Theology of War
Rev. Jaci McNeil
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine Wednesday, February 23rd (2022). If you’ve been following the news, you know the conflict that has been simmering since the 2014 annexation of Crimea has been kicked into overdrive.
Russia and Ukraine have a complicated legacy, which dates back thousands of years. In the last century, Ukraine was one of the most populous and powerful republics in the former USSR, until it broke away from Russia in 1991. Things were always a little spicy between Russia and Ukraine but things took a bad turn when Ukraine expressed an interest in joining NATO. Putin is about as interested in having another NATO country bordering his as I am having a spider crawl up my nose while I’m sleeping.
I studied Biblical theology as it pertains to war. It’s terrifically complicated, so let me start here: Remember back to your childhood, those of you who have siblings. A fight breaks out and the shouting is getting louder. Pretty soon you’ll be rolling around on the ground with your brothers, pulling their hair and pinching whatever exposed flesh you can find. Does this sound familiar or is this really just a snippet from my own childhood?
Anywho. Inevitably, your parents arrive, to stop you from killing each other. Suddenly you and your brothers become defense attorneys, offering forensic evidence for who started it. Closing arguments include these clever statements, He started it! No, she started it! This closing argument was invented by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. She did it! No, the snake did it!
Your parents say a version of this, I don’t care who started it. I’m going to end it. This might be an acceptable solution for siblings- although, I think it does matter who started it. The party who started it should be given a sterner punishment than the party who didn’t start it. Even Adam and Eve, who were both guilty were not given the same punishment, because one of them started it and one of them didn’t.
Ideally, who started it should determine primary guilt, what happens to them next and who gets to end it. In the invasion of Ukraine, Putin started it. I dislike the political factions pointing fingers at each other, blaming each other for the invasion. Let’s get Biblical. All fingers should be pointed at Putin. Putin started it. It doesn’t matter if some country encouraged him to do it or offered to help him to it financially or with military equipment. God’s official list of acceptable excuses does not include, He told me to do it. He made me do it.
This is not to say that parties who contributed either actively or passively, don’t bear responsibility. They do. But in my opinion, it is not correct to hold them to account before Putin is held to account. The guy’s feet who started it must always have his feet held to the fire before contributing parties.
Americans are divided on whether or not we should help Ukraine. However, people on either side of the argument agree that war is bad. It destroys human life, families and in many cases the innocent. War destroys both body and soul. American Civil War General William Sherman said, War is hell! I agree. War is as close to hell as you can get here on this earth.
The root cause of war, according to the Bible sin harbored in the human heart. James 4:1-2 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. The more sin we harbor, the more war we have. And war doesn’t have to be the shooting kind. It can be the ideological kind we experience every day in our families and friendships in this country. It has killed more people in America than bullets. Sin is so rampant in our world that war is a guarantee, ideological or the bullet kind. The only thing that will stop war is to stop sin. Color me pessimistic on that one.
God has gotten an unfair reputation for being a warmonger. It is an uncomfortable truth that God commanded His people go to war to defeat and punish pagan people whose culture was overflowing with sin. When a country was invaded, it was a sign of God’s judgment, but even so, God was not big on war. King David was not allowed to build a temple for God because he had killed people in several wars. In the Old Testament, only under extreme conditions, was war sanctioned and that only after many years of warnings.
One of the reasons God dislikes war is because He does not like the death of anyone, even very bad people. Ezekiel 33:11 As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live…
To sum up: God is slow to war and by association, so should Christians be. War is a result of an overflow of sin in a country and is often a sign of God’s judgment. But now I have a question. What are we to do when a nation like Germany in WWII rapes, pillages, plunders neighboring nations, and commits genocide? Is it Biblical to war against them? Gleason L. Archer wrote in the Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties, How could God be called ‘good’ if He forbade His people to protect their wives from ravishment and strangulation by drunken marauders, or to resist invaders who have come
to [kill] their children? No policy would give freer rein to wickedness and crime than a complete surrender of the right of self-defense on the part of the law-abiding members of society. No more effective way of promoting the cause of Satan and the powers of hell could be devised than depriving law-abiding citizens of all right of self-defense. It is hard to imagine how any deity could be thought ‘good’ who would ordain a policy of supine surrender to evil… No nation could retain its liberty or preserve the lives of its citizens if it were prevented from maintaining any sort of army for its
defense. It is therefore incumbent on a ‘good God’ to include the right of self-defense as the prerogative of His people. He would not be good at all if He were to turn the world over to the horrors of unbridled cruelty perpetrated by violent and bloody criminals or the unchecked aggression of invading armies.
Dr. Archer’s larger point is: When we look at war in the Bible, especially the verses in Deuteronomy, wars are supposed to be mainly defensive in nature and not offensive. This means we don’t start the fight, but if the fight is brought to us, we are within our God-given rights to fight back. In the case of Russia attacking Ukraine- Russia started the fight. They are wrong. Period. They are sinning. Those Ukrainians who are fighting back are right. Period. They are just.
In many cases, nations join a war to come to the defense of weaker nations. Defending human lessors is commended from Genesis to Revelation. The Lord Himself engages in war to defend the defenseless. Exodus 15:3 The Lord is a Man of war; The Lord is His name.
Genesis 14 provides a war story about Abram, also known as Abraham. Abram was known as a man of peace. This man of peace came to the defense of his addlepated nephew, Lot, who makes one dingbat decision after another. An alliance of kings waged war against another group of kings. Abram’s nephew, Lot, gets caught up in the melee and gets captured. Abram springs into action. He takes 318 of his men goes to war against the kings and rescues Lot. In part, what this passage teaches is, peaceful people sometimes have to go to war to defend others.
Later the Bible would say, Psalm 29:11 May the Lord give strength to His people! May the Lord bless His people with peace! The moral of the verse is understood to be: To live in peace, a nation has to be strong. One of history’s enduring lessons is that weakness provokes aggression. One of the lessons the Jews learned from the Holocaust is to never be so weak again that their very weakness invites aggression.
Good people must be stronger than bad people and good nations must be stronger than bad nations, or they will be overcome by the bad. In terms of peace, peace is maintained only as long as the decent are stronger than the indecent. Abram pursued peace but went to war when it was called for. His behavior and the verse in the Psalms are examples of Biblical wisdom that runs contrary to modern thought. In today’s non-Biblical thinking, people believe the opposite. They think good people must be weak to remain good. Good people must remain strong to vanquish the bad.
Self-defense is limited as per Exodus 22:2-3 If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him, but if the sun has risen on him, there shall be bloodguilt for him. Here we have 2 scenarios. A thief breaks into a house at night and a thief breaks in during the day. People who break into homes at night, while people are sleeping, are presumed to have homicidal intent. If the homeowner kills him, the homeowner is not guilty of murder. If an intruder breaks in during the day, he assumes the people who live there are not home. He does not have homicidal intent, so it is wrong to kill him. This Biblical injunction highlights the protection of human life, even the life of an evildoer in the middle of a criminal act. This tells me, we must seriously think it through we before we engage war and the its subsequent killing.
Deuteronomy 20 lays out rules for war, which advocate for justice, fairness and kindness. This tells us, sometimes justice, fairness and kindness come at the edge of a sword. Well, to whom is that being just? To whom is that being fair? To whom is that being kind? Those who are being attacked are the ones receiving justice, fairness and kindness in that their attackers are permanently stopped. It is also just, fair and kind to the attackers. If you believe there will be a Day of Judgement- I do and you should- we all will have to answer for all of our bad acts. The more bad acts you commit, the more you have to answer for. It stands to reason, if you are stopped from committing more evil acts, your punishment will be less than if you’d been allowed to keep piling them up.
This is the Wesleyan Church’s position on war: The Wesleyan Church, knowing that war results in great suffering for the bodies, minds, and souls of men and women, staggering economic loss with its legacy of debt for future generations, and the unleashing of the baser passions of life, urges that persons and nations seek by every legitimate means to avoid armed conflict among the peoples and nations of the world.
The Wesleyan Church understands that many Christians support their nation in times of conflict based upon the “just war principle.” In such instances, war is regarded as just when other non-violent means of resolution have failed, and the cause is for the defense of the nation and for the freedom of its citizens or those who are unable to defend themselves.
The Just War Theory that the Wesleyan Church references is code of military ethics. The purpose of the doctrine is to ensure that a war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. The criteria are split into two groups: “right to go to war” and “right conduct in war.” The main points in the Just War Theory are:
- Only defensive war is legitimate.
- The only legitimate motivation for war is to secure peace for all involved. Neither revenge nor conquest nor economic gain nor ideological supremacy are justified.
- War may only be entered upon as a last resort.
- War must be formally declared so the other guy knows its coming.
- The weaponry and the force used should be proportionate, limited to what is needed to repel the aggression and deter future attacks. All is NOT fair in love and war.
- Fighters should do everything in their power not to kill civilians.
We know someday in the future, there will be no more war. In Isaiah God said He would teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths. The result of this is, People shall not learn war anymore.
Isaiah 2:3-4 “And many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
What should Christians be doing in the meantime, when war is a reality? Romans 12:18 tells us, If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. We are to try to be at peace with other people, as far as it is possible. Sometimes it ain’t possible.
Christians must also understand that war is ultimately a spiritual battle as depicted in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Similarly, Ephesians 6:12 says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
The most important thing we can be doing in a time of war is to be praying for godly wisdom for our leaders, praying for the safety of our military, praying for a quick resolution to the conflict and most importantly, praying for a low casualty count on both sides. Above all, let’s pray for peace.