"Pacifism: The Pernicious Error of Treating an End as a Means"

As a former Mennonite, I consider pacifism a well intentioned but pernicious error.  I do so for several reasons.
         First, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle correctly observed that those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions.  In the case of formulating theories of governance and public policy, the right preliminary questions are not those that ask, as do some pacifists, “What are the ethics of the eschaton?” but “What sort of a being is fallen man and how can we protect ourselves from the evil within us and without?”  I say of that sort of pacifist what Robert Southey once said of William Godwin: He theorizes for another world, not for the rule of conduct in the present.  That is, pacifists tend to theorize for the next age rather than for the age that is.  Any theory of public policy or of private ethics that is based upon our speculations about the nature of things in the coming Kingdom rather than upon a close observation of what human beings have done (or tried to do) to one another in the past will be misguided.  To introduce speculations (and they are speculations) about the ethics of the future Kingdom and then to try to make those speculations relevant by transplanting them foursquare into the arena of public policy formulation is a practice sure to mislead.  It crowds off the stage what the late Jeane J. Kirkpatrick has called the best guide to political theorizing available to us:  our own past.  For some pacifists, the world that was is traded for a speculative world that might never be.  Historical indicators are exchanged for eschatological theorizings that often are unconvincing even to other eschatologists.
         To eschatologically oriented pacifists, the universality of the Kingdom of God is a theological basis for peace among the world’s peoples.  But, the Kingdom of God is no such thing.  It might, in fact, be a wedge of division between them.  We have Christ’s word for it that the Kingdom of God will not enter without eschatological conflict (perhaps even universal conflict), and that far from being a common denominator, Christ and the Christian gospel are often a source for alienation and division.  Christ did not come to bring peace, after all, but a sword, just as He told us. There is no ultimate political reconciliation between good and evil (or even between the less good and less evil). One or the other must die. We must not translate the reconciliation between God and sinners into a basis for ethical theory and national defense.  Only by ignoring much of what it says can we assert, as do some pacifists, that the Bible is a book of peace.
         Second, although Christian pacifists want an ethic that is Christ centered, one that takes Christ seriously, the Christ upon which they center their theory is not the Christ of the gospels.  They misconstrue the fact that Christ is "the Prince of Peace" into the false notion that Christ is the Prince of pacifism.  They do so by failing to take sufficient notice of the historical context and intention of Christ’s teachings.  They seem not to have noticed that the command Christ gave to love one’s enemies was given directly to his disciples as a standard for personal conduct and spirituality (and applicable by them in that arena), and not to parliaments, politburos, and congresses for the formulation of international policy and national defense.  Jesus was not directing his words to Caesar, or even to future Christians who were to stand in Caesar’s stead and who were responsible for public policy.  He gave them to his disciples.  Put differently, pacifists confuse the standard of Christian conduct (which is based on the principle of mercy and grace) with the standard of governmental policy (which is based on the principle of justice).
         Pacifists use the fact that Christ’s death was a means for reconciling God and sinners to establish the political ethic that Christians are to be reconcilers by means of pacifism.  But, by doing so, they have reshaped the death of Christ from an act of peace into a peaceful act, which it was not. His death was a bloody, mortal combat between the forces of good and the forces of evil, one wherein both Satan and the Son of God Himself were dealt a death blow.  The proto-evangelium (Gen. 3:15) characterizes it as the crushing of heads and the bruising of heels -- no pacifist encounter, that.  When Christ set his face toward Jerusalem like a flint, it was no peace march leading to the cessation of conflict; it was a death march leading (for the redeemed) to reconciliation with God, and (for the lost) to Armageddon and worse.  Those who do not sign the peace treaty of faith will die.  Peace was an end in view, not a means to that end -- which leads to my third objections.
        Third, the pacifist's “shalom” principle transforms the condition of peace into an ethic, or policy, of peace.  Shalom is not a policy; it is an end, a goal.  We might actually have to fight in order to get peace.  We might have to employ deadly force to push back the powers of evil in a fallen world. But pacifists make peace a policy rather than a goal, forgetting that we proceed to peace, not by peace.  We must not make the serious mistake of thinking that a theology of salvation by vicarious atonement leads to pacifism as a public policy.  Such errors arise whenever a pacifist theologian handles the New Testament as if it were a political manifesto, and not the history of our redemption, treating the teachings of Jesus as if they were the equivalent of the sayings of Chairman Mao.
        Fourth, pacifists seem to believe that only war needs to be justified, and not pacifism. They too blithely assume that in the face of resolute and colossal evil, peace ought to be the default position, as if one need not justify pacifism. But if you do not take up arms against a tyrant who employs them for the purpose of subjection and conquest, then the tyrant will remain unopposed and undefeated. The tyrant remains a tyrant. Because it takes a force to check a force, pacifism provides no check against either the practice of evil or the spread of evil. I have yet to see anything remotely like a compelling defense of military non-resistance in the face of deadly tyranny. I have yet to see a "just peace theory." That's why tyrants wish for all good persons to be pacifists. Pacifists are the tyrant's dream come true.
         Fifth, pacifists seem not to have noticed, or to have understood, the peace making and peace keeping role of even the most devastating military weapons.  Not only did using nuclear weapons immediately end the worst war in the history of the world, but it saved countless thousands of Japanese and American lives in the process, which doubtless would have been lost had we been forced to make a full-on invasion of the Japanese mainland. Iin the more than 40 years of Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States after that World War, three generations of nuclear missiles were designed, assembled, tested, deployed, and disassembled without use, and without nuclear war (or indeed war of any sort) between them.  We know what happened at the hands of that enemy to countries who did not have our defensive capabilities.  We know without any fear of contradiction that the only real peace is a defendable peace. If you cannot defend youself against your enemy -- if you depend upon your enemy's good will for your peace -- you will have no peace. It's what Ronald Reagan famously called "peace through strength". In a world menaced by tryants and killers, you get no peace through pacifism.
         That's another way of saying that in a country where the pacifists formulate national policy, the only ones who will be safe are the enemy.

date modified:
5 July 2006