War in Light of Faith in the Resurrection

There is nothing in the creeds that explicitly calls for pacifism. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theory to consider that once our faith became a state religion, warfare was back on the menu. Early Christians were perhaps less complicated in their views on governance and held strong pacifist beliefs as one might after watching one’s beloved messiah crucified by the empire. Most importantly, Jesus and the New Testament writers spend quite a bit of time talking about love for enemies, turning cheeks and grinding swords into plowshares.

When Christianity became the official religion of the empire, things quickly shifted. Naturally, empires need violence to survive. Once you’re on the winning side of history, it feels good to maintain power. Church leaders began using arguments about safety, security and defending order to describe war as a moral duty. This cry has echoed at least once a decade through my entire life. In the United States today, there are many who want to reshape Christian doctrine to align with the needs of a large and powerful governing authority.

I had the great benefit of having a father who, when drafted into World War II, refused to carry a gun. As a conscientious objector, he felt his role on this planet was to save lives, not take them. I’m sympathetic to the many Christians, including Bonhoeffer, who felt that Hitler had to be stopped by almost any means. But the lesson I received from my father was that maybe it didn’t have to be this way in the first place. Maybe our Christian witness in the face of violence could create something even larger.

Saint Augustine

In the early fifth century, Saint Augustine developed his ideas for Just War, mainly in City of God, but also elaborated in several letters and sermons. You don’t have to be a Roman emperor or a Christian nationalist to make the argument that human sin has created chaos in the world. That chaos has led to societal evil at a level that sometimes requires force to reduce the chance of future death and destruction. This was never intended as a blank check, yet governments over the next 16 centuries would continue to argue that their wars were uniquely just. The Nazis felt as justified in their actions as the Allies. Trump rushed into Iran with foolhardy abandon yet never raised a finger to help Ukraine. It’s almost like our moral justifications for war can be twisted to match any whim of those in power.

Augustine would like a word. Is this war in Iran, or conflict or escapade as it’s been described, just? Of course not. The main argument for the war (although these justifications have shifted dramatically over the last month), is that Iran was building nuclear weapons. Augustine starts with the concept of “just cause,” meaning that the defense of innocent lives can justify a war. I must first state the obvious, that Trump’s own administration was just days before telling the world that Iran’s capabilities had been obliterated and they did not pose a threat. I must also state the slightly less obvious, that Trump tore up Obama’s deal with Iran and in so doing, created a world where Iran could begin a nuclear program. This war is pointless and we’re in it because we have a senile and unlettered president trying to cover up his role in a pedophilic sex ring. There’s no just cause.

If you dig deeper into Augustine’s criteria, this war is unjust by all the standards of the Just War doctrine. Augustine requires that you exercise legitimate authority and Trump does not have authority to declare war. Of course, most American presidents have ignored Congress in many of their war actions, but past sins do not justify our current sins. Augustine also requires something called right intention. None of us trust Trump’s intentions when it comes to selling canned beans, why would we trust him with human life?

Augustine also requires that a just war be the last resort. Clearly this wasn’t the case as we had a nuclear agreement in place and there were no negotiations or collaboration with our own allies leading up to the conflict. Augustine requires proportionality, meaning that the good expected must outweigh the harm caused. I suppose your measure of proportionality here depends on your estimation of Iranian lives. Unfortunately, many Christian nationalists do not value lives in the middle east. In case you don’t believe there is no proportionality considered by our administration, allow me to quote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on 60 Minutes: “No one’s putting us in danger. We’re putting the other guys in danger. That’s our job. So we’re not concerned about that. The only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.”

Finally, Augustine requires distinguishing combatants from noncombatants. You must not target civilians. We killed almost 200 civilians, more than 100 of whom were under the age of 12, with a single Tomahawk cruise missile strike on an Iranian elementary school. Was it intentional? Probably not. Still, Augustine would require much more care than hastily plugging parameters into an AI bot and trusting the results. This was a targeting failure. If you want to claim your war is just, you need to consider civilian lives. Additionally, Trump has repeatedly called for the bombing of civilian targets like power plants. This is not only unjust from Augustine’s perspective, but an international war crime. The United States president is calling for war crimes, but, you know, we’re not very good at holding our leaders accountable for much of anything.

Reinhold Niebuhr

One of my theological heroes, Reinhold Niebuhr, made one of the strongest defenses of war in the modern age. I don’t agree with his position, but I can understand it. That’s the beauty of our faith, we can hold each other in love and not care so much about disagreements, even major ones. I can’t fault Niebuhr for wanting to defend war. Many deep thinkers who lived through World War II became atheists and existentialists, so kudos for trying to maintain faith in an era of deep evil.

Niebuhr espoused something he called, “Christian Realism,” and held that the realities of power, injustice and constant conflict sometimes required us to make difficult choices. War could be the lesser of two evils. He upheld Christ’s call for love and justice but believed the imperfect nature of humanity meant that sometimes the use of force was necessary to protect innocent lives.

What I appreciate the most about Niebuhr’s realism was the call for humility in approaching situations with moral ambiguity. Do we not fight against totalitarianism? How do we balance our ideals when they conflict with each other? Do not the complexities of human society also lead to complex political choices? Yet, while I appreciate this appeal to humility, I personally cannot trust our nations to act with moral self-awareness or accountability. Once you open the door to war, no matter the reason, you open the door to unspeakable atrocities. Maybe that’s Niebuhr’s point, we can only fight fire with fire. But I think in the end, Niebuhr is really saying that there is still no such thing as a just war, but we must fight them anyway. If fighting fire with fire is unavoidable, if we cannot escape fire, then let us choose a different kind of fire, a redemptive fire, divine love’s purifying fire that costs much yet cleanses us all.

Walter Wink

My view on warfare tends toward the radical, so I find myself much more in line with Walter Wink’s ideas of redemptive violence and nonviolent power. Wink deserves many more words than I can dedicate today, but I will provide a shallow overview intended to get you interested in reading more of his work.

Wink believed that nonviolent struggle could lead to transformation in ways that state and church sanction violence could not. Do we believe Jesus was our savior? Do we believe that Jesus instituted a new world order, a new kingdom, a new way of power that is rooted in nonviolence? Aren’t the death and resurrection of our Lord the strongest possible rejection of the myth of redemptive violence?

What Wink meant by, “myth of redemptive violence,” was the observation that all our governments justify violence by claiming it restores order and righteousness. Rome will make any claim necessary to continue its domination. Trump would claim that killing Iranians protects American lives. Redemption through violence. This myth is in stark contrast to the example of our Lord.

Jesus’s death and resurrection show a different approach to confronting evil. Now, I totally understand that most of us don’t want to face death and would rather kill others. That’s just not the example of Jesus. What do you think it means to take up your cross?

Wink believed that Christ called us to resistance, but through nonviolent means that could then expose the injustices of empire. Belief in the resurrection is belief that nonviolence can transform people and entire institutions, that creative acts of resistance could break oppression. Many think Wink naïve, yet we don’t deserve to criticize when we’ve never tried real nonviolence on a large scale in our history.

My Resurrection Faith

You may wonder where I stand, and if you don’t, you shouldn’t be reading this blog as there are many other writers wiser than I am on these matters. I am torn between my sinful nature and my desire to follow my Christ. I am moved by the example of my father who was shot 17 times on the battlefield yet carried a medical bag and not a gun. Yet I am moved by the death of innocents in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Iran, the DRC and many other places. I’d like to see peace and the defense of innocent lives. I’d like to see Putin, Trump and Netanyahu held to account for their war crimes. I’d like to exercise redemptive violence.

In the end, I must hold to the teachings of Jesus even when they feel wrong to my violent instincts and desire for justice and retribution. Jesus blesses the peacemakers. Jesus calls us to love our enemies. Jesus carried this example all the way to death on the cross. If my faith in the resurrection means anything, it means I must find a way to resist violence without using violence. I don’t think we’ve been guided by true Christian voices for much of our history, but instead by false Christian voices who try to distort our faith into one that supports power and privilege. I’d like to see us fight for diplomacy, resistance, humanitarian aid, changes in our laws and institutional reform. I’d like us to be moral witnesses to the world.

I’m also painfully aware that all of this is impossible in today’s United States. But that’s OK, because I’m a citizen of a different kingdom. Our churches should be unequivocal in denouncing death. We should provide pastoral care, guidance toward peaceful solutions and organize for nonviolent resistance. That is the moral witness of personal discipleship in the sphere of public ethics. Jesus does not call us to war but calls us to a radically different way of responding to evil. In the end analysis, I too will pick a medical bag over a gun.