Pacifism and Just War: Finding Common Ground

I recently checked out The Ethics of War and Peace from a local library primarily interested in reading Theodore J. Koontz's article, "Christian Nonviolence: An Interpretation." Like most people, I typically enjoy reading authors who I already agree with. There's nothing quite so satisfying as spending an hour reading someone say what you'd like to say if you had the clout to find your thoughts in print. Unfortunately, I found very little in Koontz's thought that impressed and instead found myself drawn to the critical response of Michael G. Cartwright to Koontz in "Conflicting Interpretations of Christian Pacifism."

Cartwright offers a number of probing critiques of Koontz, as well as an interesting engagement with the ethical dualism often inherent to Christian anarchism (which I will treat later), but what struck me most of all was his re-drawing of the lines of conflict. Cartwright admits that there is substantial disagreement between the way Christian pacifists and just war theorists approach the problem of war and the ideal of peace, but suggests, compellingly, that by marking the primary distinction as one between Christians who live in "the house of love" and those that live in the "house of fear" (to borrow Koontz's terms for describing pacifists and just war theorists), Christians necessarily mute what could be a common, if narrow, witness about war to the rest of the world.

If the conversation is framed as one between just war thinking and Christian pacifism, it is likely to proceed with advocates for just war focusing attention on Christian pacifists--as if they were the problem--while neglecting the challenge posed by other kinds of thinking about war and peace, such as "holy war" thinking, political realism, and Rambo-style militarism.

Borrowing Koontz's imagery, Cartwright later suggests,

It may be true that "fearful questions never lead to love-filled answers," but there are many kind of "fearful questions," and not all such questions are necessarily prompted by the same kinds of fear. To refine the image of the two houses, then, we might agree that not all the rooms in the house of fear are equally well-furnished, morally speaking.

More important than making allowances for a moral continuum, however, Cartwright stresses that the commonalities between the pacifists and just war theorists have something to offer as a witness to the global community, a message both parties are interested in propagating. He offers two specific examples. First, both, in contrast with realpolitik, agree that the burden of proof for justification is for those who choose war. Both ideologies represent a voice in the world, when they aren't too busy with internecine squabbling, that insists on "why go to war" as the dominant question rather than "why not?" Additionally, both ideologies reject consequentialist reasoning as primary in making personal or political decisions. The ends, in other words, do not necessarily justify the means for either group, and this is particularly true where war is concerned. Cartwright hints at other areas of potential common witness throughout, but these suffice to point out some of the deep ideological commonalities between the two groups.

Unfortunately, the possibility of a shared witness is, as is so often the case, destroyed precisely because of this common ground. As has been seen in countless times and in countless circumstances--for example the denominational struggles between the Baptists and the Restorationists in the 19th century South--it is when groups are most alike that their differences seem most important. Pacifists, and I am no exception, spend an inordinate amount of time assaulting just war thought. Even more incomprehensibly, just war advocates spend a disgusting amount energy trying to undermine pacifism, as if the real problem were Christians who do not go to war rather than Christians who go for sinister reasons to commit unspeakable atrocities.

This is not to say that debate should not continue or that--as Cartwright, with his professional ecumenical bent would seem to suggest--both positions are legitimate expressions of a common set of truths in Christ. It merely admits that war is evil, both in an absolute moral sense and in a utilitarian sense, and that as Christians we have a common duty to "speak the truth to power" against these evils. Where the alliance between Christians modes of thinking is possible it should be embraced rather than rejected because it is incomplete. At the end of the day, a just war theorist and I can sit down and lament the dropping of the bomb and, with any luck, convince the world that the consequentialist logic Harry Truman used and defended throughout his life fails to live up to the highest impulses of our created nature and, more importantly, with the divine expectations God expressed for us in Christ.

An Honest Assessment of Evil

Some years ago, I raised questions about the place of the Holocaust, and Auschwitz in particular, in debate regarding the problem of evil. It was my contention then--one which I continue to stand by--that the Holocaust did not represent any special evil, any new sort of paradigm shattering expression of the depravity of human behavior. In fact, the truly shocking nature of the Holocaust was precisely in that it was consistent with the overarching history of humanity's gross inhumanity.

In reading Vernard Eller's Christian Anarchy in conjunction with the Anarchy in May series, I came across similar arguments he was making with regard to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though I thought it best to delay sharing them so as not to overwhelm readers, the arguments bare reiterating and Eller argues them well:

With zealotism, things get worse rather than better. It turns out that the black heart of the black West is the United States of America. “More than any other event in history the worldwide human experience of those August days in 1945 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was a recapitulation of the primeval Fall.”

…Why would it not be nearer to speaking the truth in love to say some things such as these: “In World War II, every combatant that possessed atomic capability used it. That some did not possess it is of no moral credit to them. T he evidence is that all would have liked to have it and would have used it if they had had it—as would the Romans (or the Zealots) if it could have been theirs in the first century. So where is this quantum jump in moral evil?

“Whereas Hiroshima was destroyed with a single bomb, other cities in other nations and other wars have suffered similar devastation from conventional (if not primitive) weapons—it just took a bit longer to do it. So where is the quantum jump in moral evil?

“Although we are not obligated to agree, we are obligated seriously to consider and thoughtfully to respond to President Truman’s rationale for using the bomb. His explanation cannot simply be waved aside as disingenuous.”

…”That the Hiroshima bomb was not ‘history’s most evil event’ as the zealots make it out to be is shown clearly by its context. The bomb was not used as a first strike but as one blow in a raging war in which every combatant already was throwing everything he had. And the U.S. had not started but had entered only under the provocation of what was indeed a dastardly first strike. The U.S. purpose in using the bomb clearly was to achieve a surrender and a cessation of hostilities, and was in no way a genocide of the Japanese people…”

Now I am opposed to war—all war, including the U.S. involvement in World War II. But in my anti-war manual of the Bible I find not one little bit of this business of playing fast and loose with the facts in order to single out one nation’s “war demon” as the special recipient of true Christianity’s righteous rage. If find it suggesting, rather, that from Cain on, all war has been very much the same, a manifestation of the same spirit of sin no matter who’s doing it how—even if it should be the “peace people’s” war against the U.S. Government.

The same, of course, should be said for the Holocaust, and Eller's argument should give Christian's pause as they attempt to single out Nazi Germany's "war demon" as somehow more atrocious than their own. After all, the same war which saw the internment of Jews in Germany saw the internment of the Japanese in America. The same war that saw Hitler exterminate six million Jews over the course of twelve years saw the Americans exterminate seventy thousand Japanese civilians in a single day. You do the math: which nation was the more efficient executioner of non-combatants?