Brian Hamilton

Reasons I Need Not Leave My Pacifism Behind to Evalutate Particular Wars

• I do not assume my pacifism is generalizable to everyone and certainly not to society itself, so it does not constitute an abandonment of my position to adopt your framework.
• Far from abandonment: my pacifist convictions shape the way I engage just war even on its own terms, driving me to seek the most rigorous application of the theory I can find.
• Jesus is Lord of all history, including rulers within history. So even though I do not hold society to the imitation of Christ, my knowledge of Christ may give me a better grasp of society’s purpose than society has of itself.
  • To wit, it is the God who loves in suffering that ordains the powers and constrains their rebellion. Belonging to the church, I know the suffering God and the state by definition does not (though its authority nonetheless comes from God). Am I not required, then, to tell the state the limit of its power?
• Tertullian, without allowing anything more than a structural affirmation of government (which I also allow), still found it possible to argue an end to persecution, for example, or to argue against the emperors own claims to divine legitimation.
• A conviction that true justice only comes through enemy-love in no way implies the impossibility of recognizing degrees of justice measured by my own criteria. Even if suffering love is the way of God, indiscriminate firebombing (which displays no love even for your friends) is still manifestly worse than acting in immediate defense of a friend against an attacker. “Will you love only those who love you? Even the Gentiles do that.” But to say that’s not enough for Christians does not forfeit the ability to say that loving those who love you is still better than hating those who love you.

7 February 2007 |
tags: Just War, Peace