The Irrationality and Unmanliness of Christian Pacifism

On display here.  I gave up after posting references to Catholic teaching, to the work of C.S. Lewis and Richard Niebuhr, and highlighting the illogic of their exegesis.  Their blinders are apparently on for good.

Comments

[Cal]

I've proffered much from your blog and the great gems that are classical Anglicanism (English Catholicism proper perhaps).

But having looked at the last crop of manhood posts, and the equation of non-violence as 'unmanly' is inchoate and foolish. I will not deny that a certain kind of liberal sensibility pervades many a Christian's non-violence argument. This is fair to dismiss as whinging.

But please, for the love of God, do not be a silly chicken-hawk. Niebuhr is a pagan who couldn't abandon Christian symbols in his pursuit to defend Western civilization. May God have mercy on His soul.

Instead of clamoring for the sword, ISIS is nothing more than the rotten fruit of a hundred years of Western meddling in the Middle East, trying to chop up and absorb what was left of the Ottoman Empire. Russia is equally to blame in the disaster. ISIS is evil, but a reckoning. The Church needs a call to a self-discipline and a rejection of idiotic and demonic nationalistic posturing. Being a man is putting childish sword-swinging away. Live free from the sword, or die by the sword, such sayeth the Master.

cal

[Embryo Parson]

Hi, Cal.

Niebuhr was a "pagan"!? What about Lewis? Or Augustine?

Sorry, but I have to stand by what I write concerning chivalry, just war theory, and the importance of instilling at least a small degree of martial mentality in boys and men. I will also stand by my assessment that Judeo-Christianity is not pacifist, but realist. It eschews unnecessary violence and loves peace, but it also understands, as they say in Texas, that "some men need killin'." C.S. Lewis: The Necessity of Chivalry

I agree with part of what you say in your concluding paragraph. Much of what the West faces today from groups like ISIS is of its own making. However, Islamic imperialism antedates all this. For most of its history, the Christian East and West has been fighting a defensive war against it. So while I agree with your assessment of how the West has futzed things up in the Middle East, I find the rest of your assessment defeatist and both historically and theologically deficient.

[Cal]

I wasn't addressing Lewis or Augustine, particularly because they lack the geo-political vision and attempt at coherency found in Niebuhr. My omission wasn't an attempt to lump them in.

I don't see it the way you bifurcate this issue. I don't think you need to deny a martial mentality, but we are to be a "bloodless army" as St. Clement would call us. I don't think you need to reject the disciple and askesis called for in the Church, and yet also pick up a sword to kill one's enemies.

I am not defeatist and I am a realist. I see the victory of the resurrection bringing about a different way to live and conduct 'warfare'. I'm not an Anabaptist, but read Yoder.

cal

[Embryo Parson]

"I'm not an Anabaptist, but read Yoder."

I see you're not without a sense of humor. ;>)

First of all, as you well know, there is a dispute over why certain early Church Fathers argued that Christians are not permitted to serve in the military. (See also, Christians in the Roman Army: Countering the Pacifist Narrative.) Secondly, even if you could prove your case that this select group of Fathers were pacifists in principle rather than merely in practice because of the pagan rites associated with Roman military service, it's irrelevant. That view was authoritatively supplanted, just as surely as was chiliasm, and for good reason since neither can find a real basis in Holy Scripture.

I "bifurcate" the issue because the already/not yet and Christ/Caesar distinctions are interpretive schemas rooted in the New Testament and as such require such "bifurcation." It's why, among other things, we wouldn't fling open all the jail and prison cell doors because Christ and his apostles enjoin us to forgive and turn the other cheek. What's more, there are a number of implications to be drawn from Romans 13:1-7, one of which is the legitimacy of the use of force to deter and/or punish those who would harm the innocent. This is why mainstream Christian moral theology permits the use of deadly force in defense of oneself and his homeland.

"I see the victory of the resurrection bringing about a different way to live and conduct 'warfare'. "

So be it. Along with majority of Christians now living and in ages past, I simply don't share your view, which means that you won't find a home for it here at this blog. I'll stick with C.S. Lewis regarding the "necessity of chivalry".

[Cal]

I'm not trying to be humorous with Yoder. If you think Yoder's argument for non-violence equates to a historical argument or only re-tooling the Anabaptist "Fall of the Church", then you've not really read him. I didn't cite him for those. I'm comfortable, as the linked article quotes Leithart on, that the Church has always been ambiguous. There was no "golden age" (I'm an Augustinian!). Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy has to be fought for every step of the way (Paul's letters and Acts should tell us so!)

This, of course, rests now into conflating multiple ideas. Non-violence does not mean anarchy (as Origen or Lactantius would show), and a particular position does not deem it correct. I quoted St. Clement because I like his turn of phrase.

Historically, as I said, there was no golden age. However, this doesn't mean there wasn't a conflict. As per your example of chiliasm, it was a conflict. I think many martyr accounts and St. Hippolytus of Rome are the best examples of the strife. So conflicted that we are still confused. The fact that priests and bishops are not allowed to bear arms should be a striking example that military service, and blood-shed, is not open-shut. The East imposed abstention on communion if blood was shed.

A presupposition disagreement: I do not believe how you map over a Christ/Caesar. I am not an Erastian, nor am I a Lutheran/Reformed 2-Kingdoms guy. Romans 13 says nothing about participation, merely the reality, in fact, informed by Romans 12, it is descriptive of attitude. Of course, I shouldn't need to point out that St. Paul most likely wrote this during the reign of Nero. Romans 13 does not imply any lesser-magistrate doctrine and is not a document of governing.

Of course, we are sort of dancing on thin-air right now. We are arguing ideas in a world full of nuclear warheads, predator drones, and the like. Many just-war proponents have admitted that the doctrine is in many ways incapable to deal with this, at least as articulated in figures like Aquinas.

There many other problems with assumptions, such as: Canonically speaking, where would the New Covenant engender self-protection (not weak or other)? Given protection of homeland, what is 'home-land', the Nation or Nation-State is a rather novel invention? What is the significance of the modern professional, mechanized army for deliberating participation?

Again, as I said, rejecting war and refusing to kill does not equate to "feminization" or lack of discipline. Certainly the Desert Fathers wouldn't count as "feminized"! It's a lack of creativity and imagination that would engender such. I won't deny that many pacifist men are culturally-capitulated, but many advocates for war are crude and ignorant.

I may be in the minority of Church history, but I don't think you're in the majority either. We need to consider that most Christians would find this world we live in very alien, with such destruction we can wrought instantly. We're not talking about swords and clubs anymore. And, hell, have you ever experienced anything of Marine Corps boot? It's quintessentially a cult.

I've appreciated much of what you've written about many other topics. This one particularly frustrates me because a meme of a crusader with a spear in a Saracen head is not only crude but childish and naive. I do not claim to be a pacifist, but I do strive to live as a peace-maker. War only destroys peoples lives, eradicates communal bonds, and causes anarchy. I do not believe such things will stop before the Eschaton, but I do not think Christ's Church ought to participate, especially in this era between the Worlds.

Peace & love be with you,
cal