Contra Arguments for War

The following are various arguments for necessary killing, and rebuttals for each.

Argument 1: We have a right and even responsibility to take the lives of those who have unjustly taken the lives of others.

The use of the pronoun “we” is here applied to what governments should do. The issue for me is what the Christian should do in going “beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (lawyers… and by extension, the world in general).” This argument is therefore irrelevant because it is a mere validation of the rights of nations to prosecute evil without reference to God or His sovereign timing in history. And this independence is based on the premise that national authority is delegated by God rather than merely permitted by God. My concern is whether or not the Church is to respond differently to evil than the state responds to it.

Argument 2: Only victims can offer mercy. God can offer mercy, and does so for eternal salvation, but He does not take away temporal punishments. We can offer mercy, but only when we are personally victimized. Mercy does not set aside the general axiom that murderers have "forfeited their right to life."

The first thing to say here is that this is true if we are meant only to offer "our" mercy at "our" convenience. But what if we are to proclaim God's mercy in Christ universally? That seems to change things a bit. The NT seems to indicate not merely that God dispenses mercy at his pleasure, but that He asks us to cooperate with His act to dispense mercy. We are to follow his lead.

Also, some crimes are group crimes. What is one to do then? The argument here seems to indicate that there is no reason the early Christians needed to accept persecution. Maybe "I" would have to accept it, but not "we." I can defend "we" but not "I." I can't forgive the Romans for what they are doing to another Christian. Indeed, there would be no situation in which a Christian would need to accept any level of persecution, because, of course, the person who persecutes another for his religion has also “forfeited his right to life.” If the police force has the moral requirement to defend its citizens against religious persecution, why wouldn’t the Christian have the same requirement? Why should he receive any violence as a martyr? They had a moral responsibility to act in defense of their fellow Christians and they failed. They were fools and cowards, not heroes.

And another angle: Is it not true that any personal assault is an assault against humanity in general? Is it true that the man who attacks me because I'm a Christian only threatens me? How long before he moves on to another Christian? Can I "forgive" this man for what he will most likely do to other "Christians?" So, even in this case of personal victimization, it can reasonably be argued that I must respond to personal violence with force, because personal violence inevitably turns into corporate violence, and it is my responsibility to defend others. And so Jesus' injunctions about "personal forgiveness" and "personal non-violence" turn out to be nothing more than pretty, but dreadfully impractical, words easily explained away.

The argument here essentially turns mercy and forgiveness into an abstract forensic matter touching on legal status and ultimate eternal destiny, and not how God has pledged to treat us in His mercy. In effect we can forgive and still pursue the just reckoning for sins. But what on earth can forgiveness mean if it does not mean that we give up the right to punish the other for his sins? If we can forgive and retain the right to punish for sins, then such an understanding is wholly consistent with the Catholic notion of salvation and not the Protestant view.

Hypothetical: What if some un-named person commits a murder against your family and through the long course of grief you learn to forgive this man. After death you meet the murderer in heaven. You learn that he somehow became a believer but before he could seek reconciliation for his crime against you he died. How do things stand? One, you have forgiven this man; and two, he has become a Christian without being punished for the murder he committed. Doesn’t he deserve to be punished? What if the victim still desires a just punishment, because he can forgive and still seek just punishments, correct? If it had been discovered on earth prior to his death, he would have been punished and he would still be “saved.” As it now stands, he is “saved” but is not punished. Is there not something missing in the justice this man should receive? And on what basis should he not be punished in heaven (or purgatory) according to the argument contained here?

Argument 3: Christian pacifists sit around and do nothing about evil in the world because they are forgiving everybody.

This is a typical oversimplification. No Christian pacifist advocates doing nothing about evil. We simply abandon the notion that we are to conduct our lives according to lex talliones. We are called to go beyond lex talliones in addressing evil in the world because Christ has fulfilled the demands of lex talliones. To say that we advocate doing nothing about evil is equal to suggesting that God in Christ is doing nothing about evil because he gave up the option of force.

Argument 4: Pacifists think Jesus developed a “new ethic” in setting aside the option of killing.

The Martyr Ideal would not suggest that Jesus promotes a “new ethic.” It is still true that all “capital offenders” have forfeited their right to life, at least in principle, and that lex talliones is still the foundation of law, but does God have the right to determine the nature and boundaries of his mercy over against the general rule that all sinners have forfeited the right to life? Why not just say that in Christ God has already fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law and is going beyond simple justice to make a larger demonstration of mercy in the cross, and further that the Christian community is uniquely called to proclaim this mercy universally? Of course no government is interested in proclaiming mercy, but that just proves how out of touch governments are with the gospel, not how out of touch the gospel is with governments.

Argument 5: There is a general principle that killing unjustly causes one to “forfeit one’s right to life.”

Reverse the argument here: Did the children of the Canaanites commit capital crimes, as discussed here, deserving of death? Or consider the following syllogism:

1. The right to kill is based on the natural law principle that one forfeits his “right to life” when committing a capital crime (murder in general… Gen. 9).
2. If this is a natural law principle, it is applicable at all times, places, etc.
3. Genocide deprives people of life that have not murdered (babies, women, etc).
4. Therefore, God himself doesn’t uphold natural law principle.

The only way out of this is to say that God can determine when there is to be an “exception” to the principle He himself established for us to use; lets say a more "merciful" response to the evils in the world. In other words, He can say when the boundaries around capital offenses should be tightened or loosened (after all, all sins are deserving of death to God, yes?). But of course if He can do that in the OT era, He can do it in the NT era, and one has a strong argument for a wider demonstration of mercy in the cross and in the Christian community in the NT era.

Argument 6: When Jesus says, “turn the other cheek,” he speaks of personal insult only and not of violence that can lead to death.

Jesus doesn’t just say “turn the other cheek.” He also says, “love enemies,” “do good to enemies,” “do not resist an evil person,” and further establishes what seems to me to be an obvious pattern of non-violent resistance to evil through his injunctions and through his ethical modeling. There is an obvious connection between what Jesus teaches and how Jesus lives and how the disciples understood how they were supposed to live after his example. One can't just explain away the weight of the ethical lifestyles of every New Testament character with interpretive sophistry.

(Note that the interpretations of the sermon that attempt to suggest it is only addressing matters of interpersonal offense, or only religious persecution, or individual persecution, and not general and systemic evil are just inadequate, as Bonhoeffer, Stassen and Yoder have pointed out… see my analysis of the Sermon here…) http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-jesus-mean-by-loving-our.html

Argument 7: We have a principled right to defend others and ourselves.

This usually begins with casuistry, an example such as someone breaking into your house and threatening your children. The curious thing is that there is no real argument here. The person usually says, "I just can't believe God would want us to sit idly by and watch our relatives killed." Again, what is the argument here? Let's change the scenario slightly. You are in Rome and the Roman guard asks you to deny your faith or he will kill your children. Can you "sit idly by and watch your kids killed?" Simply suggesting that the cost of a particular ethical choice is high does nothing to lay aside the ethical imperative. All I'm suggesting is that Christians are to do the same thing in both cases (random evil and Christian persecution), or furnish some good reason to suggest that I'm supposed to use a different ethic in both cases.

This objection is also inconsistent, as evidenced by our attitudes toward abortionists. Here is an argument:

1. One need not wait for the government to act to kill a person presently killing an innocent victim.
2. The abortionist is presently killing an innocent victim.
3. One need not wait for the government to kill an abortionist.

I see no way out of this other than Christian pacifism or a consistent response, which would require Christians to mobilize and kill all abortionists or fight in revolution to establish a government that would ban the practice.

Point 8: One pro-just war advocate wrote, “However, to argue (for the deaths of gays, adulterers and the like) is morally permissible, inasmuch as none of Israel’s divinely given punishments was intrinsically wrong or unjust.”

This statement says it is morally permissible to argue for capital punishment for incorrigible children, gays and the like because to do so does not go against the intrinsic fairness of divinely inspired laws. But the article also says that these punishments in Israel are a mere restriction of the number of capital offenses down to a few, meaning that by extension we can also argue for capital punishment for all sins because to do so does not go against the intrinsic fairness of God’s pronouncement of death for all sins.

A reductio ad absurdum of this idea:

None of God’s prescribed punishments are intrinsically unfair.

God deems that the punishment for murder should be death.

God deems that the punishment for homosexuality, bestiality, severe disobedience to parents, etc. is death.

God deems that all sins in reality are worthy of death, including white lies, disrespect to parents, sin nature itself, etc.

We can argue for and indeed put into practice any punishment God deems intrinsically fair.

Therefore, we can argue for capital punishment for lying, theft or any level of sin, including just being born in sin.

Note: This kind of reduction is unavoidable when one finds one’s directives with respect to taking life from justice down rather than from mercy up.

Perhaps the greatest summation of my ethic with regard to taking life is that we must simply follow God's lead.