If the Law (“Thou shalt not kill”) is not absolute, the Gospel’s absolution is not perfect

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Look, I’m a smart guy, but I’m no expert in geo-politics so I won’t pretend to be one today; however, I do know theology and scripture as it relates to questions of war and witness.

So here goes:

My friend and mentor, theologian Stanley Hauerwas, posits often that Christians oppose war not because Christians believe non-violence is an effective strategy to rid the world of war but rather because Christians believe that through the cross of Jesus Christ war has been abolished.

The crucifixion is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, says scripture; therefore, in a world of war, Christians believe they are the people whom God has put into the world to bear witness to the Son’s abolition of all violence.

The cry of Mary’s son against God’s silence, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” is also at once God’s thunderous “Nein!” to all our attempts to make history come out right in the end.

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God does not intend the community of the cross to make the world a better place. The (non-violent) community of the cross is the better place God has created in the world.

While I agree wholeheartedly with Stanley’s position, the rhetoric with which he argues is too often in the register of the Law; that is, Hauerwas insists that in light of the cross this is how Christians ought to live. Not only, I suspect, does such speech burden Christians with guilt and shame over how far they fall short given the vicissitudes of the places and professions in which Christians find themselves, it ironically fails (by ostensibly establishing a new one) to do justice to the Law. In other words, what we need is a grace-centered understanding of war.

A full-throated understanding of grace lands Christians in essentially the same place as Hauerwas but does so, I think, by taking the Law with more and utmost seriousness. Ever since Augustine— and especially Aquinas— the default position of Christians, living with the burdens of Christendom, has been just war theory; that is, Christians can endorse limited wars provided they’re prosecuted under specific conditions. Wars must be defensive rather than offensive, innocent lives must not be attacked, damage should be debilitating but not total. Given the reality of original sin and the fact that it’s evenly distributed across all human hearts, it’s dubious that any war deemed a just war by the Church has ever abided by just war conditions. Lincoln, for example, understood explicitly that by endorsing Grant’s total war strategy he was relinquishing any connection to the Church’s tradition of just war.

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The problem with the just war tradition, however, is that by endorsing the idea that war is acceptable in some situations— what philosophers call casuistry— it concedes that the Law (“Thou shalt not kill”) is not universal, absolute in every instance. But if the Law is not unflinching in its demand, at all times and in all places, if sometimes the Law does not accuse us, then Christ’s sacrifice in our stead for our failures to live according to the Law is not, in some cases necessary.

In other words, if killing is just in this case, then this is an instance where you do not need a vicarious, atoning savior.

Christ did not need to die for you for this sin under the Law nor did he need to fulfill the Law for you with his life of perfect faithfulness.

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Exceptions to the Law, which scripture insists is good, holy, and righteous, undo the atonement by softening the demands of the Law.

As Paul Zahl writes, the Law “cannot be muted to suit conflicting goods.” Sinners will always only apply the Law on a case-by case basis that amounts to little more than another form of self-justification.

In some ways, the gospel of grace requires we reason backwards to the Law. Because the gospel bears the glad tidings that the cross of Christ for sinners is full, final, perfect, and once for all— a past work that redounds through the present and into the future— then the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” must be absolute and unyielding in every instance.

If grace is true, then the Christian response to war is not to mute the Law’s accusation in this particular situation. It’s to turn to our Savior and confess, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

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