Articles

Is It Ever Right to Fight?
Rethinking the "Just War" Tradition

By Mark Douglas
(Presbyterians Today, November 2003)

Events since September 11--especially Operation Iraqi Freedom--have led many Christians to think more about war and peace. Churches and individual Christians across the political spectrum have been struggling to make sense of and respond to these events. For Presbyterians this has most often led to consideration of the "just war" tradition.

A tradition is not like a single loud voice calling out from the past. It is more like a background conversation among many people that you cannot help but listen in on--and the more you listen, the more you become part of the conversation.

Think of the just war tradition, then, as an extended conversation about more and less moral reasons to enter war and more and less moral ways to wage it. From St. Augustine through John Calvin and Reinhold Niebuhr, Christians throughout history have participated in the conversation. Like any conversation, it has its share of loud voices and quiet ones, agreements and disagreements, confusions and moments of epiphany. And, like any conversation, it changes over time as new voices and new thoughts enter it.

Certainly among the loudest voices in the debates about Operation Iraqi Freedom were those that advocated careful attention to just war criteria. This is neither surprising nor disturbing: the criteria have consistently been used to test whether particular wars are justified. Yet the criteria are hardly the whole of the tradition. They spring out of a deeper set of claims about God, Scripture, human beings, and the world around us:

Scripture offers guidance.
The Bible witnesses to a range of acceptable human responses to war. It is wrong to say Scripture gives only one sure answer--whether pacifism or violence--to the problems of war. It is also wrong to say Scripture offers no guidance on war and peace.

Bottom line: Christians ought not to ignore Scripture as we seek to make sense of such matters.

All human life has value.
Human life has deep, abiding and intrinsic--though not infinite--value. Any action that would involve taking human life must be justified against a more basic claim that life should not be taken. For example, the argument could be made that more lives would be claimed if the action is not taken.

Bottom line: Christians ought not to argue that our lives have, in themselves, more value than those of our enemies.

War is not the norm.
Both humanity's original condition (in which God declares creation good) and its final destination (when Christ brings all suffering to an end) are marked by peace. Thus, paradoxically, the proper goal of war is a more just peace. The means for achieving that goal should not make peace less possible.

Bottom line: Christians ought not to be guided by a vision in which war is the norm and peace the aberration.

War is an expression of sin.
Scripture and human experience witness to the fact that, at least this side of Jesus' return, humanity shares neither the mind nor the will of God. Lacking perfect vision and incapable of perfect action, Christians who espouse just war accept sin and the tragic as conditions of human existence--and war as among the most dramatic expressions of sin and the tragic. We must act in ways that limit war and, where possible, weaken its negative consequences. These ways may, themselves, involve the use of force.

Bottom line: Christians ought not to claim that our actions are beyond the need for repentance.

War is not hell, because God is there.
God acts in history in a way that is consistent with God's self-disclosure in Scripture and especially in Jesus Christ. Human actions--even wars--occur against a backdrop of divine action and only truly become coherent against that backdrop. War ought not to be thought of as a realm in which God does not act. Instead, Christians must seek to discern how God is acting and respond in an appropriate manner.

Bottom line: Christians ought not simply to assume that God sides with us.

Christians are motivated by faith, not fear.
God calls Christians to act in the world, not because God needs us, but because God desires us and our work. We ought not to be driven by a fear that "history will come out all wrong without our efforts." Instead, Christians are motivated by faith in a God who is merciful and just, hope in a future in which God makes all things right, and love for God and neighbor. Even acts of war can be motivated by these virtues.

Bottom line: Christians ought not to condone motivation by our baser desires for destruction, violence and revenge.

These claims will be expressed in new ways as the world and its wars change. Current just war criteria date back to the 16th century. The principles still offer valuable guidance, but their use is growing increasingly strained.

Contemporary "just warriors" must take into account weapons of mass destruction and the ways flight, computer technology and the biological sciences have affected military weapons and strategies. They must think about terrorism. They must think about how democracy, claims to self-determination, and new forms of religion enter into the reasons people give for starting conflicts. They must think about the formation of international military alliances, and about the way the globalized flow of capital, information and culture will transform nation states and their conflicts. These new thoughts should lead to new uses of the just war criteria --and perhaps even to new criteria.

Can the wisdom of the just war tradition meaningfully address these and other changes in the world? No doubt it will address some better than others --such is the way of traditions as they meet new times.

It is possible that the just war tradition may fade from prominence in the West, as did other traditions such as animal sacrifice or dowry-giving. Already leaders of U.S. churches are watching their memberships increasingly be swayed by the claims of pacifists to their left or proponents of political expedience to their right.

My hope, however, is that claims like those outlined here will linger in the minds and hearts of many Christians. I hope the just war conversation, with all its wisdom, will continue influencing decisions about when and how we fight.

Mark Douglas, a PCUSA minister, is assistant professor of Christian ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga.