A Christian view of war

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Last month we observed Remembrance Day, the day on which people in Britain and elsewhere remember the end of the First World War and honour the memory of those who died in that war, the Second World War and in other conflicts since. But what is the Christian view of war? What is the Christian perspective on why wars occur? And is it right for Christians to participate in war?

Why do wars occur?

The Christian answer to the question 'Why do wars occur?' is that wars exist because of sin. In the words of C S Lewis, "God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right."

When God's human creatures go wrong by acting in a way that is contrary to God's will that is what Christians call sin. If we probe further and ask what is involved in acts of sin, the answer is distorted desire resulting from a fallen nature. Because of the spiritual disaster that occurred at the beginning of human history and which the Christian tradition calls the Fall (Genesis 3:1-24), we are by nature creatures who desire, and therefore do, things that God has forbidden (as when Eve desired and therefore took and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - Genesis 3:1-6).

As the great Welsh Christian writer Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains in his little book Why does God allow war?, warfare is simply a particular form of this pattern of wrongful desire leading to sinful action. Drawing on the words of James 4:1-2, "What cause wars and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war," he writes as follows:

".... The ultimate cause of war is lust and desire; this restlessness that is a part of us as a result of sin; this craving for that which is illicit and for that which we cannot obtain. It shows itself in many ways, both in personal, individual life, and also the life of nations. It is the root cause of theft and robbery, jealousy and envy, pride and hate, infidelity and divorce. And in precisely the same way it leads to personal quarrels and strife, and also to wars between nations. The Bible does not isolate war, as if it was something separate and unique and quite apart, as we tend to do in our thinking. It is but one of the manifestations of sin one of the consequences of sin. On a larger scale perhaps, and in a more terrible form for that reason, but still, in its essence, precisely the same as all the other effects and consequences of sin."

We can see this continuity between war and other forms of sin if we compare an act of armed robbery and an act of war. Imagine a gang of armed robbers breaking into a bank and shooting people in the course of robbing it. They have committed the sins of theft and murder because of their desire to obtain money. We call this act of sin a crime. Now imagine an army attacking a country and killing its inhabitants in order to obtain the territory and other resources of that country. Like the armed robbers in the previous scenario, this army is committing the sins of theft and murder, but in this case we call this act of sin an act of war.

Is it right for Christians to participate in war?

Because the cause of war is sin it is never legitimate for Christians to precipitate warfare. It is not right for Christians to attack other people, or other nations, as part of an army out of a desire to kill them or to take what they possess. Down the centuries there have been Christians who would go further than this and say that Christians must never go to war for any cause at all. However, this has not been the majority Christian view. The majority view has been that although Christians may not start a war as a result of sinful desire, they may nevertheless engage in warfare. As Article XXXVII of the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles puts it, "It is lawful for Christian men, at the command of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and to serve in the wars."

To understand why the majority of Christians have taken this view, we have to first of all note that God in his mercy has ordained two ways of dealing with the existence of sin.

Firstly, God has ordained that the Christian Church should proclaim the saving work of Jesus Christ through word and sacrament so that people may receive forgiveness for the sins that they have committed and may also receive through union with Jesus Christ a new form of existence in which the illicit desire that leads to sin, and therefore the commission of acts of sin, are eradicated, partially in this life and fully in the life to come.

Secondly, because not all people chose to accept the deliverance from sin that God offers through the Church and also because, as previously noted, even those who have accepted this deliverance are still liable to sin in this life, God has given to the 'Magistrate' referred to in Article XXXVII, that is to say that political rulers of particular states, the responsibility to retrain the effects of sin by acting on God's behalf in taking judicial action against acts of wrong-doing.

Paul makes this clear in Romans 13:1-4: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer."

As Paul notes, in exercising their God given authority those with political authority have the right to use 'the sword,' that is to say, they have the right to use lethal force to counteract wrong-doing if no other option is available. Thus, in the case of armed robbery the police will be prepared to take the lives of the robbers in order to protect the lives of members of the public or other members of the police force.

The right of those with political authority to use lethal force in this way is underlined in an open letter written to Christians in Great Britain by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth in 1941. In this letter he declares that there is a realm outside of the Church in which God exercises his Fatherly care by giving the state the power of the sword: "Where the life of men will not be governed by the preaching of the Gospel nor by prayer, nor by Baptism or the Lord's Supper – in other words, where the bounds of the Church stop – there begins the realm within whose bounds God's fatherly care, which does not fail even there, must be maintained and imposed, if necessary, by the threat of the sword, and, in the last resort, by its use."

As Barth goes on to say: "The State would lose all meaning and would be failing in its duty as an appointed minister of God, and it would be depriving men of the benefit which God, by its function, had intended for them, if it failed to defend the bounds between Right and Wrong by the threat, and by the actual use of, the sword."

In these quotes what Barth is talking about is not simply police action, but resort to war, and this makes that point that the correct way to see war from a Christian perspective is in terms of its being what the Christian ethicist Oliver O'Donovan, calls "an extraordinary extension of ordinary acts of judgement". That is to say, just as the pollical authorities of particular states normally take action by means of the policing and judicial systems of their countries to enact the justice of God in response to various forms of wrongdoing, so also, on occasion, they have to resort to war for the same reason. War is permissible as a means of seeking to achieve justice in response to some form of wrongdoing caused by sin that would otherwise continue such, as for example the threat to the inhabitants of a country from an external power.

In the words of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas: "... as the care of the common weal [i.e. the common good] is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Romans 13:4): 'He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil"; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies."

Seeing war in this light means understanding that war is not, as some societies have thought, a good in itself. No one should desire that even a just war should occur. It is always better that war should not take place because the wrongdoing that necessitates it does not occur. War is only ever justified as a last and lamentable resort when something has gone very seriously wrong as a result of sin.

Furthermore, the purpose of war is to prevent wrong-doing, not to kill the enemy as such. The only justification for killing enemy combatants is because they are capable of enabling wrongdoing to continue and to triumph. If this is no longer the case, their killing is unjustifiable. That is why the Christian tradition has insisted that the wounded who are incapable of fighting and those taken prisoner should not be killed because their ability to continue to do harm has ceased (in the same way that police should not kill a surrendered armed robber). For the same reason non-combatants among the enemy population should also not be harmed and steps should be taken to ensure that this is the case.

In summary, from a Christian viewpoint war is one of the results of the general sinfulness of mankind resulting from the Fall. The justification for Christian participation in war is to serve the common good by using lethal force at the command of those to who God has given political authority in order to prevent serious acts of wrong-doing that cannot be prevented in any other way. Understood in this way war, is never desirable, but may sometimes be necessary. However, the good news is that it will not be necessary forever. The Bible teaches us that that when God's kingdom is finally and fully manifested at the coming of Christ in glory, then the nations "...shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and the spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Micah 4:3).

As sin ceases so will war. Amen, come Lord Jesus.

Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.