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.
