Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding

Lisa Sowle Cahill

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781506431659
• eBook ISBN: 9781506457796
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

This book is a contribution to the Christian ethics of war and peace. It advances peacebuilding as a needed challenge to and expansion of the traditional framework of just war theory and pacifism. It builds on a critical reading of historical landmarks from the Bible through Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers, Christian peace movements, and key modern figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, and recent popes. Similar to just-war theory, peacebuilding is committed to social change and social justice but includes some theorists and practitioners who accept the use of force in extreme cases of self-defense or humanitarian intervention. Unlike just-war theorists, they do not see the justification of war as part of the Christian mission. Unlike traditional pacifists, they do see social change as necessary and possible and, as such, requiring Christian participation in public efforts. Cahill argues that transformative Christian social participation is demanded by the gospel and the example of Jesus, and can produce the avoidance, resolution, or reduction of conflicts. And yet obstacles are significant, and expectations must be realistic. Decisions to use armed force against injustice, even when they meet the criteria of just war, will be ambiguous and tragic from a Christian perspective. Regarding war and peace, the focus of Christian theology, ethics, and practice should not be on justifying war but on practical and hopeful interreligious peacebuilding.

4

Augustine and the Beginnings of Christian
Just War Theory

Early Christian thinkers were likely to assume that Christian discipleship meant a dis­tinctive way of life that, even if not deliber­ately separatist in relation to politics and gov­ernment, would mark the Christian community and its members off against dominant cultural values. The early church was not unequivocally pacifist in practice, but major theologians did see military life as a threat to Christian ideals. Although an author like Origen can refer to Christians contributing an “army of piety” to society, the outlier nature of Christian social status is reflected in the very need for a bridging metaphor. Louis Swift contrasts the first two centuries with the age of Augustine by remarking, “It is a truism that the reign of Constantine (AD 306–37) represents a watershed in the development of Christian attitudes concerning war and military service,” in­asmuch as “the question is no longer whether participation in war is justified but what conditions should govern the right to declare war (ius belli) and what rules should be observed in waging it (ius in bello).”^[1]

The focus of the present chapter will be Augustine’s answer to the Christian problem of justifying war. It will also incorporate a discussion of the problem of irreducible moral dilemmas that arise in killing, war, and political responsibility. The reality of moral dilemmas that cannot be satisfactorily resolved is attested by both Augustine’s ambiguous views of killing in war and torture and the flawed analysis by which he squares them with Christian virtue.

For Augustine, to be a “peacemaker” can involve using mortal force as a means to peace. Augustine enumerates three criteria for going to war: the goal of peace, lawful authority, and right intention (love). Augustine’s views are the point of departure for many later authors, most notably Aquinas, and continue to anchor much of the contemporary debate about just war theory. Special points of concern will be Augustine’s ambivalent view of society and politics in general; his validation of war as divinely authorized “punishment”; his requirement that war be conducted with an inward intention of love; and the effect that justification of war as loving punishment has on the ethics of going to war, of means in war, of limits of war, and on the moral identity of the warrior.

Augustine’s legacy is constructive in that he sees love as a constitutive and indispensable Christian virtue, recognizes the sinful and conflicted nature of political life, regards Christian political participation as an obligation nonetheless, grants the ambiguous moral position in which this places the agent, and in his letters and sermons exemplifies concrete strategies of social change. Negatively, however, Augustine fails to confront directly, much less resolve, the inevitable contradiction between Christian love and killing, to recognize the inherent interdependence of intention and action, to set firm and adequate limits on the ends and means of war, and to take seriously enough in the context of violent conflict the transformative possibilities of the inbreaking reign of God. Nevertheless, certain tensions in his thought suggest that the reality of moral dilemmas was not entirely outside Augustine’s frame of reference. Ultimately this chapter will argue that some of his other writings on social problems (not just war) open the door to practical strategies that resemble peacebuilding.

From Early Christian Pacifism to Just War

Christian pacifists emphasize the present possibility of enacting God’s reign now, and the absoluteness of Jesus’s teaching on love and nonviolence (Matt 5:38–48). If force is necessary and even useful in the real political world, then Christian participation in that world must in the pacifist view be limited and the use of force repudiated. As we have seen in early Christian writings, pacifists seek to realize a biblical and communal vision of sacrifice and nonviolence. They tend to overlook or downplay the occurrence of violence in the Old Testament, especially Yahweh’s lead­ership in battle. They not infrequently come to terms with biblical violence by construing a nonviolent message behind the war imagery. Their priority is reinforcement of Christian identity as constituting a contrast society against broader social acceptance of power politics and coercive force.

While pacifists stress the literal following of Jesus’s nonviolent message, those who justify government by coercive means stress Christian responsibility in a broken or fallen world, as well as the possibility of ordering that world more justly. The Christian’s conformity to the kingdom’s radical nature is qualified by his or her coexistence as a citizen of the present world and the necessity of fulfilling the obligations of justice, seen as another way of expressing neighbor love. Just war theory is oriented toward establishing and protecting the stable social structures and authorities that serve just peace. Most just war theorists take the nonviolent thrust of the Sermon on the Mount quite seriously and do not attempt to set aside nonviolence as such. Yet they usually transmute its practical impact to another level or sphere than that of practical politics. Christian discipleship has a social as well as a spiritual meaning, but Christian social ethics must be guided not only by sacrificial love but also by the common good of society and the possibility of limiting injustice and building greater justice.

The mainstream or dominant tradition on war and peace has justified limited uses of violence, yet it has also acknowledged their tension with the evangelical ideal of peace and attempted to recognize the latter in some practical way. Contrasts among the pacifism of earlier figures and later just war (and even “holy war”) positions can be gauged by distinctions, described by James Childress, employed to recognize the obligatory character of nonviolence, while limiting its practical scope: higher/lower, for oneself/for others, inner/outer, private/public.^[2] In other words, Christian authors restrict the force of New Testament sayings against violence (“turn the other cheek,” “go the second mile,” “love your enemies”) by making one or more of the following assertions: that the sayings define a “higher” Christian life (of the clergy, for example) but need not be taken literally on the “lower” plane (by the laity); that they must be interpreted strictly regarding actions on one’s own behalf but not if one is removing or preventing harm to others; that they apply to the inner realm of loving intention but not to the outer realm of just action; that they apply to the decisions of private citizens but not to those of public authorities acting in an official capacity (who have the right to command their subordinates, such as soldiers). Augustine avoids the first of these strategies, while adopting the last three—and arguing somewhat inconsistently that Christian love is directly expressed in wartime killing as loving punishment of a sinner.^[3]

All these maneuvers are attempts to construe a distinctive Christian identity as compatible with other social obligations of the Christian. The life of kingdom discipleship is negotiated historically to accommodate the responsibilities, possibilities, and tensions entailed by membership in multiple, intersecting communities of iden­tity. The critical theological, biblical, and ecclesial question, of course, is whether any given process of negotiation is also a process of dilution or distortion.

Augustine

Christian just war tradition begins with Augustine, who appropriated from Roman politics the idea of a “just war” for defense or punishment. Augustine did not invent a coherent theory comparable to modern versions, but he did germinate some of the key ideas or issues around which subsequent theories are constructed.

Augustine was born in North Africa (modern-day Algeria), a Roman province, at a time (354) when Christianity was finally enjoying imperial favor, but Roman rule was itself in decline. In 313 Constantine had granted Christianity full legal status and protection, and in 391 his successor Theodosius went so far as to outlaw traditional Roman worship and rites. Yet Rome came under threat from “barbarian” invaders, and in 410 Rome fell to the Visigoths. As a result, many Roman refugees—both Christian and “pagan,” some of them wealthy—fled across the Mediterranean to North Africa.^[4] While Christians blamed the empire’s ill fortune on persistence of idolatrous rites, the adherents of Roman religion blamed Christian abandonment of the ancestors’ gods.

Augustine was a Christian leader whose reputation beyond the North African church was sustained by correspondence, often polemical, with prominent figures like Jerome and Julian of Eclanum. These letters, his homilies, and his theological treatises provided opportunities to counter pagan accusations, to consolidate his own views of the relation between the church and political society, and to attract new patrons from among the noble Christian refugees. He argued eloquently, in one of his greatest and longest works, The City of God, that any true republic must serve the welfare of the people, that to do so requires justice, and that true justice is only possible where the God of Jesus Christ is shown true piety (pietas) and worship (latreia).^[5] Following his mentor Ambrose (ca. 339–97), rather than the historian Eusebius (ca. 260–339), Augus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• From Just War and Pacifism to Peacebuilding
• Jesus
• Early Christian Pacifism
• Augustine and the Beginnings of Christian Just War Theory
• War and the Common Good
• Reformation Interpretations of Just War
• War in God’s Name
• A Witness for the Kingdom
• From Just War and Pacifism to Peacebuilding
• Peacebuilding
• Index