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Title: Christianity And War
Author: Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw [
More Titles by Hearnshaw]
I. A CONFLICT OF CONVICTIONS
Few of those who lived through the critical ten days that culminated in the outbreak of the Great War in August, 1914, will ever forget the conflict of emotions which the events of that dramatic period called forth. If I may speak of myself--though I think that I am merely one of a large class--I was torn by the contending convictions, first, that every consideration of honour and policy made it necessary for Britain to go to the aid of Serbia, Belgium, France, and Russia in their struggle against the wanton attack of the Central Empires; but, secondly, that war is a relic of barbarism, wholly incompatible with civilization, and entirely antagonistic to the Christian ideal. On the one hand I realized the magnitude of the German menace to the Commonwealth of Europe; recognized that the Teutonic race had long plotted conquest, and that it was out for world-dominion; perceived the significance of its monstrous demands on Serbia, and its shameless violations of its treaty obligations to Luxemburg and Belgium; saw that the triumph of the imperial militants would involve the disruption of the concert of the nations, the abrogation of International Law (laboriously instituted through three centuries of painful effort) and the collapse of the democratic order; and felt, finally, that upon British intervention depended the very existence of the British Empire with all that it means of good to one-fifth part of the human race. Over against this group of convictions I was confronted on the other hand by a vision of the cosmopolitan and pacific Kingdom of God as proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount, and exemplified by Christ and His disciples in Palestine, long ago--a Kingdom whose law is love; whose fundamental principles are inexhaustible goodwill, meekness, gentleness, brotherly-kindness and charity; whose administration works along the gracious lines of sacrifice, unselfish devotion, and untiring beneficence. Obviously, within the limits of such a Kingdom war is inconceivable. Under such a regime, if it were universally established, the one service which could never be demanded would be military service. How can the consecrated servant of the Prince of Peace in any circumstances become a man of war?
The reconciliation of the contradiction is, I think, not impossible. It is to be effected, it seems to me, by recognizing that unflinching resistance to evil is the supreme duty of the present, while the realization of the ideal, pacific, and world-wide Kingdom of God is the goal of the future; and, further, that the attainment of the goal depends upon the performance of the duty. At the moment our high task is to defend our homes, our rights, our liberties, our institutions, our standards of justice, our hopes for humanity, against the diabolical aggressor. In a happier day and a freer world we may hope that, as one of the results of our present struggle and sacrifice, beneath the sway of restored and vindicated law, a larger scope may be given for the spread of the divine realm of love. The vindication of law must precede the proclamation of peace. The goodwill that shall put an end to strife must be based on triumphant justice and sovereign righteousness. As yet we see not law supreme, or justice and righteousness in the ascendant. So long as violence is rampant, and evil stalks abroad, we must be prepared to fight even to the death. It is vain--it is worse than vain; it is treasonable--to cry "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, and when the conditions of peace do not exist.
II. THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE
The distinctive feature of the religion of the Bible is its indissoluble connection with righteousness. Other primitive cults have been either domestic, or economic, or political. Thus the Lares and Penates safeguarded the pious Latin family irrespective of its ethical character; the Greek deities, such as Dionysus and Aphrodite, were frankly immoral, but if propitiated they gave plenty and prosperity; the great gods of Rome were political personages who had no regard for private virtues, and their proper worship was performed by State officials whose functions strictly fell within the department of foreign affairs. But the religion of the Chosen People, under both the Old and the New Covenant, was, and still is, a faith whose keynote is divine law. The standard which has led the hosts of Jehovah to victory throughout the ages has been the lofty ethical code which it has displayed and maintained. The Bible begins with the story of man's fall from righteousness, and it ends with a vision of his restoration to ideal holiness. The prime purpose of the religion of the Bible is the conquest of sin, the defeat of the devil, the redemption of humanity, the recovery of the lost paradise, and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. Milton made no mistake when he chose this as the central theme of his two immortal epics. Everything else is secondary.
Now the means which the Bible describes and recognizes for the attainment of its supreme end are broadly two, viz., the persuasion of love, and the compulsion of force. In the case of all those who can be reached thereby the gentler means are employed. With what infinite patience were the Children of Israel led throughout their chequered career; with what divine compassion were the faltering disciples guided along the way of salvation! But where gentler means fail or are inapplicable, sterner measures are unhesitatingly sanctioned. The Bible knows nothing of the pernicious Manichæan objection to the use of physical force to attain moral ends. In the beginning the rebellious angels were overthrown in battle by Michael and his hosts. The consummation of all things is to be reached as the result of the field of Armageddon. The Old Testament history is a long record of wars undertaken at the divine command, and to the Children of Israel Jehovah was peculiarly the God of Battles. Nor does the New Testament, with all its insistence on the power of love, ever condemn the Old Testament theology as false, ever repudiate force as a moral agent, ever denounce war as necessarily evil. On the contrary, it celebrates the achievements of the heroes of Israel who "waxed valiant in fight"; it announces irremediable destruction to the impenitent and unyielding wicked; it recognizes to the fullest degree the civil authorities who wield the sword of justice, and make themselves a terror to evil-doers; it proclaims that those who take the sword shall perish by the sword; it admits centurions and soldiers to the company of the elect without suggesting that they should forsake their military duties; it tells how on one notable occasion Christ Himself used force to cleanse the temple, and so for ever sanctified its use.
III. THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH
The Church as a whole during the long and varied course of her history has been true to the general Biblical principle that evil should, where possible, be overcome by gentle means which give the evildoer room for repentance, but that it should be stamped out by the force of inexorable justice where gentle means have failed. No one can contend, I fear, that the Church has always been wise or Christly in her application of this sound Scriptural doctrine. She has, it must be admitted, sometimes encouraged premature resort to force, and has given her blessing to countless wanton wars. She has at other times treated as evils to be suppressed by violent means offences which have been mere deviations from her own arbitrary standards, and not violations of the eternal laws of truth and right. Nevertheless, however imperfect her practice, all her great teachers from Athanasius to Aquinas, and from Aquinas to the present day, have rightly recognized the legitimacy of the employment of force for moral purposes in the last resort, have admitted the compatibility of Christianity with military service, and have confessed that, evil as war is, there are evils still greater, and that the duty of every Christian man may be to fight lest the cause of righteousness and justice should suffer defeat. If the Church had taught otherwise--if she had been captured by the Gnostic heresy of non-resistance--Mediæval Christendom and Western Civilization would inevitably have been destroyed by the assaults of Huns and Saracens, Magyars and Tartars, Vikings and Turks; while within the borders of Christendom itself law and order would have perished at the hands of wicked and violent men. Similarly in modern times common Christian opinion has agreed that there are causes worth fighting for and worth dying for. The English Puritans, for instance, including the early Quakers, considered that political freedom and religious liberty were ideals that justified and indeed demanded armed resistance to tyranny. During the last three centuries there have been few who, on religious grounds, have condemned the revolt of Christian peoples against Turkish misrule. In the American Civil War many professed pacificists felt that for the abolition of slavery they must need take arms. In our own recent history men like Havelock, Gordon, and Roberts have regarded as sacred trusts the tasks of saving women and children from massacre, of suppressing fanatical and cruel tyranny, of preventing intolerable wrong. The Church with confident consistency has rightly sanctioned and sanctified their heroic enterprises. While condemning wars of ambition, conquest, or revenge, she has taught that those who take arms to defend from murderous violence the weak and helpless, to maintain the priceless heritage of freedom, and to vindicate the majesty of law, may with humble assurance and firm faith pray for and expect the benediction of the Lord of Hosts. The Christian doctrine of war is admirably summarized by Burke in the words:--"The blood of man is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind; the rest is vanity; the rest is crime."[46]
FOOTNOTE:
[46] Burke. Regicide Peace, vi, 145.
IV. FORCE AS A MORAL INSTRUMENT
Force, in short, has a proper and necessary place in the ethical sphere. It is an indispensable instrument of the will to righteousness. The good man and the good government resolve, in the spirit of the Lord, that certain abominations shall not take place. They express their will in a law. That law remains futile, it is a mockery and a fraud, unless they are prepared to enforce it by all the means in their power, even if need be by the shedding of blood. Much, no doubt, can and will be done to secure obedience by education, by persuasion, and by appeal. Every effort will be made to prevent the evildoer, and to convert him to the good way. But the fact has to be faced that there are in the world insensate scoundrels and hardened malefactors wholly beyond the reach of education, persuasion, and appeal; men who have deliberately chosen evil to be their good, and have made a binding compact with the powers of darkness. With them force is the only possible argument. Unless it is applied, there is nothing to prevent them from dominating the earth, defying all law, and establishing the kingdom of the devil. At the back of all effective law there is, in fact, physical force. Behind the police stands the army. The magistrate would be wholly ineffective without the soldier. The criminal population would laugh civilian restraints to scorn, if it did not know that out of sight, but never far away, are the bayonets and the guns of the ultimate defenders of the peace. The salvation of the criminal is not everything: the salvation of Society is more. Society would perish in a day if the basis of force were removed from beneath the fabric of law. One of the falsest of false generalizations is that which says that "force is no remedy." It is in many cases the only remedy. In other cases it is better than a remedy; it is a sovereign preventive of wrong. Force is the very essence of government. By its means countless evils have been suppressed in the past, such as highway-robbery, private war, duelling, piracy, slave-trading. Only through fear of it is their recrudescence obviated. If a man sees wrongs being perpetrated which he has strength to prevent--if, for instance, he sees a child being tortured, a woman being outraged, a helpless fellow-man being set upon and murdered--if he sees these things and does not intervene with all his might, then he is not a pacificist but a traitor to humanity, not a man but a contemptible or infatuated worm. Similarly if a State stands on one side inactive while small nations are wantonly stamped out of existence, while treaties are violated, while International Law is defied, while unprecedented barbarities are perpetrated, it sinks to the level of an accomplice in crime, and proves itself worthy of the perdition which awaits those who make "the great refusal."
The days of universal and enduring peace, for whose dawning we all ardently look, will not be ushered in by any diminution of the forces wielded by the powers of goodness in the world, but rather by their immense increase. Just as in our own country the King's Peace became the secure possession of every Englishman only when the King's might became irresistible, so in the larger sphere of the Society of Nations the world's peace will be firmly established only when it is maintained by the united forces of all the federated Peoples of goodwill.
V. THE IDEAL OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
We, then, at the present moment are in the throes of a conflict from which we had no honourable means of escape. Not to have taken our place by the side of our Allies would have been to break our word, to violate our faith, to betray the righteous cause. We are doing, at the cost of awful sacrifice, our high duty; we have before us the noblest of purposes; we are fighting with hands that are clean, with consciences that are clear, and with hearts that are inspired by the courage of conviction. It is our fervent hope and our faithful belief that if, in spite of our wicked lack of preparation and our subsequent incredible follies, Heaven grants us a good victory, we shall use it to further the advance of humanity towards the goal of the Kingdom of God.
What that kingdom is we are shown in that matchless mosaic of utterances attributed to Christ, known as the Sermon on the Mount. It is the kingdom of righteousness, justice, love, and peace. When, however, we study the details of the polity of that kingdom, as they are set forth in the evangelical picture, we perceive (as the Church Universal has always perceived and taught) that they are capable of realization only in a Christian society cut off from the world, or in a world become dominantly Christian. To give to all who ask, to lend indiscriminately without expecting any return, would in society as at present constituted not only speedily reduce ourselves to destitution; it would also pauperize and demoralize those into whose hands our squandered wealth should pass. To take no thought for the morrow, and to refuse to lay up treasure on earth, would under existing economic conditions simply mean that we should become useless burdens upon a thrifty and prudent community. To ignore the legal and judicial institutions of our country by neither judging nor going to law in cases where wrong has been inflicted would be to foster the perpetration of crime in a world whose very propensity towards crime has necessitated the establishment of the courts. Similarly to decline to resist evil, where evil is rampant and aggressive, would be to play the part of a traitor and to surrender the world to the devil. The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, however liberally they may be interpreted, are, in short, the negation of civil government; that is to say, they assume the existence of a community of sanctified persons among whom civil government is unnecessary. The irreducible minimum of civil government--as even the administrative nihilists of the school of Herbert Spencer admit--involves three things, viz., defence of life, protection of property, and enforcement of contract. With these three things the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are, as they stand, incompatible.
All this is very obvious, and the consecrated common-sense of the Church in every age has clearly perceived it. The political science of the Apostles and the Early Fathers, and still more expressly that of their successors, recognized the authority of kings, the jurisdiction of courts, the justice of taxation, the rights of property, the majesty of human law, the protective function of soldiers, and the necessity of military service. All these were accepted as inevitable in society in its present state of imperfect development; although it was proclaimed that none of them would be required in the ideal Kingdom of God.
In the Sermon on the Mount itself, however, the truth as to the relativity of Christian institutions is obscured by the faith of the compiler that, when he wrote, the second advent of Christ was at hand, and that the Kingdom of Heaven was immediately to be established. For him there was no terrestrial future worthy of consideration; the reign of the Messiah had already begun; the consummation of all things was impending. Hence he did not feel it necessary, or indeed possible, to distinguish between the ideal of the perfect day and the practical policy of the actual moment. His citizenship already was in Heaven: to him present and future were one. The eschatological hopes of the evangelist were of course speedily dispelled, partly by mere lapse of time, partly by the growing wisdom and experience of the Church. The Church learned that its early expectation of the speedy and triumphant return of its Lord was ill-founded, and that its task was to convert the world to righteousness, not to preside over its immediate dissolution. Hence it accommodated its doctrines and its institutions to the changed outlook.
This fact causes no difficulty to those who believe in the progressiveness of revelation. Such as admit that New Testament ethics show an advance on those of the Old, will hardly contend that in politics any New Testament writer said the last word. What Tolstoy and his literalist school call the corruption and secularization of the Church was to no small degree a simple recognition of the facts that the Earth continued to exist, and that the Roman Empire and not the New Jerusalem was the dominant power therein. But though the Church as a whole was guided safely through the crisis of disillusionment, it nevertheless remains unfortunate that the compiler of the Sermon on the Mount should have made the false assumption. For the picture which he presents of the perfect man and the ideal society is so fascinating and magnificent that it is not marvellous that saints and visionaries, in a long and pathetic succession, should have repeated his error, should have ignored the distinction between present and future, should have assumed the actual existence of the Divine Kingdom towards which, as a matter of fact, mankind has still a weary and protracted pilgrimage to make; should have proclaimed the celestial anarchy, and should as a result have been overwhelmed in tragic or ludicrous disaster.
VI. THE PACIFICIST SUCCESSION
Those who have asserted the present applicability of the full detailed programme of the Sermon on the Mount, and have endeavoured to carry it into immediate effect, have been scanty in numbers, and obscure. A few early Christian communities, soon extinct; a few hermits isolated from their fellows; a few monks in secluded cloisters; a few friars repudiated by their own orders; a few small antinomian Protestant sects springing up and vanishing with gourd-like rapidity; a few groups of Slavonic dreamers forming the innocent extreme of the Nihilist fraternity--such have been the leading professors of Gospel Anarchy. One can, even while condemning them, respect them for their purity of purpose, their lofty idealism, their sincerity, and their consistency in following their false premiss to its logical conclusion.
Much more numerous, but far less worthy of regard, are those who have picked and chosen among the precepts of the Lord, have accepted what seemed good to them and have explained away the rest. It would be easy, did space allow, to present a motley succession of fanatics and heretics from apostolic days to the present who have developed fantastic theories and have maintained them by means of passages drawn from the Sermon on the Mount.
No damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text.
Only one group, however, now concerns us, and that is the group of anti-militarists who, for the most part arbitrarily ignoring or repudiating the other commands of their authority, fasten on those precepts that seem to inculcate the doctrine of non-resistance, and on the strength of these erect the visionary superstructure of pacificism. They form a strange and suspicious company. Among their early representatives stand prominent the able advocate, but furious schismatic, Tertullian; the amiable scholar, but heretically Gnostic, Origen; the accomplished stylist, but bigoted and ignorant special-pleader, Lactantius. It would not be a harsh judgment to say that most of the early pacificists had some twist of mind or character that disturbed the perfect balance of their sanity.
The later sects who have included pacificism in fleeting religious systems of varying degrees of impossibility and absurdity are still more open to suspicion on mental and moral grounds. The Cathari, the Waldenses, the Anabaptists, and the "Family of Love," not only developed monstrous doctrines: they also boasted of an antinomian freedom from legal restraint which led some of their devotees into such wild excesses of conduct as made their destruction inevitable. The Franciscan Tertiaries, who never wholly abjured war, became involved in the conflict between the Empire and the Papacy, and departed from their ideal. The more recent Nazarenes in Hungary and Doukhobors in Russia and Canada have shown themselves, by their refusal to recognize and obey any form of government, a hopeless nuisance to any community that is unfortunate enough to be afflicted by their presence. It surely must give the present-day pacificists pause, if anything can do so, to find themselves mixed up with such a throng. If men are to be judged by their company, they can hardly hope to escape certification.
It is true that the Society of Friends has a more respectable history. But the Society of Friends has for the most part consisted of sensible persons who have accepted the common Christian interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, and so have been pacificists of an unusually moderate type--by no means unconditional non-resisters. Just as they do not give indiscriminately, or lend (especially such of them as are prosperous bankers) expecting no return, or refrain from judging, or going to law, or laying up treasure on earth, or taking thought for the morrow, so they do not interpret literally the command "resist not evil." They accept the constitution of the country, the government of which is based on force; they pay taxes for the maintenance of the army and the navy, and admit their necessity; they support the police, and call it in if their persons or property are threatened; many of them, to their infinite credit, actually join the fighting forces when they feel that great moral issues are at stake. George Fox himself, the founder of the Society, was an extremely belligerent and even truculent individual. He supported the militant Cromwellian regime, and it was only after the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth, which was based on the force of the New Model army, that he abjured all weapons of offence, except his tongue. Isaac Pennington, his contemporary and friend, was actually a chaplain in the New Model (which contained many Quakers), and to the very end he was engaged in stirring it up to repeat its early exploits against "Babylon." His writings contain the passage: "I speak not against any magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign invasions, or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within their borders; for this the present state of things may and doth require."[47] A sounder and saner statement of good Christian teaching on the matter of police and military service one could not desire. With this admission in one's mind, one can view with unqualified admiration the efforts of the Friends to eliminate war, and to perfect the methods of peace in the intercourse of men. More than most Christian people have they laboured effectively to hasten the advent of the Kingdom of God. It is true that their attempts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to establish a pacificist regime have failed--it was inevitable that they should fail--but this does not in any way lessen the debt which the world owes to them for their powerful and far-reaching influence in favour of love and gentleness and peace.
FOOTNOTE:
[47] I quote from J. W. Graham, War from a Quaker Point of View, p. 71. See also my review of this book in Hibbert Journal, No. 55.
VII. CONCLUSION
The sum of the matter seems to be this. Government is necessary in this present evil world. Only by means of sovereign political authority, based upon physical as well as moral force, can there be effective "punishment of wickedness and vice" or "maintenance of true religion and virtue." This is clearly recognized in the Bible, which proclaims that "the powers that be are ordained of God," which enjoins obedience to kings and governors as a religious duty, and which sees in the sword of justice carried by the secular ruler a weapon directed against the same enemies as oppose the establishment of the Kingdom of God. It is essential for the well-being and even for the existence of society, that crime should be suppressed. Hence, in addition to moralists and ministers who seek to educate and convert, there must be police and soldiers--in short, the full organized force of the community--ready to stamp out incorrigible villainy, if need be with blood and iron. Similarly, it is essential for the well-being and even for the existence of the polity of peoples--the growing society of nations--that aggression should be prevented, that treacherous intrigues should be frustrated, that treaty engagements should be enforced, that the reign of law should be confirmed. But, in order to realize this end, there is need not only of pacific missions and cosmopolitan congresses, but also of an armed might sufficient to prevent or to punish with irresistible certainty breaches of international conventions and violations of the World's peace. Hence, whether we have regard to internal good government, or the maintenance of international justice, the need of military force is imperative. Not only does there exist what the Russians quaintly call a "Christ-serving and worthy militancy," there are occasions, of which the present is one, when military service becomes the highest form of Christian duty. To hold aloof is not to display a superior form of Christianity; it is to be an apostate. As Solovyof has impressively shown in his notable conversations on War and Christianity, pacificism under present conditions is that very sort of religious imposture with which is associated the abominable name of Antichrist.
[The end]
Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw's essay: Christianity And War
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