Faith and Violence

Christian Teaching and Christian Practice

Thomas Merton

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1968
• ISBN:
  9780268161347
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In Faith and Violence, Thomas Merton offers concrete and pungent social criticisms grounded in prophetic faith about such issues as Vietnam, racism, violence, and war.

Part One

Toward a Theology of Resistance

THEOLOGY TODAY NEEDS TO FOCUS CAREFULLY UPON THE crucial problem of violence. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is more than a mere matter of academic or sentimental interest in an age when man not only is more frustrated, more crowded, more subject to psychotic and hostile delusion than ever, but also has at his disposition an arsenal of weapons that make global suicide an easy possibility. But the so-called “nuclear umbrella” has not simplified matters in the least: it may (at least temporarily) have caused the nuclear powers to reconsider their impulses to reduce one another to radioactive dust. But meanwhile “conventional” wars go on with unabated cruelty, and already more bombs have been exploded on Vietnam than were dropped in the whole of World War II. The population of the affluent world is nourished on a steady diet of brutal mythology and hallucination, kept at a constant pitch of high tension by a life that is intrinsically violent in that it forces a large part of the population to submit to an existence which is humanly intolerable. Hence murder, mugging, rape, crime, corruption. But it must be remembered that the crime that breaks out of the ghetto is only the fruit of a greater and more pervasive violence: the injustice which forces people to live in the ghetto in the first place. The problem of violence, then, is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole social structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.

It is perfectly true that violence must at times be restrained by force: but a convenient mythology which simply legalizes the use of force by big criminals against little criminals—whose small-scale criminality is largely caused by the large-scale injustice under which they live—only perpetuates the disorder.

Pope John XXIII in Pacem in Terris quoted, with approval, a famous saying of St. Augustine: “What are kingdoms without justice but large bands of robbers?” The problem of violence today must be traced to its root: not the small-time murderers but the massively organized bands of murderers whose operations are global.

This book is concerned with the defense of the dignity and rights of man against the encroachments and brutality of massive power structures which threaten either to enslave him or to destroy him, while exploiting him in their conflicts with one another.

The Catholic moral theology of war has, especially since the Renaissance, concerned itself chiefly with casuistical discussion of how far the monarch or the sovereign state can justly make use of force. The historic context of this discussion was the struggle for a European balance of power, waged for absolute monarchs by small professional armies. In a new historical context we find not only a new struggle on a global scale between mammoth nuclear powers provided with arsenals capable of wiping out the human race, but also the emergence of scores of small nations in an undeveloped world that was until recently colonial. In this Third World we find not huge armed establishments but petty dictatorships (representing a rich minority) armed by the great powers, opposed by small, volunteer guerilla bands fighting for “the poor.” The Great Powers tend to intervene in these struggles, not so much by the threat and use of nuclear weapons (with which however they continue to threaten one another) but with armies of draftees and with new experimental weapons which are sometimes incredibly savage and cruel and which are used mostly against helpless non-combatants. Although many Churchmen, moved apparently by force of habit, continue to issue mechanical blessings upon these draftees and upon the versatile applications of science to the art of killing, it is evident that this use of force does not become moral just because the government and the mass media have declared the cause to be patriotic. The cliche “My country right or wrong” does not provide a satisfactory theological answer to the moral problems raised by the intervention of American power in all parts of the Third World. And in fact the Second Vatican Council, following the encyclical of John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, has had some pertinent things to say about war in the nuclear era. (See below, Chapter V).

To assert that conflict resolution is one of the crucial areas of theological investigation in our time is not to issue an a priori demand for a theology of pure pacifism. To declare that all use of force in any way whatever is by the very fact immoral is to plunge into confusion and unreality from the very start, because, as John XXIII admitted, “unfortunately the law of fear still reigns among peoples” and there are situations in which the only way to protect human life and rights effectively is by forcible resistance against unjust encroachment. Murder is not to be passively permitted, but resisted and prevented—and all the more so when it becomes mass-murder. The problem arises not when theology admits that force can be necessary, but when it does so in a way that implicitly favors the claims of the powerful and self-seeking establishment against the common good of mankind or against the rights of the oppressed.

The real moral issue of violence in the twentieth century is obscured by archaic and mythical presuppositions. We tend to judge violence in terms of the individual, the messy, the physically disturbing, the personally frightening. The violence we want to see restrained is the violence of the hood waiting for us in the subway or the elevator. That is reasonable, but it tends to influence us too much. It makes us think that the problem of violence is limited to this very small scale, and it makes us unable to appreciate the far greater problem of the more abstract, more global, more organized presence of violence on a massive and corporate pattern. Violence today is white-collar violence, the systematically organized bureaucratic and technological destruction of man.

The theology of violence must not lose sight of the real problem which is not the individual with a revolver but death and even genocide as big business. But this big business of death is all the more innocent and effective because it involves a long chain of individuals, each of whom can feel himself absolved from responsibility, and each of whom can perhaps salve his conscience by contributing with a more meticulous efficiency to his part in the massive operation.

We know, for instance, that Adolf Eichmann and others like him felt no guilt for their share in the extermination of the Jews. This feeling of justification was due partly to their absolute obedience to higher authority and partly to the care and efficiency which went into the details of their work. This was done almost entirely on paper. Since they dealt with numbers, not with people, and since their job was one of abstract bureaucratic organization, apparently they could easily forget the reality of what they were doing. The same is true to an even greater extent in modern warfare in which the real moral problems are not to be located in rare instances of hand-to-hand combat, but in the remote planning and organization of technological destruction. The real crimes of modern war are committed not at the front (if any) but in war offices and ministries of defense in which no one ever has to see any blood unless his secretary gets a nosebleed. Modern technological mass murder is not directly visible, like individual murder. It is abstract, corporate, businesslike, cool, free of guilt-feelings and therefore a thousand times more deadly and effective than the eruption of violence out of individual hate. It is this polite, massively organized white-collar murder machine that threatens the world with destruction, not the violence of a few desperate teen-agers in a slum. But our antiquated theology myopically focused on individual violence alone fails to see this. It shudders at the phantasm of muggings and killings where a mess is made on our own doorstep, but blesses and canonizes the antiseptic violence of corporately organized murder because it is respectable, efficient, clean, and above all profitable.

In another place I have contrasted, in some detail, the mentality of John XXIII on this point with the mentality of Macchiavelli (see Seeds of Destruction, Part III). Macchiavelli said: “There are two methods of fighting, one by law and the other by force. The first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second.” I submit that a theology which merely seeks to justify the “method of beasts” and to help it disguise itself as law—since it is after all a kind of “prolongation of law”—is not adequate for the problems of a time of violence.

On the other hand we also have to recognize that when oppressive power is thoroughly well-established, it does not always need to resort openly to the “method of beasts” because its laws are already powerful—perhaps also bestial—enough. In other words, when a system can, without resort to overt force, compel people to live in conditions of abjection, helplessness, wretchedness that keeps them on the level of beasts rather than of men, it is plainly violent. To make men live on a subhuman level against their will, to constrain them in such a way that they have no hope of escaping their condition, is an unjust exercise of force. Those who in some way or other concur in the oppression—and perhaps profit by it—are exercising violence even though they may be preaching pacifism. And their supposedly peaceful laws, which maintain this spurious kind of order, are in fact instruments of violence and oppression. If the oppressed try to resist by force—which is their right—theology has no business preaching non-violence to them. Mere blind destruction is, of course, futile and immoral: but who are we to condemn a desperation we have helped to cause!

However, as John XXIII pointed out, the “law of fear” is not the only law under which men can live, nor is it really the normal mark of the human condition. To live under the law of fear and to deal with one another by “the methods of beasts” will hardly help world events “to follow a course in keeping with man’s destiny and dignity.” In order for us to realize this, we must remember that “one of the profound requirements of (our) nature is this: … it is not fear that should reign but love—a love that tends to express itself in mutual collaboration.”

“Love” is unfortunately a much misused word. It trips easily off the Christian tongue—so easily that one gets the impression it means others ought to love us for standing on their necks.

A theology of love cannot afford to be sentimental. It cannot afford to preach edifying generalities about charity, while identifying “peace” with mere established power and legalized violence against the oppressed. A theology of love cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, justifying their wars, their violence and their bombs, while exhorting the poor and underprivileged to practice patience, meekness, longsuffering and to solve their problems, if at all, non-violently.

The theology of love must seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the world, and not merely to compromise with them. Such a theology will have to take note of the ambiguous realities of politics, without embracing the specious myth of a “realism” that merely justifies force in the service of established power. Theology does not exist merely to appease the already too untroubled conscience of the powerful and the established. A theology of love may also conceivably turn out to be a theology of revolution. In any case, it is a theology of resistance, a refusal of the evil that reduces a brother to homicidal desperation.

On the other hand, Christian faith and purity of intention—the simplicity of the dove—are no guarantee of political acumen, and theological insight is no substitute for the wisdom of the serpent which is seldom acquired in Sunday school. Should the theologian or the priest be too anxious to acquire that particular kind of wisdom? Should he be too ambitious for the achievements of a successful political operator? Should he be more careful to separate authentic Christian witness from effectiveness in political maneuvering? Or is the real place of the priest the place which Fr. Camilo Torres took, with the Colombian guerillas?

This book cannot hope to answer such questions. But it can at least provide a few materials for a theology, not of pacifism and non-violence in the sense of non-resistance, but for a theology of resistance which is at the same time Christian resistance and which therefore emphasizes reason and humane communication rather than force, but which also admits the possibility of force in a limit-situation when everything else fails.

Such a theology could not claim to be Christian if it did not retain at least some faith in the meaning of the Cross and of the redemptive death of Jesus who, instead of using force against his accusers, took all the evil upon himself and overcame that evil by his suffering. This is a basic Christian pattern, but a realistic theology will, I believe, give a new practical emphasis to it. Instead of preaching the Cross for others and advising them to suffer patiently the violence which we sweetly impose on them, with the aid of armies and police, we might conceivably recognize the right of the less fortunate to use force, and study more seriously the practice of non-violence and humane methods on our own part when, as it happens, we possess the most stupendous arsenal of power the world has ever known.

General MacArthur was no doubt sincerely edified when the conquered Japanese wrote into their Constitution a clause saying they would never again arm and go to war. He warmly congratulated them for their wisdom. But he never gave the slightest hint of thinking the United States ought to follow their example. On the contrary, he maintained to the end that for us there could be no other axiom than that “there is no substitute for victory.” Others have come after him with even more forceful convictions. They would probably be glad to see all Asian nations disarm on the spot: but failing that we can always bomb them back to the stone age. And there is no reason to believe that the United States may not eventually try to do so.

The title of this book is Faith and Violence. This might imply several interesting possibilities. The book might, for instance, study the violence of believers—and this, as history shows, has sometimes been considerable. The disciples of the Prince of Peace have sometimes managed to prove themselves extremely bloodthirsty, particularly among themselves. They have rather consistently held, in practice, that the way to prove the sincerity of faith was not so much non-violence as the generous use of lethal weapons. It is a curious fact that in this present century there have been two world wars of unparalleled savagery in which Christians, on both sides, were exhorted to go out and kill each other if not in the name of Christ and faith, at least in the name of “Christian duty.” One of the strange facts about this was that, in the second World War, German Christians were exhorted by their pastors to die for a government that was not only non-Christian but anti-Christian and which had evident intentions of getting rid of the Church. An official theology which urged Christians, as a matter of Christian duty, to fight for such a government, surely calls for examination. And we shall see that few questioned it. Few question it still. One man did, and we shall devote a few pages to his unusual case. Possibly he was what the Catholic Church might conceivably call a “saint.” If so, it was because he dared to refuse military service under the Fuehrer whom his bishop told him he was obliged to obey.

In the case of Franz Jägerstätter we have a faith that stood up against an unjust but established power and refused to practice violence in the service of that power. On the other side, we have Simone Weil who was a French pacifist before World War II and who later joined the French resistance against the Nazis. Simone Weil was not a Christian in the official sense of the word, but no matter: her motives and reservations were Christian, and the limits which she set to force when she decided to resist were also Christian.

Father Delp, Franz Jägerstätter and Simone Weil all resisted the same evil, the same violent, destructive and anti-human political force of Nazism and they all resisted it for the same motives. Their resistance took somewhat different forms. But one can see in them three possible examples of Christian resistance. In each case the resistance was more or less non-violent. It might conceivably have involved a use of force (for instance by those Christians who plotted against Hitler’s life—as Father Delp was accused of doing). The point to be emphasized however is not only that these Christians were non-violent but that they resisted. They refused to submit to a force which they recognized as anti-human and utterly destructive. They refused to accept this evil and to palliate it under the guise of “legitimate authority.” In doing so they proved themselves better theologians than the professionals and the pontiffs who supported that power and made others obey it, thus cooperating in the evil.

The first section of this book studies various aspects of non-violent resistance to the evil of war as waged by the “large bands of robbers.” Its approach assumes that non-violent resistance can be an effective means of conflict resolution, perhaps more effective than the use of force. At no point in these pages will the reader find the author trying to prove that evil should not be resisted. The reason for emphasizing non-violent resistance is this: he who resists force with force in order to seize power may become contaminated by the evil which he is resisting and, when he gains power, may be just as ruthless and unjust a tyrant as the one he has dethroned. A non-violent victory, while far more difficult to achieve, stands a better chance of curing the illness instead of contracting it.

There is an essential difference here, for non-violence seeks to “win” not by destroying or even by humiliating the adversary, but by convincing him that there is a higher and more certain common good than can be attained by bombs and blood. Non-violence, ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the adversary by winning over him, but to turn him from an adversary into a collaborator by winning him over. Unfortunately, non-violent resistance as practiced by those who do not understand it and have not been trained in it, is often only a weak and veiled form of psychological aggression.

The second part of the book, devoted to Vietnam, takes into account the fact that the use of force in Vietnam is curing and settling nothing. With incredible expense and complication, and with appalling consequences to the people we claim to be helping, we are inexorably destroying the countr...