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Particulars
of Christianity:
312
The Church Ethic
Christianity
and War (Continued)
Christianity and War
Christianity and War (Continued)
God
Bless America: Patriotic Christianity
Also,
it we should also take into account another contrast that
those familiar with the civil structure of the kingdom of
Israel would have been aware of when they read these chapters
of Romans. Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 19, and Joshua 20 all describe
a portion of the Jewish theocratic civil code, which provided
that a blood relative of a person who was slain could put
to death the man responsible for his demise.
In both Numbers 35:12, Dueteronomy 19:6 and Joshua 20:3, 5,
and 9, the scenario presented is one in which a person is
killed by accident or without the intention of the other party.
But Deuteronomy 19:12 also includes instructions for when
the death is intended by the other party. In this case the
man who committed the act is to be turned over to the avenger
of blood.
All of this finds parallel in Deuteronomy 32:43 where God
takes the role of the avenger of blood upon those who have
slain his people. In an apocalyptic sense God fulfills this
when he avenges the blood of His people upon those who have
slain them (Luke 18:7-8, Revelation 6:10, 16:6, 18:20, 19:2).
The contrast we must draw then is that in Israel, God had
established a civil code of justice in which His people were
in charge of administering justice, avenging themselves, and
repaying those who did evil. On the contrary, Paul's remarks
in Romans 12:17-19 and 13:1-4 clearly indicate that this is
no longer the case in the New Testament. Instead of God administering
justice through His people in a government that they control,
God instead has appointed the heathen governments to be responsible
for this duty (at least until the Day of the Lord and the
onset of the Jesus' millennial kingdom).
Therefore, for all of these reasons we must understand that
Paul's view expressed in Romans 12 and 13 does not include
a provision for a Christian-run nation since this idea would
involve an intermingling of believers, who Paul says are not
to avenge wrath, and the state, who Paul says is God's chosen
minister to avenge wrath on those who do evil. The contrast
between the theocratic civil code in Israel in which God's
people were to administer justice and Romans 12 and 13, which
withhold that right from believers, placing it instead with
the heathen government adds further support to this conclusion.
All of this being the case, we must conclude that there is
no precedent in the Bible for the notion of a pre-millennial
Christian government. And that additionally, there is no provision
for Christians to participate as the enforcer of the law through
military action or otherwise. Having thoroughly familiarized
ourselves with chapter 12 we can now move on to Romans 13.
Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher
powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that
be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist
shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not
a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not
be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt
have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God
to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid;
for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister
of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath,
but also for conscience sake. 6 For for this cause pay ye
tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually
upon this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their dues:
tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear
to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Having just instructed the Roman Church to leave peacefully
even foregoing justice, but instead leaving this to God. From
there Paul proceeds to teach on the role of government in
carrying out justice. Again, we must note that Paul continues
to distinguish between the higher powers (government) and
the believers, which he does not present as wielding political
authority, but rather as among those under the dominion of
the state.
Prior to the coming of the Day of the Lord and Jesus' millennial
reign, God has ordained that there should be rulers of the
world, both angelic and human. Part of the role of these rulers
is to carry out justice and to thwart injustice. Part of the
necessity of Jesus' coming kingdom and the condemnation of
these rulers, both angelic and human, is that they have not
complied with God's intentions. Nevertheless, the God-given
role of human government is (at least in part) to provide
justice and to prevent injustice and anarchy.
From this framework we must conclude that Paul's remarks in
Romans 13 mean that the New Testament teaches that human government
is responsible to maintain justice in society through the
enforcing of the law even by use of force (i.e. war). And
we as Christians are to submit to this authority with one
notable exception, when that civil authority requires us to
transgress the will of God. In such instances we are to obey
God rather than man and our options as far as civil disobedience
is concerned is limited to either martyrdom or flight.
This was the case in the early Church who in the face of Roman
persecution to renounce Christ chose either to be executed
when that was the punishment (at other times it was exile),
or to flee. However, neither in Christian history nor in Paul's
words in Romans can we find any license to resist with violence.
Instead, Paul instructs us to comply with ruling political
powers and places the implementation of justice with them
and not with believers. He thus shows that believers are not
part of the political authority and therefore, rules out the
concept of a pre-millennial Christian state.
Yet some take this very series of verses from Romans 13 to
be the Biblical mandate for Christians to wage just war and
to participate in civil government. Though as we have shown
no such scenario is compatible with Paul's remarks in this
passage, they simply envision a scenario in which civil government
is administered by Christians. Under such circumstances they
conclude that since government can wage war for the purposes
of justice, and since the government would be comprised of
Christians, that therefore, Christians are able to and obligated
to wage war for the purposes of justice as an exercise of
civil government.
There are several things that must be said about such a conclusion.
First, Romans 13 is a discussion of the relationship between
the political power and those under its authority. It is not
a discussion of how various competing or contemporary political
states relate to one another. Romans 13 presents how a government
administers justice, domestically, to the people under its
jurisdiction. Therefore, Romans 13 can only be used to support
a government's divine right to employ military force upon
its own citizens in order to uphold justice. It CANNOT in
any way be used to support international military action upon
another sovereign nation not under its authority.
So, it must be concluded that international war is beyond
the scope of Romans 13 and, therefore, Romans 13 cannot be
used as Biblical supported that a Christian government (if
one should exist) could wage war on another nation.
However, now that we have limited the scope of Romans 13 appropriately,
we must also discuss its implications on the supposed Christian
government.
The notion of a Christian nation or government is more than
conceivable to the modern, and especially western mind. Many
Americans even insist that the United States was founded as
and perhaps still is or should be such a Christian nation.
So, when we as westerners, or even as Americans, read Romans
13 it is easy to infuse the notion of Christian involvement
in a just war as a function of a Christian state.
However, there is much to consider on this matter. First,
even if the existence of a Christian state were conceded for
argument's sake, Romans 13 would only provide a mandate for
the enforcing of a justice code internally, or domestically,
upon the citizens of that state. It would not provide any
warrant for the external mobilization of military force internationally
against a separate, independent nation.
Second, any suggestion that a Biblical authorization is provided
to any proposed Christian nation to wage war upon another
country inherently contains an appeal to the idea of manifest
destiny. By placing other independent and sovereign nations
under the political authority of the Christian state there
is the presumption of a divine mandate for imperial conquest
such as was conferred upon the nation of Israel regarding
the Promised Land. Yet no Biblical decree exists for the transfer
or sharing of the divine mandate given to Israel in this respect.
On this point we must first understand, as we have previously
demonstrated, that notions of a Christian state are completely
incompatible with New Testament teaching and the understanding
of the early Church. This is especially the case where the
supposed Christian nation is one, which exerts global influence
and dominance. Therefore, it is grossly inappropriate to inscribe
such a concept into Romans 13, when it would have been completely
foreign to Paul's thinking and to the understanding of his
audience.
As has been documented by others (see http://www.pfrs.org/pd/index.html),
the first and second century church was universally Chiliast
in its eschatology. This is a key factor in interpreting the
implications of Romans 13 and can clearly been seen in Paul's
remarks therein which we have already discussed. The New Testament
era opened within the Jewish Messianic expectation of a political
hero who would emancipate God's people from the oppression
of the Gentile age. It was this very expectation that contributed
heavily to the rejection of Jesus by so many of God's people
at the time.
To be clear, the Old Testament hope was for a theocratic state
to be established by the Jewish Messiah, which would bring
the times of the Gentiles to a close and replace their dominion
once and for all. There was no room to even conceive of an
intervening period to be dominated or controlled by some other
godly government. The Messianic kingdom was the sole political
hope available to the ancient Jewish mind anything else would
have been beyond foreign to them, it would have been both
absurd and impossible.
It is with this background that we must understand the Chiliasm
of the New Testament church. Firmly rooted in Judaism, the
early Church held fast to the Jewish Messianic beliefs. In
today's terminology, they were futurist, pre-millennial, and
post-tribulational. Which means that they expected a Messianic
Kingdom was yet to come, would arrive at the onset of a literal
1,000-year reign by Jesus Christ from Jerusalem (and that
the Church would be raptured after the tribulation period).
To the early Christians, like those in Rome to whom Paul wrote
his epistle, the suggestion that prior to this Messianic kingdom
there would exist a Christian government with either limited
or global influence would also have been either ludicrous
or completely unimaginable. And since one of the primary rules
for properly interpreting scripture is to understand a passage
as the original audience did, we must reject the insertion
of a Christian nation into the instructions of Romans 13.
The notion of a Christian nation with divine authority would
simply not have been conceivable to a New Testament Church,
which saw itself, like the nation of Israel, as separate from
the world, not unrecognizably infused with it. And it would
have been incompatible with Christians who, as we have seen,
were defined as the subjects of world government, not the
stewards of government. As Paul adequately puts it in Hebrews
11:8-9, they had the mindset of Abraham, who considered himself
not a citizen of this world or of his home land, but of the
kingdom of God, who was not looking for an earthly country
to call his own, but a heavenly one. This heavenly country
is the Millennial hope of Israel and the Church.
So, if the notion of a pre-millennial Christian government
with divine authority to wage just war did not come from the
Apostles or the early Church where did it come from? This
question is answered quite easily.
At the turn of the fourth century A.D. there was a significant
change in world affairs. After almost three centuries of animosity
towards Christianity, Constantine, the emperor of Rome, is
said to have converted to Christianity after proclaiming that
he received a sign from God to conquer in the sign of the
cross. Thereafter, the process of Christianizing the Roman
state ensued. Christianity, persecuted relentlessly for almost
300 years, quickly became acceptable in Rome through the Edict
of Milan in 313 AD.
In 325 A.D. the Councel of Nicaea took place cementing the
once outlawed religion of the martyrs as the leading religion
of the empire that had for so long fed them to the lions and
burned them at the stake. From this point forward the Church
took a dramatic and dangerous turn toward the heretical compromises,
which ultimately culminated in the Roman Catholic Church.
For the next fifteen hundred years or so the Roman Catholic
Emperors and Popes wielded tremendous religious and political
power over the European and Mediterranean world. Their near-global
power grabs sustained for well over a millennium. The Pope
and the RCC became intertwined and inseparable from the political
power of the West.
The eschatological views of ancient Judaism and the early
Church quickly became out-of-vogue with the developing political
prowess of psuedo-Christian Rome. The doctrines and methods
of interpretation of these two predecessors had long since
been discarded and replaced with the spiritualization borrowed
of the Gnostic mystery schools who had infiltrated the Church
hierarchy. It was this approach of spiritualizing the plain
meaning of the text, which characterized and defined Roman
Catholic eschatology, which saw itself as the heir to the
messianic kingdom, with the Pope ruling the earth as the vicar
of Christ over the earth from Rome.
In scholarly circles this doctrine became known as Amillennialism.
It holds that there would be no literal millennial reign of
Jesus over the earth as the Jews and ancient Christians had
expected, but that instead God would Christianize the globe
through the Roman Catholic Church, the successor of the Roman
Empire.
Additional theories, which share some correspondence with
Amillennialism in regards to these matters can be found in
Preterist and Post-Millennial doctrine. (Preterism holds that
Christ returned at the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.
Post-Millennialism believes that Christ will return after
the Millennium, which will be established by the efforts of
the Church rather than by Jesus' return. All three school
share some overlap on various eschatological issues.)
The Reformation, which birthed Protestantism, initiated a
long overdue return to the bounds of literal hermeneutic (interpretive)
methods. Yet despite this recommitment Reform Theologians
did not abandon the Roman Catholic interpretive spiritualization
entirely. The early Reformers were, in fact, quite content
to keep with Catholic precedent concerning eschatological
issues of theology. Their historicist approach viewed the
Roman Church as the empire of the beast. Yet they themselves
sought to establish Christian governance and usher in either
the return of Christ or the millennium by instituting Christian
government on earth. The most obvious evidence of the continued
impact of Catholic political Christianity can be seen in Geneva
where John Calvin, a major figure in Reform Theology, was
one of the key players.
Various forms of Amillennialism, Post-millennialism, Historicism,
and Preterism enjoyed continued popularity in the period prior
to the World Wars of the twentieth century. But do, in part
to the wars that characterized that century and the continued
determination to return to a more consistently literal hermeneutic,
these schools of doctrine have since waned in prevalence.
The sole exception to this decline can be found in scholarly
and ecclesiastic circles of Calvinist persuasion (for example,
Presbyterians) where they have of late, experienced some level
of resurgence. Outside of these camps, however, there has
been a significant revival of the first and second century
Chiliasm of the early, orthodox Church, though today it is
simply known as premillennial futurism. (The sole area of
exception is the popular acceptance of pretribulationalism
rather than the post-tribulational view of the early Church's
Chiliasm.)
The contrast between Premillennial Futurism (Chiliasm) and
the Amillennial-Postmillennial-Preterist camp goes beyond
the apostolic authenticity and antiquity of the former and
the Roman Catholicity, heresy, and novelty of the later. However,
the most significant difference, for the purposes of this
article is that Premillennial Futurism, with its emphasis
on a return to early, and therefore truly, orthodox Church
doctrine, should also preclude the notion of some pre-millennial
Church state or Christian nation to which we might apply Romans
13.
The continued consideration or insistence upon a supposed
Christian government within even Protestant premillennial
futurists can be seen as an inconsistent commitment to the
literal hermeneutic (the Grammatical-Historical Method). It
is a failure to fully discard the Roman Catholic influence,
not fully abandoned by the Reformers, in favor of a purer
and more ancient Christian faith.
Those of us who wish to remain grounded in the teaching that
was given to the early Church by the apostles themselves must
relinquish any idea of a pre-millennial Christian government
and decline the infusion of such a notion (so foreign to authentic
Christianity) into our interpretation of Romans 13.
With all of this in mind it seems that violent means on both
an individual or corporately exercised level must be seen
as outside the bounds of the Christian faith, even if the
cause is just or great injury threatened. The testimony of
the martyrs is harmonious with the available statements made
in the New Testament on the matter and both lead to this same
conclusion.
And while this article has sought to examine the Biblical
and historical basis for the position that Christians can
participate in and wage just war, we might also briefly mention
the practical problems with this view.
First, attempts to define which wars are just and which are
not would be an insurmountable and completely subjective task.
This is especially true for Christians for whom such a discussion
would be largely without direct Biblical guidance.
Second, even if a suitable definition of just war could be
accomplished, it would be impossible for Christians ever to
know for certain if the wars they waged were truly for just
reasons. If a just cause was claimed, we would have to investigate
to be certain that no unjust factors were really involved
in motivating the government's decisions.
For a recent example we might consider that the suffering
of the Iraqi people under an oppressive regime would seem
to be a just cause for military action against Iraq, but the
acquisition of Iraqi oil revenue would not be. And when both
just and unjust causes were possible we would not be able
to know with certainty, which was the true motivation for
our nation's military action. Such uncertainty is unacceptable
when the justness of the cause is essential to its permissibility
within a Christian perspective.
(Of course, this example does not even take into account that
the war on Iraq would constitute military action upon another
sovereign nation and would therefore fall completely outside
of Paul's comments in Romans 13, which speaks to a political
power and the citizens under its own jurisdiction.)
In closing we readily acknowledge that the last 20 centuries
contain no shortage of wars waged in the name of Christianity
by those who claimed to be Christians. We may question whether
those who engaged in such actions were truly Christians or
whether their claims were truly representative of the Christian
faith (for example Constantine). However, one thing we should
not do is be quick to join them by pledging our support of
various wars fought by the nations we as Christians just happen
to reside in during this life. Further reason to remain pacifist
comes from a need to distinguish the Christian Faith from
others, like Islam for example, which demand and openly embraces
violence and warfare as a means to accomplish God's will.
One final disclaimer should be mentioned. Christian pacifism
should not be misunderstood as solely an aversion to violence
on the grounds that it is morally inappropriate. Instead,
it must also be seen as an objection that is also formed by
an absence of purpose for violence within the confines of
the pre-millennial Christian paradigm. War has its place within
Christianity, but it is limited to the millennial reign of
Christ, which will both be initiated by war and maintained
through "an iron rod."
A more specific objection to our conclusions may be posed
by many American readers in the form of the question: wasn't
America founded by Christian men to be and, in fact historically
hasn't it been, a Christian nation?
This is of course a matter of great debate and a perhaps a
topic for another article. However, our view is that any claim
that America is a Christian nation is at least not entirely
accurate, but more likely, almost completely false since the
founding fathers of the United States were predominantly Freemasons.
For some insight into on our view on this matter please visit
our articles entitled Global Conspiracy (and Freemasonry)
at geocities.com/biblestudying/studies.html#conspiracy.
But even setting aside the controversial question of founding
fathers and Freemasonry, the primary certainty is that America
cannot be considered a "Christian nation" set up by God's
will if the entire founding of the country was in violation
of Paul's instructions in Romans 12-13, wherein the apostle
most certainly does not allow for Christians to wage military
revolt against the appointed secular governments. The American
Revolution would also violate 1 Peter 2:13-17, wherein we
are told to submit to the ordinances of man and to submit
to and honor the king and those in government. Additionally,
Matthew 22:17-21, Matthew 17:24-27, Mark 12:14-17, Luke 20:25,
and Romans 13:7 all instruct us to pay taxes to the political
powers that are over us, regardless of whether or not we have
representation in those political systems (and most likely
presuming that we will not).
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