A couple of weeks back, Robert George delivered a First Thoughts post exhorting Catholics to take more seriously the moral hazards involved in the use of drones in war. Nicholas Hahn of Real Clear Religion has taken him up on that and, in the process, to task.
George and Hahn are serious people, and readers can draw their own conclusions about their respective arguments. But, in reading them you may agree that very quickly, and necessarily, the question of drones leads to a more fundamental claim—one invoked by, of all people, Barack Obama, in of all contexts, his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.
On that occasion the president appealed to the concept of bellum iustum—the “just war”—presumably, to defend the two operations being waged concurrently under his command and to brush back charges the Nobel Committee was using him as a prop in that political theater whose repertoire consists of a tired farce in which the U.S plays the villainous lead.
Just War theories, of secular as well as religious provenance, have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including those that either reject the notion or place it low on the ladder of realpolitik priorities. As part of a Christian lexicon, though, it can understandably seem a contradiction in terms. Indeed, Christian apologists treating the topic tend to begin by acknowledging that the very effort is self-indicting—a function of our sinful condition—and thus, a concession.
Please understand: I do not count Dr. George and Mr. Hahn among those I’m about to describe. I am, however, troubled by Christians who can ascertain divine warrant for say, capital punishment (an issue that, aside from his own death by such means, Jesus addressed at best obliquely), yet find ambiguity in such daunting Gospel moments as “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
In the last century, Mohandas Gandhi waged a different kind of war. Through it he made a compelling case for the radically nonviolent activism of ahimsa, and demonstrated its potential as a lever for seismic social change. Born as it was, from the union of religious reverence and political pragmatism, his pugnacious brand of pacifism accomplished the seemingly impossible. It also caught the attention of Christians who wondered if the mahatma was on to something Christ himself might prefer to some of the alternatives expounded in his name.
Yet, throughout his campaign, Gandhi remained keenly aware of the profound challenges posed by ahimsa, and the total commitment it required. In his eyes, if one could not manage it, it would be better to fight tooth and claw than default to inert pacifism.
Gandhi’s example had a documented influence on the formerly pistol-packing Martin Luther King, Jr. In turn, King’s exercise of Christian nonviolence has assumed its rightful its place as one of the noblest chapters in American history.
Human beings do unspeakably vicious things—are doing so as I write and you read this. Christians are commissioned to witness to the love that is the antidote to that eruptive darkness, the unconditional love that is the true nature of things.
While it is no small feat to turn the other cheek, it is another thing when the cheek being struck is not one’s own but that of a loved one—or an innocent stranger. I like to imagine I could rise to the challenge of Gandhi and King’s model with respect to my own hide. I am decidedly less sure when met with hypotheticals, like whether my killing a dictator would spare millions suffering and death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer confronted that proposition and concluded he had the paradoxical obligation to violate the sixth commandment—in order to be faithful to its author. The cost of his discipleship was death—hanged two weeks before American troops liberated the concentration camp in which he had been held.
In the course of history there have been countless wars, short and long. For over a decade now the U.S. has been engaged in military conflicts that, in the views of the present pope and his predecessor, could and ought to have been avoided with a more rigorous application of just war doctrine. Unfortunately, in the words of Bill Vallicella, “Philosophy is magnificent in aspiration, but miserable in execution.”
August 13th, 2012 | 10:24 pm
I confess that I don’t see “just war” as a contradiction in terms. And I can’t imagine why a Christian should concede that it is “self-indicting.” That is certainly not how Aquinas, or Luther or Calvin, or to use the most prominent modern thinkers, Paul Ramsey or James Turner Johnson, for instance, address the issue of just war. Aquinas, for example explicitly rejected the claim that it was always sinful to wage war.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm
To use a domestic micro example, If a police officer is required to apply deadly force to prevent a mass murderer in the act from killing even more people, what could it possibly mean to say that his actions were “self-indicting.” To be sure such a situation is lamentable in the sense that the murderer could not be prevented from killing people in the first place and in the sense that the murderer put the police officer in that position, but the police officer was not “doing evil [killing the murderer] so that good [preventing more murders] may come. In fact, we commend him for doing his duty (as a minister of God who does not bear the sword in vain) and we would consider it a vice were he to avoid his duty (and keeping his sword sheathed as it were), through cowardice or some other vice. What would be “self-indicting” in this example, would not be his application of deadly force but his failure to use deadly force. His action, we would say, is an act of justice, which is to say that it is not “self-indicting.” If he ran away out of fear for his own safety, that would be unjust and that would, indeed be “self-indicting.”
I will leave it to others to draw the analogy to the admittedly more complex jus ad bellum issues in the war against international terrorists or in the jus in bello issues related to the “drone” attacks.
August 14th, 2012 | 1:58 am
I would heartily recommend to all Richard B Hay’s chapter on nonviolence in his highly regarded “The Moral Vision of the New Testament”, where he makes a compelling biblical case for the normativity of nonviolence for Christians.
I would also recommend to you some of the fascinating recent work done by Erica Chenowith of Wesleyan University on the effectiveness of organized nonviolence. Within Christianity there are two traditions regarding the morality of the use of force: Christian Pacifism and Just War Theory. Two of the criteria of traditional just war teaching are that war (1) must be a last resort and (2) must have a probability of success in order to be just. Chenowith’s research shows the low success rates of war compared with the significantly higher success rates of organized non-violent resistance in resolving conflicts and bringing about social change. This research should factor heavily in weighing the probability of success of a given conflict. It should also push us to make more concerted efforts at nonviolent conflict resolution before we conclude that we have reached our last resort and must pursue war.
Lastly, in response to Keith, while it is tempting to make analogies between individual police actions and state sponsored war, they are actually quite different. In order to incapacitate a dangerous criminal, a police officer might morally take actions that carry a high risk of killing the criminal. In certain circumstance this would be morally legitimate under the principle of double effect. However, in a war you are talking about two parties directly and intentionally trying to kill one another. Moreover, these two parties in most circumstances will be low level soldiers who bear little or no responsibility for the decisions that have brought their two armies into conflict. Even further, the conflict between these two armies will almost certainly result in more civilian casualties than combatants. These factors (and more like them) make the situation of organized war very different from the case of emergency police intervention that you describe.
August 14th, 2012 | 9:26 am
Mr. Kelleher, you give both George and Hahn too much credit. Why don’t you read the just-war writings of a *real* philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe? She actually thought the just war teaching had real teeth. Nowadays on the religious right, “just war theory” is simply an excuse for the war one wants, just as “prudence” is no longer a virtue, but rather an excuse for acting imprudently and wickedly (since, don’t you know, only God can judge truly what is prudent and what is not).
August 14th, 2012 | 10:25 am
Vinnie–when a police officer puts the chest of a dangerous criminal in the cross-hairs of his sniper rifle or the front sight post of his 9mm baretta, and double taps his chest and then puts one in the forehead, it is pure sophistry to suggest that he did not intend to kill the criminal. Same in a combat situation.
The MORAL similarity is analogous because both involve the use of deadly force. This has nothing to do with “double effect” which relates to the forseen and unintended harm that might come to others as a result of this action. (eg. While I intended to kill the murderer, I did not intend to injure that bi-stander who got hit by the round that past though to intended target.) That issue is addressed by the principles of discrimination and proportionality and also applies in domestic police settings and in warfighting.
On Richard Hays’s chapter on violence. We are going to have to disagree if he presents a “compelling” case. I find his exegesis to be tendentious at best. To put it bluntly, that chapter is awful. Since you brought it up, however, I will note that in a public forum at the Evangelical Philosophical Society about a decade ago, I pressed him on the moral status of soldiers. My point (and it is far from novel) was that if we took his view seriously it would be hard to escape the conclusion that serving as a soldier is immoral and the “office” or “calling” of being a soldier is an intrinsically immoral profession, akin to serving as a pimp in a whore house.
Hays not only did not repudiate this notion, he responded by saying that when military Chaplains were on Duke’s campus recruiting for the military chaplaincy it was, indeed, akin to prostitution. If he thinks that about chaplains, who do not bear arms, it seems clear what he thinks of those of us who have (and do). Needless to say, I disagreed, but I understand where he is coming from.
Again, since you brought it up, let me call your attention to a sustained critique of Hays’s exegesis I co-authored with James Skillen in the Philosophia Chrsti–the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society here: (I don’t think it is available online.)
James Skillen and Keith Pavlischek, “Political Responsibility and the Use of Force: A Critique of Richard Hays,” Philosophia Christi 3/2 (2001), pp. 421–445.
You can, however, find the table of contents for that issue here:
http://www.epsociety.org/philchristi/tocs/pc_toc_3-2.pdf
August 14th, 2012 | 10:33 am
Yes, by all means read Anscombe to include her devastating criticism of pacifism and her rejection of the view of double effect suggested by Vinnie.
And then read Paul Ramsey for the same reason.
August 14th, 2012 | 3:19 pm
Another great column from Tim Kelleher on another difficult subject. Of course there will be those who mistake their own opinions for fact, but there is nothing cut and dried about Just War Theory and how the Christian “should” respond. In my opinion, there is nothing “Christian” about Just War. One can argue it’s necessity but one cannot argue that its implementation is in any way Christian. Jesus did not say “Turn the other cheek — Except in the following cases…” To turn the other cheek can mean one’s own death. That, like it or not, is the most radical and the Christ-like behavior. Being Christ-like is rather inconvenient most of the time.
August 14th, 2012 | 4:24 pm
According to Eastern Orthodox theology there is no such thing as a just war. War is always evil. Sometimes, it is a lesser evil than allowing a foreign army to invade your country and kill your people, but war is still evil even under these circumstances. That is why an Orthodox Christian soldier who kills in war is always placed under penance and cannot take communion until he has gone to confession.
Fr. John W. Morris
August 14th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
“The most noteworthy aspect of the moral approach to warfare in Aquinas and Calvin is that it teaches—contrary to today’s prevailing views—that a failure to engage in a just war is a failure of virtue, a failure to act well. An odd corollary of this conclusion is that it is a greater evil for Christians to fail to wage a just war than it is for unbelievers. When an unbeliever fails to go to war, the cause may be a lack of courage, prudence, or justice. He may be a coward or simply indifferent to evil. These are failures of natural moral virtue. When Christians (at least in the tradition of Aquinas and Calvin) fail to engage in just war, it may involve all of these natural failures as well, but it will also, and more significantly, involve a failure of charity. The Christian who fails to use force to aid his neighbor when prudence dictates that force is the best way to render that aid is an uncharitable Christian. Hence, Christians who willingly and knowingly refuse to engage in a just war do a vicious thing: they fail to show love toward their neighbor as well as toward God.”
I know that was published in one of those right wing extremist magazines, but hey….. feel free discuss why Professor Cole is wrong. Or, why Calvin and Aquinas [or Ramsey, or Johnson] were wrong (or tell me why you think Cole has Calvin and Aquinas wrong).
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/good-wars-22
August 14th, 2012 | 5:41 pm
When one is tempted toward pacifism or overidealism in the fight against militant Islam, remembering the Children’s Crusade can provide a helpful antidote. Think if they’d had Gandhi or MLK with them, those poor kids would have fared better? Here’s a nice, brief account for those who have forgotten.
http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/children.html
August 14th, 2012 | 10:49 pm
Fr. Morris–I confess to being much less familiar with Eastern Orthodoxy’s views, even though I was a grad student with Fr. Alexander Webster and sat in on his dissertation defense on just war. I think he is now recognized as one of Orthodoxy’s authorities on just war.
I guess my question is whether you would counsel an Orthodox parishioner with questions as to whether he could serve as a soldier even in what you would consider a worthy cause (prevent an enemy from invading your country) By doing so, would you counsel him to do evil (kill an enemy combatant in that war) so that good (invasion repelled) may come?
If so, how is this view distinct from a utilitarian ethic, apart from the fact the soldier has to do confession and penance?
I also wonder, if there is no such thing as a “just war” how you might determine what constitutes an unjust use of force. If there is no standard or criteria for “just war” how can you render judgment on whether a nation’s resort of force is “unjust?”
August 17th, 2012 | 10:02 am
[...] Kelleher at First Things: I am, however, troubled by Christians who can ascertain divine warrant for say, capital punishment [...]
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