I will state my premises and argument, define the terms, expand and elaborate on my points and argument, and then I will defend against probable counter arguments. I have deliberately organized my argument this way so it is easier to see my presuppositions and conclusions. This should make it easy to understand and address my argument.
Basic Argument: Claiming Christianity demands Christians be Pacifists is logically fallacious because it conflicts with one of Christianity’s key tenants, its universality. Christianity holds that it is for everyone everywhere, so to demand that Christians be Pacifists is to require everyone everywhere be Pacifists. However, this undermines the universality of Christianity because some type of violence is required for any human society to function. So to maintain that Christians must be Pacifists requires that some people in the world (the people performing the necessary violence) either not be Christians or not follow their faith completely. Christianity is then not universal. If violence is necessary for any human society to function and if Christianity is for everyone, then not all Christians can be Pacifists. Some or perhaps even most Christians could be Pacifists, but they cannot all be.
Terms: I am defining Christianity in the broad sense as everything that affirms the truth of grace through Christ’s death and resurrection and God’s revelation of himself in the Bible. This includes virtually all Protestant and Catholic denominations, but excludes groups like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am defining Pacifism as the strict adherence to non-violence in all circumstances. Not all people who call themselves Pacifists define the term this way. There are people who describe themselves as Pacifists who would use some forms of violence to defend their lives or their families’ lives but always object to fighting in wars. Some Pacifists say only non-lethal violence should be used, (which I don’t think is possible, but that’s for another time) and there are other variations. The critique I am making only fully works against Pacifism in its strictest sense. The more tolerant of violence the Christian Pacifist becomes the less valid my critique is. I will occasionally use the word “exceptional” and here I mean this as something that is non-universal or rare. I am not defining it here as something that is both rare and praiseworthy.
Premise One: Violence is necessary for any human society to function. Many people are likely appalled by this, but it is true. Every human society has had (and needed) laws. Whether these laws are primarily social, legal, or cultural in nature does not matter. I am yet to find anyone who will argue that a society without laws (in the broadest sense of the term) existed or that any group of people living together doesn’t need some set of rules. Even if those laws are things like, “the law of the jungle” or an unwritten and unspoken set of rules, they are still laws in every practical sense. Everyone agrees (at least I’ve found no one who disagrees, if anyone is aware of someone who does please let me know) that such rules are necessary. People who claim we don’t need laws usually mean that we don’t need written laws. They think that cultural and social laws or laws of common sense are enough. That may be true, but the point is that at a practical level even these more basic rules function in way that is indistinguishable from a written code. I’ve never found an anarchist in the truest sense. They simply think that non-written laws are better than formal rules, but even these are still laws.
Laws always require enforcement. Any law without enforcement is as useless as a rock band without instruments, a gun without bullets, or a day without coffee. We have laws that say don’t murder or steal, but if nothing is done to prevent or deter the murder and the thief the laws are useless. The murder keeps killing and the thief keeps stealing. The point of a law is to prevent certain types of behavior or to make it unlikely the behavior will occur again. So to have laws makes some type of enforcement necessary. Law enforcement (the concept and the police) have taken a lot of different forms, but all of these forms can be traced back to violence or the threat of violence. All law enforcement takes its power from violence or the threat of violence, so it is impossible to enforce laws without violence. I am quite sure this statement will generate many objections, but I encourage any objector to trace back the forms of enforcement and punishment to their source. The source is always violence or the threat of violence.
Violence and the threat of violence are indistinguishable in this sense. It is true that often people with no intention of violence will threaten it (which makes them liars), but the threat only holds power if someone believes it will be carried out. If everyone only threatened violence and no one carried it out (it would be a wonderfully comical world) the threats would be useless. As an analogy, suppose all the police in a fictitious city were given orders to always threaten to shot suspects but never actually do it. Assuming that all the police followed the order things would probably go well for a while. But eventually word would get around that Fictitious City Police threaten violence but never carry it out. Crime would probably rise and the police would be ineffective because they would have lost their power. While this is a fictitious example, the principal holds true. Threats of violence require actual violence backing them up to be effective. So threats of violence and actual violence are indistinguishable in any way that matters here. Even something like a monetary fine as law enforcement is still a violent act at its core. Money is being forcibly taken from someone in a fine. If he refuses to pay the fine, law enforcement will have to use violence or threaten him so he will pay.Because societies always need laws and some type of violence to enforce them, some type of violence (however limited I hope) is always necessary for society to function.
Premise Two: Christianity claims it is universal. By this I mean that Christianity claims it is for the whole world. Not every religion makes this claim. I doubt anyone who has studied Christianity will disagree with me here. There are numerous references in the Bible that make it plain that Christ and New Testament authors regarded Christianity as the way for all men (a non-gender specific use of “men” here).
There are some types of denominations that try to work around this universality. Usually they stream from or relate to Calvinism. They basically try to have it both ways by claiming that Christianity is and is not universal. That is a horrific simplification, but I’ll get more in depth on it later.So Christianity is universal. Its scriptures claim it is, and its adherents claim it is, and historically it has made efforts to spread all over the world.
Conclusion: The conclusion rests on the law of non-contradiction. A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same context. So Christianity cannot be Universal and non-Universal at the same time. It cannot demand an exceptional tenant and be Universal. If Christianity demands both things, it is logically fallacious. To use plain speak, it just doesn’t make sense and we should reject it. So I am forced to conclude that a version of Christianity that demands all Christians be Pacifists is a logically self-defeating concept. Essentially;
1. Human societies require at least some violent actions.
2. Christianity claims it is for all human societies.
3. So given 1 and 2,
4. Christianity must allow for at least some violent actions.
This does not mean that Christians cannot be Pacifists, they can be. After all a Christian can be any number of things that not all Christians can be. For example, some Christians are women and some are men. Clearly it is not a problem that the female Christians cannot become male Christians and visa versa (Major surgery does not count here because it does not change the chromosomes that produce gender). It would be problematic if all the female Christians claimed all the male Christians had to become women to be “true Christians” because clearly this is not possible (However I have attended some churches where men are required to act more like women than men). Likewise, a Christian can be a Pacifist so long as he does not claim that all Christians must be Pacifists. Essentially a person’s Pacifism must not come from Christianity, but from somewhere else. Maybe the person just does not like the thought of violence in the same way that I abhor the thought of decaffeinated coffee. There are many principals Christians can embrace that are separate from Christianity. Nearly all American Christians think democracy and free speech are wonderful principals. But these principals come from being an American, not from being a Christian. Christians in other parts of the world may find the idea of free speech to be dangerous and democracy to be an incredibly inefficient form of government.
Separating Pacifism and Christianity does not mean that Pacifism is inherently stupid or bad. It is usually high minded, good intentioned, and the worst that can be said of it is that it is naïve. It probably is the best default approach to a lot of situations. Pacifism just cannot be logically demand as the answer to all conflicts by a worldview that claims to be universal.So I have concluded that it is not logically valid to claim that following Christ demands Pacifism. If you want to be a Pacifist for other reasons, that is fine as the contradiction only lies in the requirement (but examine your other reasons to see if they are valid). It is as logically valid to be a Christian and a Pacifist as it is to be a Christian and an American. But it is as foolish to claim that all Christians must be Pacifists as it is to claim that all Christians must be Americans or Europeans.
An Out: For those who do not like my conclusion I can offer you an out. If either of my two premises are wrong the whole argument fails. So find a reason why one of them are wrong. The easiest out is to join a Christian denomination that does not believe Christianity is Universal (Yes they do exist and are considered orthodox). Most of these denominations are off-shots of Calvinism or relate to it in some way. Part of Calvinism is the idea of the Elect. Only these Elect people will actually be saved and the rest are . . . well they’re pretty much damned. This is a terribly unfair summery, but the point is that these denominations do not actually claim Christianity is Universal, so there is no logical problem if they also demand Pacifism. I think there are good reasons to reject Calvinism and similar ideas, but I’m not writing here to refute them. It is worth noting the most of these variations of Christianity soften the blow of Non-Universality by claiming that people cannot know who the Elect are, only God knows. However, that reintroduces the logic problem of demanding Pacifism with Christianity (If only God knows who the elect are then it is impossible for us to know who is saved and thus impossible for us to know who is required to be a Pacifist).
Two Counter Arguments: “Violence is not necessary for human society to function.” This counter claim to premise one can take several forms. Some people claim that society can be organized in ways that do not require violence (while admitting that at least most of them are). Some people will argue that as Christians should not conform to the world so we should not allow for violence even if human society requires it. I am sure there are other variations, but I think these two statements cover most of them.I say that if we can organize society in way that does not require violence, great let’s do it. So now . . . how do we do it? I’ve tried to do some research on this and while my research is in no way exhaustive (I am only 28), I have been unable to find any society that does not have at least a small threat of violence at work somewhere in it, and I have seen no theories or examples that can work for larger groups of people for long periods of time. I can find no evidence for the claim that society can be organized without violence. Saying “We can do X” does not mean that we can do X, you need to provide evidence and reasons why we can do X.
Pacifistic theorists often like to cite Amish and Mennonite communities as the very evidence I cannot see. While I find much to admire in Amish and Mennonite approach to life, I do not see how they can be held up as examples of non-violent communities because they are not independent communities. The ones in the United States enjoy the protection of the local police and the international protection of the US military. They can afford to be as pacifistic as they want to be because they do not have to worry about protecting themselves from external evil and violence. If some Amish or Mennonite people operated their own sovereign country, I think that would be a very strong case worth considering. But they don’t, so it’s not. Most citizens can and probably should be as pacifistic as the Amish and Mennonites are. Having police and military enable people to act non-violently and that is a good thing.Saying “It might be different” doesn’t mean it is different, so saying we might be able to have a society without violence does not mean we can. Until someone can show demonstrate a workable and plausible way of organizing society without violence, I have to conclude that we need the violence. I do welcome ideas and theories about how else society might be organized. If there are non-violent ways of minimizing and suppressing evil and suffering, I would like to know about them.
The second counterargument revolves around Christians specifically. This counter argument does not dispute that human societies need violence, but claims that Christians should not act like the rest of humanity in regards to violence. There are several different ways of justifying this claim, but they all say that Christians should act separate (in some fashion, not necessarily physically separate) from the rest of humanity. While this is certainly true about some things (they will know we are Christians by our love ) it is not true in a broad general sense. Christians still have to eat food and sleep, so we are not completely separate from the rest of humanity. Simply arguing that Christians should be separate from the rest of the world is not enough; the argument must establish that the issue of violence is one of the areas that is separate. This is where I find these counterarguments fail. If “Christ told us to be separate from the world” is used to claim that Christians should not use violence the same argument and logic can be used to claim that Christians shouldn’t eat, sleep, or do anything else that someone else in the world does. Clearly Christians need to eat and sleep. This counter argument is fallacious because it is too broad.My purpose here is simply to establish the logical relationship between Christianity and Pacifism. I am not attempting to explain the hows and whys of when violence is justified and when it is evil. That is a far more difficult and complicated topic which I am not covering here. It is clear that most violence is evil and unjustifiable. Nothing I say here should be used to justify specific acts of violence as that would be evil and logically fallacious. But I think it is clear that a Christian police officer can be justified in shooting a dangerous criminal, and a Christian soldier can be justified in killing enemy soldiers to protect his country.
Thanks for posting; I really enjoyed the read. You analysis is clear, thoughtful, and easy to follow. The argument and its defense reflect a deep level of analytical skill that I admire very much. It shows through in your writing. I can’t say I find fault with your primary argument and its defense. With that being said, I also find your argument to be partial, abrupt, or stilted. First, why no historical considerations? I find it difficult to believe that three hundred years of followers of the Way were pacifists based on reasons external to their identification with Christ. Their virulent anti-militarism, then, is explained by what, other than a desire to model their lifestyles after the founder of their faith? The argument that contemporary Christian pacifists derive their nonviolence practices on factors external to Christianities might make sense, as you demonstrate, but it falls apart logically when applied to the early Christian era and original pacifists.
ReplyDeleteSecond, why no textual considerations? If pacifist Christians claim the Bible as their primary source of authority, consider the example of Christ’s nonviolence (as found in that Bible) as the paramount model of emulation, then if follows directly (and is therefore logical) that these Christians should be pacifists. Any argument contrary to this conclusion must highlight isolated textual accounts interpreted by the majority of academic authorities in that area (historians, text critics, or theologians) to contrast the perceived notion of Christ as nonviolent (or better, as someone who in no case causes bodily harm to others).
ReplyDeleteThird, are issues really as black and white as they are simplistically portrayed? Are actions either “good” or “bad,” “moral” or “immoral”? The pacifists that I know admit that we live in a dirty world and that while nonviolence is what one must strive for, it is hardly attainable. Our lives, as you put it, are permeated by degrees of violence. Thus, is it wrong for a pacifist to watch a violent action flick (and sympathize with the gun-slinging protagonist)? Is it wrong to take kung-fu? Hunt? Speak antagonistically to another human being? There are scales or degrees to pacifist leanings (looking back on your post, I see you do acknowledge this). Most pacifists I know see nonviolence as the model or ideal, albeit one that is hardly attainable. We live in a sinful world and thus must commit morally questionable actions in order to guarantee that worse or more horrific actions don’t occur. So political assassination is a huge issue. Killing a human being is never morally acceptable for a Christian, they might say, but it simply must be done in rare cases in order to prevent further destruction of life that might ensue if the assassination doesn’t take place. Such is life. These pacifists are pragmatic realists; perhaps they read not only Miroslav Volf, Marty Mittelstadt, or John Howard Yoder but also the Niebuhr brothers.
Thus, while I concede your basic points 1-4, I see the entire argument as oversimplified in that it does not engage the critical issues surrounding the theoretical stances of contemporary Christian pacifists. The Christian pacifists that I know become so after carefully weighing both historical and textual issues and making a logical decision based on their interpretation and application of those issues. Your argument would make more sense were Christianity not a religion that 1) claims the Bible as a sole authority and 2) within that Bible centralizes Christ’s example as model for contemporary morals and ethics. Still, however, I find it hard to disagree with the line of reasoning you present; your logic is strong and your argument solid. But your argument is also narrowly concerned with several points (violence, society, and Christianity’s universalism) and does not by any means address all of the issues that surround Christian pacifism; in fact, it avoids those issues some might consider most important.
(Travis actually posted these on Facebook because the posting system was down when he tried to comment. I copied it here so everyone could read it.)
Thank you for your thoughts, compliments, and questions. I am pleased that you found my argument to be easy to follow and well grounded. So much of recent philosophical/theological writing is needlessly dense and vague. I try hard to avoid that.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, I think your criticism/questions are valid. The issues you raise are mostly due to the limited nature of the argument I am making. It does only work in limited circumstances. While you can apply an inductive version of the argument to Pacifists who are not absolute, it only works deductively with absolute Pacifists. Most Pacifists are not absolute Pacifists (as you say). I think this reflects a common but misleading use of the term, “Pacifist,” as most people I’ve known who call themselves Pacifists would use violence in limited circumstances. It would be more accurate to call them something like very/extreme limited just war theorists, but they would be uncomfortable with a label like that. I’ve found that most of them prefer the Pacifistic label because they think it means they will look for a peaceful solution first and only use other means as a last resort. The trouble is that this is principally the same thing as any reasonable just war theory, but it’s under a different label. I didn’t attempt to critique other variants of Pacifism because I thought it would get needlessly complicated, and I’m convinced limited Pacifists are in a lot more agreement with reasonable just war theorists than they think they are. I didn’t intend to convey that the argument I gave is a be all end all to the issue and I’m sorry if it came across that way. I only intended to address the specific things the argument goes after.
I really don’t find arguments over what the early church did or did not do that useful (maybe in relation to historical or sociological issues, but not theological and philosophical issues), so I didn’t touch that. The early Church is not Christ and it is not scripture, so even if we can establish that they thought X or behaved in X way, I don’t see how that qualifies as a good argument for X. A Christian should always appeal to Christ and scripture; an appeal to the early Church is an appeal to tradition. Tradition could be right or wrong. The unspoken assumption of most appeals to the early Church is that as they are closer (in time) to Christ they are more likely to be right than we are. I don’t see why this would be the case. They were people, the same as us with the same faults. It’s quite likely they got things wrong just as we do. So I find an appeal to the early church being pacifistic to be irrelevant. The early church didn’t celebrate Christmas and it didn’t have the same style worship services as modern Christians. It doesn’t follow that celebrating Christmas is wrong or that worship styles need to be changed. Given that scripture doesn’t seem to fully reject or embrace Pacifism, I think a better explanation of the early Church’s behavior is that they had other concerns than wither or not violence was justified.
I didn’t use any direct scripture references because I did not see that it was necessary for the argument. There certainly is a lot of scripture that supports the idea that Christianity is Universal, but I felt that point was so obvious that I didn’t need to prove it. I left out the references there for the sake of brevity. You don’t need to cite a source to prove that Shakespeare was born in England because that is common knowledge to anyone who knows things about Shakespeare. I thought the premises I used here were the same for Christianity.
I think you have more of a point in regards to counter arguments from Pacifists. It is true that most of them are trying to base their pacifism on scripture and it is true that at least some of them try doing so with thought and efforts at logic. I tried to address the general idea behind most Pacifistic arguments from scripture in my second counter argument. I didn’t list specific ones for the sake of brevity. They are generally things like “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” “Christ said to love our enemies, not kill them,” or “Christ lived a non-violent life and so should we.” My chief point is that arguments like these are too vague and broad to establish anything. Just because Christ lived a non-violent life (and that’s not accurate as he behaved violently when he cleansed the temple) doesn’t mean he condemned violence, it could be (and I think is quite likely) that he had other priorities that made violence irrelevant and unnecessary. I.e. just because I’m not a doctor doesn’t mean I reject medicine, I have other priorities. Simply killing someone in self-defense doesn’t really establish that you are “living by the sword.” Finally, just because you kill someone doesn’t mean you hate them or cease to love them. That is a difficult thing. But I prayed for the Muslims in Iraq while I was a soldier there. A Biblical view of godly love doesn’t eliminate the possibility of violence against those we love. Otherwise, we would have to say God doesn’t love some people (as he killed them). I think this is a case of reading a Western/non-Biblical view of love into Christ’s statement instead of looking at love as Christ did.
ReplyDeleteSo I was trying to address the general error of some Pacifistic arguments of being too broad or taking specific things and making them too broad. But mostly it was for the sake of brevity.
Also it is certainly true that moral issues are often difficult or hazy. Every action is morally good, bad, or neutral; but it can be difficult to tell which due to conflicting issues and odd circumstances. I’m honestly not sure what you were getting at with that paragraph. While I didn’t say things can get complicated, I don’t think I said or implied that they are always simple and easy. Some people have been pushing me to write about Just War theory and the primary reason I have not is that the issues surrounding violence do get complicate and hazy. It will take a great deal of work and thought before I can give that issue a fair treatment. One of the problems with the Pacifistic position that I did not mention is that it denies that very complexity and haziness. To assert that violence is never morally justified denies the ambiguities and difficult issues surrounding violence. As you mentioned a lot of people who call themselves Pacifists don’t deny the existence of these problems, but I think that’s just another cause where the term is being used in a poor/misleading fashion (although I doubt it is misleading with malicious intentions, more likely the opposite).
So while I find your objections/criticisms reasonable, I didn’t address those points because I don’t see them as useful (for this argument, they might be for other ones) or because I wanted to be as concise as possible. I don’t think for a second that this argument resolves all the issues or address every part of the problem. You certainly cannot use it to determine when it is morally permissible to join the army or a police force. The only thing I think it establishes is that Christianity does not and cannot demand that all Christians be Pacifists as Christianity does demand that we all be honest, morally upright, lovers of God.
You do not know the Scriptures or live in the Power of God that takes away the occasion of all war. Also Christianity until 4 AD was PACIFIST!
ReplyDeleteRead the history of the true people of God called QUAKERS!
ReplyDeleteInteresting points. One thing that I believe you missed is that pacifism should be legitimized through the argument that Jesus used regarding his kingdom. Jesus stressed that his kingdom is "not of this world." Your argument that the world governments require violence at time is a moot point to Christians who are living "Kingdom" living, whereby they have come to the conclusion their savior, Jesus, died, defeated death, and with that purchased them through his blood sacrifice, then they are now servants to a King, Jesus and with that comes certain rights as a Kingdom believer. We are now slaves to the King. What the earth and flesh do is moot, as Jesus referred to satan as the "Prince of this world." If the world and flesh require violence, that is because it is an imperfect world, and although we reside in it literally, we are not ruled by the world, and need to be "perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Those are Jesus' world. If we fail, that is our human flesh responding in flesh, not something to be recommended but avoided. God bless your day.
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