Christians & Wars
By Colonel (er) François-Régis Legrier, Professor of Geopolitics at Rennes School of business. Author of ‘Si tu veux la paix prépare la guerre’ (‘If you want peace, prepare for war’)
In her reflections on war, written in 1933, the philosopher Simone Weil begins with these words: ‘the present situation and the state of mind it gives rise to, once again bring the problem of war back on the agenda’. Naturally, Christians cannot remain insensitive to what is happening in the world, and must draw from their heritage the principles relating to the use of force in order to maintain an upright judgement on the subject of war, avoiding the extreme of both pacifism and warmongering.
By developing a doctrine of just war, the Church sought first and foremost to put a stop to the diabolical cycle of violence, the fruit of human sin, and to lay down strict conditions for the use of force, always with a view to restoring peace. This doctrine rejects the ancient principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” in the context of warfare; it advocates the controlled use of force in self-defence to put an offender out of harm's way and entrusts its use to the king, i.e. the legitimate government.
Following in the footsteps of Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas developed the notions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello as the basis for the doctrine of just war.
Jus in bello refers to what is commonly known as the law of war. It has been developed over the centuries, particularly under the decisive influence of Grotius, into the law of armed conflict that we know today, with its principles of discrimination, proportionality, precaution and the prohibition of superfluous harm and unnecessary suffering. Let's take an example: in 989, the Council of Charroux laid down canonical rules designed to protect the innocent in warfare and thus formulated the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
But while jus in bello deals with the way in which war is conducted, it does not answer the question of the right to make war. The jus ad bellum refers precisely to this thorny issue. From a Christian perspective, a just war can only be a last resort and requires three conditions: legitimate authority, a just cause and right intention. This presupposes a clear notion of authority, justice, good and evil, and truth - in other words, a metaphysical and philosophical foundation common to all nations.
It should be noted that a just cause does not exempt political decision-makers from the virtue of prudence. A war must have a reasonable chance of success and not create greater evils than those it is intended to remedy. The Gospel warns us: ‘Or what king, if he is going to make war on another king, does not first sit down and consider whether he can, with ten thousand men, march against the one who is coming to attack him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, while that other king is still a long way off, he sends him an embassy to ask for peace.’ (Luc 14:30-31)
Without wishing to embellish the past, it can be said that this Christian conception of warfare was that which held sway in Europe for centuries. Voltaire said in 1751[1]: ‘Christian Europe could long ago be regarded as a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some monarchical, others mixed (...) all having the same basis of religion, although divided into several sects, all having the same principles of public law and politics unknown in other parts of the world. It is because of these principles that European nations do not make their prisoners slaves, that they respect the ambassadors of their enemies (...) and that they agree above all in the wise policy of keeping an equal balance of power between them.…’
Modern warfare, with its devastating effects and implacable dimension in which hatred of the other is constantly fanned, is the negation of the principles of just war, and in many ways resembles ancient wars. Carthago delenda est! Carthage must be destroyed ... as Rome came to believe.
The jus in bello is gradually disappearing from people's consciousness in the face of the new forms of warfare. The mass draft initiated by the French Revolution, which made every civilian a contributor to the war effort, broke with the age-old principle of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Since then, the industrialisation, the incredible power of weapons, the extension of war to all environments under man's control and the dual uses of technology have all contributed to a lasting blurring of the distinction between civilian and military objectives and between combatants and non-combatants. As soon as the means of production, energy infrastructure and means of communication are used for military purposes, they become de facto military objectives. The same applies to civilians, who have willy-nilly become involved in the conflict. When a civilian sends a picture of a war zone to an intelligence centre via his mobile phone, he becomes a de facto combatant, and therefore a legitimate target for a strike.
Jus ad bellum has also been distorted and even exploited. Of course, the notions of just cause and right intention have always been tricky to handle. Anyone who engages in war naturally seeks to justify his right. However, from the moment when States first seek their material interests and pursue the logic of power, the just cause gives way to a messianic ideology and Manichaeism [2] designed to seduce and excite public opinion. Propaganda and disinformation, the basic tools for manipulating the masses, take the place of truth. Truth is “what is believed by the greatest number,” and in this trend, the internet and social networks have merely amplified what the mass media were already doing in the 20th century.
Each and every one of us is faced with a dilemma: does patriotism make it our duty to adhere to the narrative devised by our authorities when we have good reasons to believe that it is exaggerated, or even false, or not devoid of ulterior motives? The large-scale disinformation operations carried out by the United States over the last 40 years to justify its military adventures have taught us the need to be cautious.
By rejecting the Christian distinction between temporal and spiritual power, the modern world has built Caesar's temple and consecrated his omnipotence. Albert Camus made this clear in L'Homme révolté: ‘The Revolution of principles kills God in the person of his representative. The Revolution of the twentieth century kills what remains of God in the principles themselves, and consecrates historical nihilism. Whatever paths this nihilism subsequently takes, from the moment it wants to create in the century, outside any moral rule[3], it builds Caesar's temple.’
This refusal to accept any moral rule that is typical of our time is leading us into serious domestic and international disorder. Under these conditions, peace is no longer the ‘fruit of justice’ as the prophet Isaiah [4] put it, or ‘the tranquillity of order’ as Saint Augustine defined it, but the result of the law of the strongest. Man becomes once again a wolf to man...
For those who claim to be followers of Christ, the temptation is great to resign ourselves, to relegate our faith to the private sphere and thus unwittingly ‘put the light under the bushel’. Yet, from Saint Paul to Solzhenitsyn, via Bernanos, Gertrud Von Lefort and many others, many men of the Church and writers have recalled this demand for truth which, along with hope and charity, is at the heart of the Gospel message.
It can be comfortable for a Christian to take refuge in a blissful pacifism[5], a providentialism that explains every war as a divine punishment and so dispenses with the need for action, or a warmongering stance under the guise of patriotism.
To adopt these positions is to abdicate our responsibilities and will never reduce the tide of war. While Christians in positions of political responsibility have an essential role to play in recalling and, if possible, applying the principles of just war, we must not forget that even before political action, the battle is waged first and foremost on a spiritual and intellectual level.
Being a peacemaker [6] (Matthew 5:9) means bearing witness to what peace, justice and truth really are. ‘The truth will set you free’ [6] said Christ. For those who claim his name, and who do not want a Christianity without Christ, there is no more urgent battle to wage. ‘The forces of evil have begun their decisive offensive’, said Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his famous speech at Harvard in 1978, calling on his audience for a “spiritual conflagration”. Let us not be found like the apostles: asleep at the foot of a tree while Christ was in agony.
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The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.
[1] Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, chapitre II, Garnier, 1878. Available on wikisource
[2] Manichaeism was a type of gnosticism—a dualistic religion that offered salvation through special knowledge (gnosis) of spiritual truths.
[3] Underlined by us
[4] Isaiah 32:17; see also 59:8
[5] Falsely justified by the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20: 13) which in reality means ‘Thou shalt not murder’
[6] For pointers to a relational peacebuilding approach see: https://www.relationalpeacebuilding.org/en/
[7] John 8:32
