Just Wars and
Proud Sexualities
According to most church historians,
Christians mostly rejected military service in the first three centuries after
Christ. Quakers and Anabaptists often say
this shows the early Christians were pacifist, a somewhat anachronistic claim,
since “pacifism” emerged into our theological lexicon in the nineteenth
century. Quakers of the eighteenth
century and Anabaptists of the seventeenth century rejected warfighting because
it violated the teaching of Jesus, but their position only became known as “pacifism,”
the principled rejection of all war, later.
Were the early Christians pacifists? Quakers and Anabaptists like to say yes. In Roman times, soldiers were expected to
fight and kill. Jesus commanded his
followers to love their enemies.
Christians rejected military service.
Therefore, the modern pacifist Christians say, the early Christians were
pacifists. But it’s not that clear. In Roman times, soldiers were expected to pay
homage to the emperor by burning incense to his “genius.” Christians, as strictly monotheistic as the Jews,
could not participate in worship of the emperor. Christians had multiple reasons to reject
military service.
In the fourth century, things changed. Constantine, a leading Roman general,
converted to Christianity. Constantine
claimed to have seen a vision or dream in which he was instructed to conquer
under the sign of the cross. Having
defeated his enemies, Constantine became emperor. Christians, including the great theologian
Augustine, faced a new situation. What
should we do if the emperor is one of us?
Constantine abolished emperor worship; paganism was no longer a
requirement for military service. Could
Christians fight and kill?
Augustine introduced a crucial
conceptual innovation: the just war. He
taught that the command to love enemies must be integrated with God’s commands
to pursue justice. Augustine recognized
that many wars are motivated by greed, lust, desires to dominate, pride, and
revenge. Christians must not fight for
such reasons. But sometimes, Augustine taught,
Christians should fight—precisely when fighting leads to justice.
In a generation, just war theory
came to dominate Christian moral thinking about war. Augustine’s conceptual innovation was extended
and refined by other theologians over the next thousand years. Aquinas and other theologians published rules
to govern Christian participation in war in two main categories: first, rules to
determine whether a particular war might be just (jus ad bellum); second,
rules to govern behavior during a war (jus in bello).
To illustrate: suppose a king has
been insulted by the ambassador from a neighboring country. This is a serious offense, but is it a just
cause for war? Probably not, because a
Christian ruler is called by Christ to be gracious and forgiving. But suppose the king believes, on good
evidence, that the neighboring king has not only insulted him but also unjustly
executed some of his subjects who were doing business in the neighboring
country. In this case, the king knows
the neighboring king has committed grave injustice and using military might to
correct such injustice would be right.
The citizens of the king’s country are not in possession of all the
facts, and they must rely on the king’s judgment. So, the Christian subjects of the king may fight
and kill in the king’s army to help restore justice.
Continue the illustration: suppose
the offending king knows that he cannot defeat the Christian king in the open
field. His army confines itself to a
fortress city. The Christian king,
invading the unjust king’s country, faces a hard tactical decision. Should he lay siege to the unjust king’s
city? As everyone knows, a siege may
take months or years to be successful.
Very often in a siege, the first victims are the non-combatants: elderly
people, children, and women. Can a Christian
ruler decide to use this tactic, knowing that it will kill the innocent? Medieval Christian theologians wrestled with
this question. Their answer? Yes.
The Christian ruler may (indeed, must) use sieges if that is the only
way to punish the unjust ruler.
To 21st century readers,
I must say: I’m not making this up.
Many Christians today would be
surprised by my example of the insulting and unjust foreign king. Surely, they think, Christians should not
consider war over insults or even a few unjust deaths. This is because contemporary Christians who
say they believe in just war theory actually think as utilitarians. Their guiding frame is: will this war produce
more or less human flourishing, all things considered? Utilitarians do not consult rules for warfare,
except as loose guidelines.
Historically speaking, Christian moral teachers have approved of
wars that aimed to punish evil foreign rulers. German theologians approved of the German war
effort in WW1, while British theologians approved of the Allied war against
Germany. American preachers defended the
justice of both sides in the Civil War.
It seems that Christians have found room in the just war theory to
applaud an enormous variety of wars; apparently, almost every war is “just.”
When it comes to jus in bello, Christian moral theologians
approved of sieges. Later, they approved
of cannons. English and American
theologians disapproved of “unrestricted submarine warfare” when it was
practiced by the Germans in WW1, but they changed their judgment when it was
practiced by the Americans in WW2. Christian
moral theologians approved of massive aerial bombing of cities in WW2, bombings
that predictably killed far more non-combatants than soldiers. It’s not hard to find Christian moral
theologians who approved of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945. I have claimed before and I assert
again that the real just war rule governing behavior in war is this: whatever
must be done to win is permitted.
What I have said here is not enough to justify the conclusion I
would draw, namely, that the just war theory is a failure. I think just war theory is a failure,
in that it has failed spectacularly, again and again, to keep Christians from
fighting unjust wars and it has failed to prevent Christians from using
manifestly unjust means in wars. But my
tiny dip into Christian history is not nearly enough. One would have to collect a thousand pages of
documentation to demonstrate the failure of just war theory in practice.
I also think just war theory is a theological failure. That is, it does not give an adequate
interpretation of Jesus’ teaching. What
a brassy thing for me to say! Remember,
Augustine and Aquinas invented and refined the just war theory. Who am I, a retired philosophy teacher, to disagree
with such intellectual and spiritual giants?
How did they err?
Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies. This is a difficult command, so difficult that
we may all confess that we have failed to obey it. We may be tempted, each one of us
individually, to look for some way to way to avoid the implications of Jesus’
command, such as “Do good to those who spitefully use you.” Furthermore, scripture does praise justice, commanding
believers to pursue justice energetically.
“Let justice roll down like waters,” said Amos. So, in addition to a self-motivated desire to
avoid the implication of Jesus command, we may share serious disinterested
concerns for public justice. Our desire
to find some way around Jesus’ word intensifies. The world presents new political situations. We would very much like to approve of good
men (Constantine) when they have political power.
Then we hear a word, a new word, a conceptual innovation, the “just
war.” Christians, we are told, can love
their enemies and at the same time fight against them. In fact, Christians can love their enemies and
kill them, but only if the right authority says this is a just war. According to this new way of thinking, we don’t
have to judge the justice of the war; that is the business of the ruler.
And … away we go.
In the last hundred years Christians have come upon a different
conceptual innovation. The question
concerns not violence but sexuality and sexual behavior. The outlines of approved sexual behavior in Christian
moral teaching were pretty clear for nineteen centuries. First, Christian men were commanded to be
sexually faithful to their wives (and Christian women faithful to husbands), in
contrast to typical Greco-Roman expectation.
Children were not to be aborted or exposed, not even if they were
girls. (Unsurprisingly, Christianity
attracted women converts.) Chastity was
a virtue for all unmarried Christians. Pre-marital
sex, adultery, homosexual sex, and divorce (serial monogamy) were all out of
bounds.
Christians praised and practiced a variety of sexual ideals within
these general guidelines. Some
theologians taught that chastity was morally superior to the sexual
faithfulness of married persons; a “religious” calling was better than family
life. Lutherans and other Protestants
rejected that idea; marital faithfulness, they said, is just as holy as the
monastery. Some Christians celebrated
marital “companionship” (surprisingly to some, this included the Puritans),
while some theologians taught that even within marriage every act of intercourse
should always aim at procreation. Remarriage
after the death of one’s spouse was discouraged by some but permitted by
all. Divorce was always discouraged,
with varying degrees of censure for divorced persons. In recent decades, more and more Christian
moral teachers, even in churches that officially require a celibate life for nuns
and priests, endorse the frank enjoyment of sex within marriage.
In the last hundred years, especially since WW2, this mass of moral
teaching has been confronted by a conceptual innovation, the notion of “sexual
identity” or “sexual nature.” An
unstated assumption of Christian moral theology throughout Christian history is
that all people share human nature, and that this nature is expressed as male
and female. Human beings were created to
be like God, imago Dei in the Latin rendering of Genesis 1:27: “… in the
image of God he made them, male and female he made them.”
People have a very high status if they are made in the image of
God. But Christians are quick to add another
doctrine, i.e., that we are sinners.
Human beings express their sinfulness in violence and greed, pride and
rebellion, self-harm and disdain for others, etc. A major category of sin concerns sex: lust, infidelity,
rape, seduction, pre-marital sex, etc.
The concept of sexual nature calls all this into question. First, some men are not sexually attracted to
women. No matter how strenuously a
culture condemns homosexual behavior, some men desire sex with other men. 20th century psychological
research affirmed again and again that same-sex attraction was a deep, unchosen
facet of these men’s sexuality. Second,
every school of 20th century psychological therapy proved unsuccessful
in “treating” such men (that is, giving them heterosexual desires). Similar evidence was uncovered concerning
women attracted to women. Of course,
some therapists reported some successes, but no treatment method showed
consistent success.
In steps conceptual innovation: human beings exhibit more than two
sexual natures. Some men are gay, some
women are lesbian, other people are bi-sexual (having sexual attraction to men
and women), and others are heterosexual.
That was the status of the discussion fifty years ago. Since then, the concept has grown to include
transsexuals (persons with male biology who identify as female and persons with
female biology who identify as male), non-binary persons, and polyamorist
persons.
The rapid addition of categories of sexual nature indicates conceptual
innovation run amuck. I think it’s easy
to see difficult challenges ahead for Christian moral theology.
Christian moral theology affirms the dignity and worth of every
individual, much as scripture commands us to pursue justice. What should Christians say to homosexuals,
two men who love each other and want to marry?
True, the Bible (in both testaments) explicitly condemns sexual acts
between two men. But the writers of the
Bible didn’t know about sexual natures.
Just as Martin Luther was wrong to use the Bible to “refute” Copernicus,
it would be wrong to use scriptural moral rules to condemn gay marriage. (After all, the Bible does say the “earth
does not move.” You can look it up.)
Therefore, we have a scriptural principle that we must affirm the worth
and dignity of each person, and we have a conceptual innovation that lets us
avoid the obvious implication of biblical teaching. i.e., that sex is only for
men and women who are married to each other.
In the last fifty years, many Christian moral teachers have concluded
that we should affirm gay marriage for homosexuals and lesbians.
When I say, “many Christian moral teachers,” I include some of the
best Christian philosophers I have known, for example, Marilyn Adams. Who am I, a retired philosophy teacher, to
disagree with intellectual and spiritual giants? Where is her error?
Christians who affirm gay marriage need to explore the implications
of this conceptual innovation. If we affirm each person’s dignity, that means
we affirm this person’s dignity. If
it we must affirm gay marriage for those two men, shouldn’t we affirm gay
marriage for these three men? If we
affirm lesbian marriage for those two women, shouldn’t we affirm two marriages
for this bi-sexual woman? The polyamorists
say that it is essential to their sexual identify to marry multiple
partners.
The problem is that “sexual nature” has very little content. It is subject to confusion and misuse, just
as the notion of justice in war. The
basic moral rule for those who believe in sexual natures would be something
like this. “Never act contrary to your
sexual nature.” But the contemporary
explosion of sexual identities shows how little content that rule
contains.
Should older men have sex with 12 or 13 year-old boys? Most contemporary voices, and all Christian
voices, would say no. Why not? The boys aren’t old enough? Such persons should read Plato’s Symposium. Our society currently says men should not
love boys sexually, but NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association)
disagrees. Most pro-LGBT groups condemn
man/boy love on the grounds that adolescent boys are not mature enough for sex,
and they have tried to distance themselves from NAMBLA. But the same groups say transgender youth of
the same age are mature enough for sex-reassignment therapy and surgery, with
or without parental consent.
