Just War, Pacifism and Terrorism

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0We have already encountered discussions of just war thinking in selections above from Augustine and Aquinas particularly. Previous selections from Ori- gen, the Anabaptists, and the Society of Friends have touched upon Christian paci!sm. While just war thinking has prevailed as the dominant position over the long history of Christian discourse about war, paci!sm has endured and peacemaking has been the common commitment of Christian social teaching in general. In today’s world paci!sm continues to have its vigorous defenders, and coping with terrorism has tested the just war theory.

Selection 1: David A. Hoekema, “A Practical Christian Pacifism”

David A. Hoekema is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rap- ids, Michigan. He previously served as Executive Director of the American Phil- osophical Association at the University of Delaware. This article, which appeared in The Christian Century in 1986, provides a contemporary defense of paci- !sm that engages the just war tradition.

Few moral and theological positions are as deeply cherished by their adherents, yet so quickly dismissed by their opponents, as paci!sm. The moral legitimacy of using vio- lence is among the most urgent issues of our time, and yet its discussion slips quickly into an exchange of stereotypes. Paci!sts are to be commended, even admired—runs the familiar observation in mainline Protestant, Catholic and evangelical circles— but we who know what the world is really like cannot share their naive optimism. The paci!st’s reply has become equally familiar: the principles of just war, noble as they may sound, in practice merely pronounce a blessing upon ruling nations and ideologies.

I have grown increasingly dissatis!ed with the gulf separating paci!sts from defenders of just war. The church in which I was raised, the Christian Reformed Church, is what one draft board, in refusing a friend’s request to be recognized as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, aptly termed a “war church.” Calvinist theology has long been hostile to paci!sm, and most Reformed churches’ re"ections on war begin by distinguishing justi!ed from unjusti!ed wars. Yet the

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Reformed perspectives on the nature of the person and of society can actually support a realistic form of paci!sm—a version that has received too little attention in either the “peace churches” or the “war churches.”

Paci!sm need not be politically naive, nor need it place undue faith in human goodness. These may be telling objections to some paci!sts, but a careful articulation of the paci!st vision can meet them. By the same token, paci!sts ought not deride just- war theory as merely Realpolitik in vestments, for the just-war tradition, when taken seriously, is just as stringent in its demands as is paci!sm.

The case for Christian paci!sm has been made frequently and fervently by many writers. The Gospel writers record that Jesus called his followers to a way of life in which violence and division are overcome by sacri!cial love. We must not return evil for evil, Jesus taught, but must return good for evil; we must not hate those who wrong us but must love our enemies and give freely to those who hate us. These themes in Jesus’ ministry were deeply rooted in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, and Jesus’ ministry an his sacri!cial death were a continuation and a ful!llment of that tradition. Followers of Jesus, Christian paci!sts say, must follow both his example and his teachings: they must show love for all in their actions and seek healing and reconciliation in every situation.

The early Christian community understood Jesus’ commands to prohibit the bearing of arms. Christians refused to join the military, even though the Roman army of the period was as much a police force as a conquering army. Those who converted to Christianity while in military service were instructed to refrain from killing, to pray for forgiveness for past acts of violence, and to seek release from their military obligations. A striking example of the pervasiveness of paci!sm in the early church is the fact that Tertullian and Origen—church fathers who stood at opposite poles regarding the relation of faith to philosophical reasoning—each wrote a tract sup- porting Christians’ refusal to join the military.

A profound change in the Christian attitude toward war occurred at the time of the emperor Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity helped bring the Chris- tian community from the fringes to the center of Western society. From the time of Constantine to the present, paci!sm has been a minority view in the Christian church. The just-war tradition, rooted in the ethical theories of Plato and Cicero and formulated within the Christian tradition by Augustine, Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers, defends military force as a last resort against grave injustice. According to this view, when the innocent are threatened by an unjust aggressor and all other rem- edies have failed, Jesus’ demand for sacri!cial love may require us to use lethal force.

Paci!sm and just-war theory reach different conclusions only in a narrow range of cases: both positions insist that Christians must strive always for healing and recon- ciliation and must act out of love for all, and both traditions unequivocally condemn the reasons—whether nationalism, territorial or economic gain, revenge or glory— for which nearly all wars have been fought. Yet the differences that exist are both theologically and politically signi!cant. Just-war defenders argue that if all means short of violence have failed and organized violence promises to be a limited and effective means of reestablishing justice, Christians may participate in war. Paci!sts insist that to resort to warfare, even for a moral end, is to adopt a means inconsistent with the Christian’s calling.

Why is the paci!st vision of a healing and reconciling ministry of nonviolence not universally embraced in the churches? I would single out !ve prominent arguments

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to which paci!sts, if they are to make their own position cogent and realistic, must respond.

Paci!sm is surrender. “The paci!st viewpoint is appealing in principle, but in prac- tice it means surrendering to the aggressor,” is a charge heard often. “Capitulation to the forces of evil cannot be moral.”

The problem with this objection is that it equates paci!sm with passive nonre- sistance. Paci!sm is not synonymous with “passivism”: the paci!st rejection of war is compatible with a great many measures for defense against aggression. In fact, paci!st theorists have urged the development of a civilian-based non-military defense, which would encompass organized but nonviolent resistance, refusal to cooperate with occu- pying forces, and efforts to undermine enemy morale.

The tendency to equate paci!sm with “passivism” and capitulation re"ects how little we know of the remarkable historical successes nonviolent tactics have achieved, even in the face of brutal repression. From the courageous Swedish and Danish resistance to Naziism to the transformation of Polish society by the Solidarity labor movement, and from the struggle for Indian self-rule led by Gandhi to the struggle for racial equality in the United States led by Martin Luther King Jr., and others, nonviolence has been a creative and effective force. Whether nonviolent resistance can always overcome aggression and whether its cost in suffering and death will in every case be less than that of war is dif!cult to say, but at least it cannot be said that paci!sm is merely a policy of capitulation.

Paci!sm extolls purity. “The main problem with paci!sm” runs a second objection, “is that the paci!st places a higher value on his or her own purity of conscience than on saving others’ lives. If we are going to ful!ll our obligations, we have to be will- ing to get our hands dirty and not hold ourselves on some higher moral plateau than everyone else. Paci!sts enjoy the freedom that others ensure by their willingness to resort to arms.

This objection rests on two confusions. In the !rst place, paci!sm is an objection to war per se, not merely an objection to personal participation in war. Paci!sts do not ask for a special exemption because of their high moral views or delicate sensibilities; they refuse to participate in war because it is immoral. Their exemption from military service is simply the compromise position that has developed in a society in which moral objection to war is not unanimously shared.

A second confusion in this argument is the notion that taking part in war shall be regarded as a lesser evil, rendered necessary by extreme circumstances. Such a claim has no part in traditional just-war theory—or, indeed, in any coherent moral theory. The just-war proponent believes that war is sometimes required by justice, in which case it is not the lesser of two evils but is itself a good. The issue is whether intentional killing in war is ever a good thing, not whether one ought to grit one’s teeth and bravely commit one wrong rather than another.

Paci!sm is based on optimistic humanism. “Paci!sm links a noble ideal—the avoid- ance of violence—to naive and implausible assumptions about the inherent good- ness of human nature. If I thought that I could trust people and nations to resolve their differences peaceably and fairly, I would be a paci!st too. But history teaches us differently.”

This objection brings us near the heart of the theological argument against paci- !sm. Indeed, it is a telling argument against some forms of paci!sm. Gandhi, for example, was sustained by a deep faith in the goodness of human nature, a goodness

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he thought nonviolent action could call forth. “If love or non-violence be not the law of our being,” he wrote, “the whole of my argument falls to pieces” (in Gandhi on Non- Violence, edited by Thomas Merton [New Directions, 1964], p. 25). Similar optimism about human nature seems to have motivated some Quaker writers and much of the paci!sm of American church leaders following the First World War. Such optimism requires a selective and unrealistic assessment of human behavior and human capaci- ties. If paci!sm rests on a trust that people have a natural capacity and an irrepressible tendency to resolve their differences justly and harmoniously, then paci!sm is a delu- sion, and a dangerous one.

Such trust is not, however, essential to paci!sm. There can be a realistic paci!sm, a paci!sm that gives due weight to the sinfulness and perversity of human nature.

Paci!sts and defenders of just war can agree that every life is tainted with sin, and that evil will inevitably arise, but still disagree about how we ought to respond when it does arise. An essential companion to the doctrine of sin is the doctrine of grace. Though human nature is corrupted by sin, it is also illuminated by God’s presence and guidance; God’s grace shows itself in countless ways in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. In light of this fact, evil demands a response that over- comes rather than compounds evil. Such a paci!st stance differs signi!cantly from a Gandhian or humanistic faith in the capacity of the human heart for goodness, while retaining the conviction that there are other remedies for sin besides war.

It should be noted, further, that realism about human nature cuts two ways: if it undermines a paci!sm based on optimism, it also undermines the assumption that weapons of destruction and violence intended to restrain evil will be used only for that purpose. The reality of human sinfulness means that the instruments we intend to use for good are certain to be turned to evil purposes as well. There is therefore a strong presumption for using those means of justice that are least likely to be abused and least likely to cause irrevocable harm when they are abused. An army trained and equipped for national defense can quickly become an army of conquest or a tool of repression in the hands of an unprincipled leader. But a nonviolent national defense force, or a peacekeeping force bringing together citizens of a dozen nations, is of little use except for its intended purpose.

Paci!sm confuses moral categories. “The basic confusion of paci!sts is their assump- tion that the principles of Christian morality which we ought to follow in our indi- vidual lives can be applied to governments. Only individuals can truly be moral; governments are by their very nature ‘immoral,’ if we judge them as we would judge individuals. Killing is wrong for individuals, but for states an entirely different stan- dard must be applied.”

The notion that morality applies to individuals and not to governments is com- pletely contrary to a central doctrine of Reformed theology which is endorsed, in varying forms, by other Christian traditions as well: that Jesus Christ is the Lord not just of the church, nor of a special sphere of religious activity, but of all of the natural and human world. We are not called to serve God in our religious activities and to carry on as usual in the other areas of life—far from it. We are called to live as fol- lowers of Jesus Christ in every human activity. Thus, we must obey God’s demands for justice and reconciliation not only as families and churches but as societies. There is no room in Christian social thought for excluding governments from the realm of morality. If Christian ethics permits killing in certain circumstances, then violence is legitimate as a last resort, both for individuals and for governments. But if, on

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the other hand, Jesus did in fact demand that the members of the new Kingdom he inaugurated renounce all killing, then we must restructure both our personal and our institutional lives to ful!ll that demand.

Paci!sm is too patient. “To suffer wrong rather than harm another, to return non- violent resistance for violent oppression, might have been appropriate at an earlier stage in our struggle. But the violence in"icted on us for so long leaves us no choice but to use force in return. We can endure no more; only arms can bring justice now.”

This argument, the cry raised in Soweto and San Salvador, is painfully familiar, and it is impossible to hear it without feeling the deep pain of those who make it. I am not sure whether this argument can be answered. Those of us who regard it at a comfortable distance may not know the possibilities that remain to those whose lives have been stunted by violence.

Are there wrongs so grave that only violent means can set them right? I do not believe there are, but I do believe that the historical point at which one faces this ques- tion is signi!cant. Naziism would surely have been destroyed by sustained nonviolent resistance had Christians and others not averted their gaze from its evil for so long. But whether Naziism could have been destroyed by nonviolent means in 1939 is a far more dif!cult question. Similarly, the Christian churches of South Africa, both black and white, could once have ended the policy of apartheid through nonviolent reforms, but today, as the black-death toll mounts into the thousands, it is dif!cult to imagine that the system will fall unless commensurate force is brought to bear against it.

Situations of extreme oppression do not invalidate the paci!st vision of nonvi- olent change. Active but nonlethal resistance is both theologically and practically defensible even in seemingly hopeless circumstances—as the courageous work of André Trocmé in Vichy France and of several church leaders in South Africa today makes evident. Yet many in such situations turn to violence as their last hope in the struggle for justice. We may dispute their conclusion, but our response should be more one of solidarity than of condemnation.

I have argued that the major objections to paci!sm can be met by a paci!sm grounded in Christian commitment and realism about human nature. To answer these objections is not to show that paci!sm is the only responsible stance that a Christian may adopt. The issue of the justi!ability of violence needs to be faced squarely and debated vigorously in the churches, and paci!sts and non-paci!sts can learn much from each other in this debate. Nevertheless, I believe that the practical paci!sm I have described deserves more serious consideration than it has received in Christian circles, espe- cially since the major alternative to paci!sm in Christian ethics, the just-war tradition, has signi!cant de!ciencies. Important as the just-war tradition has been in the development of Christian thinking about war and peace, it gives insuf!cient weight to the central Christian calling to be agents of healing and reconciliation.

Furthermore, the radical changes that the nuclear age has brought to the phenomenon of war make it impossible to weigh means against ends in the way required by just-war theory. War is justi!ed, according to just- war criteria, when its good result—the restoration of justice—outweighs the harm it will cause. But when the possible consequences of war include

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the destruction of humankind and the permanent defacement of the entire natural and human world, we do not know how to balance bene!ts against such costs. The just-war tradition cannot guide us in thinking about such a prospect.

What are the practical implications of such a paci!st stance? Several !rst steps can be clearly identi!ed. The cessation of nuclear testing and of the development of new weapons systems, and the subsequent reduction of exist- ing stockpiles of weapons would stabilize the international balance of ter- ror. If at the same time means of international cooperation were created and international authorities strengthened, the threat of war would begin to hang less heavily over us. To go beyond these preliminary steps to abolish war would require far more drastic attacks on the political and economic roots of war.

No one can consistently call for peaceful alternatives to war without re"ect- ing on the ways in which one personally participates in and bene!ts from social institutions that cause violence. Some people may refuse to take up arms, others may withhold taxes designated for military ends; and others may renounce jobs or possessions that implicate them in injustice. Here there is an urgent need for more open and honest discussion in the churches, for we are too quick to condemn those who bear witness in a way to which we do not feel called. We ought not to demand the same actions from every- one. Out of more open and honest discussion may come new and still untried ways of putting "esh on a shared vision of peace.

Practical Christian paci!sm is grounded in faithfulness and hope, but also in realism. It provides not only a moral basis for dealing with con"icts but a framework within which to carry on the vital task of building structures that can eventually eliminate war and its causes.

Selection 2: Address of Pope John Paul II to the Diplomatic Corps, January 13, 2003

In a manner consistent with Catholic social teaching, Pope John Paul II places the reality of war and the threat of terrorism in the larger of context of respect for the sanctity of life in all human activities. While the just war principle of “last resort”"is voiced, the emphasis is on the things that make for peace.

Mr. Ambassador, you have also pointed to the legitimate expectations of modern men and women, all too often frustrated by political crises, by armed violence, by social con"icts, by poverty or by natural catastrophes. Never as at the beginning of this mil- lennium has humanity felt how precarious is the world which it has shaped.

2. I have been personally struck by the feeling of fear which often dwells in the hearts of our contemporaries. An insidious terrorism capable of striking at any time

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and anywhere; the unresolved problem of the Middle East, with the Holy Land and Iraq; the turmoil disrupting South America, particularly Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela; the con"icts preventing numerous African countries from focusing on their development; the diseases spreading contagion and death; the grave problem of famine, especially in Africa; the irresponsible behaviour contributing to the depletion of the planet’s resources: all these are so many plagues threatening the survival of humanity, the peace of individuals and the security of societies.

3. Yet everything can change. It depends on each of us. Everyone can develop within himself his potential for faith, for honesty, for respect of others and for commitment to the service of others.

It also depends, quite obviously, on political leaders, who are called to serve the common good. You will not be surprised if before an assembly of diplomats I state in this regard certain requirements which I believe must be met if entire peoples, perhaps even humanity itself, are not to sink into the abyss.

First, a “YES TO LIFE”! Respect life itself and individual lives: everything starts here, for the most fundamental of human rights is certainly the right to life. Abor- tion, euthanasia, human cloning, for example, risk reducing the human person to a mere object: life and death to order, as it were! When all moral criteria are removed, scienti!c research involving the sources of life becomes a denial of the being and the dignity of the person. War itself is an attack on human life since it brings in its wake suffering and death. The battle for peace is always a battle for life!

Next, RESPECT FOR LAW. Life within society—particularly international life—presupposes common and inviolable principles whose goal is to guarantee the security and the freedom of individual citizens and of nations. These rules of conduct are the foundation of national and international stability. Today political leaders have at hand highly relevant texts and institutions. It is enough simply to put them into practice. The world would be totally different if people began to apply in a straight- forward manner the agreements already signed!

Finally, the DUTY OF SOLIDARITY. In a world with a superabundance of infor- mation, but which paradoxically !nds it so dif!cult to communicate and where living conditions are scandalously unequal, it is important to spare no effort to ensure that everyone feels responsible for the growth and happiness of all. Our future is at stake. An unemployed young person, a handicapped person who is marginalized, elderly people who are uncared for, countries which are captives of hunger and poverty: these situations all too often make people despair and fall prey to the temptation either of closing in on themselves or of resorting to violence.

4. This is why choices need to be made so that humanity can still have a future. There- fore, the peoples of the earth and their leaders must sometimes have the courage to say “No”.

“NO TO DEATH”! That is to say, no to all that attacks the incomparable dignity of every human being, beginning with that of unborn children. If life is truly a trea- sure, we need to be able to preserve it and to make it bear fruit without distorting it. “No” to all that weakens the family, the basic cell of society. “No” to all that destroys in children the sense of striving, their respect for themselves and others, the sense of service.

“NO TO SELFISHNESS”! In other words, to all that impels man to protect himself inside the cocoon of a privileged social class or a cultural comfort which excludes others. The life-style of the prosperous, their patterns of consumption, must

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be reviewed in the light of their repercussions on other countries. Let us mention for example the problem of water resources, which the United Nations Organization has asked us all to consider during this year 2003. Sel!shness is also the indifference of prosperous nations towards nations left out in the cold. All peoples are entitled to receive a fair share of the goods of this world and of the know-how of the more advanced countries. How can we fail to think here, for example, of the access of every- one to generic medicines, needed to continue the !ght against current pandemics, an access—alas—often thwarted by short-term economic considerations?

“NO TO WAR”! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for human- ity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences. I say this as I think of those who still place their trust in nuclear weapons and of the all-too-numerous con"icts which continue to hold hostage our brothers and sisters in humanity. At Christmas, Bethlehem reminded us of the unresolved crisis in the Middle East, where two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, are called to live side-by-side, equally free and sovereign, in mutual respect. Without needing to repeat what I said to you last year on this occasion, I will simply add today, faced with the constant degeneration of the crisis in the Middle East, that the solution will never be imposed by recourse to terrorism or armed con"ict, as if military victories could be the solution. And what are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike the people of Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than twelve years of embargo? War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. As the Charter of the United Nations Organization and international law itself remind us, war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.

5. It is therefore possible to change the course of events, once good will, trust in others, !delity to commitments and cooperation between responsible partners are allowed to prevail. I shall give two examples.

Today’s Europe, which is at once united and enlarged. Europe has succeeded in tearing down the walls which dis!gured her. She has committed herself to planning and creating a new reality capable of combining unity and diversity, national sover- eignty and joint activity, economic progress and social justice. This new Europe is the bearer of the values which have borne fruit for two thousand years in an “art” of thinking and living from which the whole world has bene!tted. Among these values Christianity holds a privileged position, inasmuch as it gave birth to a humanism which has permeated Europe’s history and institutions. In recalling this patrimony, the Holy See and all the Christian Churches have urged those drawing up the future Constitutional Treaty of the European Union to include a reference to Churches and religious institutions. We believe it desirable that, in full respect of the secular state, three complementary elements should be recognized: religious freedom not only in its individual and ritual aspects, but also in its social and corporative dimensions; the appropriateness of structures for dialogue and consultation between the Governing Bodies and communities of believers; respect for the juridical status already enjoyed by Churches and religious institutions in the Member States of the Union. A Europe which disavowed its past, which denied the fact of religion, and which had no spiritual

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dimension would be extremely impoverished in the face of the ambitious project which calls upon all its energies: constructing a Europe for all!

Africa too gives us today an occasion to rejoice: Angola has begun its rebuilding; Burundi has taken the path which could lead to peace and expects from the inter- national community understanding and !nancial aid; the Democratic Republic of Congo is seriously engaged in a national dialogue which should lead to democracy. The Sudan has likewise shown good will, even if the path to peace remains long and arduous. We should of course be grateful for these signs of progress and we should encourage political leaders to spare no effort in ensuring that, little by little, the peo- ples of Africa experience the beginnings of paci!cation and thus of prosperity, safe from ethnic struggles, caprice and corruption. For this reason we can only deplore the grave incidents which have rocked Côte-d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic, while inviting the people of those countries to lay down their arms, to respect their respective constitutions and to lay the foundations for national dialogue. It will then be easy to involve all the elements of the national community in planning a society in which everyone !nds a place. Furthermore, we do well to note that Africans are increasingly trying to !nd the solutions best suited to their problems, thanks to the activity of the African Union and effective forms of regional mediation.

6. Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is vital to note that the independence of States can no longer be understood apart from the concept of interdependence. All States are interconnected both for better and for worse. For this reason, and rightly so, we must be able to distinguish good from evil and call them by their proper names. As history has taught us time and time again, it is when doubt or confusion about what is right and wrong prevails that the greatest evils are to be feared.

If we are to avoid descending into chaos, it seems to me that two conditions must be met. First, we must rediscover within States and between States the paramount value of the natural law, which was the source of inspiration for the rights of nations and for the !rst formulations of international law. Even if today some people question its validity, I am convinced that its general and universal principles can still help us to understand more clearly the unity of the human race and to foster the development of the consciences both of those who govern and of those who are governed. Second, we need the persevering work of Statesmen who are honest and sel#ess. In effect, the indispens- able professional competence of political leaders can !nd no legitimation unless it is connected to strong moral convictions. How can one claim to deal with world affairs without reference to this set of principles which is the basis of the “universal common good” spoken of so eloquently by Pope John XXIII in his Encyclical Pacem in Terris? It will always be possible for a leader who acts in accordance with his convictions to reject situations of injustice or of institutional corruption, or to put an end to them. It is precisely in this, I believe, that we rediscover what is today commonly called “good governance”. The material and spiritual well-being of humanity, the protection of the freedom and rights of the human person, sel"ess public service, closeness to concrete conditions: all of these take precedence over every political project and constitute a moral necessity which in itself is the best guarantee of peace within nations and peace between States.

7. It is clear that, for a believer, these motivations are enriched by faith in a God who is the Creator and Father of all, who has entrusted man with stewardship of the earth and with the duty of brotherly love. This shows how it is in a State’s own interest to ensure that religious freedom—which is a natural right, that is, at one and the same

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time both an individual and social right—is effectively guaranteed for all. As I have had occasion to remark in the past, believers who feel that their faith is respected and whose communities enjoy juridical recognition will work with ever greater convic- tion in the common project of building up the civil society to which they belong. You will understand then why I speak out on behalf of all Christians who, from Asia to Europe, continue to be victims of violence and intolerance, such as happened recently during the celebration of Christmas. Ecumenical dialogue between Christians and respectful contact with other religions, in particular with Islam, are the best remedy for sectarian rifts, fanaticism or religious terrorism. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, I will mention but one situation which is a cause of great suffering for me: the plight of Catholic communities in the Russian Federation, which for months now have seen some of their Pastors prevented from returning to them for administrative reasons. The Holy See expects from the Government authorities concrete decisions which will put an end to this crisis, and which are in keeping with the international agreements subscribed to by the modern and democratic Russia. Russian Catholics wish to live as their brethren do in the rest of the world, enjoying the same freedom and the same dignity.

8. Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, may all of us who have gathered in this place, which is a symbol of spirituality, dialogue and peace, contribute by our daily actions to the advancement of all the peoples of the earth, in justice and har- mony, to their progress towards conditions of greater happiness and greater justice, far from poverty, violence and threats of war!º

Selection 3: Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror

Jean Bethke Elshtain (b. 1941) is Laura Spellman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. Her book argues for the moral validity of just war thinking in the war against terror she believes it is our obli- gation to pursue in the world after the September 9, 2011, attacks. Her position is a direct counterpoint to those of her academic peers who have adopted a more paci!st position.

How WELL DOES THE post–September 11 war effort fare when assessed accord- ing to the just war framework?

The resort to force—or jus ad bellum—stipulates certain criteria for evaluation, as outlined in chapter 3. Let’s begin with the triggering event. Surely there can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the attacks of Sep tember 11 constituted an act of aggression aimed speci!cally at killing civilians.1 Indeed, when a wound as grievous as that of September 11 has been in"icted on a body politic, it would be the height of irresponsi bility and a dereliction of duty for public of!cials to fail to respond. A political ethic is an ethic of responsibility. The just war tradition is a way to exercise that responsibility with justice in mind. Such an act of terror ism aims to disrupt fun- damental civic peace and tranquility. Good is forced into hiding as we retreat behind closed doors. Preventing further harm and restoring the preconditions for civic tran- quility is a justi!able casus belli.

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But the argument need not end there. One could go on to make the case that love of our neighbor—in this case, the Afghan people—is im plicated as well. Or, less theologically, one could speak of equal regard for others based on human dignity and our common humanity. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, one of every four children died before the age of !ve; life expectancy was about forty-three years; only 12 per- cent of the population had access to safe drinking water; and barely 30 percent of the men and only 15 percent of the women could read or write. To be sure, the Taliban took over a country already weakened by war. But rather than restoring services and helping to rebuild the social framework, they devastated it further, becoming violent depredators of their own people. The !ve years of Taliban rule produced nearly one million refugees, and an estimated six million Afghans, fully one-quarter of the popu- lation, were unable to !nd suf!cient food to eat.

“In each of the last few years,” writes New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, “. . . 225,000 children died in Afghanistan before the age of 5, along with 15,000 women who died during pregnancy or childbirth. There was no way to save those lives under the Taliban; in deed, international organizations were retreating from Afghanistan even before 9/11 because of the arrests of Christian aid workers.” Since the fall of the Taliban, he continues, “aid is pouring in and lives are being saved on an enormous scale. UNICEF, for example, has vaccinated 734,000 children against measles over the last two months, in a country where virtually no one had been vac- cinated against disease in the previ ous 10 years. Because measles often led to death in Afghanistan, the vac cination campaign will save at least 35,000 children’s lives each year.” Kristof also calculated that 115,000 fewer children under the age of !ve will die in Afghanistan each year, and that there will be 9,600 fewer ma ternal deaths. Kristof’s point is that military intervention that stops vio lence saves more civilian lives than are harmed or lost in the con"ict itself. Vital human goods, such as healthy children and mothers, cannot be achieved without a minimal level of civic peace.

American forces operating in Afghanistan not only recognize this precondition but are authorized to act on it: As soon as an area is free from pervasive and random violence, troops working as civil affairs teams are paired with local of!cials. Their task is to reconstruct schools, rebuild hospitals, repair roads, and restore water sys- tems. An article in the New York Times describes the reopening of a school that had been closed and gutted by the Taliban. An American civil affairs team paid lo cal workers to ready the school for classes of four thousand girls, grades !rst through twelfth. I am not arguing that enabling Afghan girls to return to school is a suf!cient reason in and of itself to deploy force. But it is clear that the restoration of a funda- mental human right to educa tion is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. response to the attacks of Septem ber 11. As a result, Afghanistan will be a more just place than if no military action had been taken.

Examining the evidence, we can see that the U.S. military response in Afghani- stan clearly meets the just cause criterion of being a war fought with the right inten- tion—to punish wrongdoers and to prevent them from murdering civilians in the future. The right authority criterion was met when both houses of the U.S. Con- gress authorized statutes and ap propriated monies for the war effort. To this we can add the right au thority enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter on self-defense. The Bush administration honored the charter’s require ments by giving advance notice to the UN Security Council of its inten tion to used armed force to punish aggression—for the !rst time in anyone’s living memory, as this noti!cation

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requirement had become a dead letter. The Security Council, for its part, acknowl- edged the threat posed by Al Qaeda to the international community.

What of the criterion of last resort? Properly understood, last resort is a resort to armed force taken after deliberation rather than as an im mediate reaction. The criterion of last resort does not compel a govern ment to try everything else in actual fact but rather to explore other options before concluding that none seems appropriate or viable in light of the nature of the threat. What is one to do with the likes of bin Laden and Al Qaeda? They present no accountable, organized entity to engage—no sovereign state. They are not parties to any structure of diplomacy and thus cannot be negotiated with; in any event, because what they seek is our destruction, there is nothing to negotiate about. As Michael Quinlan, a British commentator, writes:

As we saw amid the wreck of Yugoslavia, to place military action at the very end of the line may mean invoking it only when matters have reached a desperate pass, and when its scale (with the inevitable damage) is larger than its robust use earlier might have entailed. The passage of time is moreover not neutral—if Saddam Hussein had been given longer in Kuwait, or Milosevic in Kosovo, while their mouthpieces !libustered, the delay would have furthered their malign aims.

What about the prospect of success? This prudential consideration is always tricky, and in this instance I cannot pronounce with any degree of certainty that this crite- rion is met. Afghanistan has been successfully lib erated, even though enormous dif- !culties lie ahead, including the con tinuing jostling between rival ethnic and tribal groups and the tension, as a result of military errors, between local authorities, the Afghan govern ment, and American and coalition forces. It is important for the time being that the United States remain engaged there, as the Afghan gov ernment is urging us, so that Afghanistan does not fall back into the dis mal company of failed states.

Interdicting terrorism of global reach is a tough war aim indeed, even though, and undeniably, the entire world—especially the Muslim world—will be better off if the effort is successful. It is faithful Mus lims, more than any other group, who are threatened and tormented when radical Islamists and their terrorist arm hold sway.

* * *

Just and Unjust Means

The two key in Bello requirements are proportionality and discrimination, Propor- tionality refers to the need to use the level of force commensu rate with the nature of the threat. If a nation faces a threat from a small. renegade band carrying out indiscriminate assassinations, it does not call in a tactical nuclear strike; rather, it puts a mobile unit in the !eld to track down this band and stop them. Discrimi- nation refers to the need to differentiate between combatants and noncombatants. Noncombat ants historically have been women, children, the aged and in!rm, all

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un armed persons going about their daily lives, and prisoners of war who have been disarmed by de!nition.

Knowingly and intentionally placing noncombatants in jeopardy and putting in place strategies that bring the greatest suffering and harm to noncombatants rather than to combatants is unacceptable on just war grounds. According to just war thinking, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than those of enemy noncombatants. In the case of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan, of course, the noncombatant were not foes because they too had been victims of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Even as U.S. forces attempted to strike only legitimate war tar gets, however, the campaign in Afghanistan renewed an old debate about what constitutes a legiti- mate war target.

Legitimate war targets may vary from con"ict to con"ict depending on what is deemed essential to the war effort of one’s opponents. It is always suspect to destroy the infrastructure of civilian life. People should not be deprived of drinking water, for example. In the early for mulations of the principle of proportionality, it was stipulated that wells from which persons and animals drink are never to be poisoned.

Although civilian casualties should be avoided if at all possible, they occur in every war. Inevitably, civilians fall in harm’s way because a shell or bomb goes astray and misses its primary target or because war !ghters are given faulty intelligence about where combatants are hidden, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The question of “collateral damage” should never be taken lightly. That the United States takes this matter very seriously indeed was noted in chapter 1. Every incident in which civilian lives are lost is investigated and invokes a reevaluation of tactics in an attempt to prevent such incidents in the future. The First Geneva Protocol of 1977, additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, relating to the Protection of Vic- tims of International Armed Con "icts, codi!ed basic just war norms on civilian and nonmilitary targeting, building these into the interstices of international norms on warmaking.

The demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternately satis!ed or ignored, depending on whether they serve one’s war aims. The norms require that a war-!ghting country ask itself critical questions about each criterion. The United States knows that it must try to answer these questions about its war on terror ism, even with all the dif!culties attendant upon separating combat- ants from noncombatants when !ghting a shadowy entity that is not a state actor and has neither de jure nor de facto accountability to any wider in ternational community.

During and after a con"ict, those animated by the just war tradition assess the conduct of a war-!ghting nation by how its warriors con ducted themselves. Did they rape and pillage? Were they operating un der careful rules of engagement? Did they make every attempt to limit civilian casualties, knowing that, in time of war, civilians are invariably going to fall in harm’s way? It is unworthy of the solemn nature of these questions to respond cynically or naively.

Since the Vietnam War and the restructuring of the U.S. military, those who train U.S. soldiers have taken pains to underscore the codes of ethics that derive from the just war tradition. No institution in Amer ica pays more attention to ethical restraint on the use of force than does the U.S. military. Thus, we do not threaten to kill and target explicitly three thousand civilians because that number of our own civilians were intentionally slaughtered. The soldier, by contrast to the terrorist, searches out and punishes those responsible for planning, aiding and abetting, and

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perpetrating the attacks, the act of aggression that served as the trigger for going to war. Preventing future attacks is a critical mo tivation. Just punishment, which observes restraints, is different from revenge, which knows no limits.

Have in bello criteria been met in the U.S. war on terrorism? On the rule of discrimination, it is clear that every effort is being made to sepa rate combat- ants from noncombatants, and that targeting civilians has been ruled out as an explicit war-!ghting strategy. As the author and war historian Caleb Carr puts it: “Warfare against civilians must never get an swered in kind. For as failed a tactic as such warfare has been, reprisals similarly directed at civilians have been even more so—particularly when they have exceeded the original assault in scope. . . . Terror must never be answered with terror; but war can only be answered with war, and it is in cumbent on us to devise a style of war more imaginative, more decisive, and yet more humane than anything terrorists can contrive.” What the terrorists are plan- ning, if they can acquire effective biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, are attacks on civilians. What we are planning is to interdict their plans: to stop them without resorting to their methods.

The improved accuracy of the U.S. air war, conducted with weaponry that is more precise and does less damage to the surround than was possi ble only a few years ago, serves the ends of discrimination. A senior navy of!cer, quoted by the New York Times, observed that: “With precision-guided weapons, you don’t have to use as many bombs to achieve the de sired effects, and using fewer weapons reduces the risk of collateral damage.” It is dif!cult to assess civilian casualties in a war theater, par ticularly in the patchwork that is Afghanistan, where different areas are under at least partial control of contesting tribal leaders (some of whom may have called in U.S. strikes against the Taliban when they were in fact trying to kill their own ethnic or tribal rivals, and this on more than one occasion). But attempts to come up with an accurate estimate of civilian deaths in Afghanistan have been made by human rights groups, the U.S. military, and the Los Angeles Times. As of July 3, 2002, the consensus was that Afghan civilian casualties numbered between 1,000 and 2,000. The Los Angeles Times reviewed more than 2,000 news stories cover- ing 194 in cidents. Their count was between 1,067 and 1,201. Relief of!cials of the Afghan government gave the same !gures.

The Los Angeles Times concluded that the numbers suggest a very low casualty rate compared with earlier Afghan con"icts. In the early battles between competing Afghan warlords, an estimated 50,000 civilians were killed, according to the Inter- national Committee of the Red Cross. So viet air raids in March 1979 killed 20,000 civilians in a few days in the western city of Herat—just a fraction of the estimated 670,000 civilians who died during the ten-year Soviet occupation. In the current con"ict, Afghans themselves report that the big problem is not the accuracy of U.S. weaponry but "awed intelligence.

For example, before it fell, the Taliban put out false information about U.S. warplanes hitting a hospital in central Kabul. “Lies—all lies,” said Ghulam Hus- sain, an emergency room nurse who said he was on duty that night. “Not a single person in this hospital was hurt. No rock ets, no bombs, no missiles. Not even a window was broken. “15 The pres ident of the Afghan Red Crescent (the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross), a foe of the Taliban, is quoted as saying: “The Taliban propa ganda created a huge distortion in the outside world, especially early in the war. . . . Civilians were killed, of course, but not nearly as many as the Taliban said,

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or in the way they said. . . . The Americans were careful and their bombs were very accurate. They checked to see for sure that they were targeting Taliban or al-Qaida bases or convoys. The people who died—it was accidental, not deliberate.”

To signal the serious nature of mistaken bombings in which civilians are harmed, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz visited Afghanistan in July 2002 to explore recent incidents and to insist that these incidents be fully investi- gated. The New York Times reported the results of an investigation in which on-site reviews were conducted of eleven locations where airstrikes had killed an estimated four hundred civilians. These reviews “suggest that American commanders have sometimes relied on mistaken information from local Afghans.” An other factor was an understandable preference to use airstrikes with pre cision, high-tech weaponry rather than to put more soldiers in harm’s way. American military commanders reiterated that “they take pains to ensure that civilians are spared, often verifying their targets with several sources of information. In many of the cases . . . they insist that they struck valid military targets.” The investigation concluded that too many men in the !eld had been given cell phones to call in intelligence; not all of them shared the interest of the coalition !ghting terrorism in trying to uproot the last of the Al Qaeda–Taliban nexus.

The New York Times report also suggested that there might be a pattern in the U.S. military of overreliance on air power. During the Kosovo war, I criticized the Clinton administration for its stated zero-casualty policy. In that con"ict, we aimed to sacri!ce Serbian civilians rather than risk the life of a single American soldier. Such a policy is not acceptable on just war grounds. To his credit, President Bush warned from the beginning that American lives would be at risk and some would be lost. That commit ment must always be carried through on the battle!eld in order to protect civilians as thoroughly as possible in a theater of modern war.

The United States must do everything it can to minimize civilian deaths—and it is doing so. The United States must express remorse for every civilian death in a way that is not simply rote—and it is doing so. The United States must investigate every incident in which civilians are killed—and it is doing so. The United States must make some sort of recompense for unintended civilian casualties, and it may be making plans to do so—an unusual, even unheard of, act in wartime.

Finally, what about proportionality? Proportionality is a daunting challenge in the !ght against terrorism. As the British analyst Clifford Longley writes: “Propor- tionality is a central concept of conventional just war theory. Under the principle of double effect, for instance, it may be justi!ed to shell or bomb an enemy position even though there may be civilian casualties as a result. But shooting off rounds of ammu nition that unintentionally kill civilians would not be justi!ed simply to dem- onstrate . . . that the gunners are keen and up to scratch.” Terror ism aims to kill as many civilians as possible. Terrorists do not assess ca sualties against traditional war aims: The war aim is the death of civilians and the terrorizing of living civilians. How do we develop a propor tional response to a disproportionate intended threat?

We begin by being clear about what we cannot do. We cannot use biochemi- cal, biological, or counter-population nuclear weapons against civilians just because our enemies are setting about doing it. We cannot knowingly target any number of civilians because our opponents are doing it. We can attempt to interdict, disarm, and demolish training camps, weapons stashes, and active combatants, and we can deploy the weapons appropriate to that purpose.

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It is fair to say that in Afghanistan the U.S. military is doing its best to respond proportionately. If it were not, the infrastructure of civilian life in that country would have been devastated completely, and it is not. In stead, schools are opening, women are returning to work, movie the aters are !lled to capacity, and people can once again listen to music and dance at weddings. This observation is not intended to minimize the suffering and grief that has occurred in too many places, some of it the result of American mistakes in the war effort. But the restoration of a basic structure of civilian rule and a functioning state is a great bene!t. We must stay engaged to this peaceful end.

The just war tradition of moral argument affords criteria for determining whether a resort to force is justi!ed. Just war thinking provides guidance as to how a war should be fought and offers a framework of deliberation, evaluation, criticism, and moral challenge. Particularly useful is the tough-minded moral and political realism of just war thinking—not a Machiavellian “anything goes” realism, but an Augus- tinian realism that resists sentimentalism and insists on ethical restraint. Estrange- ment, con "ict, and tragedy are constant features of the human condition, and just war thinking laced with Augustinian realism offers no assurances that we can ever make the world entirely safe. Augustinianism is skeptical about the exercise of power even as it recognizes the inescapability of power. Augustinian realists are not crusad- ers, but they do insist that we are called upon to act in a mode of realistic hope with a hardheaded recognition of the limits to action. You do not yourself have to be an Augustinian to recognize the abiding truths and strengths of this position.

Why, and how, have so many in our intellectual and religious life abandoned any such tradition or framework?

491

The Church in the World and the Ethics of Virtue 42 0The selections in this chapter are different but connected. John Howard Yod-

er’s theological perspective on the church in the world deeply in!uenced Stanley Hauerwas in that regard and became foundational for his emphasis on the ethics of virtue and the church as a community of character. Jean Porter as a leading scholar of scholastic thought represents that tradition of virtue ethics in dialogue with Hauerwas.

Selection 1: John Howard Yoder The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) is widely thought of as the premier Mennonite theologian of the past century. His book, Politics of Jesus, has endured as one of the “must read” books on the church in the world. Yoder was a staunch defender of paci"sm. He believed that Jesus’s call to the Christian community is a radical call to be the church in Christ like discipleship, letting the integrity of this wit- ness be its social witness rather than activistic political engagement in projects of social transformation. This nuanced view of Christianity’s relation to democracy is illustrative.

The Christian Case for Democracy

The kind of review of the case of democracy which I suggest could be undertaken from numerous perspectives, traditional and revisionist, within the various disciplines involved. I here suggest only that we add, as one speci!cally ethical perspective, a theological accounting for the context in which Christians in particular ask whether and why democracy is the preferred form of government. The two pointers from which, I suggest, we might have something to learn are:

(1) A New Testament realism about the nature of governmental power, as exem- pli!ed in the political choices of Jesus and the apostles; (2) a free-church realism about the ambivalence of “Christendom,” as this doubt has been exempli!ed in debates

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within the Protes tant Reformation from Peter of Chelcic to Roger Williams, re bounding in contemporary bicentennial discussion about “civil religion.”

It is not a simple matter, going back to our biblical roots to !nd a clear vision of how the world political order ought to be. We need to correct for our built-in habits of thought, to recognize that prescrip tive visions for how things ought to be, in the world beyond the com munity of faith, did not come naturally to early Christians, or to early Israelites. Israelite nationalists did have a vision for the civil order of their own people. It was theocratic rather than democratic and in historical experience not viable after the !rst successes of the Mac cabees and Zealots.

Obviously the Maccabees knew what they wanted to see happen to imperial pagan government, as did the Zealots. They wanted it to go away. The Maccabean vision included an af!rmative design for government according to the will of God, but projected that hope only for the people of God, not for a better empire. There was a pre scription for righteous kingship tying together the priest and the prophet in the unity of God’s people, but not a vision for a better Rome. Joseph, Daniel, and Mordecai contributed creatively to mak ing more livable the existing pagan impe- rial system. Frustration with or opposition to a system, or even the desire of the apocalyptic or the Zealot that it should go away, did not yet constitute an alternative af !rmative description of what would be the best form of government.

Perhaps an exception to my generalization would be the vision of Micah 4 and Isaiah 2, with all the nations coming to Jerusalem to learn the law and then going home to live in peace. This is in one sense a vision for an alternative way of having God run the world. Yet it is formally marked by not !tting in the frame I am talking about. The event which will attract the nations who come to Jerusalem is not suc- cessful empire building, nor effective prophetic critique, nor progressive involve- ment in political vocations, but the End-time in tervention of Yahweh, who will elevate the hill of Zion above all the surrounding mountains and attract the nations to come uncoerced to learn the law. One might speak of this as an alternative vision of a world empire, but it is just as much a vision of the end of world empire.

It obviously did not occur to the early Christians to ask whether empire was or was not the best form of government. Nor is the call for democracy self-evident in most of the rest of the world. The tribes men or slum dwellers today do not ask the question. Nor do Soviet Baptists or Christians in China. To ask, “What is the best form of government?” is itself a Constantinian question. It is representative of an already “established” social posture. It assumes that the para digmatic person, the model ethical agent, is in a position of such power (and of such leisure—but that would be a further question) that it falls to him to evaluate alternative worlds and to prefer the one in which he himself (for the model ethical agent assumes himself to be a part of “the people”) shares the rule. This paradigmatic ethical agent is assumed to be free, adult, healthy, male (as even our generic pronouns testify), an owner of property, and able to earn.

The Constantinian moral paradigm makes a number of interlock ing assump- tions about the nature of ethical discourse, each of them self-evident within the system and each of them questionable from a biblical or radical reformation per- spective. It is easiest to demonstrate the bearing of these questions by looking at speci!c applica tions like the ethics of violence and war, or (in the sixteenth century) like truth-telling and the oath. But as the axioms behind moral logic they reach clear across the board:

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1. There is the axiom of generalizability in terms of the social whole as agent. By virtue of the numerical dominance of Christians in society, when you ask what is right for Christians to do, you are asking what the whole society should do.

2. There is the assumption of generalizability through putting my self in the place of the ruler. The meaning of an ethical statement is tested by asking how the society would go if Caesar (or Carter or Reagan) were to administer his society accordingly, not only in his face-to-face relationships but through the legislative and co ercive powers of his of!ce.

3. There is the further generalizability of putting myself in the place of “Every- man.” I test a moral statement about myself by whether I can wish that it would be a law for all.

Once the question is identi!ed, it is most evident that none of these assumptions about convincing moral discourse would have made sense to the earliest Christians. They do not really make sense today to a dissident Baptist Christian in the Soviet Union, or to Christians in extreme minority situations anywhere else in the world.

Once these assumptions are made, and especially once they are made so sweep- ingly and so self-evidently as not to be critically con scious, they open the door for a whole new view of the ethics of power. From this point on, there is obvious reason to declare irrelevant many of the biblical models. Therefore one must replace them with some thing else.

Once these assumptions have been made, then there is no dif! culty in elaborat- ing within them why we now see democracy as the best form of government. Each of the above parties claiming pater nity (Augustinian, Enlightenment, free churches) can give their rea sons, and probably all are right.

Gospel Realism

The simplest expression of a non-Christendom alternative stance that I can offer in this paper will be the conscious anachronism and oversimpli!cation of reaching back to the New Testament to state an alternative. I offer this example not as a proof text nor as prescription, but as a provocative paradigm.

We may see the alternative social analysis simply stated in a text which Luke places most dramatically (Mark and Matthew have its near equivalent earlier in the story) within the conversations in the upper room, just after the “institution of the Eucharist” and between two predictions by Jesus of how his disciples were going to fail him.

“The rulers of the nations lord it over them.” Jesus does not suggest that this phenomenon of “lording it” or exercising dominion is one which will go away or for which he has an immediate alternative. He is not an anarchist either in tactics or in theory. He admits the fact of dominion among the nations.

But Jesus does not glorify or ratify this fact. He does not af!rm that it is a work of Providence or divine institution. He does not af !rm the divine right of rulers, as a majority of Christians since Con stantine have done, including the transfer of such

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moral rati!cation to democratic regimes since 1776. Jesus neither says that domin- ion is good nor that it is bad. There is in his words no ethical evalua tion of “domin- ion” as a good or bad system for the nations. He is, one might say anachronistically, a positivist. He just says that it is that way.

“Those who exercise authority let themselves be called benefactors.”Again the text is a description and not a moral judgment. Jesus does not say that the rulers of the nations are benefactors. He reports that they make that moral claim. “They let themselves be called” is the speci!c thrust of the middle voice. It is the case that even the pettiest Carib bean dictator, like the most powerful in Peking or Moscow, makes claims to be benefactor. But Jesus is not a cynic. He does not say that the claims are false. He does not, like a modern Marxist, brush them aside as ideologi- cal window dressing.

“But it shall not be so among you; you shall be servants because I am a servant.” After having described realistically both the fact of rule and the fact of value claims being made for that rule, Jesus locates himself and his disciples in a different ethi- cal game. They are not to take over that game of “rulers-making-a-case-for-their- benevolence” nor are they to attempt to interfere with it. They are called simply to do something else. The meaning of that “something else” is the alternative answer to the question of government which is represented by the servant Messiah.

In the immediate context of the narrative of the passion, Jesus was explain- ing to his disciples why they should see through and re ject the Zealot option which, the text makes very clear, was still their picture of his coming Kingdom. The pericope began with their argu ment about their places in the coming govern- ment: “Liberation !ghters-making-a-case-for-their-bene!cence” was their picture of Jesus and of themselves. He set it aside in favor of the cross-and-servanthood alternative.

By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, and placed this story in the midst of the passion narrative, the Zealot ethic was no longer a possi bility. We must read Luke as telling us that this text takes on a wider relevance. Now it is a capsule of a general view of government as such. This view is wide enough to include both the rela- tive accep tance of the “powers that be” expressed in Romans 13 and the realistic denunciation of those same powers when their claim to be bene factors is unveiled as idolatry in Revelation 13.

This statement in Luke deals separately with three levels which we have been taught to merge. One level is the fact of dominion. It is simply there, independent of and prior to any process of evalua tion. Secondly there is the level of moral rhetoric used by the bearers of power to legitimize themselves. This legitimation language comes after the fact of dominion. And then there is the third reality, the ethic of Jesus and his followers, who take their signals from some where else.

Since Constantine we have fused those three levels: the facticity of dominion, the language of legitimation, and the differentness of the disciples. Thereby we have confused rather than clari!ed the proper diversity of language. This mixes the descriptive and the pre scriptive, interweaving the language which justi!es coercion with that which guides voluntary discipleship. Since Constantine, when talk ing about government, we have assumed (as Jesus could not have) that we are talking about government of Christians and by Christians. We have thus lost the distance which Jesus maintained between his real ism about power and his messianic liberty in servanthood. We have not distinguished between an ethic which can claim the