The authority of Christ sometimes reveals deeper significance to our circumstances, and sometimes it calls into question conventional ways of thinking about human conflicts. While the particular effect that Christian allegiance has on our other allegiances is often complex, however, it is imperative that we begin our evaluation of these troubling times from the perspective of Christian authority.
Martin Luther King Jr. insisted that recognition of Jesus as supreme authority mandated a commitment to peace. In contrast to political realism’s priority for self-interest, King emphasized the sacredness in all human beings and refused the convenient compartmentalization of persons into “friends” and “enemies.” Christ confronted human darkness in crucifixion, King preached, and in the triumph of the resurrection set the standard for victory over hate by the application of persistent and unifying love. For King, the authority of Christ judges our culture of hate and offers an alternative worldview of peace and universal love.1
Not all Christians have concluded that the authority of Christ leads to the consistent pacifism of someone like King, of course. Just-war principles articulate a way of applying the authority of Christ to balance Christian concerns for both love and justice. But there is more to just-war thinking than the pale invocations of “just cause” that characterize our public pronouncements. Christian faith reminds us that the justification of war begins with the same presumption against killing that lies at the heart of pacifism, a presumption rooted in the value God places on human life. In making the argument to violate that presumption, Christian just-war thinking insists that there is more to a just war than a just cause. Judged against holy authority, a just war will be based on an intention of the heart that is as righteous as the publicly stated cause. Judged against holy authority, war will be engaged out of overwhelming concern for the innocent. Judged against holy authority, war will be legitimately declared out of fidelity to the common good. Holy authority condemns the baptism of war with quasi-Christian language like “just cause” or “crusades” against evil, instead insisting that we consider the obligations of war with deep and honest seriousness.
Most of all, allegiance to that authority above all others reminds us that, in the tragic events that are unfolding before us, we all are judged. H. Richard Niebuhr, upon the advent of the Second World War, declared that war is the judgment of God. By this he did not mean that war is God’s judgment on the “bad guys,” but that it is God’s judgment on all of us. More often than not, observed Niebuhr, we are guilty of transgressions just like our enemies, and “the pains of war do not descend primarily on the unjust but on the innocent.” The cost of war is complicated and widespread, and the blame for war is universal. Wars are not simplistic crusades of good versus evil, insisted Niebuhr. “Wars are crucifixion.” Wars are crucifixion because it is not the mightiest who suffer most in them, but the “humble . . . people who have had little to do with the framing of great policies.” Wars are crucifixion because they remind us, in our moment of violence, that we share responsibility for the destruction they visit. Wars are crucifixion, because when the innocent die at our hands, we heap judgment upon our own heads. 2
Like the crucifixion of Christ, however, Niebuhr suggested that war as crucifixion might also be an occasion for redemption. War may also be crucifixion in the sense that we have hope, that in the midst of the brutality, God works to save us from ourselves. This redemptive possibility does not alleviate the tragedy, and it does not give us reason to boast or crusade. But it gives us hope that in our most hideous moment, God may figure out a way to turn atrocity to our salvation. Trust in holy authority, then, encourages us to see war as a tragedy which, we pray, God may turn into a vehicle for our salvation — which means that if we enter into it, we do so not with enthusiasm and certainly not with bravado, but with regret, guilt and unceasing prayer.
To consider this pending war from a commitment to holy authority does not mean, of course, that all Christians will agree on how to read our obligations in the light of faith, as the history of Christian reflection on war and peace demonstrates. Nor does it mean that Christians will disagree categorically with the conclusions of the political realists in our midst. It does mean that Christians should begin their reflections on this present darkness with the authority of Christ, even when that authority calls into question popular sentiment or conventional wisdom.
In the end, this commitment to Christian authority is not only theologically faithful, it is also politically valuable. For public debate will be stronger for the priorities that Christian reflection brings to the table. We bring strength in our priority for peace, our concern for the innocent, and our desire for a return to actual public discourse. We bring strength in our admission of guilt, and in our respect for bystanders, for enemies, for those who disagree with us — perhaps even for the French. We bring strength in our appeal to a higher authority, and we offer critical insight from that authority to the world, with the hope that the insight we lend might lead to peace, and that peace might further our proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
1 Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” in A Testament of Hope (HarperCollins, 1986), pp. 253-258.
2 H. Richard Niebuhr, “War as the Judgment of God,” in War in the Twentieth Century (WJKP, 1992), pp. 47-55.
Posted March 31, 2003
James Calvin Davis is assistant professor of religion at Middlebury College (Vt.).
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