lazy cross-platform posting about war...

     Over there on Facetube, I offered the following as a comment to a post commending a book entitled In Defense of War, by one Nigel Biggar. I have not yet read the book, so it seemed meet and right to make clear that this was a comment provoked by the very thought of defending war. It was not, and could not, be an intelligent response to the specifics of the book’s arguments. Now, I did say a few things about Kosovo, Iraq, and WWI, that are excised here for reasons of space. So, without further ado, here’s the rub.
     I have noticed a lamentable trend, especially among young Reformed folk, toward almost embracing war as a good, while ridiculing (in fine form and good two kingdoms fashion) those Christians who have offered principled and nuanced arguments for avoiding any participation in the bloodshed of this world.

     Perhaps the problem is with the word 'peace' itself. 'Peace,' in Christian terms, is an eschatological reality we cannot make ourselves, but we can so order affairs that some level of tranquilitas is possible. Often this is accompanied by the credible threat of force against those who would otherwise disrupt that good order. Whether we should be about the business of defending war is, to say the least, dubious. It often happens in such a context that one will find that even expressing sadness over the necessity of such an evil enterprise will draw condemnation. Only a moral idiot would find the actual fighting of a war anything but a grave evil - it is death and pain and brutality on an unimaginable scale. All the methods and weapons of war are designed for one purpose, to kill in the most painful, horrifying way possible. (That last is the important qualifier - there is nothing clean, surgical, precise or unambiguous about battle.) We should be everlastingly wary of loud calls for war, and less than eager in its pursuit until absolute necessity presses us. Then, we must repent and beg with Augustine that we might at last be freed from our necessities, knowing that war in such a case is a scourge (sin being the punishment for sin at all times and in all places).

     An aside - Realist pacifists like Yoder (he's on the Niebuhrian end of the scale here) never imagine that their nonviolence will result in worldly 'peace', though it would be pleasant if that were so. They realize that the likely outcome is that they will get plowed under. Yoder, what's more, in The Original Revolution, offers a kind of Mennonite Two Kingdoms, wherein the State and its policing, war making capacities are unfortunately necessary in this fallen world, but Christians are not to involve themselves in such business. Over time, he said, it just might fall out that were more and more folks to convert to following Jesus, the number left over for that kind of business would grow smaller and smaller. He wasn't holding his breath for that, however, being the Niebuhrian sort that he was.

     It comes to this - even if, in the final rigorous analysis, war is in certain cases permissible and even necessary (that latter being vastly more difficult to prove), it does not follow that one cannot take the even more difficult road of martyrdom by refusing to kill. For my part, I tend to take the nonviolent way because I am, quite frankly, the most violent man at heart you will ever meet. My instinct is to refuse the 'proportionate response' and the 'defensive posture', and wipe out those who would threaten me before they can act. I suspect that I'm not the only one with such a streak of amoral brutality, and it is precisely that which is let loose in a war, even a 'just war'. After all, one of the criteria for a just war is a reasonable chance of success, which means you have to be able to reasonably assert that winning the war is possible. Look at history, and tell me what it takes to win a war. If you're honest, you'll see that it's precisely that amoral brutality, the willingness to kill without restraint, to inspire terror and obedience by turns, and in the end, kill more people in more horrifyingly painful and terrifying ways, than your enemy, that wins a war.