Various Objections to Christian Pacifism and Some Responses

Objection 1 - Christian pacifism denies the government its rightful role and as such would undermine justice.

Even if one were to accept a paradigm of extreme separation, such as the Amish, how is it obvious that such a conclusion would follow. The Amish do not deny the government its permissive right to rule, and in principle submit to governmental authority. They simply live an ethic which meets the minimalist requirements of the state and then go far beyond it in their own private ethical interactions as a community.

If the objector has in mind a universal application of Christian pacifism, then this question becomes more complicated, but not much more. It seems that most who object to pacifism on these grounds are thinking in Kantian terms--namely, what if all people were pacifists? Would there be grounds for a justice system?

Origen's response to this is interesting. When Celsus, the scholarly pagan critic of Christianity asked him the same question, Origin replied, "If all people in the Empire became Christians, then God would protect the empire." That may seem a bit terse for most Christians today to accept.

But this objection seems to me to miss the point. The entire point of Jesus' kingdom is that it is incompatible with any other kingdom. Because of this, the state refuses to submit to Jesus' right to rule and thus creates its own justice system, borrowing its best ideas from the moral law. Law in nations is a practical outworking of the need for order, so that even in the state's appropriation of moral law it is in rebellion against God. The state wants God's law to serve it; it doesn't want to serve Him by keeping it. In constructing its laws the state is not trying to understand and love God; it is attempting to secure self-interest. This is why mercy is totally irrelevant to the application of state law, or perhaps should be if it is to be consistent. Is it any wonder that Jesus says his kingdom is new wine that is incompatible with the wineskins of human governance?

Note also that this objection can be turned on its head. The idea is that pacifism cannot be generally applied, and as such is impractical and void of justice, can just as easily be charged against just war theory. Surely it can be argued that faithfulness to just war criteria is impossible as well and thus just war theory is at least as impractical as Christian pacifism. I'd like someone to provide for me one example of a war, especially a modern war, in which one party was totally faithful to just war principles. If one can only be an imperfect Christian pacifist or an imperfect just war practitioner, which is preferable if one is to be a Christ follower?

Objection 2 - Just because American government is corrupted does not make it evil. Work is corrupted but it is not evil, etc.

This objection is disanalogous. The true analogy would be comparing not work to America, but prostitution as work with democracy as government, etc. Work in principle is not bad and neither is government in principle bad. But note that this is not what people are talking about. They are comparing work in principle to various corrupted manifestations of government. Also, not everything a Prostitute does is evil, but her whole profession is directed by an action that is evil. In the same way, not everything done by those exercising power in a democracy is bad, but I think it can be reasonably charged that the whole enterprise is bad.

Another way of looking at this is by asking what will happen in the redemptive process. The restoration process will not eliminate government or work, but will rebuild it. I take it that subsuming humanity under His redemptive purposes, God will not stop until he has remade our minds (free wills), our hands (how we work) and our governments (how we relate to one another). But to hear many people talk, America requires no redemption. For them, America is the source of redemption for the world, a city set on a hill.

It seems then that original goods, such as government, free will or work, retain their ontologically good status in a conceived ideal Christian world, where identifiable corruptions of these, such as rebellion, prostitution or democracy, will be wholly discarded. Think of it thus: In the garden, it is conceivable that Adam and Eve, for their work, could have done things like harvesting or painting. These specific activities are largely unchanged by the fall and eventual restoration of man. We harvest and paint now, and conceivably will do so in heaven. But what about governments? Perhaps we will still pave roads, but will we gather into town halls to figure out how to manage ourselves in heaven? Will we develop standing armies to protect our temporal interests? Will God have to be re-elected?

And here is the big question: Can the tools used to preserve the damned and fallen earthly city be useful in promoting and enlarging the borders of the City of God?

Objection 3 - The Bible does not exclude the possibility of self-defense or defense of others, especially in cases where our faith is not under attack.

Jesus in the Sermon, and in his example, does not make this distinction. And neither did the early Christians. I think Bonhoeffer's scathing critique of this is sufficient refutation against it and I recommend it highly, notwithstanding of course his own behavior in this regard. You will find his argument in his book "The Cost of Discipleship." I discuss some of those principles in another blog article: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-jesus-mean-by-loving-our.html

I also think there is an argument for various forms of defense, provided those defenses are not a violation of Jesus' injunction to go beyond simple retributive "eye for eye" responses. Clearly one defense is to move one's family to safety, even abandoning one's rightful property in order to do so. Christians did this frequently during the persecution age. Another response would be to absorb the evil so others can reach safety. A father could presumably distract and even occupy an assailant while his family got away, losing his own life in the process. This option seems reasonable even for a family during the imperial age attacked by Roman soldiers. But of course, assuming there is no option here because they are overwhelmed by superior force, then it would be unacceptable to do anything but accept a martyr's fate.

Objection 4 - Any relationship to the state is a contradiction of the separation mandate.

Not true! Surely there are many activities the Christian community can engage in that are wholly consistent with their identity as Kingdom people in a foreign land. If the people in this foreign land invite our votes on individual moral issues, for example, it will not be inconsistent for us to vote our consciences on those matters. And there are a whole variety of other issues. I acknowledge that a consistent Christian pacifist, if he clearly states his position on these matters, will not likely be voted into public office.

Objection 5 - What is a Christian justice system then?

In short, the cross of Jesus Christ, a stumbling block to many and foolishness to others. In the Christian community, the worst consequence for chronic sinful actions is excommunication. And excommunication is tantamount to turning someone over to the culture at large since they refuse to accept Christ's solution. And as I have said elsewhere, it is not the prerogative of the Church to deny the state its claim on the lives of criminals, but the Church can always plead its case for clemency. (This of course changes if the state requires us to do the killing, or so involves us that we would become culpable... for example, informing on the Jews during WWII.)

Again I would turn this around on the just war advocate. What is your sense of a Christian justice system? Is it Jesus and Democracy? Jesus and Socialism? Should mercy ever be offered? When and how much? What compromises are going to be acceptable here? Who is going to determine just and unjust wars? Elected officials or clergy or a combination? And which ones? How will they be qualified? The just war advocate exchanges the simplicity of the Sermon for the quagmire of spiritually gilded relativism and then justifies this move by wrenching the Sermon into agreement with his position through theological legerdemain. Sometimes only a scholar can see in the text the truth that isn't there!

Objection 6: Pacifism is just not manly.

Really? Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, has suggested that he could not follow a man he could beat up. Does it not seem obvious that if Mark Driscoll were around in the 1st century, he would have joined the rest in thinking Jesus a bit too effeminate to be the King of the Jews? Many people shared Driscoll's sentiments in the 1st century and that is why they tortured and crucified the incarnate God. God was apparently not quite manly enough for these people!

I also wonder why people who state this objection can in any way praise the early church martyrs. Is Pacifism only manly if there is no other option? Is it manly if you are persecuted for your faith, but less manly in resisting other evils? Was Jesus manly? Were the early Christians weak fools? Take the case often used to condemn pacifism: Someone breaks into your home and attacks your family. Defending them by force is the manly thing to do, right?

But let's imagine for a moment that the person breaking in does so because he hates Christians and wants to torment them in this way and it is clear that this is his reason (he announces it so that he can make his point, or you live in an area where Christians are under persecution and this is the most likely motive). It seems to me at the very least odd to suggest that a "manly" response is warranted in the case of random violence, and that usually the martyr response would be cowardly, but it is not in this case. Resisting this specific evil in this way is manly, but resisting just any evil in this way is cowardly. Perhaps it can be argued whether or not pacifism or armed resistance is the correct response to evil, but surely the courage of the martyr need not be impugned in either case.

Objection 7: Protecting lives trumps other moral principles, such as truth telling.

We hear that it is acceptable to lie about hiding Jews because it is more important to protect the innocent than it is to speak the truth. Okay, but why not apply this principle to the early Christians? When confronted by a Roman soldier who threatens to kill the members of your Church unless you deny your faith, why not lie to protect the innocent? Most Christians say that protecting lives in such a case becomes less important than maintaining one's Christian witness. My question is simply, why does this principle not always govern our decisions? Why do we not think, when confronted by evil of all kinds, "Am I proclaiming Christ in all I do and in all I say?" So that hiding Jews or responding to war or any evil that encroaches upon us, our primary response is the response of Christ in all things. It occurs to me that many Christians could function without reference to Christ at all on the question of war. Jesus is frankly irrelevant to the politics of war for most Christians. His is merely a non-threatening and thankfully innocuous private ethic.