doctrine precisely because they believe there is some fairly simple way out of the sinfulness of human history.

It is rather remarkable that so many modern Christians should believe that Christianity is primarily a “challenge” to man to obey the law of Christ; whereas it is, as a matter of fact, a religion which deals realistically with the problem presented by the violation of this law. Far from believing that the ills of the world could be set right “if only” men obeyed the law of Christ, it has always regarded the problem of achieving justice in a sinful world as a very difficult task. In the profounder versions of the Christian faith the very Utopian illusions, which are currently equated with Christianity, have been rigorously disavowed.

THE TRUTH AND HERESY OF PACIFISM

Nevertheless, it is not possible to regard pacifism simply as a heresy. In one of its aspects modern Christian pacifism is simply a version of Christian perfectionism. It expresses a

genuine impulse in the heart of Christianity, the impulse to take the law of Christ seriously and not to allow the political strategies, which the sinful character of man makes necessary, to become final norms. In its profounder forms, this Christian perfectionism did not proceed from a simple faith that the “law of love” could be regarded as an alternative to the political strategies by which the world achieves a precarious justice. These strategies invariably involve the balancing of power with power; and they never completely escape the peril of tyranny on the one hand, and the peril of anarchy and warfare on the other.

In medieval ascetic perfectionism and in Protestant sectarian perfectionism (of the type of Meno Simons, for instance) the effort to achieve a standard of perfect love in individual life was not presented as a political alternative. On the contrary, the political problem and task were specifically disavowed. This perfectionism did not give itself to the illusion that it had discovered a method for eliminating the element of conflict from political strategies. On the contrary, it regarded the mystery of evil as beyond its power of solution. It was content to set up the most perfect and unselfish individual life as a symbol of the Kingdom of God. It knew that this could only be done by disavowing the political task and by freeing the individual of all responsibility for social justice.

It is this kind of pacifism which is not a heresy. It is rather a valuable asset for the Christian faith. It is a reminder to the Christian community that the relative norms of social justice, which justify both coercion and resistance to coercion, are not final norms, and that Christians are in constant peril of forgetting their relative and tentative character and of making them too completely normative.

There is thus a Christian pacifism which is not a heresy. Yet most modern forms of Christian pacifism are heretical. Presumably inspired by the Christian gospel, they have really absorbed the Renaissance faith in the goodness of man, have rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin as an outmoded bit of pessimism, have reinterpreted the cross so that it is made to stand for the absurd idea that perfect love is guaranteed a simple victory over the world, and have rejected all other profound elements of the Christian gospel as “Pauline” accretions which must be stripped from the “simple gospel of Jesus.” This form of pacifism is not only heretical when judged by the standards of the total gospel. It is equally heretical when judged by the facts of human existence. There are no historical realities which remotely conform to it. It is important to recognize this lack of conformity to the facts of experience as a criterion of heresy.

All forms of religious faith are principles of interpretation which we use to organize our experience. Some religions may be adequate principles of interpretation at certain levels of experience, but they break down at deeper levels.no religious faith can maintain itself in defiance of the experience which it supposedly interprets. A religious faith which substitutes faith in man for faith in God cannot finally validate itself in experience. If we believe that the only reason men do not love each other perfectly is because the law of love has not been

preached persuasively enough, we believe something to which experience does not conform. If we believe that if Britain had only been fortunate enough to have produced 30 percent instead of 2 percent of conscientious objectors to military service, Hitler's heart would have been softened and he would not have dared to attack Poland, we hold a faith which no historic reality justifies.

Such a belief has no more justification in the facts of experience than the communist belief that the sole cause of man's sin is the class organization of society and the corollary faith that a “classless” society will be essentially free of human sinfulness. All of these beliefs are pathetic alternatives to the Christian faith. They all come finally to the same thing. They do not believe that man remains a tragic creature who needs the divine mercy as much at the end as at the beginning of his moral endeavors. They believe rather that there is some fairly easy way out of the human situation of “self-alienation.” In this connection it is significant that Christian pacifists, rationalists like Bertrand Russell, and mystics like Aldous Huxley, believe essentially the same thing. The Christians make Christ into the symbol of their faith in man. But their faith is really identical with that of Russell or Huxley.

The common element in these various expressions of faith in man is the belief that man is essentially good at some level of his being. They believe that if you can abstract the rational-universal man from what is finite and contingent in human nature, or if you can only cultivate some mystic-universal element in the deeper levels of man's consciousness, you will be able to eliminate human selfishness and the consequent conflict of life with life. These rational or mystical views of man conform neither to the New Testament's view of human nature nor yet to the complex facts of human experience. In order to elaborate the thesis more fully, that the refusal of the Christian Church to espouse pacifism is not apostasy and that most modern forms of pacifism are heretical, it is necessary first of all to consider the character of the absolute and unqualified demands which Christ makes and to understand the relation of these demands to the gospel.

It is very foolish to deny that the ethic of Jesus is an absolute and uncompromising ethic. It is, in the phrase of Ernst Troeltsch, an ethic of “love universalism and love perfectionism.” The injunctions “resist not evil,” “love your enemies,” “if ye love them that love you what thanks have you?” “be not anxious for your life,” and “be ye therefore perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect,” are all of one piece, and they are all uncompromising and absolute. Nothing is more futile and pathetic than the effort of some Christian theologians who find it necessary to become involved in the relativities of politics, in resistance to tyranny or in social conflict, to justify themselves by seeking to prove that Christ was also involved in some of these relativities, that he used whips to drive the money-changers out of the Temple, or that he came “not to bring peace but a sword,” or that he asked the disciples to sell a cloak and buy a sword. What could be more futile than to build a whole ethical structure upon the exegetical issue whether Jesus accepted the sword with the words: “It is enough,” or whether he really meant: “Enough of this” (Luke 22:36)?

Those of us who regard the ethic of Jesus as finally and ultimately normative, but as not immediately applicable to the task of securing justice in a sinful world, are very foolish if we try to reduce the ethic so that it will cover and justify our prudential and relative standards and strategies. To do this is to reduce the ethic to a new legalism. The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law. Every law and every standard which falls short of the law of love embodies contingent factors and makes concessions to the fact that sinful man must achieve tentative harmonies of life with life which are less than the best. It is dangerous and confusing to give these tentative and relative standards final and absolute religious sanction.

Curiously enough the pacifists are just as guilty as their less absolutist brethren of diluting the ethic of Jesus for the purpose of justifying their position. They are forced to recognize that an ethic of pure non-resistance can have no immediate relevance to any political situation; for in every political situation it is necessary to achieve justice by resisting pride and power. They therefore declare that the ethic of Jesus is not an ethic of non-resistance, but one of non-violent resistance; that it allows one to resist evil provided the resistance does not involve the destruction of life or property.

There is not the slightest support in Scripture for this doctrine of non-violence. Nothing could be plainer than that the ethic uncompromisingly enjoins non-resistance and not non-violent resistance. Furthermore, it is obvious that the distinction between violent and non-violent resistance is not an absolute distinction. If it is made absolute, we arrive at the morally absurd position of giving moral preference to the non-violent power which Doctor Goebbels wields, over the type of power wielded by a general. This absurdity is really derived from the modern (and yet probably very ancient and very Platonic) heresy of regarding the “physical” as evil and the “spiritual” as good. The reductio ad absurdum of this position is achieved in a book which has become something of a textbook for modern pacifists, Richard Gregg's The Power of Non-Violence. In this book, non-violent resistance is commended as the best method of defeating your foe, particularly as the best method of breaking his morale. It is suggested that Christ ended his life on the cross because he had not completely mastered the technique of non-violence, and must for this reason be regarded as a guide who is inferior to Gandhi, but whose significance lies in initiating a movement which culminates in Gandhi.

One may well concede that a wise and decent statesmanship will seek not only to avoid conflict, but to avoid violence in conflict. Parliamentary political controversy is one method of sublimating political struggles in such a way as to avoid violent collisions of interest. But this pragmatic distinction has nothing to do with the more basic distinction between the ethic of the “Kingdom of God,” in which no concession is made to human sin, and all relative political strategies which, assuming human sinfulness, seek to secure the highest measure of peace and justice among selfish and sinful men.

THE TENSION BETWEEN “BE NOT ANXIOUS” AND “LOVE THY NEIGHBOR”

If pacifists were less anxious to dilute the ethic of Christ to make it conform to their particular type of non-violent politics, and if they were less obsessed with the obvious contradiction between the ethic of Christ and the fact of war, they might have noticed that the injunction “resist not evil” is only part and parcel of a total ethic which we violate not only in war-time, but every day of our life, and that overt conflict is but a final and vivid revelation of the character of human existence. This total ethic can be summarized most succinctly in the two injunctions “Be not anxious for your life” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (cf. Matt. 6:31, 19:19).

In the first of these, attention is called to the fact that the root and source of all undue self-assertion lies in the anxiety which all men have in regard to their existence. The ideal possibility is that perfect trust in God's providence (“for your heavenly father knoweth what things ye have need of”) and perfect unconcern for the physical life (“fear not them which are able to kill the body”) would create a state of serenity in which one life would not seek to take advantage of another life. But the fact is that anxiety is an inevitable concomitant of human freedom, and is the root of the inevitable sin which expresses itself in every human activity and creativity. Not even the most idealistic preacher who admonishes his congregation to obey the law of Christ is free of the sin which arises from anxiety. He may or may not be anxious for his job, but he is certainly anxious about his prestige. Perhaps he is anxious for his reputation as a righteous man. He may be tempted to preach a perfect ethic the more vehemently in order to hide an unconscious apprehension of the fact that his own life does not conform to it. There is no life which does not violate the injunction “Be not anxious.” that is the tragedy of human sin. It is the tragedy of man who is dependent upon God, but seeks to make himself independent and self-sufficing.

In the same way there is no life which is not involved in a violation of the injunction, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” No one is so blind as the idealist who tells us that war would be unnecessary “if only” nations obeyed the law of Christ, but who remains unconscious of the fact that even the most saintly life is involved in some measure of contradiction to this law. Have we not all known loving fathers and mothers who, despite a very genuine love for their children, had to be resisted if justice and freedom were to be gained for the children ?do we not know that the sinful will-to-power may be compounded with the most ideal motives and may use the latter as its instruments and vehicles? The collective life of man undoubtedly stands on a lower moral plane than the life of individuals, yet nothing revealed in the life of races and nations is unknown in individual life. The sins of pride and of lust for power and the consequent tyranny and injustice are all present, at least in an inchoate form, in individual life. Even as I write, my little five-year-old boy comes to me with the tale of an attack made upon him by his year-old sister. This tale is concocted to escape paternal judgment for being too rough in playing with his sister. One is reminded of Germany's claim that Poland was the aggressor and the similar Russian charge against Finland.

THE TENSION BETWEEN TYRANNY AND ANARCHY

The pacifists do not know human nature well enough to be concerned about the contradictions between the law of love and the sin of man, until sin has conceived and brought forth death. They do not see that sin introduces an element of conflict into the world and that even the most loving relations are not free of it. They are, consequently, unable to appreciate the complexity of the problem of justice. They merely assert that if only men loved one another, all the complex, and sometimes horrible, realities of the political order could be dispensed with. They do not see that their “if” begs the most basic problem of human history. It is because men are sinners that justice can be achieved only by a certain degree of coercion on the one hand, and by resistance to coercion and tyranny on the other hand. The political life of man must constantly steer between the Scylla of anarchy and the Charybdis of tyranny.

Human egotism makes large-scale co-operation upon a purely voluntary basis impossible. Governments must coerce. Yet there is an element of evil in this coercion. It is always in danger of serving the purposes of the coercing power rather than the general weal. We cannot fully trust the motives of any ruling class or power. That is why it is important to maintain democratic checks upon the centers of power. It may also be necessary to resist a ruling class, nation or race, if it violates the standards of relative justice which have been set up for it. Such resistance means war. It need not mean overt conflict or violence. But if those who resist tyranny publish their scruples against violence too publicly, the tyrannical power need only threaten the use of violence against non-violent pressure to persuade the resisters to quiescence. The relation of pacifism to the abortive effort to apply non-violent sanctions against Italy in the Ethiopian dispute is instructive at this point.

The refusal to recognize that sin introduces an element of conflict into the world invariably means that a morally perverse preference is given to tyranny over anarchy (war). If we are told that tyranny would destroy itself, if only we would not challenge it, the obvious answer is that tyranny continues to grow if it is not resisted. If it is to be resisted, the risk of overt conflict must be taken. The thesis that German tyranny must not be challenged by other nations because Germany will throw off this yoke in due time, merely means that an unjustified moral preference is given to civil war over international war, for internal resistance runs the risk of conflict as much as external resistance. Furthermore, no consideration is given to the fact that a tyrannical state may grow too powerful to be successfully resisted by purely internal pressure, and that the injustices which it does to other than its own nationals may rightfully lay the problem of the tyranny upon other nations.

It is not unfair to assert that most pacifists who seek to present their religious absolutism as a political alternative to the claims and counter-claims, the pressures and counter-pressures of the political order, invariably betray themselves into this preference for tyranny. Tyranny is not war. It is peace, but it is a peace which has nothing to do with the peace of the Kingdom of God. It is a peace which results from one will establishing a complete dominion over other wills and reducing them to acquiescence.

One of the most terrible consequences of a confused religious absolutism is that it is forced to condone such tyranny as that of Germany in the nations which it has conquered and now cruelly oppresses. It usually does this by insisting that the tyranny is no worse than that which is practised in the so-called democratic nations. Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so-called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform perfectly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistencies of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practise. If we cannot make a distinction here, there are no historical distinctions which have any value. All the distinctions upon which the fate of civilization has turned in the history of mankind have been just such relative distinctions.

One is persuaded to thank God in such times as these that the common people maintain a degree of “common sense,” that they preserve an uncorrupted ability to react against injustice and the cruelty of racial bigotry. This ability has been lost among some Christian idealists who preach the law of love but forget that they, as well as all other men, are involved in the violation of that law; and who must (in order to obscure this glaring defect in their theory) eliminate all relative distinctions in history and praise the peace of tyranny as if it were nearer to the peace of the Kingdom of God than war. The overt conflicts of human history are periods of judgment when what has been hidden becomes revealed. It is the business of Christian prophecy to anticipate these judgments to some degree at least, to call attention to the fact that when men say “peace and quiet” “destruction will come upon them unaware” (cf. Ps. 35:8, Ez. 7:25), and reveal to what degree this overt destruction is a vivid portrayal of the constant factor of sin in human life. A theology which fails to come to grips with this tragic factor of sin is heretical, both from the standpoint of the gospel and in terms of its blindness to obvious facts of human experience in every realm and on every level of moral goodness.

THE TENSION BETWEEN RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MERCY

The gospel is something more than the law of love. The gospel deals with the fact that men violate the law of love. The gospel presents Christ as the pledge and revelation of God's mercy which finds man in his rebellion and overcomes his sin.

The question is whether the grace of Christ is primarily a power of righteousness which so heals the sinful heart that henceforth it is able to fulfil the law of love; or whether it is primarily the assurance of divine mercy for a persistent sinfulness which man never overcomes completely. When St. Paul declared:” I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet it is no more I that live but Christ that dwelleth in me” (Gal. 2:20), did he mean that the new life in Christ was not his own by reason of the fact that grace, rather than his own power, enabled him to live on the new level of righteousness? Or did he mean that the new life was his only in intention and by reason of God's willingness to accept intention for achievement? Was the emphasis upon sanctification or justification?

This is the issue upon which the Protestant Reformation separated itself from classical Catholicism, believing that Thomistic interpretations of grace lent themselves to new forms of self-righteousness in place of the Judaistic-legalistic self-righteousness which St. Paul condemned. If one studies the whole thought of St. Paul, one is almost forced to the conclusion that he was not himself quite certain whether the peace which he had found in Christ was a moral peace, the peace of having become what man truly is; or whether it was primarily a religious peace, the peace of being “completely known and all forgiven,” of being accepted by God despite the continued sinfulness of the heart. Perhaps St. Paul could not be quite sure about where the emphasis was to be placed, for the simple reason that no one can be quite certain about the character of this ultimate peace. There must be, and there is, moral content in it, a fact which Reformation theology tends to deny and which Catholic and sectarian theology emphasizes. But there is never such perfect moral content in it that any man could find perfect peace through his moral achievements, not even the achievements which he attributes to grace rather than the power of his own will. This is the truth which the Reformation emphasized and which modern Protestant Christianity has almost completely forgotten.

We are, therefore, living in a state of sorry moral and religious confusion. In the very moment of world history in which every contemporary historical event justifies the Reformation emphasis upon the persistence of sin on every level of moral achievement, we not only identify Protestant faith with a moralistic sentimentality which neglects and obscures truths in the Christian gospel (which it was the mission of the Reformation to rescue from obscurity), but we even neglect those reservations and qualifications upon the theory of sanctification upon which classical Catholicism wisely insisted.

We have, in other words, reinterpreted the Christian gospel in terms of the Renaissance faith in man. Modern pacifism is merely a final fruit of this Renaissance spirit, which has pervaded the whole of modern Protestantism. We have interpreted world history as a gradual ascent to the Kingdom of God which waits for final triumph only upon the willingness of Christians to “take Christ seriously.” There is nothing in Christ's own teachings, except dubious interpretations of the parable of the leaven and the mustard seed, to justify this interpretation of world history. In the whole of the New Testament, gospels and epistles alike, there is only one interpretation of world history. That pictures history as moving toward a climax in which both Christ and anti-Christ are revealed.

The New Testament does not, in other words, envisage a simple triumph of good over evil in history. It sees human history involved in the contradictions of sin to the end. That is why it sees no simple resolution of the problem of history. It believes that the Kingdom of God will finally resolve the contradictions of history; but for it the Kingdom of God is no simple historical possibility. The grace of God for man and the Kingdom of God for history are both divine realities and not human possibilities.

The Christian faith believes that the atonement reveals God's mercy as an ultimate resource by which God alone overcomes the judgment which sin deserves. If this final truth of the Christian religion has no meaning to modern men, including modern Christians, that is because even the tragic character of contemporary history has not yet persuaded them to take the fact of human sinfulness seriously.

LOVE AS A PRINCIPLE OF INDISCRIMINATE CRITICISM

The contradiction between the law of love and the sinfulness of man raises not only the ultimate religious problem how men are to have peace if They do not overcome the contradiction, and how history will culminate if the contradiction remains on every level of historic achievement; it also raises the immediate problem how men are to achieve a tolerable harmony of life with life, if human pride and selfishness prevent the realization of the law of love.

The pacifists are quite right in one emphasis. They are right in asserting that love is really the law of life. It is not some ultimate possibility which has nothing to do with human history. The freedom of man, his transcendence over the limitations of nature and over all historic and traditional social situations, makes any form of human community which falls short of the law of love less than the best. Only by a voluntary giving of life to life and a free interpenetration of personalities could man do justice both to the freedom of other personalities and the necessity of community between personalities. The law of love therefore remains a principle of criticism over all forms of community in which elements of coercion and conflict destroy the highest type of fellowship.

To look at human communities from the perspective of the Kingdom of God is to know that there is a sinful element in all the expedients which the political order uses to establish justice. That is why even the seemingly most stable justice degenerates periodically into either tyranny or anarchy. But it must also be recognized that it is not possible to eliminate the sinful element in the political expedients. They are, in the words of St. Augustine, both the consequence of, and the remedy for, sin. If they are the remedy for sin, the ideal of love is not merely a principle of indiscriminate criticism upon all approximations of justice. It is also a principle of discriminate criticism between forms of justice.

As a principle of indiscriminate criticism upon all forms of justice, the law of love reminds us that the injustice and tyranny against which we contend in the foe is partially the consequence of our own injustice, that the pathology of modern Germans is partially a consequence of the vindictiveness of the peace of Versailles, and that the ambition of a tyrannical imperialism is different only in degree and not in kind from the imperial impulse which characterizes all of human life.

The Christian faith ought to persuade us that political controversies are always conflicts between sinners and not between righteous men and sinners. It ought to mitigate the self-righteousness which is an inevitable concomitant of all human conflict. The spirit of contrition is an important ingredient in the sense of justice. If it is powerful enough it may be able to restrain the impulse of vengeance sufficiently to allow a decent justice to emerge. This is an important issue facing Europe in anticipation of the conclusion of the present war. It cannot be denied that the Christian conscience failed terribly in restraining vengeance after the last war. It is also quite obvious that the natural inclination to self-righteousness was the primary force of this vengeance (expressed particularly in the war guilt clause of the peace treaty). The pacifists draw the conclusion from the fact that justice is never free from vindictiveness, that we ought not for this reason ever to contend against a foe. This argument leaves out of account that capitulation to the foe might well subject us to a worse vindictiveness. It is as foolish to imagine that the foe is free of the sin which we deplore in ourselves as it is to regard ourselves as free of the sin which we deplore in the foe.

The fact that our own sin is always partly the cause of the sins against which we must contend is regarded by simple moral purists as proof that we have no right to contend against the foe. They regard the injunction “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7) as a simple alternative to the schemes of justice which society has devised, and whereby it prevents the worst forms of anti-social conduct. This injunction of Christ ought to remind every judge and every juridical tribunal that the crime of the criminal is partly the consequence of the sins of society. But if pacifists are to be consistent they ought to advocate the abolition of the whole judicial process in society. It is perfectly true that national societies have more impartial instruments of justice than international society possesses to date. Nevertheless, no impartial court is as impartial as it pretends to be, and there is no judicial process which is completely free of vindictiveness. Yet we cannot dispense with it; and we will have to continue to put criminals into jail. There is a point where the final cause of the criminal's anti-social conduct becomes a fairly irrelevant issue in comparison with the task of preventing his conduct from injuring innocent fellows.

The ultimate principles of the Kingdom of God are never irrelevant to any problem of justice, and they hover over every social situation as an ideal possibility; but that does not mean that they can be made into simple alternatives for the present schemes of relative justice. The thesis that the so-called democratic nations have no right to resist overt forms of tyranny, because their own history betrays imperialistic motives, would have meaning only if it were possible to achieve a perfect form of justice in any nation and to free national life completely of the imperialistic motive. This is impossible; for imperialism is the collective expression of the sinful will-to-power which characterizes all human existence. The pacifist argument on this issue betrays how completely pacifism gives itself to illusions about the stuff with which it is dealing in human nature. These illusions deserve particular censure, because no one who knows his own heart very well ought to be given to such illusions.

LOVE AS A PRINCIPLE OF DISCRIMINATE CRITICISM

The recognition of the law of love as an indiscriminate principle of criticism over all attempts at social and international justice is actually a resource of justice, for it prevents the pride, self-righteousness and vindictiveness of men from corrupting their efforts at justice. But it must be recognized that love is also a principle of discriminate criticism between various forms of community and various attempts at justice. The closest approximation to a love in which life supports life in voluntary community is a justice in which life is prevented from destroying life and the interests of the one are guarded against unjust claims by the other. Such justice is achieved when impartial tribunals of society prevent men “from being judges in their own cases,” in the words of John Locke. But the tribunals of justice merely codify certain equilibria of power. Justice is basically dependent upon a balance of power. Whenever an individual or a group or a nation possesses undue power, and whenever this power is not checked by the possibility of criticizing and resisting it, it grows inordinate. The equilibrium of power upon which every structure of justice rests would degenerate into anarchy but for the organizing center which controls it. One reason why the balances of power, which prevent injustice in international relations, periodically degenerate into overt anarchy is because no way has yet been found to establish an adequate organizing center, a stable international judicatory, for this balance of power.

A balance of power is something different from, and inferior to, the harmony of love. It is a basic condition of justice, given the sinfulness of man. Such a balance of power does not exclude love. In fact, without love the frictions and tensions of a balance of power would become intolerable. But without the balance of power even the most loving relations may degenerate into unjust relations, and love may become the screen which hides the injustice. Family relations are instructive at this point. Women did not gain justice from men, despite the intimacy of family relations, until they secured sufficient economic power to challenge male autocracy. There are Christian “idealists” today who speak sentimentally of love as the only way to justice, whose family life might benefit from a more delicate “balance of power.” Naturally the tensions of such a balance may become overt; and overt tensions may degenerate into conflict. The center of power, which has the function of preventing this anarchy of conflict, may also degenerate into tyranny. There is no perfectly adequate method of preventing either anarchy or tyranny. But obviously the justice established in the so-called democratic nations represents a high degree of achievement; and the achievement becomes the more impressive when it is compared with the tyranny into which alternative forms of society have fallen. The obvious evils of tyranny, however, will not inevitably persuade the victims of economic anarchy in democratic society to eschew tyranny. When men suffer from anarchy they may foolishly regard the evils of tyranny as the lesser evils. Yet the evils of tyranny in fascist and communist nations are so patent, that we may dare to hope that what is still left of democratic civilizations will not lightly sacrifice the virtues of democracy for the sake of escaping its defects. We have a very vivid and conclusive evidence about the probable consequences of a tyrannical unification of Europe. The nature of the German rule in the

conquered nations of Europe gives us the evidence. There are too many contingent factors in various national and international schemes of justice to justify any unqualified endorsement of even the most democratic structure of justice as “Christian.” Yet it must be obvious that any social structure in which power has been made responsible, and in which anarchy has been overcome by methods of mutual accommodation, is preferable to either anarchy or tyranny. If it is not possible to express a moral preference for the justice achieved in democratic societies, in comparison with tyrannical societies, no historical preference has any meaning. This kind of justice approximates the harmony of love more than either anarchy or tyranny. If we do not make discriminate judgments between social systems we weaken the resolution to defend and extend civilization. Pacifism either tempts us to make no judgments at all, or to give an undue preference to tyranny in comparison with the momentary anarchy which is necessary to overcome tyranny. It must be admitted that the anarchy of war which results from resistance to tyranny is not always creative; that, at given periods of history, civilization may lack the resource to fashion a new and higher form of unity out of momentary anarchy. The defeat of Germany, and the frustration of the Nazi effort to unify Europe in tyrannical terms, is a negative task. It does not guarantee the emergence of a new Europe with a higher level of international cohesion and new organs of international justice. But it is a negative task which cannot be avoided. All schemes for avoiding this negative task rest upon illusions about human nature. Specifically, these illusions express themselves in the failure to understand the stubbornness and persistence of the tyrannical will, once it is fully conceived. It would not require great argumentative skill to prove that Nazi tyranny never could have reached such proportions as to be able to place the whole of Europe under its ban, if sentimental illusions about the character of the evil which Europe was facing had not been combined with less noble motives for tolerating Nazi aggression.

A simple Christian moralism is senseless and confusing. It is senseless when, as in the World War, it seeks uncritically to identify the cause of Christ with the cause of democracy without a religious reservation. It is just as senseless when it seeks to purge itself of this error by an uncritical refusal to make any distinctions between relative values in history. The fact is that we might as well dispense with the Christian faith entirely if it is our conviction that we can act in history only if we are guiltless. This means that we must either prove our guiltlessness in order to be able to act; or refuse to act because we cannot achieve guiltlessness. Self-righteousness or inaction are the alternatives of secular moralism. If they are also the only alternatives of Christian moralism, one rightly suspects that Christian faith has become diluted with secular perspectives.

In its profoundest insights, the Christian faith sees the whole of human history as involved in guilt, and finds no release from guilt except in the grace of God. The Christian is freed by that grace to act in history, to give his devotion to the highest values he knows, to defend those citadels of civilization of which necessity and historic destiny have made him the defender; and he is persuaded by that grace to remember the ambiguity of even his best actions. If the

providence of God does not enter the affairs of men to bring good out of evil, the evil in our good may easily destroy our most ambitious efforts and frustrate our highest hopes.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF A TRUE PACIFISM

Despite our conviction that most modern pacifism is too filled with secular and moralistic illusions to be of the highest value to the Christian community, we may be grateful for the fact that the Christian Church has learned, since the last war, to protect its pacifists and to appreciate their testimony. Even when this testimony is marred by self-righteousness, because it does not proceed from a sufficiently profound understanding of the tragedy of human history, it has its value.

It is a terrible thing to take human life. The conflict between man and man and nation and nation is tragic. If there are men who declare that, no matter what the consequences, they cannot bring themselves to participate in this slaughter, the church ought to be able to say to the general community: we quite understand this scruple and we respect it. It proceeds from the conviction that the true end of man is brotherhood, and that love is the law of life. we who allow ourselves to become engaged in war need this testimony of the absolutist against us, lest we accept the warfare of the world as normative, lest we become callous to the horror of war, and lest we forget the ambiguity of our own actions and motives and the risk we run of achieving no permanent good from this momentary anarchy in which we are involved.

But we have a right to remind the absolutists that their testimony against us would be more effective if it were not corrupted by self-righteousness and were not accompanied by the implicit or explicit accusation of apostasy. A pacifism which really springs from the Christian faith, without secular accretions and corruptions, could not be as certain as modern pacifism is that it possesses an alternative for the conflicts and tensions from which and through which the world must rescue a precarious justice.

A truly Christian pacifism would set each heart under the judgment of God to such a degree that even the pacifist idealist would know that knowledge of the will of God is no guarantee of his ability or willingness to obey it. The idealist would recognize to what degree he is himself involved in rebellion against God, and would know that this rebellion is too serious to be overcome by just one more sermon on love, and one more challenge to man to obey the law of Christ.

Reading 2: Angus Dun & Reinhold Niebuhr, “God Wills Both Justice and Peace” (1955)2

God Wills Both Justice and Peace

All Christians abhor war and the evils which stem from it. Non-pacifist Christians agree with their pacifist brethren on the duty to help reduce causes of conflict, and to help promote positive conditions of peace with justice. They share the belief that the Christian should base his action in a war situation on the dictates of conscience, informed by the command of love, and that each is responsible to God for his acts. But non-pacifist Christians reject the position of absolute pacifism because it distorts the Christian concept of love and tries to apply an individual ethic to a collective situation. At the same time they recognize the moral hazards and complexities of the non-pacifist position, which are increased by the growing powers of mass destruction.

I.                                        Pacifism Distorts the Command of Love

The Christian stands under the command of love, which challenges him in his relations with persons and with society. As a citizen of the Kingdom he knows the redeeming power of the love revealed by Christ. As a citizen of a sinful society, he is called, and judged, and renewed by the divine command.

This central principle of the Christian ethic provides both the dynamic for transforming personal relations and the mainspring for social responsibility. Love has what might be called two dimensions: the vertical dimension of perfection, of sacrificial love; and the horizontal dimension of concern for all people, of concern for social justice and the balances by which it is maintained. The pacifist comprehension of love seizes upon one of these two aspects. It makes an absolute of sacrificial love at the expense of social responsibility. The pacifist tends to regard the love command less as an over-arching principle which confronts the Christian in all his situations than as a neat formula to use in situations of violence. This is an inadequate, distorted view of the Christian concept of love.

This partial view leads the pacifist to exalt peace over the claims of justice, when a choice between the two must be made. Non-violence is regarded as a pure expression of love, while the struggle for justice is seen as a rough and inferior approximation of love. It is true that the Christian must wrestle with the ultimate possibilities of love. And justice, which depends upon the uneasy balances of social life, is not ultimate. On the other hand, justice is not essentially a compromise with evil or simply an approximation of love in an evil world. It expresses the social responsibility which stems from one dimension of love. Justice is an instrument of love in a sinful society. To abandon it, whenever violence is involved, is irresponsible.

The struggle for justice and the struggle for peace have the same sanction in the command of love. Both present a moral imperative. But justice has the prior claim, for while order may be conducive to justice, there can be no lasting peace without justice. The Biblical concept is expressed by Isaiah: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace” (Is. 32: 17). The just war position gains strength from the consideration that the triumph of an unjust cause would defeat both the ends of justice and the future hope of peace.

By making an absolute of non-violence, the pacifist is led to a position of social irresponsibility. Violence is regarded as sinful, no matter how just the cause or how great the wickedness which would follow its defeat. Non-violence is seen as an escape from sin, no matter how evil the consequences which may flow from it. Many pacifists naively believe that the consequences of non-violence can only be good.

II.                                  Pacifism Applies an Individual Ethic to a Collective Situation

The tendency toward social irresponsibility in the pacifist position also derives from the attempt to apply the personal ethic of sacrificial love to the social problems of war. Pacifists say that Christians must accept suffering instead of inflicting it. This is quite true, so far as personal relations are concerned. But the moral issues of war seldom present themselves in such simple terms. The issue is often whether or not to accept (and thus to inflict) suffering by others, as the victims of aggression or injustice. This issue cannot be resolved by a formula of non-violence, quite applicable to individual relations. A social ethic is required. 

The very limited concept of Christian citizenship held by pacifist Christians is one of the weaknesses of their position. The responsibility of the Christian to and for the state is recognized up to a point… But when the state has to exercise its admitted central function as guarantor of order, then the state is abandoned on the ground that the  has a higher loyalty and code of conduct. The Christian is thus “in the world” until coercion or violence enter the scene, when he becomes “not of the world.”

This is a wrong concept of the tension in which the Christian stands, for the demands of the Gospel challenge him at every point, and not merely when the state resorts to force. And he is obliged to act responsibly in society at all times, and not merely when the state is at peace. Being in the world, but not of the world, applies to the whole of life.

[…]

These, in brief, are reasons why non-pacifist Christians find pacifism an inadequate expression of the commandment of love, and are compelled to reject it. But it is easier for them to point out the weaknesses of the pacifist position than to work out a satisfactory formulation of their own more complex position.

III.                              The Concept of the Just War

There is no adequate definition of a just war which can be applied to the various conceivable war situations with which the nations may be confronted. Nor is such a definition likely to emerge. For the permutations of the international crisis, the shifting claims of justice and order, and the changing consequences of alternative courses, are endless. Consequently, for non-pacifist Christians unable to make the state the keeper of their consciences, there is no

easy way or foolproof guide. In the end, each must weigh the conflicting claims for himself, in the light of the most objective information available. Each must decide whether, on balance, there is enough preponderance of moral value on one side of a conflict to justify conscientious participation. While the judgments of the Christian community can help, in the final analysis, the individual conscience is the arbiter of a just war.

A heavy burden of responsibility is thus placed on the individual Christian. His access to accurate and objective information, particularly in a war situation, is limited. The principles he must strive to apply, while finding sanction in the commands of the Gospel, do not provide any infallible guide to his decision. There are no foolproof yardsticks for him to use. And the possibilities of erroneous conclusions in such complex situations are many. The hazards here, which are the hazards of the Protestant heritage, are real.

To help guide the conscience and to reduce the hazards, various formulas have been advanced. Each has its merits and weaknesses. The three positions… may be referred to briefly.

The traditional concept of a just war... defines a just war as one in which just means are used to defend a just cause. This traditional concept calls attention to the importance of means appropriate to the ends sought and to the danger of excessive violence. But efforts to construct a precise guide through detailed elaborations of this definition result in a rigid and highly artificial structure, more likely to confuse than illumine the conscience.

[…]

A second approach to guidance for the Christian conscience is one which attempts to establish international law as the plumb line for the concept of a just war... The valid element here is recognition that the judgement of the international community can provide a corrective to the distortions of national interest and provide a factor of relative objectivity in determining the justice or injustice of a particular cause ...Insofar as there is a "rule of law" in international affairs, the law does provide an aid to conscience. But it is clear that the rule of law in the world affairs is both primitive and partial. Undue reliance on it as a guide leads to a false legalism. The United Nations provides the most objective collective judgement available but it is not an impartial supranational institution, nor is it infallible. To “defend the law” is part of the defence of justice and order it. But it is no substitute for it.

The third approach to the concept of a just war is the position...that Christians, in obedience to conscience, have a duty to participate in war “waged... to defend the victims of wanton aggression, or to secure freedom for the oppressed.” In its stress upon conscience and its avoidance of elaborate formulas, this definition... has the merit of simplicity, and flexibility in the face of changing crisis. It also has the weakness of giving little precise guidance to the conscience. While aggression and oppression remain the chief targets of a just war, the

formulation seems to breathe more of a crusading spirit than most non-pacifist Christians would find appropriate today.

IV.                              The New Dimension of War

The rapid development of weapons of mass destruction has enormously increased the destructive power in Soviet and Western hands. This has created a new dimension of catastrophe for any future global war. And because of the ramifications of the power blocs, and the tensions between them, there is great danger that limited wars will become a global war. Obviously, the probability of tremendous, perhaps incalculable, destruction on both sides in a future war needs to be reckoned with in the moral calculations of the just war position.

The notion that the excessive violence of atomic warfare has ended the possibility of a just war does not stand up… The moral problem has been altered, not eliminated.

The threat of atomic destruction has heightened the criminal irresponsibility of aggression, the employment of war as an instrument of national or bloc policy. Correspondingly, the moral obligation to discourage such a crime or, if it occurs, to deny it victory, has been underscored. The consequences of a successful defence are fearful to contemplate, but the consequences of a successful aggression, with tyrannical monopoly of the weapons of mass destruction, are calculated to be worse. While the avoidance of excessive and indiscriminate violence, and of such destruction as would undermine the basis for future peace remain moral imperatives in a just war, it does not seem possible to draw a line in advance, beyond which it would be better to yield then to resist.

Resistance to aggression, designed to deny it victory and tyrannical control, is not to be equated with victory by those who resist the aggressor. In view of war’s new dimension of annihilation, the justification for a defensive war of limited objectives, to prevent conquest and to force an end to hostilities, does not apply equally to the objectives of bringing an aggressor to unconditional surrender and punishment. Because the ultimate consequences of atomic warfare cannot be measured, only the most imperative demands of justice have a clear sanction.

For this reason, the occasions to which the concept of a just war can be rightly applied have become highly restricted. A war to “defend the victims of wanton aggression,” where the demands of justice join the demands of order, is today the clearest case of a just war. But where the immediate claims of order and justice conflict, as in a war initiated “to secure freedom for the oppressed,” the case is now much less clear. The claims of justice are no less. But because contemporary war places so many moral values in incalculable jeopardy, the immediate claims of order have become much greater. Although oppression was never more abhorrent to the Christian conscience or more dangerous to the longer-range prospects of

peace than today, the concept of a just war does not provide moral justification for initiating a war of incalculable consequences to end such oppression.

While this position gives the claims of order a certain immediate priority over the claims of justice, the fact remains that no lasting peace is possible except on foundations of justice. Nor can the shorter-range prospects be improved unless remedial measures are taken in regard to social injustices likely to erupt as civil and hence international war. Consequently, the restraints imposed by the new dimension of war underline the importance of a vigorous development of methods of peaceful change. For God wills both justice and peace.

References[1] Robert McAfee Brown, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1986), 102-119.

[2] although from a draft response co-written by Bishop Dun and Niebuhr, this extract is nonetheless worth including here as it succinctly sets out Niebuhr’s position on nuclear weapons.

Exercise 11 Grid – *use Grid for exercise 4*

Chapter Twelve ReadingsRead the following two pieces by John Howard Yoder and then submit Exercise 12 (or an Essay) on Yoder. Where would you place him on the grid? Why? What is his attitude to political authority? Does he see many goals shared by Christianity and the political authority? Does he call on Christians to reject it, live apart from it, engage with it or seek to perfect it? What is his attitude to political violence? Is he a pacifist, a Just War proponent or a Holy War proponent? If the former, is he against war, against killing, against violence, against coercion, or against resistance? If a proponent of Just War, are his limits on war strict, moderate or permissive?

Reading 1: John H. Yoder, “Reinhold Niebuhr & Christian Pacifism”

Mennonite Quarterly Review (April 1955)

INTRODUCTION

There can be no doubt that Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology is the principal system of thought with which to come to grips if we on the Continent wish to consider pacifism as found in America today. Niebuhr’s significance is also considerable in England and many of his books have been reprinted there, but on the Continent he is naturally less well-known and his writings are seldom if ever translated and not often discussed.

Niebuhr’s importance has two aspects for us as pacifists. First, as the foremost American leader of what has been named the “neo-orthodox” theology, he represents for us a movement of thought which is both vigorous and popular, which is likely to influence our own thought as well as that of those to whom we wish to bring our peace witness. Secondly, Niebuhr matters to us because he talks to us. He addresses himself to the question of pacifism and nonresistance not once but several times, using it in fact as the clearest case of the

essential problem of all Christian ethics, namely, how to bring down to earth the “impracticable” teachings of Jesus. 

To understand fully Niebuhr’s ethical approach and to appreciate how consistently it fits into the rest of his theology would require a lengthy introduction to this entire system of thought, especially as elaborated in his major work, The Nature and Destiny of Man.  To do such a study adequately would be much too long for this occasion; we must therefore content ourselves with a few summary paragraphs before passing on to the more specifically ethical aspects of his views.

I.            NIEBUHR’S GENERAL THEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION

First, a word as to Niebuhr’s “neo-orthodoxy”. This name has been attached to his school of thought because of his attack upon liberal humanism and rationalism and his rehabilitation of the doctrine of sin, which had gone somewhat out of fashion. In his opposition to the modern view of man and the world Niebuhr in America is thus somewhat parallel to the leaders of the “dialectical” school in Europe, but it would be dangerous to push such a parallel too far.

Niebuhr’s theology is first of all an anthropology, his doctrine of God first of all a doctrine of man. His interest is in man and man’s predicament, and his approval for historic Christian doctrine lies chiefly in his contention that only the Biblical Christian view of man is adequate to explain both man’s goodness and his sin, and to see both the positive and the negative values of his entanglement in the natural and historical world. He accepts this Biblical view not because of any orthodox respect for revelation but because it commends itself as the only adequate one. This general approach needs to be kept in mind in later discussion. In spite of the appearance of the label “neo-orthodoxy” Niebuhr is far from what a historian of theology could call orthodox, and almost as far from the theologies of the Word which are now the vogue in Europe. Niebuhr’s starting point is not revelation but modern man’s rational analysis of his nature and his predicament. God is significant chiefly as personification of the good and of the possibilities of pardon and transcendence. 

This man-centeredness is in many ways close to the attitude of the Bible, which is also interested in man’s needs and their resolution. But the Bible as we understand it, though preoccupied with man, does not begin with his predicament and derive from that a solution which it then expresses in appropriate myths. The Bible rather speaks of God as Him, who as part of His program for restoring the order whose destruction was not exclusively man’s fault, meets man’s need. That Niebuhr’s anthropological slant, his preoccupation with the tension in which man finds himself, prevents him from giving full weight to the ethical importance of God’s redemption will later be one of the theses of our criticism.  

The essential character of man for Niebuhr is the paradoxical juxtaposition of freedom and unfreedom in his nature. On one hand, as an animal and a participant in the historical process,

man is finite, ignorant, subject to external causes, and understandable as an interplay of given factors, animal drives, heredity, nervous and muscular faculties and limits, etc. But at the same time man is transcendent. Being self-conscious and aware of his limits, he becomes to a certain degree free, and knows himself responsible for his choices. Man being thus a contradiction between the transcendent and the finite, or to use Niebuhr’s favorite term, man being in a state of “tension,” the whole problem of ethics and the whole problem of Christian doctrine is to do adequate justice to both poles of this tension without relaxing it. To “relax” the tension means to analyze man, or ethics, in terms of only one pole, be it that of transcendence or that of finitude. 

Sin, for instance, is man’s effort to relax his tension either by making himself God (the sin of pride, affirming transcendence, and denying finitude), or by finding his only motives in nature and his material drives of self-preservation (the sin of sensuality, denying transcendence and affirming finitude). Sin is not, as a Platonic dualism would see it, the fact of man’s involvement in nature, but rather his wrong effort, once thus involved, to resolve the tension resulting from his belonging to both the realm of matter and that of spirit.  

Just as a dualism may fail to do justice to man by separating two aspects of his nature and attempting to eliminate one of them, so also a monism is inadequate when it underestimates the tension between them. The modern liberal optimistic world view accepts both man’s finitude (e.g., in its confidence in education and social organization as causal factors capable of remolding him) and his transcendence (in its confidence in man’s becoming continually more rational and thereby better), without perceiving that there exists between finitude and transcendence a tension which provides occasion for sin. Liberalism has thus no doctrine of sin, and sees man’s failings as areas where further evolution in the direction of rationality will provide an easy solution.  

The same sort of tension is to be seen in the field of ethics. No absolute good appeals to man’s reason (the transcendence) when man must live on the level of the historically realizable (the finitude). Again the thinker’s task is to do justice to both poles of the tension. On one hand it is wrong to give total authority to the historically given, as the church has done at certain stages of history when she became too easily the apologist of conservatism; on the other, the monastic withdrawal from the world to a level of unreality where a perfect life is assumed possible is just as false a resolution as the dualism. And again the monastic error is that of thinking too optimistically, as did the liberalism of the social gospel that inconsistent application of the absolutes of ethics enters into the realm of historical possibility.  

II                NIEBUHR’S CRITIQUE OF PACIFISM

Before turning from this brief introduction to a direct account of Niebuhr’s attack on pacifism, we should note the works which are most relevant, in addition to the larger work already named.

Moral Man and Immoral Society, first published in 1932, sets forth the thesis that human communities are always more selfish and less rational than individuals, and that what is possible for society is even less good than what is possible for an individual. This is of course decidedly relevant to the relationship between pacifism as an individual ethic and pacifism as a strategy for states.

An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, the Rauschenbusch lectures for 1934, treats the specific meaning for ethics of maintaining the tension between the good, which is impossible, and the possible, which is less than good.

Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist was published in 1939 as a pamphlet and also as part of Christianity and Power Politics in 1940. We shall proceed to a discussion of the content of this writing which is a direct attack on pacifism as Niebuhr understands it.

To begin with, Niebuhr’s conception of pacifism is not fully identical with Christian pacifism as expressed by the conscientious objector. Niebuhr once held pacifist convictions, and it is normal that the pacifism which he understands, and rejects, is not so much the post-World War II pacifism of conscientious objectors we are concerned about, but rather the pacifism of a particular group and a particular epoch in American political history. Pacifism for Niebuhr means the contention in the political area that a state should renounce the use of war as an instrument of national policy; he understands this position and attacks it on political grounds and with political problems in mind. He associates it with a certain complex of political judgments, such as the feasibility of universal disarmament and the reasonableness of Hitler, which were associated with a certain type of political pacifism. But the contention of historic Christian pacifism, that when a nation makes war the Christian should refuse to participate in the killing, is not directly grasped by Niebuhr, and thus cannot be directly refuted. This distinction between pacifism as a political policy for states and pacifism as an ethical principle for Christians will need to be kept in mind in the following discussion; even though most pacifists are pacifist in both senses of the word, their judgments on the two levels are not of the same order.

A.        The Ethical Significance of Love

Niebuhr’s reasoning begins with one item of basic agreement with the Christian pacifist; he accepts fully the belief that in the New Testament Jesus reveals the absolute normativeness of the law of love of the kingdom of God as final and authoritative revelation of what is ethically ultimate. Not only does Niebuhr give general assent to the rightness of love, but he also agrees with us in defining that love in particular as the Sermon on the Mount defines it, as self-giving, non-retaliating, non-calculating, as mirroring the gracious love of God for the unworthy and disobedient sinner. He therefore has no respect for those who by a dubious exegesis attempt to justify violence on the basis of the Gospel.

This insight of Niebuhr into the spirit of Jesus’ ethical teaching must be recognized by pacifists as a great forward step in the dialogue with nonpacifists. In most theological circles in Europe, and in orthodox and fundamentalist circles in America as well, the nonpacifist (even Karl Barth) tries to prove his point by arguing about the cleansing of the temple, the two swords at Gethsemane, or the solders whom John the Baptist did not tell to desert. Niebuhr has done a great service to truth in attacking, along with pacifists, the flimsiness of such arguments and thus bringing the debate nearer to the real point at issue.

The love of the Gospel ethic, Niebuhr admits, is not proposed as being first of all an effective social policy. It is not nonviolent resistance chosen pragmatically in preference to violence because of its greater effectiveness in the struggle for existence or for progress; it is rather nonresistance, unconditional obedience to the nature of love, making no promises of effectiveness. The ultimate expression of this ethic is the cross, and Christ’s “obedience unto death, even the death of the cross” was the utter opposite of a calculating pragmatic choice of means.

Thus we might think Niebuhr practically ready to come over into the pacifist camp, but the consistency of his paradoxical thought prevents such a simple conclusion. Just as in other areas of doctrine there is here a tension to be maintained, and the demands of Jesus’ nonresisting love must be balanced against the impossibility of our ever executing them. Because we ourselves are sinners we will not and because our society is sinful we cannot realize in our lives the love and unselfishness which this would require. Thus we find ourselves in a tension between the “simple possibility,” i.e., that which can be achieved in the world, and the “impossible possibility,” that which cannot be realized but which is normative for us and the ground of our being. Our norm is the love of Christ, the absolute will of God for us, but that love is never a simple possibility.

B. The Significance of Love’s Impossibility

If consistent Christian love is impossible, is the ethical teaching of Christ entirely useless? Niebuhr would be the first to reject such a conclusion, and his judgment that love is impossible changes nothing in its claims upon us, which must be maintained in tension with their impossibility. In reality, Niebuhr gives a very real relevance to the impossible, and his Interpretation of Christian Ethics contains a chapter entitled “The Relevance of an Impossible Ideal.” There he demonstrates two aspects of the practical importance of love as the law of life.

First of all, to say with the Bible that love is the law of life means that before that law we are all condemned as sinners. This is the relevance of love as a principle of indiscriminate criticism, revealing to each of us his selfishness and rendering a great service to ethics by making self-righteousness impossible and thus preparing us for the Gospel. “The good news of the Gospel is not the law that we ought to love one another…[but] that there is a resource of divine mercy

which is able to overcome a contradiction within our own souls [contradiction in that we love ourselves more than our neighbor].”[1]Only in the humility and the peace which the forgiveness of the Gospel gives us will we be able to act realistically and courageously.

But even though we are all sinners we are not all equally bad; though all attempts at realizing the good in human experiences are unsuccessful some come nearer the good than others. Love is therefore also relevant as a principle of discriminate criticism, guiding us to choose from among those ethical alternatives which are possible. To say with the Bible that love is the law of life means that in sinful society we should work for the closest possible approximation to the ideal voluntary community which perfect loves defines. That closest approximation is represented by a society of equal justice where conflicting selfish interests are balanced against one another in the fairest possible way. The nature of this balance is sinful (egoism remains instead of self-giving love) and its support is sinful (in the ultimate sanctions of violence by which unsocial activity is restrained), but every achievement of justice is an expression of love’s relevance and every system of justice may be further perfected by further efforts to be relatively less unloving.

Niebuhr sees three distinct problems arising from the contradiction that exists between love which is the law of life and sin which is the historical reality of man’s failure to love. First of these problems is how to have peace in the face of this continuing contradiction. The answer is the Christian one, namely, the pardon of God. The forgiving grace, which as we have seen Niebuhr considers to be the heart of the Gospel, does not remove the contradiction by making man righteous; it rather enables him to live with the contradiction by assuring him of justification by faith.

The second problem is how human existence and the course of history can have any sense with human life remaining in conflict with its norm. This is the problem of eschatology, and the Christian answer is the myth of the second coming of Christ and other related concepts. We need not follow this idea in detail since it is outside the scope of our study.

The third problem arising from sin’s permanence is how to achieve in such a situation a tolerable balance between egoisms in society. This is the problem of ethics, and its solution is not in pure love as a simple possibility (since love condemns any balance of egoisms) but in equal justice. This justice, it goes without saying, will require the use of force and sometimes even war.

C. The Ground of Love’s Impossibility

We have seen how fundamental to Niebuhr’s entire analysis is the impossibility of love as a real alternative for action. This impossibility can be further analyzed, and we find it to have three explanations. One is the simple experience of persisting selfishness in the life of the individual. No human action, no matter how much better it may be than other available

alternatives at the time, is completely unselfish or completely free of pride and the other dimensions of sin. 

A second source of this impossibility is the multiplicity of conflicting claims upon one’s love. If I only had one neighbour it would be theoretically possible to love him completely, to respond without limit to his claims, even if selfish, upon me. But if two different persons both want my coat I cannot give my cloak to both of them. I cannot give all my goods to feed the poor and at the same time provide for my wife and children. Thus it comes to pass that in a complex society the claims of various needs, including the requirements of the vocation in which an individual serves society, conflict to the extent that it is never possible to love without limits, to give of oneself without reservation. Because the conflicting claims within society are all selfish claims it is further necessary, not only to fall short of complete unselfishness in attempting to meet real needs, but also to use methods falling short of live in order to minimize the exploitation of the weak by the strong. This must be done by supporting the selfishness of the weak, since, although it be selfishness, its goals are nearer to equal justice than is the unchallenged domination of the selfishness of the strong. 

The third reason for the impossibility of loving action in society is the thesis of Niebuhr’s book Moral Man and Immoral Society. In this book he contends that groups of men are always less moral, more selfish, than the individuals which compose them. The social group, the clan, the class, or the nation has less imagination to understand the needs and the interests of others, less rational capacity to analyze its own actions and thus counteract its egoistic tendencies. Thus even if love were possible for individuals it would still be an impossibility for politics and social organization, which remain the realm in which justice is sought through a balance of power between the various group egoisms which conflict. Although these egoisms are all to be condemned as contrary to the law of love (which as we have seen exemplifies love as a principle of indiscriminate criticism), it remains true that some of them are closer to the interests of equal justice than others (love as principal of discriminate criticism). 

Niebuhr supports a leftist position in economics, for instance, because the selfish interests of the working class are closer to equal justice than the goals of the capitalists. He prefers democracy as a political system, not because of any illusions about its perfection, but because it best governs the interplay of group egoisms with the least violence and the greatest opportunity for change. With all their faults, the democracies were nearer equal justice than was the Nazi government and thus the application of love as a principle of discriminate criticism justified war against Hitler, and will justify war against communism if other less brutal means of conflict fail. War, which Niebuhr prefers to call anarchy, is preferable to tyranny because of the openness it gives for a better realignment of forces, and also because Niebuhr thinks (in contradiction to his own ethics) that war is noble and surrender ignoble.[2]

D. The Criticism of Pacifism

We are now ready to list the precise criticisms leveled by Niebuhr against pacifism as a political strategy. Consistently with his whole systematic approach, his main complaint is that the pacifist considers the realization of love as a simple possibility in history. The contention that states can, in this world, refuse to use violence underestimates the presence of sin in the world (by predicting success for a pacifist strategy’s appeal to good will) and thus in reality surrenders to sin too easily (letting a tyrant win without resistance). Refusing to go to war against a tyrant means complicity in his tyranny, which is worse than war because it marks a refusal to assume responsibility for correcting the situation. 

…the refusal to recognize that sin introduces an element of conflict into the world invariably means that a morally perverse preference is given to tyranny over anarchy… The thesis that German tyranny must not be challenged by other nations because Germany will throw off its yoke in due time, merely means that an unjustified moral preference is given to civil war over international war… Most pacifists who seek to present their religious absolutism as a political alternative to…the pressures and counterpressures of the political order, invariably betray themselves into this preference for tyranny. Tyranny is not war. It is peace, but it is a peace which has nothing to do with the peace of the kingdom of God.[3]

Not only does responsible action require a struggle against injustice, but the nature of the struggle is such that the methods of love are not effective. The ineffectiveness is shown by the cross itself which Niebuhr says is “the symbol of love triumphant in its own integrity, but not triumphant in the world and society.” Not only do the methods of love fail to arrest evil, but by assuring an aggressor that he will meet no resistance, pacifism can actually encourage aggression.  

Pacifists tend often to point to the guilt and the selfishness of both parties to a war, in order to argue that one side is not much better than the other and thus cannot claim to be fighting for the good. While Niebuhr accepts this approach in line with the “indiscriminate criticism” function of the law of love, he objects strongly to its depreciation of the “discriminate criticism” which is just as necessary. 

…like a clash between imperialism…so is a clash between myself and a gangster a conflict of rival egotisms. There is a perspective from which there is not much difference between my egotism and that of a gangster. But from another perspective there is an important difference.[4]

The particular case in point at the time Niebuhr wrote this was the beginning of World War II. Without denying that British or American motives were open to criticism, he insisted that “from another perspective” the war was nevertheless basically comparable to police action against a gangster in the interest of justice. 

Pacifism commits an error in both exegesis and ethics when it argues that nonviolent resistance is the practical application of New Testament love in politics. Niebuhr insists that the New Testament teaches nonresistance, not nonviolence. Nonviolence is a pragmatic method, and on certain occasions may be preferable to violence. In Moral Man and Immoral Society Niebuhr argues extensively in favor of nonviolence as a strategy “which offers the largest opportunities for a harmonious relationship with the moral and rational factors in moral life.” But nonviolent resistance remains a means of coercion and of conflict, and is far from being a faithful translation of nonresisting love into social action. 

E. The Validity of Pacifism

Such a pacifism, which considers pure love a simple possibility in politics, identifies nonviolence with pure love, and prefers tyranny to war, Niebuhr calls heretical. There is, however, a sort of pacifism which is not heretical, and which he even considers as necessary wherever there is religious vitality. We may briefly sketch the characteristics of this sort of pacifism, which is “a valuable asset to Christian faith”.

It will, first of all, admit its inability to present practical solutions to political problems and may even, in the sectarian perfectionist form which Niebuhr considers most consistent, conscientiously disavow all responsibility for social justice.

It will, secondly, avoid the danger of self-righteousness by remembering that the pacifist too is a sinner and that in other realms of life he does not apply the Gospel so seriously (the commandment “be ye not anxious,” for instance). Knowing himself to be also sinful, the pacifist would not accuse the leaders of responsible churches in society of apostasy when, in the legitimate interest of achieving a closer approximation of equal justice, they approve of war as a last resort.

Such a pacifism is valuable as a reminder that war is horrible and that love is the law of life which should be kept in tension with the compromises which are found necessary, and that the violence of war endangers the goals it sets out to assure. Such a reminder given in humility is useful.

III. EVALUATION OF NIEBUHR’S CRITIQUE

Before turning from this expose of Niebuhr’s judgment of pacifism to our judgment of Niebuhr’s position, we should note a pamphlet already written on the subject by a pacifist, namely G.H.C. Macgregor’s The Relevance of the Impossible: A Reply to Reinhold Niebuhr.  The following paragraphs have drawn from this work. Since our purpose in this paper is more descriptive than polemical this evaluation will consider the various arguments only briefly. 

A. Areas of Agreement

We should first summarize the elements of Niebuhr’s teaching with which we agree; they are significant:

(1)   Nonresistant love is taught by the New Testament.

(2)   Love is the ultimate ethical norm.

(3)   Compromise always endangers the achievement of good ends. 

(4)   Both sides are selfish in war, in politics and even in police action, and it is false to identify the interests of religion with a war. 

There are further certain criticisms of pacifism which have a degree of validity and which relate to the previously mentioned distinction between pacifism as a political policy and pacifism as personal refusal to participate in war.

(1) It is true that some pacifists, especially between the two World Wars were over-optimistic as to the possibility of the easy solution of international problems and unaware of the depths of national selfishness and irrationality.

(2) It is true that nonviolence and nonresistance are not identical and that nonviolent resistance as represented by Gandhi’s disciples is a means of coercion in class, race, or party struggle. This is not to deny that it often is, and could always be, the better means of struggle, but the pragmatic grounds of nonviolent pacifism and the religious grounds of nonresistant pacifism should be distinguished. A pacifism which is advocated because it promises to be effective always risks by its own logic being driven to accept war when pacifism no longer

appears successful. This obviously happened to much of the pacifist enthusiasm of the interwar period and it can also happen to Gandhism.

(3) The Christian, who has spiritual resources for unselfish and rational action, cannot expect of societies, which have not such resources and make no claim to be fully disinterested, a Christian degree of unselfishness and love. This is the drawback in any attempt to derive a social and political strategy from individual Christian ethics and although Niebuhr formulates this observation differently in Moral Man and Immoral Society, his thesis has a degree of validity.

B. Areas of Disagreement

In analyzing our direct disagreement with Niebuhr, it would be a mistake to begin by responding to the precise arguments against political pacifism which are listed in  Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist; our real disagreement with him is deeper and can be resumed under four heads.

            First, and least basic, is his sentimental depreciation of the horror and sinfulness of war. He sees no real difference except in degree between the police function within a nation and war between nations, between modern total war and medieval knightly squabbles. Thus it is easy for him for him to prefer war to tyranny, praising the nobility of the instinct which prompts resistance, even if that resistance be futile and thus ethically unjustifiable. The “lesser evil” argument which he thus applies to the advocacy of war thus has two fallacies:

(1) a factual one, a false judgment as to whether, even on selfish grounds, modern war is a better means of conflict than nonviolence, or less harmful to civilization and moral values than tyranny;

(2) a moral fallacy in the failure to distinguish between agents. Slavery may be “worse than war” in the sense that it is more unpleasant for me, but in war, the sin is mine, in slavery it is not. 

The second area of disagreement is with the presuppositions of Niebuhr’s ethical reasoning. In spite of his sharp analysis in many areas of thought he fails to analyze some of the assumptions which enter into his own system. These notions come to have the force of axioms even though they have never been submitted to exact examination. 

            (1) We may begin with the notion of impossibility. The impossibility of the good is, we have seen, a central element of Niebuhr’s dialectic, but in reality this term has several possible meanings. Loving action may be impossible because in his freedom the individual is unwilling to sacrifice; or because, feeling some other value more important, he intentionally considers love as not binding; it may be impossible because he disposes of insufficient information or

material resources, or because of already existing situations over which he is powerless; it may be impossible in the sense that, after carrying out an action thought good he will see that it could have been better; it may impossible only in the sense that society is by definition metaphysically corrupted by original sin. Analysis will show that these different kinds of impossibility are far from identical. Some involve guilt because real freedom existed and a real possibility was rejected for selfish or unselfish reasons. Others involve no freedom and thus no guilt (unless guilt is taken to mean a metaphysical involvement in imperfection rather than a result of freedom misused) and are not ethical problems at all. This confusion between kinds of possibility hides the fact that were there no freedom there would be no duty. The existence of a moral imperative is meaningless if its accomplishment is excluded by definition. The observable phenomenon that there is pride and selfishness in every action proves not that there cannot be a loving act, but only that there are no perfectly loving agents, and this observation is not determinative for ethics, since ethics is not interested in what is, but in what ought to be, or, to state it in a Christian form, what is in Christ.

            (2) A similar observation must be made concerning the concept of “necessity,” which is given an absolute instead of an instrumental value. Nothing is necessary in itself  as far as ethics is concerned: an act is necessary in view  of a certain end. It is not necessary to eat unless I desire to avoid hunger and death; it is not necessary to defend myself unless I desire survival, it is not necessary to defend the social order unless I prefer it to that which would replace it. Thus there is no absolute necessity but only the instrumental necessity defined by that which stands to be gained or lost. There is no necessity of abandoning love as an ethical absolute unless something more important than love stands to be lost. This is in turn possible only if there is a moral absolute higher than love, and for a Christian such an absolute is difficult to imagine. In reality the term “necessity” is but a camouflage for some personal or group egoism, whether the survival instinct itself, unwillingness to surrender advantages, or something more abstract and less overtly selfish.

            (3) A third dubious concept, one often used to support that of necessity, is that of “responsibility.” As used by Niebuhr this means not our obligation to concern ourselves with all needs around us in terms of the love ethic; it means rather an inherent duty to take charge of the social order in the interest of its survival or its amelioration by the use of means dictated, not by love, but by the social order itself. This social order being sinful, the methods “necessary” to administer it will also be sinful. “Responsibility” thus becomes an autonomous moral absolute, sinful society is accepted as normative for ethics, and when society calls for violence the laws of love is no longer decisive (except in the “discriminate” function of preferring the less nasty sorts of violence). Of course, according to pacifist belief, there exists a real Christian responsibility for the social order, but that responsibility is a derivative of Christian love, not a contradictory and self-defining ethical norm.

            The fact that these concepts – impossibility, necessity, responsibility – are used by Niebuhr in such a way as to introduce new norms into ethics which, because of the existence

of sin, are allowed to cancel out love may lead us to suspect a deeper error in Niebuhr’s approach to morality. Apart from the more theological aspects to be treated later this error is threefold:

            (1) No amount of reasoning can derive an “ought” from an “is,” an imperative from a declarative, a judgment of value from a judgment of fact. The fact that all are sinners is neither a reason nor an excuse for sinning. The fact reported by the American zoologist, Kinsey, that men are often immoral is no rehabilitation of adultery. The situation must be considered by ethics and must guide the application of the ethical ultimate, but the situation itself is incapable of providing the ultimate. Thus the existence of sin, the fact that all acts have selfish motives, cannot be admitted under the same “necessity” or otherwise as an ethical norm.

            (2) The fact that Niebuhr does in effect rehabilitate the selfish motives of self-preservation as ethical determinants explains the case with which he justifies any compromises which his nation undertakes in foreign policy, however unenlightened that policy be. His arguments as to “responsibility” and “impossibility,” as to the use of love to choose between imperfect alternatives, as to supporting the egoism whose interest is nearest to justice, may be used in any country to approve of any foreign policy. We need only observe the disagreements between Niebuhr, Barth, and Bereczky to confirm that this ethical approach does not define the good; it rather finds grounds for calling good any policy which was chosen for other reasons. These three men, with similar ethical theories, justify with almost identical arguments three different positions, each coinciding with the selfish interest and the present policy of his own nation.

            (3) This ethical pluralism is possible only when one rejects from the start the belief that God’s will can be known and that right action can be identical for all. Niebuhr will recognize as valid any pacifism which agrees to recognize Niebuhr’s nonpacifism as equally valid. Thus he supposes that there can be two contradictory positions, both right as long as both are held tolerantly. This must presuppose that there is no one knowable good and that conflicting actions carried on with good intentions or in the awareness of their imperfection are all equally right. It goes without saying that if this is really true there is little point to any talk about ethical considerations.

            The most significant objection of all against Niebuhr is however still deeper. His argument that the presence of sin in the world justifies or necessitates an ethic which is no better than enlightened opportunism claims to agree with Christian insights as to the nature of man and of the good. That there is a great degree of agreement between Niebuhr’s analysis of man’s need and the Bible’s must be granted; but it is just as clear that Niebuhr’s answer to the need is not the Bible’s. For Niebuhr derives his ethics from the fact of man’s predicament and the Bible derives not only ethics, but everything, from the fact of God’s redemption. Those Christian doctrines which relate to the redemption are consistently slighted by Niebuhr,

transferred to another realm of being, or read as mythological expressions of man’s capacities for transcendence.

            (1) Although the New Testament understands the cross only in the light of the resurrection, Niebuhr speaks of the cross repeatedly, of the resurrection of Christ not at all, and of the resurrection of the body only as a mythological symbol for the fact that the superhistorical triumph of the good must also somehow involve history. Thus he can consider forgiving grace as central in our relation to our sinfulness and enabling grace as only a temptation to pride. Whereas the Bible speaks of our “resurrection with Christ” as opening new ethical possibilities, grace is for Niebuhr primarily the way to have peace in spite of our continuing sin.

            (2) In the Bible, the bearer of the meaning of history is not the United States of America, nor Western Christendom, but a divine human society: the church, the body of Christ. In view of Niebuhr’s interest in history it is surprising that the concept of the church is quite absent from his thought; when he mentions the word “church” it is only to criticize the medieval synthesis of Catholicism. This omission is highly significant for understanding what is wrong with Niebuhr’s social ethics. For the body of Christ differs from other social bodies in that it is not less moral than its individual members. If being a perfectly loyal American, a freemason, or a bourgeois, identifies a man with that group egoism in such a way as to make him less loving than he would be as an individual, the contrary is true of being a member of Christ. Thus the thesis of Moral Man and Immoral Society  falls down in the crucial case, the only one which is really decisive for Christian ethics. 

            In addition to being a society better than the sum of its members, the church is also a supernational society. One of the strongest arguments of Christian pacifism is that when churches endorse nationalist aims and Christian kills Christian the greatest possible offense against the unity of the body of Christ takes place. This argument is meaningless for Niebuhr because, despite his participation in the ecumenical movement, the church as distinguished from society has no significant place in his ethical thought.

            (3) The Bible teaches that there is a significant difference between the saint and the unbeliever by virtue of a change of motives so basic as to be called a new birth. Niebuhr has no place for the doctrine of regeneration since the saint is for him still a sinner, even though he may be a less offensive one. In addition to what is implies about the possibility of God-pleasing action (already mentioned under 1), the doctrine of regeneration means that ethics for Christians and ethics for unregenerate society are two distinct disciplines. Niebuhr, in attempting to construct a Christian ethic for unregenerate society, naturally runs into impossible possibilities, prematurely resolved tensions, and other such monsters, but their origin is not in the nature of man nor in the nature of redemption; they result from the illegitimate union of Christian and non-Christian elements.

            (4) The common denominator of the above-mentioned doctrines of resurrection, the church, and regeneration is that all are works of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is likewise neglected in Niebuhr’s ethics. In the New Testament the coming of the Spirit means the imparting of power, and that power  is not a mythological symbol for the infinite perfectibility of human rationality but rather a working reality within history and especially within the church. This  power opens a brand-new realm of historic possibilities; not “simple possibilities” but crucial  possibilities.

            The acceptance of the  cross, i.e., the full cost of utter obedience to the loving nature of God, is the path to the accomplishment in history, not of perfection, but of action which can please God and be useful to men. The triumph of love over sin is not reserved for some Platonic realm (such as Niebuhr’s “superhistory”) where the eschatological judgment takes place. Sin is vanquished every time a Christian in the power of God chooses the better instead of the good, obedience instead of necessity, love instead of compromise, brotherhood instead of veiled self-interest. No insistence on “maintaining the tension” between the good and the possible, whether derived from systematic considerations or sociological observation, can change this reality. That this triumph over sin is incomplete changes in no way the fact that it is possible, and that if God call us to deny ourselves, accept suffering, and love our neighbors, that too is possible. This possibility passes by the way of the cross, and therefore is “foolishness to the Greeks and a scandal to the Jews, but to them that believe it is the wisdom of God and the power of God.”

C. Postscript

Before concluding we should remind ourselves of Niebuhr’s real service to theology, and to pacifism, in making real the omnipresence of sin, even when mixed with the best of intentions. All our insistence upon the possibility and the relevance of the law of love should not lead us to forget the humiliating fact that we do not obey it, that we are too often selfish and proud, and that if God deigns to tolerate us and use us it is only by His grace.

            And, lastly, it must be said that Niebuhr is not as pessimistic in all realms as we have had to portray him here in his dialogue with pacifism. It is thus only fair to close with two hopeful quotations dealing with the belief (which according to Niebuhr’s view is illusory) that loving action and the achievement of good in history is a possibility.

There are no limits to be set in history for the achievement of a more universal brotherhood, for the development of more perfect and more inclusive human relations. All the characteristic hopes and aspirations of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, of both secular and religious liberalism, are right at least in this, that they understand the side of Christian doctrine which regards the agape  of the kingdom of God as a resource for infinite developments toward a more perfect brotherhood in history.[5] The truest visions of religion are illusions, which may

be partly realized by being resolutely believed. For what religion believes to be true is not wholly true but ought to be true; and may become true if its truth is not doubted.[6]

            One can hardly avoid feeling that such statements, which belong to Niebuhr’s thought just as surely as does his pessimism, would lead him to Christian pacifism if it were not for his un-Biblical assumption of responsibility for policing society and for preserving Western civilization. This way in which a presupposition as to what is to be defended leads him pragmatically to militarist conclusions is a further reminder, valid for Niebuhr as well as for ourselves, that militarists and pacifists share alike the risk of identifying the kingdom of God with a particular social order, a particular strategy, or a particular peace.

Reading 2: John Howard Yoder, Peace Without Eschatology? (1954)7

Christian thought is learning to give increasing attention to the importance of the Christian hope for the Christian life. Christian thought in the decades prior to the Second World War was strongly influenced by thinkers and preachers who hoped for “the brotherhood of man” just around the comer and who, therefore, thought they had no time to waste on eschatology. The very word frightened them; it seemed to suggest weird speculations and wild-eyed fanatics out of touch with the world's real needs. And yet for all their down-to-earth social concern and their avoidance of date-setting, these optimists and believers in man also had an eschatology. Their simple confidence that they could be sure of the meaning of life was in itself a doctrine of what is ultimate - i.e., an eschatology - though a questionable one, being in part unconscious and not directly based on Christian foundations.

The plan of the World Council of Churches to set the Christian hope in the center of its theological deliberations at Evanston[8] is a recognition that history and human endeavor can be understood only in terms of God's plan. There is no significance to human effort and, strictly speaking, no history unless life can be seen in terms of ultimate goals. The eschaton, the “Last Thing,” the End-Event, imparts to life a meaningfulness that it would not otherwise have.

A singularly apt example of the eschatological mode of thought is the use of the term “peace” to designate the position of the conscientious objector or of the “Historic Peace Churches.” “Peace” is not an accurate description of what has generally happened to nonresistant Christians throughout history, nor of the way the conscientious objector is treated in most countries today. Nor does Christian pacifism guarantee a warless world. “Peace” describes the pacifist's hope, the goal in the light of which Christians act, the character of Christian actions, the ultimate divine certainty that lets the Christian position make sense; it does not describe the external appearance or the observable results of Christian behavior. This is what we mean

by eschatology: a hope that, defying present frustration, defines a present position in terms of the yet unseen goal that gives it meaning. Our task here is to examine the relation between the present position and the goal, between pacifism and “peace,” in the basis of the biblical eschatology.

We must first of all distinguish between eschatology - whose concern as we have defined it is the meaning of the eschaton for present history - and apocalyptics - the effort to obtain precise information as to the date and shape of things to come. In marked contrast to the apocryphal literature of the time, the Bible is far more interested in eschatology than in apocalyptics; even when an apocalyptic type of literature occurs, its preoccupation is not with prediction for the sake of prediction but rather with the meaning that the future has for the present. It would be inaccurate to maintain that an apocalyptic interest is foreign to New Testament Christianity, but we may nevertheless carry on our present study without asking the questions that the apocalypses answer. 

Recent New Testament study has devoted itself to lifting out of the records of the life of the first churches the content of the kerygma, the central message of the apostolic preachers. The message is no timeless theological statement; it is from beginning to end eschatological, a declaration about events and their place in the unfolding of God's purpose. It would be a rewarding study to analyze the various stages of salvation history - the backward look to David and the prophets of old, the recital of the works of Christ, his passion and resurrection, the forward look to his coming in preparation for which all humanity must repent - for each stage has a particular significance for ethics. We must, however, limit our present study to the meaning of our present age, which extends from the resurrection to the final coming. In this framework we shall seek the answer to two questions: how shall we understand attempts to build “peace without eschatology,” i.e., to build a strategy for Christians in society upon a wrong understanding of eschatology? and how does a biblical eschatology clarify the place and meaning of Christian pacifism? The biblical emphases presupposed here are generally accepted by contemporary theologians of all schools of thought. 

Peace with Eschatology: Nonresistance and the Aeons

The New Testament sees our present age - the age of the church, extending from Pentecost to the Parousia - as a period of the overlapping of two aeons. These aeons are not distinct periods of time, for they exist simultaneously. They differ rather in nature or in direction; one points backward to human history outside of (before) Christ; the other points forward to the fullness of the kingdom of God, of which it is a foretaste. Each aeon has a social manifestation: the former in the “world,” the latter in the church or the body of Christ. The new aeon came into history in a decisive way with the incarnation and the entire work of Christ. Christ had been awaited eagerly by Judaism for centuries; but when he came he was rejected, for the new aeon he revealed was not what people wanted. Jesus' contemporaries were awaiting a new age, a bringing to fulfillment of God's plan; but they expected it to confirm and to

vindicate their national hopes, prides, and solidarities. Thus Christ's claims and kingdom were to them scandalous.

The new aeon involves a radical break with the old; Christ also was forced to break with the Jewish national community to be faithful to his mission. The gospel he brought, even though expressed in terms borrowed from the realm of government (kingdom) and involving definite consequences for the social order, proclaimed the institution of a new kind of life, not of a new government. All through his ministry, from the temptation in the desert to the last minute in Gethsemane, violent means were offered him from all sides as short cuts to the accomplishment of his purposes, and he refused to use them. He struck at the very institution of human justice with his “Who made me a judge over you?” and even into the intimacy of the family circle with his “not peace but a sword!” Students of the Bible have in the past given inadequate attention to this aspect of Jesus' attitude; for our present problem it is of utmost significance to be aware that human community (as it exists under the sign of the old aeon) was far from being Jesus' central concerns.

Jesus' interest was in people; the reason for his low esteem for the political order was his high, loving esteem for concrete people as the object of his concern. Christ is agape; self-giving, nonresistant love. At the cross this nonresistance, including the refusal to use political means of self-defense, found its ultimate revelation in the uncomplaining and forgiving death of the innocent at the hands of the guilty. This death reveals how God deals with evil; here is the only valid starting point for Christian pacifism or nonresistance. The cross is the extreme demonstration that agape seeks neither effectiveness nor justice and is willing to suffer any loss or seeming defeat for the sake of obedience.

But the cross is not defeat. Christ's obedience unto death was crowned by the miracle of the resurrection and the exaltation at the right hand of God.

Bearing the human likeness,revea1ed in human shape,he humbled himself, and in obedienceaccepted even death - death on a cross.Therefore God raised him to the heightsand bestowed on him the name above all names. . . .-            Philippians 2:8-10 

Effectiveness and success had been sacrificed for the sake of love, but this sacrifice was turned by God into a victory that vindicated to the utmost the apparent impotence of love. The same life of the new aeon that was revealed in Christ is also the possession of the church, since

Pentecost answered the Old Testament's longings for a “pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh”[9] and a “law written in the heart.”[10] The' Holy Spirit is the “down payment” on the coming glory, and the new life of the resurrection is the path of the Christian now. But before the resurrection there was the cross, and Christians must follow their Master in suffering for the sake of love. Nonresistance is thus not a matter of legalism but of discipleship, not “thou shalt not” but “as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17), and it is especially in relation to evil that discipleship is meaningful. Every strand of New Testament literature testifies to a direct relationship between the way Christ suffered on the cross and the way the Christian, as disciple, is called to suffer in the face of evil (Matt. 10:38; Mark 10:38f.; 8:34f.; Luke 14:27). Solidarity with Christ (“discipleship”) must often be in tension with the wider human solidarity (John 15:20; 2 Cor. 1:5; 4:10; Phil. 1:29; 2:5-8; 3:10; Col. 1:24f.; Heb. 12:1-4; 1 Pet. 2:21f.; Rev. 12:11).[11]

It is not going too far to affirm that the new thing revealed in Christ was this attitude to the old aeon, including force and self-defense. The cross was not in itself a new revelation; Isaiah 53 foresaw already the path that the Servant of YHWH would have to tread. Nor was the resurrection essentially new; God's victory over evil had been affirmed, by definition one might say, from the beginning. Nor was the selection of a faithful remnant a new idea. What was centrally new about Christ was that these ideas became incarnate. But superficially the greatest novelty and the occasion of stumbling was his willingness to sacrifice in the interest of nonresistant love, all other forms of human solidarity, including the legitimate national interests of the chosen people. Abraham had been told that in his seed all the nations would be blessed, and most of his descendants had understood this promise as the vindication of their nationalism. Jesus revealed that the contrary was the case: the universality of God's kingdom contradicts rather than confirms all particular solidarities and can be reached only by first forsaking the old aeon (Luke 18:28-30). 

In the Old Testament the prophets had mostly been lonely men, cut off from their people by their loyalty to God (which was, in the deepest sense, their real loyalty to their people, even though the people condemned them as troublemakers). Then in the New Testament the body of Christ came into being, a new people in the prophets' line, succeeding Israel as the people of the promise. Nationalism and pragmatism are both rejected in the life of the people of the new aeon, whose only purpose is love in the way of the cross and in the power of the resurrection. 

Christ is not only the Head of the church; he is at the same time Lord of history, reigning at the right hand of God over the principalities and powers. The old aeon, representative of human history under the mark of sin, has also been brought under the reign of Christ (which is not identical with the consummate kingdom of God, 1 Cor. 15:24). The characteristic of the reign of Christ is that evil, without being blotted out, is channelized by God, in spite of itself, to serve God's purposes. Vengeance itself, the most characteristic manifestation of evil, instead of creating chaos as is its nature, is harnessed through the state in such a way as to preserve

order and give room for the growth and work of the church. Vengeance is not thereby redeemed or made good; it is nonetheless rendered subservient to God's purposes, as an anticipation of the promised ultimate defeat of sin.

This lordship over history had already been claimed for YHWH in the Old Testament. Isaiah 10 exemplifies God's use of the state's vengefulness to administer judgment, but without approving of the vengefulness, and without exempting the “scourge of his wrath” from judgment in its turn. When the New Testament attributes this lordship over history and the powers to Christ, it means that the essential change which has taken place is not within the realm of the old aeon, vengeance and the state, where there is really no change; it is rather that the new aeon revealed in Christ takes primacy over the old, explains the meaning of the old, and will finally vanquish the old. The state did not change with the coming of Christ; what changed was the coming of the new aeon which proclaimed doom of the old one.

Romans 13 and the parallel passages in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Peter 2 give us the criteria for judging to what extent a state’s activities (since the state incarnates this subdued evil) are subject to Christ’s reign. If the use of force is such as to protect the innocent and punish the evildoers, to preserve peace so that “all men might come to the knowledge of the truth,” then that state may be considered as fitting within God’s plan, as subject to the reign of Christ. This positive evaluation cannot apply to a given state in all that it does, but at best in one case at a time, each time it chooses the best alternative rather than adding evil to evil. It is, however, possible, and even frequent, for a state to abandon this function, to deny any sort of submission to a moral order higher than itself, and in so doing to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. That state is what we find in Revelation 13, best described as demonic. Pilate condemning Jesus, not daring to be honest with his own recognition of Jesus’ innocence, shows the weak form of this obedience; the strong form is sufficiently well known in our day to need no further description.

Cullmann describes the subjugation of the old aeon in terms of “D-Day” and “V-Day”. D-Day, the successful invasion of the continent of Europe by the allied forces, was the decisive stroke which determined the end of World War II. Yet the war was not over. Between the decisive stroke and the final surrender (V-Day) there was a period in which the Axis powers were fighting a losing battle and the Allies were relatively sure of final triumph. This corresponds to the age of the church. Evil is potentially subdued, and its submission is already a reality in the reign of Christ, but the final triumph of God is yet to come.

The consummation will mean the fulfillment of the new aeon and the collapse of the old. The “world” in the sense of creation becomes after purgation identical with the new aeon, after having been the hostage of the old. It is in the light of this promised fulfillment that life in the new aeon, which seems so ineffective now, is nevertheless meaningful and right.

The consummation is first of all the vindication of the way of the cross. When John weeps in despair because there is no one to break the seals of the scroll in which is revealed tile meaning of history, his joy comes from the cry that the Lamb that was slain is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals (first vision, Rev. 5), for the Lamb has ransomed people of every nation to make them a kingdom of servants of God who shall reign on earth. The ultimate meaning of history is to be found in the work of the church. (This relationship of Christ's suffering to his triumph is also stated in Philippians 2; the centrality of the church in history in Titus 2 and 1 Peter 2.) The victory of the Lamb through his death seals the victory of the church. The church's suffering, like the Master's suffering, is the measure of the church's obedience to the self-giving love of God. Nonresistance is right, in the deepest sense, not because it works, but because it anticipates the triumph of the Lamb that was slain.

The apparent complicity with evil that the nonresistant position involves has always been a stumbling block to nonpacifists. Here we must point out that this attitude, leaving evil free to be evil, leaving sinners free to separate themselves from God and sin against humanity, is part of the nature of agapeitself, as revealed already in creation. If the cutting phrase of Peguy, “complice, c’est pire que coupable,” were true, then God must needs be the guilty one for making his creatures free and again for letting his innocent Son be killed. The modem tendency to equate involvement with guilt should have to apply par excellence, if it were valid at all, to the implication of the all-powerful God in the sin of his creatures. God's love for us begins right at the point where God permits sin against himself and against others, without crushing the rebel under his/her own rebellion. The word for this is divine patience, not complicity.

But this gracious divine patience is not the complete answer to evil. We have seen that evil is already brought into check by the reign of Christ; the consummation of this reign is the defeat of every enemy by the exclusion of evil. Just as the doctrine of creation affirms that God made us free and the doctrine of redemption says this freedom of sin was what led agape to the cross, so also the doctrine of hell lets sin free, finally and irrevocably, to choose separation from God. Only by respecting this freedom to the bitter end can love give meaning to history. Any universalism that would seek, in the intention of magnifying redemption, to deny to the unrepentant sinner the liberty to refuse God's grace would in reality deny that human choice has any real meaning at all. With judgment and hell the old aeon comes to its end (by being left to itself) and the fate of the disobedient is exclusion from the new heaven and new earth, the consummation of the new society begun in Christ.

It is abundantly clear in the New Testament, as all exegetes agree, that this final triumph over evil is not brought about by any human or political means. The agent in judgment is not the church, for the church suffers nonresistantly. (Note the themes of patience and endurance in Revelation 6:9-11; 13:10; 14:12.) Nor is the agent the state, as it is for the judgments of God within history; for in fact the king or the state, refusing ever more demonically Christ's dominion, becomes God's major enemy (Antichrist). God's agent is his own miraculous Word,

the sword coming from the mouth of the King of kings and Lord of lords who is astride the white horse (Rev. 19). Just as has been the case ever since the patriarchs and most notably at Christ's cross, the task of obedience is to obey, and the responsibility for bringing about victory is God's alone, God's means beyond human calculation. God's intervention, not human progress, is the vindication of human obedience. The Christian's responsibility for defeating evil is to resist the temptation to meet it on its own terms. To crush the evil adversary is to be vanquished by him because it means accepting his standards.

The term “interim ethics” has often been used to describe the ethics of the New Testament. Customarily (according to the line of thought derived from Albert Schweitzer) this term means that Christ and the New Testament writers were led by their expectancy of an early end of time to an irresponsible attitude to ethics in society. This analysis springs from the attempt to judge on the basis of the old aeon. The New Testament view is rather: “Were you not raised to life with Christ? Then aspire to the realm above” (Col. 3:1). It means being longsighted, not shortsighted; it means trusting God to triumph through the cross. Faith is just this attitude (as the examples of Heb. 11:1-12:4 show), the willingness to accept the apparently ineffective path of obedience, trusting in God for the results. Faith, even in Hebrews 11:1 f., does not mean doctrinal acquiescence to unproved affirmations, but the same trust in God that Christ initiated and perfected in itself (12:3). Again, the example is the cross, which was right in itself even though its rightness (in terms of ultimate effect) was not yet apparent.

Peace Without Eschatology: The Constantinian Heresy

We have seen that the eschatological situation - in which nonresistance is meaningful and in which the state has its place - is one of tension between two aeons, tension that will be resolved by the triumph of the new in the fullness of the kingdom of God. The attitude that seeks peace without eschatology is that which would identify church and world, or fuse the two aeons in the present age without the act of God whereby evil is removed from the scene. This means a confusion between the providential purpose of the state, that of achieving a “tolerable balance of egoisms” (an expression borrowed with gratitude from Reinhold Niebuhr) and the redemptive purpose of the church, the rejection of egoism in the commitment to discipleship. This confusion leads to the paganization of the church and the demonization of the state.

The common understanding of religion in the ancient Middle East was that of the tribal deity; a god whose significance was not ethical but ceremonial. God's purpose was not to tell his people how to live but to support their tribal unity and guarantee their prosperity through the observance of the proper cultic rites. This pagan attitude came to light in Israel as well in the form of the false prophets, whose significance in Old Testament times we often underestimate. Whereas the true prophets of the Lord proclaimed YHWH's ethical requirements, judgment, and call to repentance, the false prophets were supported by the state in return for their support of the state's projects. Rather than define ethical demands of

God, they committed God to the approval of the king's own plans. Jeremiah summed up their service as being to proclaim “peace” when there is no peace, i.e., proclaiming prosperity without judgment, peace without eschatology. This position was far from pacifism. “Shalom,” “peace” as the false prophets preached it, referred not to the absence of war but to the blessing of God on national aims, including wars for national interest (Jer. 6:13-15; 8:7-14). The false prophets, making God to be a handyman rather than a judge, thus inaugurated the line of those who seek to sanctify nationalism with the name of God. This line goes on into the Maccabees and to the various parties of Jesus' time who attempted to unite faith and nationalism in various ways - the Sadducees by collaboration, the Zealots by rebellion. Jesus, in close contact with the Zealots' movement, consistently refused their intention to wage war for national independence.[12]

The classic expression of this attitude in the Christian epoch is known as Constantinianism; the term refers to the conception of Christianity that took shape in the century between the Edict of Milan and the City of God. The central nature of this change, which Constantine himself did not invent nor force upon the church, is not a matter of doctrine nor of polity; it is the identification of church and world in the mutual approva1 and support exchanged by Constantine and the bishops. The church is no longer the obedient suffering line of the true prophets; it has a vested interest in the present order of things and uses the cultic means at its disposal to legitimize that order. The church does not preach ethics, judgment, repentance, separation from the world; it dispenses sacraments and holds society together. Christian ethics no longer means the study of what God wants of us; since all of society is Christian (by definition, i.e., by baptism), Christian ethics must be workable for all of society. Instead of seeking sanctification, ethics becomes concerned with the persistent power of sin and the calculation of the lesser evil; at the best it produces puritanism, and at the worst simple opportunism. 

It is not at all surprising that Augustine, for whom the Constantinian church was a matter of course, should have held that the Roman church was the millennium. Thus the next step in the union of church and world was the conscious abandon of eschatology. This is logical because God's goal, the conquest of the world by the church, had been reached (via the conquest of the church by the world). By no means did Augustine underestimate the reality of sin; but he seriously overestimated the adequacy of the available institutional and sacramental means for overcoming it.

This reasoning goes one step further. If the kingdom is in the process of realization through the present order, then the state is not merely a means of reconciling competing egoisms in the interest of order; it can be an agent of God's defeat of evil and may initiate disorder. The Crusades are the classic case. Rather than preserving peace, which 1 Timothy 2 asserts is the purpose of kings, the Holy Roman Empire wages war for the faith and against the heathen. Thus the function of judgment, which the New Testament eschatology leaves to God, becomes also the prerogative of the state, with the church's consent, if not urging.

Herbert Butterfield, in his study Christianity, Diplomacy, and War demonstrates that the periods of relative stability and cultural advance have been those where wars were limited to pragmatic local adjustments between conflicting interests (in which case they could be somehow compared to the police function and considered as subject to the reign of Christ). Likewise, the least social progress has come when nations, in a Constantinian attitude, have felt obligated by honor to fight for a “cause.” The Thirty Years' War and the ideological wars of our century are good examples. In these cases the use of force, by claiming to be a positive good rather than an evil subdued by Christ, becomes demonic and disrupts the stability of society more than it serves it. No longer subject to the restraint of Christ, the state, blessed by the church, becomes plaintiff, judge, jury, and executioner; and the rightness of the cause justifies any methods, even the suppression or extermination of the enemy. Thus even the New Testament doctrine of hell finds its place in Constantinianism; the purpose of exterminating, rather than subduing, evil is shifted from the endtime to the present. Standing not far from the brink of a world crusade to end all crusades, we do well to remember that the Constantinian and crusader's mentality is, far from being a way to serve Christ's kingdom, a sure road to demonizing the state by denying the limits to its authority and failing to submit its claims to a higher moral instance.

Constantinianism was at least consistent with its starting point; it knew only one society, that of the Roman empire, and sought to Christianize it. But today nations are numerous, and each nation claims for itself the authority from God to represent the cause of history. The origin of this kind of nationalism is also to be found in the example of Constantine. For Constantine, in replacing Christ's universal reign by the universal empire, shut out the barbarians. This seemed quite normal, since they were not Christians but in reality it gave the church's sanction to the divided state of the human community and opened the door to the concept that one nation or people or government can represent God's cause in opposition to other peoples who, being evil, need to be brought into submission. When the Germanic tribes replaced the Empire they applied this sense of divine mission to their tribal interests, despite all the efforts of the medieval church toward maintaining peace. Once admitted in principle, this attitude could later bless nationalism just as consistently as it had blessed imperialism. The universality of Christ's reign is replaced by the particularism of a specific state's intentions.

This goes even further. Once it is admitted that a particular group egoism is the bearer of the meaning of history, so that the nation's or the group's cause is endorsed by God, the divisiveness thus authorized does not stop with nationalism. Just as the medieval unity of Europe broke down into autonomous kingdoms each claiming God's sanction, so also each nation now tends to break down into classes and parties, each of them again sure of divine approval or its secular equivalent. Once a “cause” justifies a crusade or national independence, it may just as well justify a revolution, a cold war threatening to grow hot, or the toppling of a cabinet to suit a particular party's interest. All these phenomena, from the Bolshevik Revolution to John Foster Dulles, are examples of one basic attitude. They suppose that it is justified in the interest of a “cause” for a particular group, whose devotion to that

cause is a special mission from God, to rend the fabric of human solidarity, poisoning the future and introducing a rupture that is the precise opposite of the “peace” that it is the duty of the state under the lordship of Christ to insure.

If, with the New Testament, we understand the unity of the church as a universal bond of faith, we can understand that the real sectarianism, in the biblical sense of unchristian divisiveness, was the formation of churches bound to the state and identified with the nation. And on the other hand, some so-called “sects,” notably the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, the seventeenth-century Quakers, the eighteenth-century Moravians, and the nineteenth-century Open Brethren, were by their freedom from such ties, by their mobility and their missionary concern, by their preference of simple biblical piety and obedient faith to creedal orthodoxy, the veritable proponents of ecumenical Christianity. On the other hand, the revolution of Münster (1534-35), with which uninformed historians still blacken the Anabaptist name, was not consistent Anabaptism; it was a reversion to the same heresy accepted by Lutherans and Catholics alike - the belief that political means can be used against God's enemies to oblige an entire society to do God's will. It is for this reason that the nonresistant Anabaptists denounced the Münsterites even before the conversion of Menno. Münster attempted, just as did Constantine, to take into human hands the work that will be done by the Word of God at the end of the age - the final victory of the church and defeat of evil.

One of the startling manifestations of modem particularized Constantinianism is the parallelism between the opposing groups, each of which claims to be right. In our day the examples are as patent as they were in the Thirty Years' War. Both Dulles and Molotov were convinced that no coexistence of two opposing systems was possible; each was willing not only to wage war but even to destroy all culture rather than let the enemy exist. Each was sure that the other was the aggressor and that any injustices or inconsistencies on one's own side (like the police methods in the people's democracies or the West's support of Rhee, Tito, Franco, French colonialism) were only rendered necessary by the enemy's aggressiveness and espionage. Each was convinced that history is on the side of his system and that the opposing system is the incarnation of evil. Each was willing to have the people's morale upheld by the churches; neither was willing to stand under God's judgment and neither felt the need to repent. Each felt obliged to take God's plan into his own hands and guaranteed the triumph of the good by means of the available economic, political, and if need be military weapons. Each sought peace by the use of force in the name of God without accepting God's judgment, without abandoning group egoism, without trusting God to turn obedience into triumph by divine means. In short, both were right where Israel was in the time of Micaiah, and both were amply served by churches faithful to the tradition of the four hundred prophets of 1 Kings 22. “Attack,” they answered, “the Lord will deliver it into your hands” (v. 7). Peace without eschatology has become war without limit; thus is fulfilled the warning of the Lord, “Satan cannot be cast out by Beelzebub.”

Eschatology and the Peace Witness

Having seen how the crusader's thesis that the end justifies the means is finally self-defeating, and that the Constantinian heresy ultimately reverts to a purely pagan view of God as a tribal deity, we must return to the New Testament eschatology for a new start. We shall ask not only what is required of Christians (for on this level the imperative of nonresistance is clear) but also whether any guidance may be found in the realm of social strategy and the prophetic witness to the state. Certain aspects of a biblical, eschatological, nonresistant Christian view of history may be sketched here.

First of all, we must admit that only a clearly eschatological viewpoint permits a valid critique of the present historical situation and the choice of action that can be effective. Noneschatological analysis of history is unprotected against the dangers of subjectivism and opportunism, and finishes by letting the sinful present situation be its own norm. History, from Abraham to Marx, demonstrates that significant action, for good or for evil, is accomplished by those whose present action is illuminated by an eschatological hope. There are some kinds of apocalypticism that may favor a do-nothing attitude to social evil; this is precisely what is unchristian and unbiblical about some kinds of apocalypticism. But Schweitzer's thesis, generally accepted by liberal theologians, that the eschatological expectancy of the early church led to ethical irresponsibility, is simply wrong, exegetically and historically.

Within pacifist circles there is urgent need to clear up a serious ambiguity in the understanding of our peace witness. This ambiguity contributed to the weakness of the optimistic political pacifism of the Kellogg-Briand era, and was really a Constantinian attitude, as it felt that true peace was about to be achieved in our .time by unrepentant states. Once again the hope was for peace without eschatology.

Restoring our peace witness to its valid eschatological setting, we find it to have three distinct elements. One is addressed to Christians: “Let the church be the church!” As Peace Is the Will of God[13] attempts to do it, we must proclaim to every Christian that pacifism is not the prophetic vocation of a few individuals but that every member of the body of Christ is called to absolute nonresistance in discipleship and to abandonment of all loyalties that counter that obedience, including the desire to be effective immediately or to make oneself responsible for civil justice. This is the call of the Epistle to the Hebrews - a call to faith and sanctification. Eschatology adds nothing to the content of this appeal; but the knowledge that the way of the Lamb is what will finally conquer demonstrates that the appeal, for all its scandal, is not nonsense.

Second, there is the call to the individual, including the statesman, to be reconciled with God. This is evangelism in the strict contemporary sense and is a part of the peace witness. Any social-minded concern that does not have this appeal to personal commitment at its heart is either utopian or a polite form of demagoguery. But we must still face the problem with which we began. What is our witness to the statesman, who is not in the church and has no intention to be converted? Here only the eschatological perspective can provide an answer, whereas the

“realisms” that agree with Constantine finish by giving him a free hand. We must return to the first Christian confession of faith, Christos kyrios, Christ is Lord. The reign of Christ means for the state the obligation to serve God by encouraging the good and restraining evil, i.e., to serve peace, to preserve the social cohesion in which the leaven of the gospel can build the church, and also render the old aeon more tolerable. 

Butterfield, not a pacifist but an honest historian, applies this sort of viewpoint to the question of war. He concludes that the Constantinian war, i.e., the crusade whose presupposition is the impossibility of coexistence and whose aim is unconditional surrender, is not only bad Christianity but also bad politics. He concludes with a qualified approval of what he calls “limited war,” i.e., war that is the equivalent of a local police action, aiming not at annihilation but at a readjustment of tensions within the framework of an international order whose existence is not called into question. His thesis is that this sort of balance-of-power diplomacy that one associates with the Victorian age is the most realistic. In virtue of its recognition that it is not the kingdom of God, it is able to preserve a proximate justice that permits the silent growth of what Butterfield calls the “imponderables,” those attitudes and convictions, not always rational or conscious, that are the real preservatives of peace. These factors of cohesion - ideals of brotherhood, of honesty, of social justice, or the abundant life - are the byproducts of the Christian witness and the Christian home and have leavening effect even on non-Christians and non-Christian society. It would even be possible to speak of a limited doctrine of progress within this context. As long as the state does not interfere, either through fascism or through violence that destroys the tissue of society, these byproducts of Christianity do make the world, even the old aeon, immensely more tolerable. Yet, they make men and women ultimately no better in the sight of God and no better administrators of the talents entrusted them. 

The function of the state is likened by Butterfield to the task of the architect in building a cathedral. The force of gravity, like human egoism, is not in itself a constructive force. Yet, if art and science combine to shape and place properly each stone, the result is a unity of balanced tensions, combining to give an impression not of gravity but of lightness and buoyancy. This sort of delicate balance of essentially destructive forces is what the political apparatus is called to maintain under the lordship of Christ, for the sake not of the cathedral but of the service going on within it. 

Thus the church's prophetic witness to the state rests on firmly fixed criteria; any act of the state may be tested according to them and God's estimation pronounced with all proper humility. The good are to be protected, the evildoers are to be restrained, and the fabric of society is to be preserved, both from revolution and from war. Thus, to be precise, the church can condemn methods of warfare that are indiscriminate in their victims and goals of warfare that go further than the localized readjustment of a tension. These things are wrong for the state, not only for the Christian.[14] On the other hand, a police action within a society or under the United Nations cannot on the same basis be condemned on principle; the question

is whether the safeguards are there to insure that it become nothing more. In practice, these principles would condemn all modem war, not on the basis of perfectionist discipleship ethics, but on the realistic basis of what the state is for.

Two comments must be appended here. First of all, the kind of objectivity that makes it possible to see the task of the state in this light is really possible only for Christians. For only the Christian (and not many Christians at that) can combine forgiveness (not holding the sins of others against them) with repentance (the willingness to see one's own sin). The pagan sees all the sin on the “other side” and the proclamation of repentance is, therefore, the only liberation from selfishness and the only basis of objectivity.[15]

Second, the message of the prophets always took a negative form. In spite of all the ammunition that the social gospel theology took from the Old Testament prophets, those prophets do not propose a detailed plan for the administration of society. This is necessary in the nature of the case, for the state is not an ideal order, ideally definable; it is a pragmatic, tolerable balance of egoisms and can become more or less tolerable. To define the point of infinite tolerability would be to define the kingdom; it cannot be done in terms of the present situation. Thus the prophet, or the prophetic church, speaks first of all God's condemnation of concrete injustices; if those injustices are corrected, new ones may be tackled. Progress in tolerability may be achieved, as the democracies of Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands show us; but only in limited degree and in specific areas, and the means of progressing is not by defining utopias but by denouncing particular evils and inventing particular remedies. On the larger perspective the forces of disintegration are advancing as rapidly as the church. We need not be embarrassed when politicians ask us what they should do; our first answer is that they are already not doing the best that they know, and they should first stop the injustices they are now committing and implement the ideals they now proclaim.

Constantine and Responsibility

The relation of this entire development to an understanding of nonresistant Christian pacifism is obvious. It is just as clear that the New Testament, by its ethics as well as by its eschatology, rejects most kinds of nationalism, militarism, and vengeance for the Christian and calls Christians to return good for evil. Any attempt to draw from Scriptures an approval of war in principle, on the basis of what John the Baptist said to soldiers, what Jesus said before Gethsemane, what Samuel said to Saul, or of Jesus' use of a whip when he cleansed the temple, is condemned to failure.

The relation of this entire development to an understanding of nonresistant Christian pacifism is obvious. It is just as clear that the New Testament, by its ethics as well as by its eschatology, rejects most kinds of nationalism, militarism, and vengeance for the Christian and calls Christians to return good for evil. Any attempt to draw from Scriptures an approval of war in principle, on the basis of what John the Baptist said to soldiers, what Jesus said before

Gethsemane, what Samuel said to Saul, or of Jesus' use of a whip when he cleansed the temple, is condemned to failure.

We must, however, give greater respect to the one serious argument that remains to justify participation in war. This argument has not always been clearly distinguished from the untenable exegetical points just mentioned; but it has another foundation, and in its purest form it admits that nonresistance is God's will for the Christian, and that war is evil. In spite of this concession it is held that in a social situation where third parties are involved nonresistance is not the full response to the problem of evil. The Christian as an individual should turn the other cheek; but in society Christians have a responsibility for the protection of their good neighbors against their bad neighbors - in short, what we have seen to be the police function of the state. This is not to say that the good neighbors are wholly good or the bad wholly bad; but in the conflict in question, one neighbor's egoism coincides more closely with order and justice than the other's. It is, therefore, the Christian's duty through the functions of the state, to contribute to the maintenance of order and justice in this way. Even war as an extreme case may be justified when the alternative would be permitting passively the extension of tyranny, which is worse than war.

We must recognize the sincerity and the consistency of this viewpoint and the honest realism that its proponents demonstrate when they do not claim to be angels or to have a divine mission to go crusading. This view of the function of the state is the only true and reliable one and coincides with the biblical view of the police function of the state under the lordship first of YHWH, then of Christ. That is precisely our objection to it; this view, based on a realistic analysis of the old aeon, knows nothing of the new. It is not specifically Christian and would fit into any honest system of social morality. If Christ had never become incarnate, died, risen, ascended to heaven, and sent his Spirit, this view would be just as possible, though its particularly clear and objective expression may result partly from certain Christian insights.

The contemporary slogan that expresses this prevalent attitude. to war and other questions of a social nature, especially in contemporary ecumenical and neo-orthodox or “chastened-liberal” circles, is the term “responsibility.” This term is extremely dangerous, not because of what it says, but because of its begging the question and its ambiguity. The question that matters is not whether this Christian has a responsibility for the social order, it is what that responsibility is. Those who use this slogan, however, proceed from the affirmation that we are responsible to the conclusion (contained in their definition of responsibility) that it must be expressed in a specific way, including the ultimate possibility of war. The error here is not in affirming that there is a real Christian responsibility to and for the social order; it is rather in the (generally unexamined and unavowed) presuppositions that result in that responsibility's being defined from within the given order alone rather than from the gospel as it infringes upon the situation. Thus the sinful situation itself becomes the norm, and there can be no such thing as Christian ethics derived in the light of revelation.

We have seen that there is a real responsibility of the Christian to the social order but that, to be accurate, it must distinguish between the objects of its witness. Thus we find the basic error of the “responsible” position to be its Constantinian point of departure. This starting point leads first of all to confusion as to the agent of Christian ethics. Since the distinction between church and world is largely lost, the “responsible” church will try to preach a kind of ethics that will work for non-Christians as well as Christians. Or, better said, since everyone in such a society may consider themselves Christian, the church will teach ethics not for those who possess the power of the Holy Spirit and an enabling hope but for those whose Christianity is conformity. This excludes at the outset any possibility of putting Christian ethics in its true light and concludes by making consistent Christianity the “prophetic calling” of a few, who may be useful if only they don't claim to be right.

But the most serious criticism of this definition of social concern is its preference of the old aeon to the new and the identification of the church's mission and the meaning of history with the function of the state in organizing sinful society. This preference is so deeply anchored and so unquestioned that it seems scandalously irresponsible of the “sectarians” to dare to question it. This is why the American churches as a whole are embarrassed to be asked to talk of eschatology. Yet, it is clear in the New Testament that the meaning of history is not what the state will achieve in the way of a progressively more tolerable ordering of society but what the church achieves through evangelism and through the leavening process. This “messianic self-consciousness” on the part of the church looks most offensive to the proponents of a modem world view, but it is what we find in the Bible.

The claim is frequent that by not taking over themselves the police function in society Christians would abandon this function to evil people or to the “demonic.” Again, this apparently logical argument is neither quite biblical nor quite realistic: (a) because the police function would be abandoned not to the demonic but to the reign of Christ; (b) because through the “leavening” process, Christianized morality seeps into the non-Christian mind through example and through the education of children who do not themselves choose radical Christianity, with the result that the whole moral tone of non-Christian society is changed for the better and there are honorable and honest people available to run the government before the church is numerically strong enough for “responsibility” to be a meaningful concept. (A case in point: Quakerism, Methodism, and the revivals along the American frontier did more to give a moral tone to Anglo-Saxon democratic traditions than did Anglican and Puritan politicking - once again, leavening works better than policing); (c) because the prophetic function of the church, properly interpreted, is more effective against injustice than getting mixed in the partisan political process oneself; (d) because there always exists the potential corrective power of other egoisms (Assyria in Isa. 10) to keep any abuse from going too far.

It is within the scope of this “responsibility” mentality that the argument of the “lesser evil” is formulated. While it shows commendable honesty in refusing to claim that violence and war are good, it betrays still more logical confusion in the use of the terms. Generally neither the

agent, the nature of evil, the criteria for comparing evils, I nor the relation of means to ends is clearly defied, much less biblically derived.

Leaving aside several valid criticisms at this point, let us give the “lesser evil” argument its most defensible form. The contention is that out of love for my Neighbor A I should protect him when Neighbor B attacks him, for if I did not I should share the guilt for the attack. Being guilty of defensive violence against Neighbor B is less evil than being passively guilty of permitting offensive violence against Neighbor A for one of two reasons: either because Neighbor B is the aggressor or because Neighbor A is my friend or relative or fellow citizen for whom I have more responsibility than for Neighbor B. 

The nonresistant answer here cannot help being scandalous and pushing the scandal of the cross to the end. If the cross defies agape, it denies:

a.) that “one's own” family, friends, compatriots, are more to be loved than the enemy,[16]

b.) that the life of the aggressor is worth less than that of the attacked;

c.) that the responsibility to prevent evil (policing Neighbor B) is an expression of love (it is love in the sense of a benevolent sentiment but not of agape as defined by the cross) when it involves the death of the aggressor,

d.) that letting evil happen is as blameworthy as committing it.

These four denials are implicit in the positive development of this essay. To develop them further here would be repetition. That these denials appear scandalous to our neighbors demonstrates simply how thoroughly the Western Christian mind-set has been Constantinianized, i.e., influenced by pagan and pre-Christian ideas of particular human solidarities as ethical absolutes.

When this argument is phrased in terms of the war question, its customary formulation is the claim that tyranny is worse than war Apart from the confusion of agents (tyranny is the tyrant's fault, war would be ours), this raises seriously the question of ends and means. For “absolutist” ethics ends and means are inseparable and there can be no legitimate calculation of predictable success. For “lesser evil” ethics, however, the comparison of results is paramount and, once mystical arguments about fighting to the death against all odds are rejected (on the lesser-evil basis), it is hard to demonstrate that the national autonomy, even with the cultural values it protects, would be a greater loss than what would be destroyed in an atomic-bacterial-chemical war and in the totalitarization even of the “free” nations that war now involves. Since no one but Gandhi has tried submission to tyranny, the comparison is hard to make; but the nations that in World War II resisted Hitler the most violently did not necessarily suffer the least thereby. For the Christian disciple, it is clear from Jesus' attitude to

the Roman occupation forces and his rejection of the Zealots' aims and methods, as well as from the first centuries of Christian history, that war is not preferable to tyranny; i.e., that the intention of liberating one's people from despotic rule does not authorize the use of unloving methods. In fact the claim that God is especially interested in any people's political autonomy or that God has charged any one modem nation with a particular mission that makes its survival a good in ipso is precisely what is pagan about modern particularized Constantinianism. Personal survival is for the Christian not an end in itself; how much less national survival.

 A second objection to the “lesser-evil” argument is the incapacity of the human agent to calculate the results of his or her actions in such a way as to measure hypothetical evils one against another, especially to measure the evil he or she would commit against the evil he or she would prevent. The very decision to base one's ethical decisions on one's own calculations is in itself already the sacrifice of ethics to opportunism. Such calculations are highly uncertain, due to the limits of human knowledge and to the distortion of objective truth by human pride. To shift our critique to the Christian plane: the way in which God works in history has often been such as to confound the predictions of the pious and the faithful, especially those who tied their predictions about God's working too closely to their national welfare. The most significant contributions to history have in the past often been made not by the social strategists, who from a position of power sought to steer toward the lesser predictable evil, but by the “sectarians” whose eschatological consciousness made it sensible for them to act in apparently irresponsible ways. The most effective way to contribute to the preservation of society in the old aeon is to live in the new. 

A third objection, which should be of basic significance to the “responsible” school even though notice is seldom taken of it, is that the effect of the “lesser evil” argument in historical reality is the opposite of its intent. Consistently applied, this argument would condemn most wars and most causes for war and would permit a war only as a very last resort, subject to strictly defined limitations; yet, the actual effect of this argument upon the church's witness is to authorize at least the war for which the nation is just now preparing, since at least this war (one claims) is a very last resort. Whereas in intent this position should hold wars within bounds and would condemn at any rate the wars now being waged and being prepared, its effect on those who hear theologians speaking thus is to make war or the threat of war a first resort. Whereas in consistent application the “lesser-evil” argument would lead in our day to a pragmatic (though not absolutist) pacifism and to the advocacy of nonviolent means of resistance, in reality it authorizes the church to accept the-domination of modem society by militarism without effective dissent. 

This writer was present in 1950-51 in the University of Basel when Karl Barth dealt with war and related questions in the lectures that were to become volume III/4 of his Church Dogmatics. For most of an hour his argument was categorical, condemning practically all the concrete causes for which wars have been and may be fought. The students became more and

more uneasy, especially when he said that pacifism is “almost infinitely right.” Then came the dialectical twist, with the idea of a divine vocation of self-defense assigned to a particular nation and a war that Switzerland might fight was declared - hypothetically - admissible. First there was a general release of tension in a mood of “didn't think he'd make it,” then applause. What is significant here is the difference between what Barth said and what the students understood. Even though a consistent application of Karl Barth's teaching would condemn allwars except those fought to defend the independence of small Christian republics, and even though Barth himself now takes a position categorically opposed to nuclear weapons, calling himself in fact “practically pacifist,”[17] every half-informed Christian thinks Karl Barth is not opposed to war. Similarly, Reinhold Niebuhr's justification of American military preparedness is used by the Luce thinking of some American patriots to justify a far more intransigent militarism than Niebuhr himself could justify. This tendency of theologians' statements to be misinterpreted is also part of “political reality.” Even the most clairvoyant and realistic analysis of the modem theologian is thus powerless against the momentum of the Constantinian compromise. Once the nation is authorized exceptionally to be the agent of God's wrath, the heritage of paganism makes quick work of generalizing that authorization into a divine rubber stamp.

Peace With Eschatology

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of god; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; it is not yet clear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 1 John 3 

References[1] Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York, 1940), 2.

[2] Ibid., 45,44.

[3] Ibid., 15, 16.

[4] Ibid., 169.

[5] The Nature and Destiny of Man II, (New York, 1943), 194, quoted by Muste in Pacifism and Perfectionism.

[6] Moral Man and Immoral Society, (New York, 1932), 81.

[7] Downloaded from http://people.duke.edu/~kns15/Peace_Eschatology_Yoder.pdf (with a missing page inserted from The Original Revolution).

[8] The Second General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, planned for summer 1954 in Evanston, Illinois, under the topic, “Christ, the Hope of the World,” set the theme of the Heerenwegen conference.

[9] Peter's sermon at Pentecost, Acts 217, interprets Pentecost as the fulfilment of Joel 2:28.

[10] Hebrews 8:8-12 characterizes the new covenant as the fulfillment of this promise from Jeremiah 31:33.

[11] Compare my fuller treatment of the theme of sharing in the suffering of Christ in The Politics of Jesus, Chap. VIII.

[12] Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Testament (New York: Scribners, 1956). Compare my later broadening of the theme of the Zealot temptation in my The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972, rev. 1994).

[13] The Heerenwegen conference at which this paper was first presented was immediately followed by a working session of the Continuation Committee of the Historic Peace Churches and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, which completed the editorial work for the text, “Peace Is the Will of God,” which was then jointly submitted by them to the World Council of Churches just prior to the Evanston assembly. “Peace Is the Will of God” is again available as appendix to the newer Declaration a Peace (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1991).

[14] This conception has been further spelled out in my booklet The Christian Witness to the State (Newton, Kans.: Faith and Lie Press, 1964).

[15] The term “Christian” in this text refers to a nonnative stance and state of mind. It is not claimed that people calling themselves “Christian” live up to this description or even that most

of them would want to. Likewise “pagan” points not to particular adherents of other religions but to the stance of unbelief or idolatry from which the Christian confesses that he or she has been called. For further description of the idea of a Christian vision of the historical process cf. Andre Troone, The Politics of Repentance(Fellowship, 1953), and Herbert Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy, and War (Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1953), especially the chapter, “Human Nature and Human Capability,” pp. 418.

[16] The preference for the enemy over the friend as an object of the Christian's moral responsibility is explicitly stated in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. It is founded in the nature of the love of God, who favors his enemies in loving rebellious men and seeking their restoration. I have exposited Barth's position in the pamphlet The Pacifism of Karl Barth (Church Peace Mission, Herald Press, 1964) and at greater length in Karl Barth and the Problem of War (Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1970).

[17] 15. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958): 550. The original German makes the point even more clearly against the interpretation his position is popularly given: Die Kirchliche Doptik, IV/2 (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955): 622.

Exercise 12 Grid – *use Grid for exercise 4*

Chapter Thirteen ReadingsRead the following two extracts by Pope John XXIII and the US Bishops and then submit Exercise 13 (or an Essay) on the Catholic Church in the nuclear age. Where would you place it on the grid? Why? What is the Church’s attitude to political authority now? Does it see many goals shared by Christianity and the political authority? Does it call on Christians to reject it, live apart from it, engage with it or seek to perfect it? What is its attitude to political violence now? Is the Church pacifist, a Just War proponent, or an advocate of Holy War? If the former, is it against war, against killing, against violence, against coercion, or against resistance? If a proponent of Just War, are its limits on war strict, moderate or permissive?

Reading 1: Pacem in Terris: Encyclical Of Pope John XXIII on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, And Liberty (April 11, 1963). Extracts1

1. Peace on Earth—which man throughout the ages has so longed for and sought after—can never be established, never guaranteed, except by the diligent observance of the divinely established order.

Order in the Universe

2. That a marvelous order predominates in the world of living beings and in the forces of nature, is the plain lesson which the progress of modern research and the discoveries of technology teach us. And it is part of the greatness of man that he can appreciate that order, and devise the means for harnessing those forces for his own benefit.

3. But what emerges first and foremost from the progress of scientific knowledge and the inventions of technology is the infinite greatness of God Himself, who created both man and the universe. Yes; out of nothing He made all things, and filled them with the fullness of His own wisdom and goodness. Hence, these are the words the holy psalmist used in praise of God: "O Lord, our Lord: how admirable is thy name in the whole earth!"[2] And elsewhere he says: "How great are thy works, O Lord! Thou hast made all things in wisdom."[3]

Moreover, God created man "in His own image and likeness,"[4] endowed him with intelligence and freedom, and made him lord of creation. All this the psalmist proclaims when he says: "Thou hast made him a little less than the angels: thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, and hast set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast subjected all things under his feet."[5]

Order in Human Beings

4. And yet there is a disunity among individuals and among nations which is in striking contrast to this perfect order in the universe. One would think that the relationships that bind men together could only be governed by force.

5. But the world's Creator has stamped man's inmost being with an order revealed to man by his conscience; and his conscience insists on his preserving it. Men "show the work of the law written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness to them."[6] And how could it be otherwise? All created being reflects the infinite wisdom of God. It reflects it all the more clearly, the higher it stands in the scale of perfection.[7]

6. But the mischief is often caused by erroneous opinions. Many people think that the laws which govern man's relations with the State are the same as those which regulate the blind, elemental forces of the universe. But it is not so; the laws which govern men are quite different. The Father of the universe has inscribed them in man's nature, and that is where we must look for them; there and nowhere else.

7. These laws clearly indicate how a man must behave toward his fellows in society, and how the mutual relationships between the members of a State and its officials are to be conducted. They show too what principles must govern the relations between States; and finally, what should be the relations between individuals or States on the one hand, and the world-wide community of nations on the other. Men's common interests make it imperative that at long last a world-wide community of nations be established.

II. RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND THE PUBLIC AUTHORITIES

46. Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous without the presence of those who, invested with legal authority, preserve its institutions and do all that is necessary to

sponsor actively the interests of all its members. And they derive their authority from God, for, as St. Paul teaches, "there is no power but from God".[8]

In his commentary on this passage, St. John Chrysostom writes: "What are you saying? Is every ruler appointed by God? No, that is not what I mean, he says, for I am not now talking about individual rulers, but about authority as such. My contention is that the existence of a ruling authority—the fact that some should command and others obey, and that all things not come about as the result of blind chance—this is a provision of divine wisdom."[9]

God has created men social by nature, and a society cannot "hold together unless someone is in command to give effective direction and unity of purpose. Hence every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and consequently has God for its author."[10]

47. But it must not be imagined that authority knows no bounds. Since its starting point is the permission to govern in accordance with right reason, there is no escaping the conclusion that it derives its binding force from the moral order, which in turn has God as its origin and end.

Attainment of the Common Good is the Purpose of the Public Authority

53. Men, both as individuals and as intermediate groups, are required to make their own specific contributions to the general welfare. The main consequence of this is that they must harmonize their own interests with the needs of others, and offer their goods and services as their rulers shall direct—assuming, of course, that justice is maintained and the authorities are acting within the limits of their competence. Those who have authority in the State must exercise that authority in a way which is not only morally irreproachable, but also best calculated to ensure or promote the State's welfare.

54. The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities. In working for the common good, therefore, the authorities must obviously respect its nature, and at the same time adjust their legislation to meet the requirements of the given situation.[11]

Essentials of the Common Good

56. We must add, therefore, that it is in the nature of the common good that every single citizen has the right to share in it—although in different ways, depending on his tasks, merits and circumstances. Hence every civil authority must strive to promote the common good in the interest of all, without favoring any individual citizen or category of citizen. As Pope Leo XIII insisted: "The civil power must not be subservient to the advantage of any one individual, or of some few persons; inasmuch as it was established for the common good of all."[12]

Nevertheless, considerations of justice and equity can at times demand that those in power pay more attention to the weaker members of society, since these are at a disadvantage when it comes to defending their own rights and asserting their legitimate interests.[13]

Responsibilities of the Public Authority, and Rights and Duties of Individuals

60. It is generally accepted today that the common good is best safeguarded when personal rights and duties are guaranteed. The chief concern of civil authorities must therefore be to ensure that these rights are recognized, respected, co-ordinated, defended and promoted, and that each individual is enabled to perform his duties more easily. For "to safeguard the inviolable rights of the human person, and to facilitate the performance of his duties, is the principal duty of every public authority."[14]

61. Thus any government which refused to recognize human rights or acted in violation of them, would not only fail in its duty; its decrees would be wholly lacking in binding force.[15]

Reconciliation and Protection of Rights and Duties of Individuals

62. One of the principal duties of any government, moreover, is the suitable and adequate superintendence and co-ordination of men's respective rights in society. This must be done in such a way 1) that the exercise of their rights by certain citizens does not obstruct other citizens in the exercise of theirs; 2) that the individual, standing upon his own rights, does not impede others in the performance of their duties; 3) that the rights of all be effectively safeguarded, and completely restored if they have been violated.[16]

Structure and Operation of the Public Authority

67. For the rest, it is not possible to give a general ruling on the most suitable form of government, or the ways in which civil authorities can most effectively fulfill their legislative, administrative, and judicial functions.

68. In determining what form a particular government shall take, and the way in which it shall function, a major consideration will be the prevailing circumstances and the condition of the people; and these are things which vary in different places and at different times.

III. RELATIONS BETWEEN STATES

80. With respect to States themselves, Our predecessors have constantly taught, and We wish to lend the weight of Our own authority to their teaching, that nations are the subjects of reciprocal rights and duties. Their relationships, therefore, must likewise be harmonized in accordance with the dictates of truth, justice, willing cooperation, and freedom. The same law

of nature that governs the life and conduct of individuals must also regulate the relations of political communities with one another.

In Truth

86. The first point to be settled is that mutual ties between States must be governed by truth. Truth calls for the elimination of every trace of racial discrimination, and the consequent recognition of the inviolable principle that all States are by nature equal in dignity.

Each of them accordingly has the right to exist, to develop, and to possess the necessary means and accept a primary responsibility for its own development. Each is also legitimately entitled to its good name and to the respect which is its due.

87. As we know from experience, men frequently differ widely in knowledge, virtue, intelligence and wealth, but that is no valid argument in favor of a system whereby those who are in a position of superiority impose their will arbitrarily on others. On the contrary, such men have a greater share in the common responsibility to help others to reach perfection by their mutual efforts.

88. So, too, on the international level: some nations may have attained to a superior degree of scientific, cultural and economic development. But that does not entitle them to exert unjust political domination over other nations. It means that they have to make a greater contribution to the common cause of social progress.

89. The fact is that no one can be by nature superior to his fellows, since all men are equally noble in natural dignity. And consequently there are no differences at all between political communities from the point of view of natural dignity. Each State is like a body, the members of which are human beings. And, as we know from experience, nations can be highly sensitive in matters in any way touching their dignity and honor; and with good reason.

In Justice

91. Relations between States must furthermore be regulated by justice. This necessitates both the recognition of their mutual rights, and, at the same time, the fulfilment of their respective duties.

92. States have the right to existence, to self development, and to the means necessary to achieve this. They have the right to play the leading part in the process of their own development, and the right to their good name and due honors. Consequently, States are likewise in duty bound to safeguard all such rights effectively, and to avoid any action that could violate them. And just as individual men may not pursue their own private interests in a way that is unfair and detrimental to others, so too it would be criminal in a State to aim at

improving itself by the use of methods which involve other nations in injury and unjust oppression. There is a saying of St. Augustine which has particular relevance in this context: "Take away justice, and what are kingdoms but mighty bands of robbers".[17]

93. There may be, and sometimes is, a clash of interests among States, each striving for its own development. When differences of this sort arise, they must be settled in a truly human way, not by armed force nor by deceit or trickery. There must be a mutual assessment of the arguments and feelings on both sides, a mature and objective investigation of the situation, and an equitable reconciliation of opposing views.

Active Solidarity

98. Since relationships between States must be regulated in accordance with the principles of truth and justice, States must further these relationships by taking positive steps to pool their material and spiritual resources. In many cases this can be achieved by all kinds of mutual collaboration; and this is already happening in our own day in the economic, social, political, educational, health and athletic spheres—and with beneficial results. We must bear in mind that of its very nature civil authority exists, not to confine men within the frontiers of their own nations, but primarily to protect the common good of the State, which certainly cannot be divorced from the common good of the entire human family

99. Thus, in pursuing their own interests, civil societies, far from causing injury to others, must join plans and forces whenever the efforts of particular States cannot achieve the desired goal. But in doing so great care must be taken. What is beneficial to some States may prove detrimental rather than advantageous to others.

Causes of the Arms Race

109. On the other hand, We are deeply distressed to see the enormous stocks of armaments that have been, and continue to be, manufactured in the economically more developed countries. This policy is involving a vast outlay of intellectual and material resources, with the result that the people of these countries are saddled with a great burden, while other countries lack the help they need for their economic and social development .

110. There is a common belief that under modern conditions peace cannot be assured except on the basis of an equal balance of armaments and that this factor is the probable cause of this stockpiling of armaments. Thus, if one country increases its military strength, others are immediately roused by a competitive spirit to augment their own supply of armaments. And if one country is equipped with atomic weapons, others consider themselves justified in producing such weapons themselves, equal in destructive force.

111. Consequently people are living in the grip of constant fear. They are afraid that at any moment the impending storm may break upon them with horrific violence. And they have good reasons for their fear, for there is certainly no lack of such weapons. While it is difficult to believe that anyone would dare to assume responsibility for initiating the appalling slaughter and destruction that war would bring in its wake, there is no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance. Moreover, even though the monstrous power of modern weapons does indeed act as a deterrent, there is reason to fear that the very testing of nuclear devices for war purposes can, if continued, lead to serious danger for various forms of life on earth.

Need for Disarmament

112. Hence justice, right reason, and the recognition of man's dignity cry out insistently for a cessation to the arms race. The stock-piles of armaments which have been built up in various countries must be reduced all round and simultaneously by the parties concerned. Nuclear weapons must be banned. A general agreement must be reached on a suitable disarmament program, with an effective system of mutual control. In the words of Pope Pius XII: "The calamity of a world war, with the economic and social ruin and the moral excesses and dissolution that accompany it, must not on any account be permitted to engulf the human race for a third time."[18]

113. Everyone, however, must realize that, unless this process of disarmament be thoroughgoing and complete, and reach men's very souls, it is impossible to stop the arms race, or to reduce armaments, or—and this is the main thing—ultimately to abolish them entirely. Everyone must sincerely co-operate in the effort to banish fear and the anxious expectation of war from men's minds. But this requires that the fundamental principles upon which peace is based in today's world be replaced by an altogether different one, namely, the realization that true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust. And We are confident that this can be achieved, for it is a thing which not only is dictated by common sense, but is in itself most desirable and most fruitful of good.

Three Motives

114. Here, then, we have an objective dictated first of all by reason. There is general agreement—or at least there should be—that relations between States, as between individuals, must be regulated not by armed force, but in accordance with the principles of right reason: the principles, that is, of truth, justice and vigorous and sincere co-operation.

115. Secondly, it is an objective which We maintain is more earnestly to be desired. For who is there who does not feel the craving to be rid of the threat of war, and to see peace preserved and made daily more secure?

116. And finally it is an objective which is rich with possibilities for good. Its advantages will be felt everywhere, by individuals, by families, by nations, by the whole human race. The warning of Pope Pius XII still rings in our ears: "Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war."[19]

In Liberty

120. Furthermore, relations between States must be regulated by the principle of freedom. This means that no country has the right to take any action that would constitute an unjust oppression of other countries, or an unwarranted interference in their affairs. On the contrary, all should help to develop in others an increasing awareness of their duties, an adventurous and enterprising spirit, and the resolution to take the initiative for their own advancement in every field of endeavor.

Signs of the Times

126. Men nowadays are becoming more and more convinced that any disputes which may arise between nations must be resolved by negotiation and agreement, and not by recourse to arms.

127. We acknowledge that this conviction owes its origin chiefly to the terrifying destructive force of modern weapons. It arises from fear of the ghastly and catastrophic consequences of their use. Thus, in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.

128. And yet, unhappily, we often find the law of fear reigning supreme among nations and causing them to spend enormous sums on armaments. Their object is not aggression, so they say—and there is no reason for disbelieving them—but to deter others from aggression.

129. Nevertheless, We are hopeful that, by establishing contact with one another and by a policy of negotiation, nations will come to a better recognition of the natural ties that bind them together as men. We are hopeful, too, that they will come to a fairer realization of one of the cardinal duties deriving from our common nature: namely, that love, not fear, must dominate the relationships between individuals and between nations. It is principally characteristic of love that it draws men together in all sorts of ways, sincerely united in the bonds of mind and matter; and this is a union from which countless blessings can flow.

IV. RELATIONSHIP OF MEN AND OF POLITICAL COMMUNITIES WITH THE WORLD COMMUNITY

130. Recent progress in science and technology has had a profound influence on man's way of life. This progress is a spur to men all over the world to extend their collaboration and

association with one another in these days when material resources, travel from one country to another, and technical information have so vastly increased. This has led to a phenomenal growth in relationships between individuals, families and intermediate associations belonging to the various nations, and between the public authorities of the various political communities. There is also a growing economic interdependence between States. National economies are gradually becoming so interdependent that a kind of world economy is being born from the simultaneous integration of the economies of individual States. And finally, each country's social progress, order, security and peace are necessarily linked with the social progress, order, security and peace of every other country.

131. From this it is clear that no State can fittingly pursue its own interests in isolation from the rest, nor, under such circumstances, can it develop itself as it should. The prosperity and progress of any State is in part consequence, and in part cause, of the prosperity and progress of all other States.

Inadequacy of Modern States to Ensure Universal Common Good the

132. No era will ever succeed in destroying the unity of the human family, for it consists of men who are all equal by virtue of their natural dignity. Hence there will always be an imperative need—born of man's very nature—to promote in sufficient measure the universal common good; the good, that is, of the whole human family.

133. In the past rulers of States seem to have been able to make sufficient provision for the universal common good through the normal diplomatic channels, or by top-level meetings and discussions, treaties and agreements; by using, that is, the ways and means suggested by the natural law, the law of nations, or international law.

134. In our own day, however, mutual relationships between States have undergone a far reaching change. On the one hand, the universal common good gives rise to problems of the utmost gravity, complexity and urgency—especially as regards the preservation of the security and peace of the whole world. On the other hand, the rulers of individual nations, being all on an equal footing, largely fail in their efforts to achieve this, however much they multiply their meetings and their endeavors to discover more fitting instruments of justice. And this is no reflection on their sincerity and enterprise. It is merely that their authority is not sufficiently influential.

135. We are thus driven to the conclusion that the shape and structure of political life in the modern world, and the influence exercised by public authority in all the nations of the world are unequal to the task of promoting the common good of all peoples.

Connection between the Common Good and Political Authority

136. Now, if one considers carefully the inner significance of the common good on the one hand, and the nature and function of public authority on the other, one cannot fail to see that there is an intrinsic connection between them. Public authority, as the means of promoting the common good in civil society, is a postulate of the moral order. But the moral order likewise requires that this authority be effective in attaining its end. Hence the civil institutions in which such authority resides, becomes operative and promotes its ends, are endowed with a certain kind of structure and efficacy: a structure and efficacy which make such institutions capable of realizing the common good by ways and means adequate to the changing historical conditions.

137. Today the universal common good presents us with problems which are world-wide in their dimensions; problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by a public authority with power, organization and means co-extensive with these problems, and with a world-wide sphere of activity. Consequently the moral order itself demands the establishment of some such general form of public authority.

Public Authority Instituted by Common Consent and Not Imposed by Force

138. But this general authority equipped with world-wide power and adequate means for achieving the universal common good cannot be imposed by force. It must be set up with the consent of all nations. If its work is to be effective, it must operate with fairness, absolute impartiality, and with dedication to the common good of all peoples. The forcible imposition by the more powerful nations of a universal authority of this kind would inevitably arouse fears of its being used as an instrument to serve the interests of the few or to take the side of a single nation, and thus the influence and effectiveness of its activity would be undermined. For even though nations may differ widely in material progress and military strength, they are very sensitive as regards their juridical equality and the excellence of their own way of life. They are right, therefore, in their reluctance to submit to an authority imposed by force, established without their co-operation, or not accepted of their own accord.

The Universal Common Good and Personal Rights

139. The common good of individual States is something that cannot be determined without reference to the human person, and the same is true of the common good of all States taken together. Hence the public authority of the world community must likewise have as its special aim the recognition, respect, safeguarding and promotion of the rights of the human person. This can be done by direct action, if need be, or by the creation throughout the world of the sort of conditions in which rulers of individual States can more easily carry out their specific functions.

The Principle of Subsidiarity

140. The same principle of subsidiarity which governs the relations between public authorities and individuals, families and intermediate societies in a single State, must also apply to the relations between the public authority of the world community and the public authorities of each political community. The special function of this universal authority must be to evaluate and find a solution to economic, social, political and cultural problems which affect the universal common good. These are problems which, because of their extreme gravity, vastness and urgency, must be considered too difficult for the rulers of individual States to solve with any degree of success.

141. But it is no part of the duty of universal authority to limit the sphere of action of the public authority of individual States, or to arrogate any of their functions to itself. On the contrary, its essential purpose is to create world conditions in which the public authorities of each nation, its citizens and intermediate groups, can carry out their tasks, fullfill their duties and claim their rights with greater security.[20]

Modern Developments

142. The United Nations Organization (U.N.) was established, as is well known, on June 26, 1945. To it were subsequently added lesser organizations consisting of members nominated by the public authority of the various nations and entrusted with highly important international functions in the economics, social, cultural, educational and health fields. The United Nations Organization has the special aim of maintaining and strengthening peace between nations, and of encouraging and assisting friendly relations between them, based on the principles of equality, mutual respect, and extensive cooperation in every field of human endeavor.

145. It is therefore Our earnest wish that the United Nations Organization may be able progressively to adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks. May the day be not long delayed when every human being can find in this organization an effective safeguard of his personal rights; those rights, that is, which derive directly from his dignity as a human person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable. This is all the more desirable in that men today are taking an ever more active part in the public life of their own nations, and in doing so they are showing an increased interest in the affairs of all peoples. They are becoming more and more conscious of being living members of the universal family of mankind.

Reading 2: U.S. Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (1983)21

The Challenge of Peace:

God's Promise and Our Response,

A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops  May 3, 1983

Summary

The Second Vatican Council opened its evaluation of modern warfare with the statement: "The whole human race faces a moment of supreme crisis in its advance toward maturity." We agree with the council's assessment; the crisis of the moment is embodied in the threat which nuclear weapons pose for the world and much that we hold dear in the world. We have seen and felt the effects of the crisis of the nuclear age in the lives of people we serve. Nuclear weaponry has drastically changed the nature of warfare, and the arms race poses a threat to human life and human civilization which is without precedent.

We write this letter from the perspective of Catholic faith. Faith does not insulate us from the daily challenges of life but intensifies our desire to address them precisely in light of the gospel which has come to us in the person of the risen Christ. Through the resources of faith and reason we desire in this letter to provide hope for people in our day and direction toward a world freed of the nuclear threat.

As Catholic bishops we write this letter as an exercise of our teaching ministry. The Catholic tradition on war and peace is a long and complex one; it stretches from the Sermon on the Mount to the statements of Pope John Paul II. We wish to explore and explain the resources of the moral-religious teaching and to apply it to specific questions of our day. In doing this we realize, and we want readers of this letter to recognize, that not all statements in this letter have the same moral authority. At times we state universally binding moral principles found in the teachings of the Church; at other times the pastoral letter makes specific applications, observations and recommendations which allow for diversity of opinion on the part of those who assess the factual data of situations differently. However, we expect Catholics to give our moral judgments serious consideration when they are forming their own views on specific problems…

While this letter is addressed principally to the Catholic community, we want it to make a contribution to the wider public debate in our country on the dangers and dilemmas of the nuclear age. Our contribution will not be primarily technical or political, but we are convinced

that there is no satisfactory answer to the human problems of the nuclear age which fails to consider the moral and religious dimensions of the questions we face…

This letter includes many judgments from the perspective of ethics, politics and strategy needed to speak concretely and correctly to the "moment of supreme crisis" identified by Vatican II. We stress again that readers should be aware, as we have been, of the distinction between our statement of moral principles and of official Church teaching and our application of these to concrete issues. We urge that special care be taken not to use passages out of context; neither should brief portions of this document be cited to support positions it does not intend to convey or which are not truly in accord with the spirit of its teaching. 

In concluding this summary we respond to two key questions often asked about this pastoral letter: Why do we address these matters fraught with such complexity, controversy and passion? We speak as pastors, not politicians. We are teachers, not technicians. We cannot avoid our responsibility to lift up the moral dimensions of the choices before our world and nation. The nuclear age is an era of moral as well as physical danger. We are the first generation since Genesis with the power to threaten the created order. We cannot remain silent in the face of such danger. Why do we address these issues? We are simply trying to live up to the call of Jesus to be peacemakers in our own time and situation. 

What are we saying? Fundamentally, we are saying that the decisions about nuclear weapons are among the most pressing moral questions of our age. While these decisions have obvious military and political aspects, they involve fundamental moral choices. In simple terms, we are saying that good ends (defending one's country, protecting freedom, etc.) cannot justify immoral means (the use of weapons which kill indiscriminately and threaten whole societies). We fear that our world and nation are headed in the wrong direction. More weapons with greater destructive potential are produced every day. More and more nations are seeking to become nuclear powers. In our quest for more and more security we fear we are actually becoming less and less secure… 

Kingdom and History

56. The Christian understanding of history is hopeful and confident but also sober and realistic. "Christian optimism based on the glorious cross of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is no excuse for self-deception. For Christians, peace on earth is always a challenge because of the presence of sin in man's heart."[22] Peace must be built on the basis of justice in a world where the personal and social consequences of sin are evident…

58. Christians are called to live the tension between the vision of the reign of God and its concrete realization in history. The tension is often described in terms of "already but not yet": i.e., we already live in the grace of the kingdom, but it is not yet the completed kingdom. Hence, we are a pilgrim people in a world marked by conflict and injustice. Christ's grace is at

work in the world; his command of love and his call to reconciliation are not purely future ideals but call us to obedience today. 

59. With Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II we are convinced that "peace is possible."[23] At the same time, experience convinces us that "in this world a totally and permanently peaceful human society is unfortunately a utopia, and that ideologies that hold up that prospect as easily attainable are based on hopes that cannot be realized, whatever the reason behind them."[24]

60. This recognition - that peace is possible but never assured and that its possibility must be continually protected and preserved in the face of obstacles and attacks upon it - accounts in large measure for the complexity of Catholic teaching on warfare. In the kingdom of God, peace and justice will be fully realized. Justice is always the foundation of peace. In history, efforts to pursue both peace and justice are at times in tension, and the struggle for justice may threaten certain forms of peace. 

61. It is within this tension of kingdom and history that Catholic teaching has addressed the problem of war. Wars mark the fabric of human history, distort the life of nations today, and, in the form of nuclear weapons, threaten the destruction of the world as we know it and the civilization which has been patiently constructed over centuries. The causes of war are multiple and not easily identified. Christians will find in any violent situation the consequences of sin: not only sinful patterns of domination, oppression or aggression, but the conflict of values and interests which illustrate the limitations of a sinful world. The threat of nuclear war which affects the world today reflects such sinful patterns and conflicts. 

The Nature of Peace

68. The Catholic tradition has always understood the meaning of peace in positive terms. Peace is both a gift of God and a human work. It must be constructed on the basis of central human values: truth, justice, freedom, and love...

 70. As we have already noted, however, the protection of human rights and the preservation of peace are tasks to be accomplished in a world marked by sin and conflict of various kinds. The Church's teaching on war and peace establishes a strong presumption against war which is binding on all; it then examines when this presumption may be overriden, precisely in the name of preserving the kind of peace which protects human dignity and human rights. 

The Presumption against War and the Principle of Legitimate Self-defense

73. The Christian has no choice but to defend peace, properly understood, against aggression. This is an inalienable obligation. It is the how of defending peace which offers moral options. We stress this principle again because we observe so much misunderstanding about both

those who resist bearing arms and those who bear them. Great numbers from both traditions provide examples of exceptional courage, examples the world continues to need. Of the millions of men and women who have served with integrity in the armed forces, many have laid down their lives. Many others serve today throughout the world in the difficult and demanding task of helping to preserve that "peace of a sort" of which the council speaks. We see many deeply sincere individuals who, far from being indifferent or apathetic to world evils, believe strongly in conscience that they are best defending true peace by refusing to bear arms. In some cases they are motivated by their understanding of the gospel and the life and death of Jesus as forbidding all violence. In others, their motivation is simply to give personal example of Christian forbearance as a positive, constructive approach toward loving reconciliation with enemies. In still other cases, they propose or engage in "active non-violence" as programmed resistance to thwart aggression, or to render ineffective any oppression attempted by force of arms. No government, and certainly no Christian, may simply assume that such individuals are mere pawns of conspiratorial forces or guilty of cowardice.

74. Catholic teaching sees these two distinct moral responses as having a complementary relationship, in the sense that both seek to serve the common good. They differ in their perception of how the common good is to be defended most effectively, but both responses testify to the Christian conviction that peace must be pursued and rights defended within moral restraints and in the context of defining other basic human values.

75. In all of this discussion of distinct choices, of course, we are referring to options open to individuals. The council and the popes have stated clearly that governments threatened by armed, unjust aggression must defend their people. This includes defense by armed force if necessary as a last resort. We shall discuss below the conditions and limits imposed on such defense. Even when speaking of individuals, however, the council is careful to preserve the fundamental right of defense. Some choose not to vindicate their rights by armed force and adopt other methods of defense, but they do not lose the right of defense nor may they renounce their obligations to others…

77. None of the above is to suggest, however, that armed force is the only defense against unjust aggression, regardless of circumstances… There must be serious and continuing study and efforts to develop programmed methods for both individuals and nations to defend against unjust aggression without using violence.

78. We believe work to develop non-violent means of fending off aggression and resolving conflict best reflects the call of Jesus both to love and to justice. Indeed, each increase in the potential destructiveness of weapons and therefore of war serves to underline the rightness of the way that Jesus mandated to his followers. But, on the other hand, the fact of aggression, oppression and injustice in our world also serves to legitimate the resort to weapons and armed force in defense of justice. We must recognize the reality of the paradox we face as

Christians living in the context of the world as it presently exists, we must continue to articulate our belief that love is possible and the only real hope for all human relations, and yet accept that force, even deadly force, is sometimes justified and that nations must provide for their defense. It is the mandate of Christians, in the face of this paradox, to strive to resolve it through an even greater commitment to Christ and his message…

79. In light of the framework of Catholic teaching on the nature of peace, the avoidance of war, and the state's right of legitimate defense, we can now spell out certain moral principles within the Catholic tradition which provide guidance for public policy and individual choice

The Just War Criteria

80. The moral theory of the "just war" or "limited war" doctrine begins with the presumption which binds all Christians: we should do no harm to our neighbors; how we treat our enemy is the key test of whether we love our neighbor; and the possibility of taking even one human life is a prospect we should consider in fear and trembling. How is it possible to move from these presumptions to the idea of a justifiable use of lethal force? 

81. Historically and theologically the clearest answer to the question is found in St. Augustine. Augustine was impressed by the fact and the consequences of sin in history - the "not yet" dimension of the kingdom. In his view war was both the result of sin and a tragic remedy for sin in the life of political societies. War arose from disordered ambitions, but it could also be used, in some cases at least, to restrain evil and protect the innocent. The classic case which illustrated his view was the use of lethal force to prevent aggression against innocent victims. Faced with the fact of attack on the innocent, the presumption that we do no harm, even to our enemy, yielded to the command of love understood as the need to restrain an enemy who would injure the innocent.

82. The just-war argument has taken several forms in the history of Catholic theology, but this Augustinian insight is its central premise.[25] In the twentieth century, papal teaching has used the logic of Augustine and Aquinas[26] to articulate a right of self-defense for states in a decentralized international order and to state the criteria for exercising that right. The essential position was stated by Vatican II: "As long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."[27] We have already indicated the centrality of this principle for understanding Catholic teaching about the state and its duties.

83. Just-war teaching has evolved, however, as an effort to prevent war; only if war cannot be rationally avoided, does the teaching then seek to restrict and reduce its horrors. It does this by establishing a set of rigorous conditions which must be met if the decision to go to war is to be morally permissible. Such a decision, especially today, requires extraordinarily strong

reasons for overriding the presumption in favor of peace and against war. This is one significant reason why valid just-war teaching makes provision for conscientious dissent. It is presumed that all sane people prefer peace, never want to initiate war, and accept even the most justifiable defensive war only as a sad necessity. Only the most powerful reasons may be permitted to override such objection. In the words of Pope Pius XII: The Christian will for peace ... is very careful to avoid recourse to the force of arms in the defense of rights which, however legitimate, do not offset the risk of kindling a blaze with all its spiritual and material consequences.[28]

84. The determination of when conditions exist which allow the resort to force in spite of the strong presumption against it is made in light of jus ad bellum criteria. The determination of how even a justified resort to force must be conducted is made in light of the jus in bello criteria. We shall briefly explore the meaning of both.[29]

Jus ad Bellum 

85. Why and when recourse to war is permissible.

86. a) Just Cause: War is permissible only to confront "a real and certain danger," i.e., to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence, and to basic human rights. As both Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII made clear, if war of retribution was ever justifiable, the risks of modern war negate such a claim today.

87. b) Competent Authority: In the Catholic tradition the right to use force has always been joined to the common good; war must be declared by those with responsibility for public order, not by private groups or individuals.

88. The requirement that a decision to go to war must be made by competent authority is particularly important in a democratic society. It needs detailed treatment here since it involves a broad spectrum of related issues. Some of the bitterest divisions of society in our own nation's history, for example, have been evoked over the question of whether or not a president of the United States has acted constitutionally and legally in involving our country in a de facto war, even if - indeed, especially if - war was never formally declared. Equally perplexing problems of conscience can be raised for individuals expected or legally required to go to war even though our duly elected representatives in Congress have, in fact, voted for war.

89. The criterion of competent authority is of further importance in a day when revolutionary war has become commonplace. Historically, the just-war has been open to a "just revolution" position, recognizing that an oppressive government may lose its claim to legitimacy. Insufficient analytical attention has been given to the moral issues of revolutionary warfare. The mere possession of sufficient weaponry, for example, does not legitimize the initiation of

war by "insurgents" against an established government, any more than the government's systematic oppression of its people can be carried out under the doctrine of "national security."

90. While the legitimacy of revolution in some circumstances cannot be denied, just-war teachings must be applied to revolutionary-counterrevolutionary conflicts as to others. The issue of who constitutes competent authority and how such authority is exercised is essential…

92. c) Comparative Justice: Questions concerning the means of waging war today, particularly in view of the destructive potential of weapons, have tended to override questions concerning the comparative justice of the positions of respective adversaries or enemies. In essence: which side is sufficiently "right" in a dispute, and are the values at stake critical enough to override the presumption against war? The question in its most basic form is this: do the rights and values involved justify killing? For whatever the means used, war, by definition, involves violence, destruction, suffering, and death.

93. The category of comparative justice is destined to emphasize the presumption against war which stands at the beginning of just-war teaching. In a world of sovereign states recognizing neither a common moral authority nor a central political authority, comparative justice stresses that no state should act on the basis that it has "absolute justice" on its side. Every party to a conflict should acknowledge the limits of its "just cause" and the consequent requirement to use only limited means in pursuit of its objectives. Far from legitimizing a crusade mentality, comparative justice is designed to relativize absolute claims and to restrain the use of force even in a "justified" conflict.[30]

94. Given techniques of propaganda and the ease with which nations and individuals either assume or delude themselves into believing that God or right is clearly on their side, the test of comparative justice may be extremely difficult to apply. Clearly however, this is not the case in every instance of war. Blatant aggression from without and subversion from within are often enough readily identifiable by all reasonably fair-minded people.

95. d) Right Intention: Right intention is related to just cause -war can be legitimately intended only for the reasons set forth above as a just cause. During the conflict, right intention means pursuit of peace and reconciliation, including avoiding unnecessarily destructive acts or imposing unreasonable conditions (e.g., unconditional surrender).

96. e) Last Resort. For resort to war to be justified, all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted. There are formidable problems in this requirement. No international organization currently in existence has exercised sufficient internationally recognized authority to be able either to mediate effectively in most cases or to prevent conflict by the intervention of United Nations or other peacekeeping forces. Furthermore, there is a tendency for nations or peoples

which perceive conflict between or among other nations as advantageous to themselves to attempt to prevent a peaceful settlement rather than advance it.

97. We regret the apparent unwillingness of some to see in the United Nations organization the potential for world order which exists and to encourage its development…

98. f) Probability of Success. This is a difficult criterion to apply, but its purpose is to prevent irrational resort to force or hopeless resistance when the outcome of either will clearly be disproportionate or futile. The determination includes a recognition that at times defense of key values, even against great odds, may be a "proportionate" witness.

99. g) Proportionality: In terms of the jus ad bellum criteria, proportionality means that the damage to be inflicted and the costs incurred by war must be proportionate to the good expected by taking up arms. Nor should judgments concerning proportionality be limited to the temporal order without regard to a spiritual dimension in terms of "damage," "cost," and "the good expected." In today's interdependent world even a local conflict can affect people everywhere; this is particularly the case when the nuclear powers are involved. Hence a nation cannot justly go to war today without considering the effect of its action on others and on the international community.

100. This principle of proportionality applies throughout the conduct of the war as well as to the decision to begin warfare. During the Vietnam war our bishops' conference ultimately concluded that the conflict had reached such a level of devastation to the adversary and damage to our own society that continuing it could not be justified.[31]

Jus in Bello

101. Even when the stringent conditions which justify resort to war are met, the conduct of war (i.e., strategy, tactics, and individual actions) remains subject to continuous scrutiny in light of two principles which have special significance today precisely because of the destructive capability of modern technological warfare. These principles are proportionality and discrimination. In discussing them here, we shall apply them to the question of jus ad bellum as well as jus in bello; for today it becomes increasingly difficult to make a decision to use any kind of armed force, however limited initially in intention and in the destructive power of the weapons employed, without facing at least the possibility of escalation to broader, or even total, war and to the use of weapons of horrendous destructive potential…

104. Moreover, the lives of innocent persons may never be taken directly, regardless of the purpose alleged for doing so. To wage truly "total" war is by definition to take huge numbers of innocent lives. Just response to aggression must be discriminate; it must be directed

against unjust aggressors, not against innocent people caught up in a war not of their making…

105. When confronting choices among specific military options, the question asked by proportionalityis: once we take into account not only the military advantages that will be achieved by using this means but also all the harms reasonably expected to follow from using it, can its use still be justified? We know, of course, that no end can justify means evil in themselves, such as the executing of hostages or the targeting of non-combatants. Nonetheless, even if the means adopted is not evil in itself, it is necessary to take into account the probable harms that will result from using it and the justice of accepting those harms…

107. Finally, another set of questions concerns the interpretation of the principle of discrimination. The principle prohibits directly intended attacks on non-combatants and non-military targets. It raises a series of questions about the term "intentional," the category of "non-combatant," and the meaning of “military."

108. … It is not always easy to determine who is directly involved in a "war effort" or to what degree. Plainly, though, not even by the broadest definition can one rationally consider combatants entire classes of human beings such as schoolchildren, hospital patients, the elderly, the ill, the average industrial worker producing goods not directly related to military purposes, farmers, and many others. They may never be directly attacked.

109. Direct attacks on military targets involve similar complexities. Which targets are "military" ones and which are not? To what degree, for instance, does the use (by either revolutionaries or regular military forces) of a village or housing in a civilian populated area invite attack? What of a munitions factory in the heart of a city? Who is directly responsible for the deaths of noncombatants should the attack be carried out? To revert to the question raised earlier, how many deaths of non-combatants are "tolerable" as a result of indirect attacks - attacks directed against combat forces and military targets, which nevertheless kill non-combatants at the same time?

110. These two principles, in all their complexity, must be applied to the range of weapons - conventional, nuclear, biological, and chemical - with which nations are armed today.

The Value of Non-violence

111. Moved by the example of Jesus' life and by his teaching, some Christians have from the earliest days of the Church committed themselves to a nonviolent lifestyle.[32] Some understood the gospel of Jesus to prohibit all killing. Some affirmed the use of prayer and other spiritual methods as means of responding to enmity and hostility…

116. The vision of Christian non-violence is not passive about injustice and the defense of the rights of others; it rather affirms and exemplifies what it means to resist injustice through non-violent methods.

117. In the twentieth century, prescinding from the non-Christian witness of a Mahatma Gandhi and its worldwide impact, the nonviolent witness of such figures as Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King has had profound impact upon the life of the Church in the United States…

119. As Catholic bishops it is incumbent upon us to stress to our own community and to the wider society the significance of this support for a pacifist option for individuals..

120. …While the just-war teaching has clearly been in possession for the past 1,500 years of Catholic thought, the "new moment" in which we find ourselves sees the just-war teaching and non-violence as distinct but interdependent methods of evaluating warfare. They diverge on some specific conclusions, but they share a common presumption against the use of force as a means of settling disputes.

121. Both find their roots in the Christian theological tradition; each contributes to the full moral vision we need in pursuit of a human peace. We believe the two perspectives support and complement one another, each preserving the other from distortion. Finally, in an age of technological warfare, analysis from the viewpoint of non-violence and analysis from the viewpoint of the just-war teaching often converge and agree in their opposition to methods of warfare which are in fact indistinguishable from total warfare.

II. War and Peace in the Modern World: Problems and Principles

122. Both the just-war teaching and non-violence are confronted with a unique challenge by nuclear warfare. This must be the starting point of any further moral reflection: nuclear weapons particularly and nuclear warfare as it is planned today, raise new moral questions. No previously conceived moral position escapes the fundamental confrontation posed by contemporary nuclear strategy…

C. The Use of Nuclear Weapons

1. Counter-Population Warfare

147. Under no circumstances may nuclear weapons or other instruments of mass slaughter be used for the purpose of destroying population centers or other predominantly civilian targets...

148. Retaliatory action whether nuclear or conventional which would indiscriminately take many wholly innocent lives, lives of people who are in no way responsible for reckless actions

of their government, must also be condemned. This condemnation, in our judgment, applies even to the retaliatory use of weapons striking enemy cities after our own have already been struck. No Christian can rightfully carry out orders or policies deliberately aimed at killing noncombatants.[33]

149. We make this judgment at the beginning of our treatment of nuclear strategy precisely because the defense of the principle of noncombatant immunity is so important for an ethic of war and because the nuclear age has posed such extreme problems for the principle. Later in this letter we shall discuss specific aspects of U.S. policy in light of this principle and in light of recent U.S. policy statements stressing the determination not to target directly or strike directly against civilian populations. Our concern about protecting the moral value of noncombatant immunity, however, requires that we make a clear reassertion of the principle our first word on this matter.

  2. The Initiation of Nuclear War

150. We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale, can be morally justified. Non-nuclear attacks by another state must be resisted by other than nuclear means. Therefore, a serious moral obligation exists to develop non-nuclear defensive strategies as rapidly as possible…

153. This judgment affirms that the willingness to initiate nuclear war entails a distinct, weighty moral responsibility; it involves transgressing a fragile barrier - political, psychological, and moral - which has been constructed since 1945. We express repeatedly in this letter our extreme skepticism about the prospects for controlling a nuclear exchange, however limited the first use might be. Precisely because of this skepticism, we judge resort to nuclear weapons to counter a conventional attack to be morally unjustifiable.[34] Consequently we seek to reinforce the barrier against any use of nuclear weapons. Our support of a "no first use" policy must be seen in this light.

154. At the same time we recognize the responsibility the United States has had and continues to have in assisting allied nations in their defense against either a conventional or a nuclear attack Especially in the European theater, the deterrence of a nuclear attack may require nuclear weapons for a time, even though their possession and deployment must be subject to rigid restrictions.

155. The need to defend against a conventional attack in Europe imposes the political and moral burden of developing adequate, alternative modes of defense to prevent reliance on nuclear weapons. Even with the best coordinated effort - hardly likely in view of contemporary political division on this question - development of an alternative defense position will still take time.

156. In the interim, deterrence against a conventional attack relies upon two factors: the not inconsiderable conventional forces at the disposal of NATO and the recognition by a potential attacker that the outbreak of large - scale conventional war could escalate to the nuclear level through accident or miscalculation by either side. We are aware that NATO's refusal to adopt a "no first use" pledge is to some extent linked to the deterrent effect of this inherent ambiguity. Nonetheless, in light of the probable effects of initiating nuclear war, we urge NATO to move rapidly toward the adoption of a "no first use" policy, but doing so in tandem with development of an adequate alternative defense posture.

3. Limited Nuclear War

157. It would be possible to agree with our first two conclusions and still not be sure about retaliatory use of nuclear weapons in what is called a "limited exchange." The issue at stake is the real as opposed to the theoretical possibility of a "limited nuclear exchange."

158. We recognize that the policy debate on this question is inconclusive and that all participants are left with hypothetical projections about probable reactions in a nuclear exchange. While not trying to adjudicate the technical debate, we are aware of it and wish to raise a series of questions which challenge the actual meaning of "limited" in this discussion.

a) Would leaders have sufficient information to know what is happening in a nuclear exchange?

b) Would they be able under the conditions of stress, time pressures, and fragmentary information to make the extraordinarily precise decision needed to keep the exchange limited if this were technically possible?

c) Would military commanders be able, in the midst of the destruction and confusion of a nuclear exchange, to maintain a policy of "discriminate targeting"? Can this be done in modern warfare, waged across great distances by aircraft and missiles?

d) Given the accidents we know about in peacetime conditions, what assurances are there that computer errors could be avoided in the midst of a nuclear exchange?

e) Would not the casualties, even in a war defined as limited by strategists, still run in the millions?

f) How "limited" would be the long-term effects of radiation, famine, social fragmentation, and economic dislocation?

159. Unless these questions can be answered satisfactorily, we will continue to be highly skeptical about the real meaning of "limited." One of the criteria of the just-war tradition is a

reasonable hope of success in bringing about justice and peace. We must ask whether such a reasonable hope can exist once nuclear weapons have been exchanged. The burden of proof remains on those who assert that meaningful limitation is possible.

160. A nuclear response to either conventional or nuclear attack can cause destruction which goes far beyond "legitimate defense." Such use of nuclear weapons would not be justified.

 Deterrence in Principle and Practice

162. The moral challenge posed by nuclear weapons is not exhausted by an analysis of their possible uses. Much of the political and moral debate of the nuclear age has concerned the strategy of deterrence. Deterrence is at the heart of the U.S. - Soviet relationship, currently the most dangerous dimension of the nuclear arms race…

Moral Principles and Policy Choices

178. Targeting doctrine raises significant moral questions because it is a significant determinant of what would occur if nuclear weapons were ever to be used. Although we acknowledge the need for deterrence, not all forms of deterrence are morally acceptable. There are moral limits to deterrence policy as well as to policy regarding use. Specifically, it is not morally acceptable to intend to kill the innocent as part of a strategy of deterring nuclear war…

 184. A second issue of concern to us is the relationship of deterrence doctrine to war-fighting strategies. We are aware of the argument that war-fighting capabilities enhance the credibility of the deterrent, particularly the strategy of extended deterrence. But the development of such capabilities raises other strategic and moral questions. The relationship of war-fighting capabilities and targeting doctrine exemplifies the difficult choices in this area of policy. Targeting civilian populations would violate the principle of discrimination - one of the central moral principles of a Christian ethic of war. But "counterforce targeting," while preferable from the perspective of protecting civilians, is often joined with a declaratory policy which conveys the notion that nuclear war is subject to precise rational and moral limits. We have already expressed our severe doubts about such a concept. Furthermore, a purely counterforce strategy may seem to threaten the viability of other nations' retaliatory forces making deterrence unstable in a crisis and war more likely… 

188. On the basis of these criteria we wish now to make some specific evaluations:

1) If nuclear deterrence exists only to prevent the use of nuclear weapons by others, then proposals to go beyond this to planning for prolonged periods of repeated nuclear strikes and counterstrikes, or "prevailing" in nuclear war, are not acceptable. They encourage notions that

nuclear war can be engaged in with tolerable human and moral consequences. Rather, we must continually say "no" to the idea of nuclear war.

2) If nuclear deterrence is our goal, "sufficiency" to deter is an adequate strategy; the quest for nuclear superiority must be rejected. 

3) Nuclear deterrence should be used as a step on the way toward progressive disarmament. Each proposed addition to our strategic system or change in strategic doctrine must be assessed precisely in light of whether it will render steps toward "progressive disarmament" more or less likely. 

189. Moreover, these criteria provide us with the means to make some judgments and recommendations about the recent direction of U.S. strategic policy. Progress toward a world freed of dependence on nuclear deterrence must be carefully carried out. But it must not be delayed. There is an urgent moral and political responsibility to use the "peace of a sort" we have as a framework to move toward authentic peace through nuclear arms control, reductions, and disarmament. Of primary importance in this process is the need to prevent the development and deployment of destabilizing weapons systems on either side; a second requirement is to insure that the more sophisticated command and control systems do not become mere hair triggers for automatic launch on warning; a third is the need to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the international system. 

190. In light of these general judgments we oppose some specific proposals in respect to our present deterrence posture: 

1) The addition of weapons which are likely to be vulnerable to attack, yet also possess a "prompt hard-target kill" capability that threatens to make the other side's retaliatory forces vulnerable. Such weapons may seem to be useful primarily in a first strike[35]; we resist such weapons for this reason and we oppose Soviet deployment of such weapons which generate fear of a first strike against U.S. forces.

2) The willingness to foster strategic planning which seeks a nuclear war-fighting capability that goes beyond the limited function of deterrence outlined in this letter.

3) Proposals which have the effect of lowering the nuclear threshold and blurring the difference between nuclear and conventional weapons.

191. In support of the concept of "sufficiency" as an adequate deterrent, and in light of the present size and composition of both the U.S. and Soviet strategic arsenals, we recommend:

1) Support for immediate, bilateral, verifiable agreements to halt the testing, production, and deployment of new nuclear weapons systems.[36]

2) Support for negotiated bilateral deep cuts in the arsenals of both superpowers, particularly those weapons systems which have destabilizing characteristics; U.S. proposals like those for START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) and INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) negotiations in Geneva are said to be designed to achieve deep cuts[37]; our hope is that they will be pursued in a manner which will realize these goals.

3) Support for early and successful conclusion of negotiations of a comprehensive test ban treaty.

4) Removal by all parties of short-range nuclear weapons which multiply dangers disproportionate to their deterrent value.

5) Removal by all parties of nuclear weapons from areas where they are likely to be overrun in the early stages of war, thus forcing rapid and uncontrollable decisions on their use.

6) Strengthening of command and control over nuclear weapons to prevent inadvertent and unauthorized use.

192. These judgments are meant to exemplify how a lack of unequivocal condemnation of deterrence is meant only to be an attempt to acknowledge the role attributed to deterrence, but not to support its extension beyond the limited purpose discussed above. Some have urged us to condemn all aspects of nuclear deterrence. This urging has been based on a variety of reasons, but has emphasized particularly the high and terrible risks that either deliberate use or accidental detonation of nuclear weapons could quickly escalate to something utterly disproportionate to any acceptable moral purpose. That determination requires highly technical judgments about hypothetical events. Although reasons exist which move some to condemn reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence, we have not reached this conclusion for the reasons outlined in this letter.

193. Nevertheless, there must be no misunderstanding of our profound skepticism about the moral acceptability of any use of nuclear weapons. It is obvious that the use of any weapons which violate the principle of discrimination merits unequivocal condemnation.

Shaping a Peaceful World

234. Preventing nuclear war is a moral imperative; but the avoidance of war, nuclear or conventional, is not a sufficient conception of international relations today. Nor does it exhaust the content of Catholic teaching. Both the political needs and the moral challenge of our time require a positive conception of peace, based on a vision of a just world order…

World Order in Catholic Teaching

  235. This positive conception of peace sees it as the fruit of order; order, in turn, is shaped by the values of justice, truth, freedom and love. The basis of this teaching is found in sacred scripture, St. Augustine and St. Thomas. It has found contemporary expression and development in papal teaching of this century. The popes of the nuclear age, from Pius XII through John Paul II have affirmed pursuit of international order as the way to banish the scourge of war from human affairs.[38]

236. The fundamental premise of world order in Catholic teaching is a theological truth: the unity of the human family rooted in common creation, destined for the kingdom, and united by moral bonds of rights and duties. This basic truth about the unity of the human family pervades the entire teaching on war and peace: for the pacifist position it is one of the reasons why life cannot be taken, while for the just-war position, even in a justified conflict bonds of responsibility remain in spite of the conflict. 

237. Catholic teaching recognizes that in modern history, at least since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the international community has been governed by nation-states. Catholic moral theology, as expressed for example in chapters 2 and 3 of Peace on Earth, accords a real but relative moral value to sovereign states. The value is real because of the functions states fulfill as sources of order and authority in the political community; it is relative because boundaries of the sovereign state do not dissolve the deeper relationships of responsibility existing in the human community. Just as within nations the moral fabric of society is described in Catholic teaching in terms of reciprocal rights and duties-between individuals, and then between the individual and the state - so in the international community Peace on Earth defines the rights and duties which exist among states.[1]

238. In the past twenty years Catholic teaching has become increasingly specific about the content of these international rights and duties. In 1963, Peace on Earth sketched the political and legal order among states. In 1966, The Development of Peoples elaborated an order of economic rights and duties. In 1979, Pope John Paul II articulated the human rights basis of international relations in his Address to the United Nations General Assembly. 

239. These documents and others which build upon them, outlined a moral order of international relations, i.e., how the international community should be organized. At the same time this teaching has been sensitive to the actual pattern of relations prevailing among states. While not ignoring present geopolitical realities, one of the primary functions of Catholic teaching on world order has been to point the way toward a more integrated international system. 

240. In analyzing this path toward world order, the category increasingly used in Catholic moral teaching (and, more recently, in the social sciences also) is the interdependence of the world today, The theological principle of unity has always affirmed a human interdependence;

but today this bond is complemented by the growing political and economic interdependence of the world, manifested in a whole range of international issues.[39]

241. An important element missing from world order today is a properly constituted political authority with the capacity to shape our material interdependence in the direction of moral interdependence. Pope John XXIII stated the case in the following way: 

Today the universal common good poses problems of world-wide dimensions, which cannot be adequately tackled or solved except by the efforts of public authority endowed with a wideness of powers, structure and means of the same proportions: that is, of public authority which is in a position to operate in an effective manner on a world-wide basis. The moral order itself, therefore, demands that such a form of public authority be established.[40]

242. Just as the nation-state was a step in the evolution of government at a time when expanding trade and new weapons technologies made the feudal system inadequate to manage conflicts and provide security, so we are now entering an era of new, global interdependencies requiring global systems of governance to manage the resulting conflicts and ensure our common security. Major global problems such as worldwide inflation, trade and payments deficits, competition over scarce resources, hunger, widespread unemployment, global environmental dangers, the growing power of transnational corporations, and the threat of international financial collapse, as well as the danger of world war resulting from these growing tensions -cannot be remedied by a single nation-state approach. They shall require the concerted effort of the whole world community. As we shall indicate below, the United Nations should be particularly considered in this effort. 

243. In the nuclear age, it is in the regulation of interstate conflicts and ultimately the replacement of military by negotiated solutions that the supreme importance and necessity of a moral as well as a political concept of the international common good can be grasped. The absence of adequate structures for addressing these issues places even greater responsibility on the policies of individual states. By a mix of political vision and moral wisdom, states are called to interpret the national interest in light of the larger global interest. 

244. We are living in a global age with problems and conflicts on a global scale. Either we shall learn to resolve these problems together, or we shall destroy one another. Mutual security and survival require a new vision of the world as one interdependent planet. We have rights and duties not only within our diverse national communities but within the larger world community. 

References[1] Downloaded from http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html.

[2] Ps. 8:1.

[3] Ps. 103:24.

[4] Cf. Gen. 1:26.

[5] Ps. 8:5-6.

[6] Rom. 2:15.

[7] Cf. Ps. 18:8-11.

[8] Rom. 13:1-6.

[9] In Epist. ad Rom. c. 13, vv. 1-2, homil. XXIII; PG 60. 615.

[10] Leo XIII's encyclical epistle Immortale Dei, Acta Leonis XIII, V, 1885, p. 120.

[11] Cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1942, AAS 35 (1943) 13, and Leo XIII's encyclical epistle Immortale Dei, Acta Leonis XIII, V, 1885, p. 120.

[12] Cf. Pius XII's encyclical letterSummi Pontificatus, AAS 31 (1939) 412-453.

[13] Cf. Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, AAS 29 (1937) 159, and his encyclical letter Divini Redemptoris, AAS 29 (1937) 65-106.

[14] Leo XIII's encyclical letter Immortale Dei. "Acta Leonis XIII  , V, 1885, p. 121.

[15] Cf. Leo XIII's encyclical letter Rerum novarum, Acta Leonis XIII, XI, 1891, pp. 133-134.

[16] Cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, Pentecost, June 1, 1941, AAS 33 (1941) 200.

[17] Cf. Pius XI's encyclical letter Mit brennender Sorge, AAS 29 (1937) 159, and his encyclical Divini Redemptoris, AAS 29 (1937) 79; and Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1942, AAS 35 (1943) 9-24.

[18] Cf. Pius XI's encyclical letter Divini Redemptoris  , AAS 29 (1937) 81, and Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1942, AAS 35 (1943) 9-24.

[19] De civitate Dei, lib. IV, c. 4; PL 41. 115; cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1939, AAS 32 (1940) 5-13.

[20] Cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1941, AAS 34 (1942) 17, and Benedict XV's exhortation to the rulers of the belligerent powers, August 1, 1917, AAS 9 (1917) 41.

[21] Cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, August 24, 1939, AAS 31 (1939) 334.

[22] Cf. Pius XII's address to Young Members of Italian Catholic Action, Rome, Sept. 12, 1948, AAS 40 (1948) 412.

[23] Downloaded from http://www.usccb.org/upload/challenge-peace-gods-promise-our-response-1983.pdf.

[24] John Paul II, "World Day of Peace Message 1982," 12, Origins 11 (1982):477.

[25] John Paul II, "Message U.N. Special Session 1982," 13, Pope Paul VI, "World Day of Peace Message 1973."

[26] John Paul II, "World Day of Peace Message 1982," 12, cited, p. 478.

[27] Augustine called it a Manichaean heresy to assert that war is intrinsically evil and contrary to Christian charity, and stated: "War and conquest are a sad necessity in the eyes of men of principle, yet it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men" (The City of God, Book IV, C. 15). Representative surveys of the history and theology of the just-war tradition include: F. H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (New York: 1975); P. Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, N.C.: 1961); P. Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: 1968); James T. Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War (Princeton: 1975), Just-War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton: 1981); L. B. Walters, Five Classic Just-War Theories (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1971); W. O'Brien, War and/or Survival (New York: 1969), The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: 1981); J. C. Murray, "Remarks on the Moral Problem of War," Theological Studies 20 (1959):40-61.

[28] Aquinas treats the question of war in the Summa Theologica, II-IIae q. 40; also cf. II-IIae, q. 64. 

[29] Pastoral Constitution, no. 79.

[30] Pius XII, "Christmas Message," 1948.

[31] For an analysis of the content and relationship of these principles cf.: R Potter, "The Moral Logic of War," McCormick Quarterly 23 (1970):203-33; J. Childress, "Just War Criteria," in T. Shannon, ed., War or Peace, The Search for New Answers (New York: 1980).

[32] James T. Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War, cited; W. O'Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War, cited, pp. 13-30; W. Vanderpol, La doctrine scolastique du droit de guerre, P. 387ff; J. C. Murray, "Theology and Modern Warfare," in W. J. Nagel, ed., Morality and Modern Warfare, P. 80ff.

[33] National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Resolution on Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C.: 1971).

[34] Representative authors in the tradition of Christian pacifism and non-violence include: R. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace (Abington: 1960), chs. 4, 5, 10; J. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus(Grand Rapids: 1972), Nevertheless: Varieties of Religious Pacifism (Scottsdale: 1971); T. Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice (Notre Dame: 1968); G. Zahn, War, Conscience and Dissent (New York: 1967); E. Egan, "The Beatitudes: Works of Mercy and Pacifism," in T. Shannon, ed., War or Peace: The Search for New Answers (New York: 1980), pp. 169-187; J. Fahey, "The Catholic Church and the Arms Race," Worldview 22 ( 1979):3841; J. Douglass, The Nonviolent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace (New York: 1966).

[35] Pastoral Constitution, 80.

[36] Our conclusions and judgments in this area although based on careful study and reflection of the application of moral principles do not have, of course, the same force as the principles themselves and therefore allow for different opinions, as the Summary makes clear.

[37] Several experts in strategic theory would place both the MX missile and Pershing II missiles in this category.

[38] In each of the successive drafts of this letter we have tried to state a central moral imperative: that the arms race should be stopped and disarmament begun. The implementation of this imperative is open to a wide variety of approaches. Hence we have chosen our own language in this Paragraph, not wanting either to be identified with one specific political initiative or to have our words used against specific political measures.

[39] Cf. President Reagan's "Speech to the National Press Club" (November 18, 1981) and "Address at Eureka College" (May 9, 1982), Department of State, Current Policy  no. 316 and 387.

[40] Cf. V. Yzermans, ed. Major Addresses Of Pius XII, 2 Vols. (St. Paul: 1961) and J. Gremillion, The Gospel Of Peace and Justice, cited.

[41] Cf. John XXIII, Peace on Earth (1963), esp. 80-145.

[42] A sampling of the policy problems and possibilities posed by interdependence can be found in: R. O. Keohane and J. S. Nye, Jr., Power and Interdependence (Boston: 1917); S. Hoffmann, Primacy or World Order (New York: 1978); The Overseas Development Council, The U.S. and World Developments 1979; 1980; 1982 (Washington, D.C.).

[43] John XXIII, Peace on Earth  (1963), 137.

Exercise 13 Grid – *use Grid for exercise 4*

Chapter FourteenConclusionThis chapter completes the course. There is no reading at the end of this chapter. There is one exercise to submit, your Final Exercise, which is to be 400 words long. You have completed twelve exercises and an essay and have placed thirteen dots (with names) on the grid representing the location that you have given the thirteen subjects in your reading exercises. You may have moved some thinkers in response to feedback on your reading exercises. Scan your grid and include it with your Final Exercise. The final exercise is 400 words describing the distribution. What conclusions can be reached as regards Christian attitudes towards political violence and political authority over the past 2000 years? Can you discern distinct strands of thought on politics and violence in the Christian tradition (represented by clusters on the grid or empty quadrants)? Have there been developments over time?

This course has followed one strand in the history of political thought, namely, Christian thought on political violence. In doing so it has examined material that is relevant to

answering a wide variety of questions:

a)    What are the values that we bring to politics?   

b)    What are the Christian attitudes to political authority and political violence?

c)     What makes Westerners Westerners?

d)    What issues does war pose for morality?

e)    How do religion and politics affect each other?

f)     How did the Just War principles come to be?

The material examined has been the writings of Christian thinkers over 2000 years (mostly in translation as the majority of the works were written in Latin). We have looked at these works in order to gain an understanding of the concerns of these major figures in Christian thought and the approach they took to political issues. The focus has been on their writings as we wished to let them speak for themselves as much as possible. However a conceptual framework was applied to aid understanding of their attitudes to political authority and violence. A grid was constructed using two spectra of views on political authority and political violence, with nine positions on the former and eleven on the latter. Were these labels useful? Did they help to highlight similarities and differences in the views of the Christian thinkers? Or did they fail to capture the essence of the writers’ concerns, forcing them into categories they did not fit?

Clear stands of thought can be distinguished. The three most important Christian thinkers of the years 150-1500AD were Tertullian, Augustine and Aquinas; the three most important Christian thinkers in the US debate over war in the nuclear age were Reinhold Niebuhr, John Yoder and the US Catholic bishops. To a great extent, Niebuhr explains in modern terms the approach of St Augustine (based on original sin and the consequent need for coerced order) whereas Yoder shows what Tertullian means (an obedience to God regardless of political or historical consequences) and the US Bishops rely very much on Aquinas (and his key concepts of natural law and the common good). Although these three strands have been important in the history of Christian attitudes to political authority and violence, there has been considerable variety within each. Reinhold Niebuhr is neo-Augustinian but his attitude to political authority (and to the good that it can achieve in society) is markedly more positive than that of Augustine or Luther. John Yoder is a Christian pacifist but how similar is his pacifism to that of Tertullian or Origen? Is it the same pacifism that runs through 2000 years of Christianity or have very different stances on violence been promoted by Tertullian, Origen, Barclay, Tolstoy, and Yoder? The natural law approach to politics used by the US Bishops has evolved since Aquinas and Grotius. Has the Catholic Church been consistent in its position on politics and violence or is its stance in the age of nuclear weapons fundamentally different from that of previous centuries? 

Missing from this course is the issue of terrorism. Among the most pressing issues of political violence and state authority facing the world today is the threat of terrorism from religiously-inspired groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc., but this course has not studied any Christian response to the problem. Although any Christian thinker will bring his or her own concerns and concepts to the issue, this course has studied the theoretical foundations on which any such Christian stance on terrorism would probably be built. The three distinctively Christian approaches to political authority and violence of apolitical pacifism, Augustinian realism and

the Catholic natural law approach will yield distinctive responses to the threat of Islamist terrorism. Broadly, we can expect an Augustinian realist to focus on the need for coerced order in the face of the threat from human sinfulness; the natural law approach will stress the importance and naturalness of human community (at many levels including the global) and the need for community to be regulated (by law but also by force); a Christian pacifist will refuse to wage war or maybe even to use force.

Thank you for doing this course!

There is one exercise to submit, your Final Exercise, which is to be 400 words long. There is no reading. Instead consult your grid. You have completed twelve exercises and an essay and should now have thirteen dots (with names) on the grid representing the location that you have given the thirteen subjects in your reading exercises. Each thinker has been placed with regard to their attitude to political authority and their attitude to political violence (you may have moved some thinkers in response to feedback on your reading exercises). For your final exercise describe the distribution in 400 words. Scan your grid and include it with your Final Exercise. What general conclusions can be reached as regards Christian attitudes towards political violence and political authority over the past 2000 years? Can you discern strands of thought on politics and violence in the Christian tradition (represented by clusters on the grid or empty quadrants)? Have there been developments over time?

Final ExerciseWhen you have completed twelve exercises and an essay, you will have placed thirteen dots (with names) on the grid representing the location that you have given the thirteen thinkers in your reading exercises. Scan your grid and include it with your final exercise. In 400 words, describe the distribution. What does the grid tell you? What conclusion can be reached as regards Christian attitudes towards political violence and political authority over the past 2000 years? Are there distinct strands of thought on politics and violence in the Christian traditions?