The Sword or the Cross?
“This only I would learn of you, whether you are baptized on the sword or on the Cross?”—Menno Simons
Reflection by Edwin Woodruff Tait, contributing editor Christian History
In discussions about Christian attitudes to war, one of the surest ways to annoy people is to take an “almost pacifist” position—holding that war is legitimate in principle but almost always wrong in practice. Many defenders of Christian involvement in war get far angrier with “almost pacifists” than “real pacifists.” In fact, some authors on just war argue that the just war tradition has been hijacked by people who really want to be pacifists but don’t have the honesty or courage to admit it. I am one of those people. In practice, most of the time, I sound like a pacifist. Yet I’m not quite willing to go all the way.
Sword or cross?
The obvious reason to be a Christian pacifist is the belief that killing people is incompatible with Jesus’ call to love our neighbors. But the strongest reason not to be a pacifist is that being a pacifist is incompatible with Jesus’ call to love our neighbors. The Protestant Reformer Martin Bucer, in his comments on Matthew 5:39, remarked that Jesus did not say to turn our neighbor’s cheek, but our own. Bucer criticized Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler not for taking love of neighbor too far, but for not taking it far enough. As Bucer saw it, Sattler wanted to create a little community of the pure who weren’t concerned with the welfare of the whole society. Christian love requires us to defend our neighbors against unjust aggressors, and to punish those who harm others. The Anabaptist Balthasar Hubmaier took the argument further, claiming that the just use of the sword (not all Anabaptists were pacifists in the 16th century) was loving toward the evil-doer. C. S. Lewis (probably without having read Hubmaier) would make the same argument centuries later.
While many Christian pacifists find the notion of killing a person out of love horrifying and self-contradictory, I can’t agree. As Greek philosopher Plato and Christian philosopher Boethius both argued, the worst possible thing for anyone is to do evil and get away with it. To thwart an act of violence or injustice is an act of love not only for the victim but for the perpetrator, even if the only way to stop the evil act is to kill the evil-doer. If I should ever commit an act of violence, I hope someone will stop me, even if they have to kill me to do it. Hence, I’m not able to go all the way and embrace Christian pacifism. It is, at least in principle, possible to use force, even lethal force, justly and lovingly.
But is it possible in practice? That is quite a different question. Since we are all sinners, prone to violence and hatred and self-righteousness, doesn’t any use of force against evil inevitably become an expression of evil itself? Isn’t violence, in fact, very much like Tolkien’s “Ring,” something which a person may take up with noble intentions but will always corrupt those intentions? It looks very much as if it is, especially when violence is institutionalized and made a regular part of personal or national policy. The only person who can be safely trusted to use force in defense of the innocent is a sinless person.
But as Christians, we believe that there is one perfect, sinless example of how to fight evil. When Jesus died on the Cross, he was pouring himself out on behalf of his “neighbors,” standing between us and the powers of evil, enacting love in the most powerful manner possible. And this, it seems to me, is where the strength of the Christian pacifist position lies. As Menno Simons put it: “This only I would learn of you, whether you are baptized on the sword or on the Cross?”
Violence is so seductive to us sinners as to constitute an alternative means of redemption. We speak of soldiers dying to make us free and buying our liberty with their blood. We speak of just war as the means by which we will destroy evil. In practice, the use of force to fight evil inevitably seems to become an alternative to the Cross.
I believe that under certain very limited circumstances—when someone is in the act of committing murder or rape—the use of force, even lethal force, is legitimate for Christians. But even then it should be used with the utmost reluctance, and nonviolently putting oneself between the evil-doer and his victim is a more perfect way of following Jesus. And the more we institutionalize and regularize the use of force, whether as individuals or nations—the more we prepare for it, the more we anticipate it, the more zealously we try to work ourselves up to it—the more we are falling under the spell of an alternative Gospel in which the sword, not the Cross, is the means of salvation.
Edwin Woodruff Tait is contributing editor of Christian History magazine Read about pacifists during World Wars I and II in this newly published article by Steven M. Nolt: "Service for Peace."
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