In Sunday’s sermon I drew attention to the scandalous results of a recent Pew study which indicates that Christians approve of torture in even greater numbers than do religiously unaffiliated people. I said that this study reveals that however much people may claim to be worshipping the Jesus found in the Bible—that is, the Jesus of history, the real Jesus—many are merely worshipping a mental idol of their own creation that they’ve simply dubbed “Jesus”. After the sermon a man approached me and remarked “I’m afraid to ask you what you think about national defense.” This article is intended as a response to that remark and the much more important matter of Jesus’ probable view of such things as national defense. After all, one often hears well meaning people speak of Jesus as if the man were a strident pacifist. Indeed, entire denominations are built on this premise. But as we shall see, the idea that Jesus was opposed to all forms of physically force—even when employed by lawful authorities—is simply untenable in light of scripture.
First one needs to understand that the ancient Jews, like all nations, had a military of a sort. It may not have been a professional army (at least not all of it) as we’re accustomed to but the Hebrews nonetheless had, in times of need, an assembly of armed men, organized along some pattern, which would fight other people to the death at the command of their national leaders. This wasn’t some anomaly in a particular part of their history, it was a simple and essentially ubiquitous fact of their national character. We might say that the legitimacy of a military (at least in principle) was just a given in the wider Hebrew psyche—especially considering the positive role the Hebrew military had in much of the nation’s scriptures.
Secondly one needs to remember that Jesus was an ancient Jew. He wasn’t a conservative 17th century British Evangelical, a nihilistic 19th century German rationalist, or a liberal 21st century American agnostic. He was an ancient Jew and thus he ought to be understood against the backdrop of his own actual cultural milieu and not, anachronistically, against our own. The practical upshot of this is that one ought to assume that Jesus likely supported, at least tacitly, those things which his larger culture supported unless we have actual evidence to the contrary. (Just as we would assume that a given 18th century white American southerner would probably support democracy, slavery, and Christianity unless we had actual evidence to the contrary.)
Now with these two caveats in mind (ancient Judaism’s belief in the acceptability of at least some military force & Jesus’ identity as an ancient Jew) we can look at the actual specifics we find in the New Testament beginning with Jesus’ immediate context and then working our way to Jesus himself.
First we should look at the case of John the Baptist since every single canonical gospel presents this man as the long-prophesied forerunner of Jesus who in turn predicted the coming of Jesus. Additionally, when commenting on John the Baptist, Jesus said, “among those born of women there is no one greater than John” (Luke 7:28).
When John was baptizing people as a symbol of repentance he was asked for advice by a number of different groups…including soldiers. In Luke 3:14 we find this: “Then some soldiers asked him, ‘And what should we do?’ He replied, ‘Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.’” Now this seems like it would have been a great opportunity for John to denounce military service. He had been asked point-blank what repentance for active soldiers would look like and could very easily have said, “Get a different job!” But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything even vaguely disapproving of military service at all let alone advocate for thorough-going pacifism. He merely condemned an abuse that sometimes accompanies occupations: extortion.
Well now let’s look at the apostles Peter and Paul, something of Jesus’ successors.
Peter wrote (in 1 Peter 2:13-14) “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (emphasis added). And Paul wrote (in Romans 13:1-6) “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing” (emphasis added). Given these two passages it seems clear that, again, the legitimacy of force as exercised by the state is affirmed—at least in principle.
So what we have established is that not only Jesus’ wider cultural context believed that a state could legitimately use physical force (expressed supremely through a military) but his immediate predecessor and (far more significantly) his immediate successors (who regarded him as utterly authoritative!) did so as well. Given all this it is extraordinarily likely that Jesus felt much the same way—that is, unless we can produce definitive evidence to the contrary.
But when we look to Jesus himself this evidence is rather lacking. Yes, Jesus did say things that would seem (at least in themselves) to indicate a support of pacifism: “Do not resist the evil man, turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52), and so on. But at the very same time Jesus both heartily approved a man (the Centurion of Matthew 8:5-13) who’s whole job (at least ostensibly) was to “resist the evil man” and Jesus himself called Peter to arms (Luke 22:35-38). So what’s going on here? I confess that I’m not quite sure. Perhaps these statements are further manifestations of Jesus’ well attested tendency to use hyperbole and they were merely meant as stern warnings against militarism and vengefulness on the one hand and quietism and fatalism on the other. Or perhaps Jesus’ seemingly pacifistic words were directed at a specific issue at hand—like the seething nationalistic insurgency afoot in Israel in his day; I think N.T. Wright does a pretty good job arguing that perspective.
In the end, then, what we have is a Jesus who was the inheritor of a culture which saw the value of state-directed force, who was forerun by a man who he himself approved who had no qualms with militaries in principle, who produced a movement that was radically committed to his person and teachings and likewise felt that the state had the right, as an instrument of God (in some sense), to utilize force at times, and who himself approved a soldier and called for swords. Given all this, the idea that Jesus was a through-going Ghandi-esque pacifist is utterly implausible; it simply doesn’t align with the data. Rather, the evidence in hand suggests that Jesus saw the value of police forces and militaries and approved of them within certain reasonable limits as outlined by his wider-ranging ethic of mercy and love.
Of course one could claim that Jesus actually repudiated his culture’s mores, firmly (but silently) disapproved of John’s permissive response to the soldiers, didn’t actually mean what he said when it sounded “militant,” and was subsequently wildly misunderstood by his closest followers. But such a maneuver is not the sign of a humble and receptive attempt to understand the Jesus of history through the records of his life that we actually possess. Instead, such mental gymnastics belie a desire to force Jesus into a preexisting ideological mould—a process which, once again, leads us away from the real Jesus and towards an idol of our own construction.
One sometimes hears the complaint that if God really wanted people to worship Him in a specific way He would have made His desires more obviously known than He apparently has. The idea here is that the death and resurrection of a relatively insignificant Jew living in some backwater of the Roman Empire in the 1st century seems like a silly way for God to initiate some worldwide plan of conversion. Certainly God could have done better than that, says the skeptic.