Sacred Violence ... Part 5

“Sacred Violence - in Christianity and Islam,” - by Tony Harwood-Jones

SEGMENT #5

The Later Church, St. Augustine, and Public Order
Eventually it emerged that some people were to live more by the rules of heaven, such as clergy, while others, such as politicians and soldiers, were to live more by the rules of the world. Ambrose, in the fourth century, made it explicit: while all individual Christians must live by Christ’s teachings, and respond peacefully to aggression in their private lives, soldiers, in their capacity of public servants, can bring glory to God by fighting to defend the state. Clergy, however, must never fight, even in the defence of the state, because their public duty is to be concerned with matters of the spirit.⁴⁷

Augustine agrees: “As to killing others to defend one’s own life I do not approve of this, [he says] unless one happens to be a soldier or a public functionary acting not for himself, but in defence of others or of the city in which he resides.”⁴⁸

Again, the religious, the secular clergy, and the monks must not engage in warfare at all.⁴⁹

Augustine, who developed a full-blown theory of “Christian” Just War, could not find anything for his code in Christ’s teachings, for it is not there. He borrowed, rather, from Plato and from Cicero, declaring that war exists to bring about a condition of peace. It may be used to repel attack, and to enforce violated treaties. A request to end hostilities must be honoured. There must be no massacres, no desecrating of temples, no vengeance, and no atrocities. Good faith must be kept with the enemy.⁵⁰

To include Jesus’ ethic in his system, Augustine had to intensify the duality that was already growing within Christianity. With him, the division between personal and interior on the one hand, and public and external on the other, became complete. What he taught was that privately, in our hearts, we must be loving and forgiving; externally we must do our duty to the state and fight. Bodily, we must kill the enemy, but spiritually, we must love that enemy.⁵¹

For all that Augustine permitted violence, he never went as far as to consider it “godly” or “good.” To him it was very much an ugly necessity in a very sinful world. As far as he was concerned, God did not ordain violence. It is part of human evil. Only when, in the interests of public order, it becomes the lesser of two evils, does it become permissible.

Augustine always considered the task of public administration to be thoroughly distasteful, as it involved the continual violation of Christ’s commands. A magistrate must order executions, even torture, when required, but he must hate it, and ask God to deliver him from the necessity.⁵² In the years that followed, however, Christians became quite used to the public administration of violence, and some may even have enjoyed it.

The Crusades
When the Crusades began, even monks and clergy, whose job had been the care of heavenly things, were putting on armour and setting out to attack the occupants of Jerusalem. By some accounts they relished the experience. “A Christian glories in the death of a Muslim,” said Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, “Because Christ is glorified.”⁵³ “Therefore, ye knights, attack with confidence... the enemies of the cross of Christ, assured that neither life nor death can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”⁵⁴

Monks and knights broke the walls of Jerusalem on the 15th of July, 1099.

“With drawn swords [writes someone who was there] our people ran through the city; nor did they spare anyone, not even those pleading for mercy. If you had been there, your feet would have been stained up to the ankles with blood. What more shall I tell? Not one of them was allowed to live. They did not spare the women or children.

“The horses waded in blood up to their knees, nay up to the bridle. It was a just and wonderful judgement of God.”⁵⁵

Christians had certainly come a long way from the days when police and soldiers were refused membership in the church because of their violent professions!

There is no doubt that the Crusaders completely violated the teaching and example of Christ. But they even fell far short of the Graeco-Roman standards of war which Augustine had so regretfully adapted. Where was his prohibition of atrocity, or of the desecrating of temples? Where was his obligation to respond to pleas for mercy? Where, even, his prohibition of clergy taking up arms? Gone. And where was his stipulation that war be declared only as a response to aggression?

The Crusaders alleged that they were recovering property that was once Christian, that the Muslim occupation was a form of aggression. But the Muslims had conquered Jerusalem more than four hundred years earlier, and it is unlikely that Augustine would have considered an attack on such an established occupation to be an act of defence!

The problem of legitimate defense is as alive today as it was then. How long ago must a provocation be, before it is considered “stale”? Palestinians treat a 1967 invasion as a current provocation; in fact most of them view the half-century old creation of Israel as equally current. Sixty year old war crimes are still being tried in Canada. Is it possible that the English of Canada are still occupying “French” territory? Certainly North American Aboriginals view the four hundred year-old European occupation as a current affront. Jesus said an individual assault must be forgiven immediately. Augustine thought invaders could be repelled by force. He never discussed what should happen once the invaders get in!

And what type of aggression justifies an armed response anyway? Are threats enough? Or economic injustice? Or deprivation of civil rights? The 1989 American invasion of Panama was described by the U.S.A. as a proper response to the threats of President Noriega, and to the murder of one person. Nelson Mandela, in February 1990, declared that the continued armed struggle of the South African black people was a response to the “oppression” of Apartheid.

Christians in Central and South America view the terrible economic injustices of that region as “acts of violence.” Are they sufficient to justify an armed response? Archbishop Oscar Romero, himself eventually murdered for his stand, thought so:

When a dictatorship seriously attacks human rights and the common good of the nation, [he wrote] when it becomes unbearable and channels for dialogue, understanding, and rationality are closed, when that happens the church speaks of the legitimate right of defense. To define the moment of insurrection, to indicate the moment when all the channels for dialogue are closed, that is not the church’s task. ⁵⁶

Young Father Garcia, with whom we began this essay, thought the time had come. Identifying with Christ’s manifest concern for the poor and the dispossessed, he picked up a rifle and took aim at the oppressors of his people. His friends called him “Christ-like,” one of his contemporaries quipped, “Christ forbade the sword, but not the machine gun!”⁵⁷ but Christians, by and large, feel uneasy.

For the peaceful and non-retaliatory side of Christianity, submerged through long generations, has never fully disappeared. In the Reformation, Anabaptists and Mennonites gave new vitality to the Sermon on the Mount. Their fellow-Christians, coming out of centuries of internal mayhem, flayed them and boiled them for their views, but with great courage they have persisted to this day.

And then there is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A Lutheran scholar and pastor in the darkest moments of Nazi Germany, threatened daily by the S.S., and eventually imprisoned and executed by them. Here is what he wrote, not very long before they came to get him:

We must love [our enemy] not only in thought and word, but in deed.... As brother stands by brother in distress, binding up his wounds and soothing his pain, so let us show our love towards our enemy.... If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. ⁵⁸

Although even this remarkable man may have acquiesced in a plan to assassinate Hitler, as far as we know, in prison, and even before his executioners, Bonhoeffer practiced what he preached.

Augustine, the Crusaders, Fr.Garcia, Archbishop Romero, or Dr.Bonhoeffer... which was the more Christian? It is hard to tell. In one sense, all of them are Christian, for Christians cover an enormous spectrum, from pacifism to ferocity, and maintain an uncomfortable ambivalence about it all.

But if we were to ask which of these is more Christ-like, perhaps the answer would be less inclusive. For all his Christ-like concern for the poor, Fr.Garcia, like the Crusaders, is doing something that doesn’t fit. No one could imagine Jesus, who certainly treated his enemies as oppressors of the poor, taking up a machine gun and mowing them down! As long as Christians believe that the New Testament Jesus is an accurate portrait of the mind of God, they must uphold non-violence in some form. Surely, of the above examples, Dr.Bonhoeffer is the most Christ-like, and as such is the closest to obeying the commandments of the Christian God.

Continued...