Jesus and the Use of Armed Force by Claude and Virggil

VIRGGIL : We are going to try to determine objectively Jesus's position on the use of armed force. You must not be influenced by the position of the churches, nor by what you know about me. You pronounce only on the use of armed force by a State in the context of a defensive or offensive war. If you consider that Jesus did not take a position, say so. Take care not to confuse a possible justification of force for policing or individual security needs with the use of force as a means of settling international conflicts. CLAUDE : Jesus and the Use of Armed Force by the State: Analysis of the Texts Method : I confine myself to the words and acts attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels, without doctrinal extrapolation. For each text, I identify the precise context in order to avoid semantic drift.

1. Texts Often Cited — and What They Do Not Say "Those who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt 26:52) Context: Peter has just wounded Malchus during the arrest of Jesus. Jesus stops this resistance. This is an individual act, in a particular circumstance, to protect a person. It is not a statement of principle on inter-state war. "Turn the other cheek", "Love your enemies" (Mt 5:39; Mt 5:44; Lc 6:27) Context: the Sermon on the Mount is an ethic addressed to disciples as individuals, in their interpersonal relationships. Jesus is not addressing sovereigns, generals, or states. Transposing these personal injunctions to a national defence policy is a later theological move that Jesus himself never makes. "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Mt 10:34) Manifestly metaphorical: this concerns the division within families caused by faith. No connection with war. "Buy a sword" (Lc 22:36-38) Jesus tells his disciples to procure a sword. When they reply "here are two", he says "that is enough" — which, whatever the interpretation (literal or symbolic), does not constitute a foundation for a doctrine on defensive or offensive war. "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would have fought" (Jn 18:36) An important text, but a limited one: Jesus affirms that his kingdom does not resort to armed force. This is a declaration about the nature of the Kingdom of God, not a moral judgement on the wars of human states. He does not say that states must not defend themselves — he says that his kingdom is not of that nature. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" (Mt 22:21) Jesus acknowledges the legitimacy of Roman civil authority — an authority that included precisely the use of military force. He does not condemn it, but neither does he explicitly approve of it. It is a delimitation of spheres, not a moral evaluation of war. The Centurion episode (Mt 8:5-13; Lc 7:1-10) Jesus heals the servant of a Roman military officer and praises his faith in a remarkable way: "I have found no such faith in Israel." He does not ask the centurion to leave the army, nor does he problematise his profession. This is an argument ex silentio, admittedly, but a significant silence.
2. What Jesus Did Not Do — He never challenged Pilate, Herod, or Rome on their military use of force. — He never formulated a doctrine on just or unjust war. — He never distinguished between defensive and offensive war in his teachings. — He never called a soldier or officer to abandon his profession (unlike what he does with tax collectors). Conclusion Jesus did not take an explicit position on the use of armed force by a State in the context of a war, whether defensive or offensive. His ethical teaching is an interpersonal and eschatological ethic, addressed to individual disciples in the context of the Kingdom of God — not a political theory applicable to relations between sovereign states. He acknowledged without condemning the military power structures of his time, and simply refused to inscribe his own movement within them. The pacifist traditions (Tertullian, the Anabaptists) and the theory of just war (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas) are both post-apostolic theological elaborations that draw on Jesus, but cannot claim that he himself settled the question. VIRGGIL : You do not quote certain important passages of the Gospel that regard political state power as a source of evil: the temptations in the desert; the crimes of Herod (father and son). Herod the son is described as a fox. His cruelty is denounced. If power is essentially non-virtuous, or if its virtuous exercise is highly problematic, how can it make reasonable use of force? Second aspect: if individuals must forgive and settle their conflicts with wisdom and justice, without seeking vengeance, why would these principles be inapplicable to States? CLAUDE : Revision and Deepening — Two Serious Objections You raise two points I should have integrated. I address them honestly. I. The Nature of Political Power in the Gospels The Temptations in the Desert (Mt 4:8-9; Lc 4:5-7) This is indeed a text I should have cited, and its omission was a genuine lacuna. Satan offers Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" — and Jesus refuses. What is theologically weighty is the narrative premise: Satan has these kingdoms at his disposal. Jesus does not contest this premise. He does not say "you cannot offer me what does not belong to you" — he simply declines the offer. Luke even specifies that Satan says: "this power has been entrusted to me, and I give it to whom I will" (Lc 4:6). This narrative frame positions the world's political structures within the sphere of the evil one, not as neutral institutions. Herod described as a fox (Lc 13:32) The term is contemptuous — cunning, pettiness, moral baseness. Jesus does not use it as a neutral description of a governing style. It is a character judgement on a holder of power. The crimes of Herod the Great (Mt 2, massacre of the innocents) The narrative structure of Matthew is deliberate: from the very birth of the Messiah, political power responds with the massacre of children. The Herodian state is introduced as a murderous and irrational power. What this implies logically If the world's political structures are presented as belonging to the sphere of Satan, and if their holders are described as morally corrupted by nature or by function, then the capacity of these structures to make virtuous use of force becomes structurally doubtful within Jesus's worldview. It is not simply that individual rulers are bad — it is that the system is tainted at the source. This is a genuine concession relative to my initial analysis. The picture I had drawn — "Jesus acknowledges without condemning the military structures" — was incomplete. II. The Argument from Logical Coherence Your second argument is philosophically strong and deserves to be taken seriously: if the ethics of Jesus impose on individuals forgiveness, non-vengeance, peaceful resolution of conflicts — on what grounds would states be exempted? Traditional responses to this question exist, but none of them come from Jesus himself: — Augustine / Aquinas: the state has a protective function for the innocent that the individual does not have — a functional argument. But Jesus does not formulate it. — Paul (Rm 13): the state bears the sword as "minister of God" — but that is Paul, not Jesus. — The individual/community distinction: some theologians argue that communities obey a different logic. But Jesus also addresses communities (his disciples as a group, not only as individuals), and he never himself makes this exemption. What this means analytically The principle of coherence you invoke is legitimate: if Jesus never explicitly distinguishes between individual ethics and state ethics, the burden of proof falls on those who wish to exempt states from his ethical injunctions. This exemption is a post-hoc theological construction, not a direct deduction from Jesus's teaching. Revised Conclusion Integrating these two elements, the most defensible position is the following: Jesus did not produce an explicit doctrine on inter-state war, but the converging elements of his teaching lean structurally against the legitimacy of state violence:
3. Political structures are narratively associated with the sphere of Satan in the temptations.
4. Their holders are described as corrupted or morally deficient.
5. His interpersonal ethic — non-vengeance, forgiveness, peaceful resolution — is never explicitly suspended for political collectives.
6. He refuses to inscribe his own movement within the logic of armed force. The pacifist reading of the early centuries (Tertullian, Origen, the martyrs who refused military service) is therefore more directly rooted in the Gospel texts than the theory of just war, which requires significant philosophical mediations (Augustine, Stoicism, natural law) that Jesus himself does not employ. What I maintain: Jesus does not explicitly settle the question. What I correct: the implicit orientation of his teaching is more critical of the coercive power of the state than I had presented. VIRGGIL : Three questions: 1) Do you know the works of Jean Lasserre on the subject? Do they allow us to refine or refute the previous answers? 2) Moreover, if States apply among themselves the law: "Whatever you want men to do to you, do likewise to them, for this is the law and the prophets" — then how could there be wars? In a family where solidarity and mutual aid reign, conflicts are reduced. In a family where respect reigns, conflicts are arbitrated. 3) Finally, according to the NT it is God and his incarnation Jesus who make men good, in a bilateral relationship. If the State ignores God or accepts him through sheer hypocritical populism or worse still, gives him the features of a vengeful God, protector of earthly goods, how can it make correct use of force? Pronounce yourself frankly and objectively on these three points. CLAUDE : Three Questions — Frank Answers I. Jean Lasserre: Contribution and Relevance Jean Lasserre (1908-1983) was a pastor of the Reformed Church of France, peace theologian, and travelling secretary of the French branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. His work La guerre et l'Évangile (1953; English: War and the Gospel, 1962) brought him international recognition. What is historically remarkable: the encounter and friendship between Lasserre and Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1930-31 appear to have had decisive effects on Bonhoeffer's theological reorientation. In other words, Lasserre contributed to shaping the thought of one of the most important Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. Two major conceptual contributions: The Constantinian heresy. Lasserre coins the concept of the Constantinian heresy to designate the collusion of Christianity with state and military power since Constantine — Christian morality for the private sphere, Mars the god of war for relations between peoples and nations. This is an exegetically grounded thesis: since Constantine, Christian states have benefited from a tacit exemption that Jesus never granted. Lasserre identifies this not as a legitimate development but as a structural corruption. The categorical distinction between non-lethal and lethal violence. Lasserre argues the categorical difference between a use of violence that does not kill and a use of violence that kills — which is precisely the distinction you had asked me to maintain between police use of force and inter-state war. Contribution to our analysis: Lasserre confirms and radicalises the conclusions of our previous exchanges. He refutes nothing. He adds the concept of Constantinian heresy as a rigorous analytical tool to name the drift we had identified — the post-Pauline exemption of states from Gospel ethics — and he calls it by its name: a doctrinal corruption, not a legitimate development. II. The Golden Rule Applied to States The argument is formally sound and I must say so clearly. Mt 7:12 is formulated without restriction of subject: "Whatever you want men to do to you, do likewise to them." Jesus does not write "whatever you, as individuals, want." He introduces no exemption for political collectives. And he himself concludes: "for this is the law and the prophets" — meaning he presents this rule not as one maxim among others, but as the summary of the whole of revealed ethics. Your family analogy is more than an image: it is a functional model. In a family where genuine solidarity reigns, conflicts exist but do not degenerate into lethal violence because the members share a mutual interest in the survival of the relationship. Inter-state war presupposes precisely the absence of this fundamental solidarity. What this rigorously implies: If States applied the Golden Rule among themselves — "what you do not wish to suffer, do not inflict" — offensive war would become logically impossible: no state desires to be invaded, bombed, colonised. And defensive war would become purposeless, for want of an aggressor. The argument does not resolve all borderline cases (what to do in the face of a state that itself violates the rule?), but it establishes that war is structurally incompatible with the ethics of Jesus as he himself formulates it, without needing to resort to more complex or contested texts. This is an argument that the just war theologians have never truly refuted — they have mostly circumvented it. III. New Testament Anthropology and the Moral Capacity of the State This is the most radical of the three questions, and it deserves a frank answer. The NT is consistent on this point: authentic moral transformation is the fruit of the action of the Spirit in a bilateral relationship with God. Paul states it clearly — the fruits of the Spirit (Ga 5:22) are gifts, not autonomous moral conquests. John expresses it differently: without the vine, the branch can do nothing (Jn 15:5). New Testament anthropology is deeply anti-Pelagian before Pelagius. Now you identify three real and distinct cases:
7. The State that ignores God acts from a logic of pure power. It can produce a certain legal and strategic rationality, but it has access only to the natural springs of morality — enlightened self-interest, balance of forces, international reputation. Within the New Testament framework, this is precisely the operation of the flesh (sarx) without the Spirit: capable of a certain coherence, but structurally incapable of the justice that a correct use of force presupposes. For "correct" in this framework implies not only tactical proportionality, but rectitude of intention — and this is where New Testament anthropology imposes itself as a relentless critique.
8. The State that instrumentalises religion through hypocritical populism is in the worst position exegetically speaking, because it appropriates the vocabulary of transformation without accepting its logic. Jesus reserves his harshest condemnations precisely for those who make this calculation — the hypocrites of the Sermon on the Mount, the Pharisees who use piety as a social lever. A state that invokes God to legitimise its wars while exempting itself from the ethics of forgiveness and non-vengeance is in precisely the position Jesus condemns most vigorously.
9. The State that gives God the features of a vengeful protector of earthly interests — this is the logic of crusade, holy war, Gott mit uns. Theologically this is the gravest corruption because it is no longer merely an exemption from the ethics of Jesus, but an active inversion: it makes God the guarantor of what Jesus associated with the sphere of Satan in the temptations in the desert. The kingdoms of the world and their glory, precisely. Conclusion on this third point: If the capacity to make correct use of force requires the conditions that the NT posits — rectitude of intention, disinterestedness, a justice that transcends self-interest — then none of the three types of states you describe meets these conditions, and the NT furnishes no reason to believe that states in general meet them. It is not only that rulers are morally deficient as individuals: it is that the institutional logic of the state structurally produces biases contrary to these conditions — national interest, sovereignty, competition for power. The theory of just war presupposes a moral agent capable of applying its criteria with impartiality. New Testament anthropology makes this supposition very difficult to sustain without transforming grace — and transforming grace is not administered by state decree. VIRGGIL : Finally, you have not mentioned the fact that Jesus denounces war as a calamity in the same way as earthquakes or famines, and that these calamities can strike a group as a whole, as with Sodom. He does not ignore the question of collective responsibility in the face of calamities, which is why he pronounces an anathema on Capernaum that does not convert despite his signs. Can we consider that Jesus subscribes to a form of collective responsibility on earth for calamities, and does he not consider — as in the example of the parable of Jonah that he liked to cite — that all cities are potential Ninevehs that must live in repentance, lest they suffer calamities of which war is a variant? CLAUDE : War as Calamity, Collective Responsibility and the Typology of Jonah This is an exegetically serious observation that I should indeed have integrated. Let us proceed with rigour. I. War in Apocalyptic Discourse — Status and Significance Mt 24:6-7 / Lc 21:9-11: In the eschatological discourse, Jesus places wars and rumours of wars in the same series as famines, epidemics, and earthquakes. The structure of the list is significant: these are not distinct and intentional judgements, they are signs of a world order in decomposition. Jesus does not present them as instruments of precise justice, but as manifestations of a cosmos in rupture with God. This framing matters: war is a calamity, not a policy. It belongs to the same category as the earthquake — a destructive event that strikes collectively, without precise moral discrimination between the victims. II. Collective Responsibility — The Texts The anathema on the cities of Galilee (Mt 11:20-24; Lc 10:13-15) This is a text of remarkable severity. Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum are condemned collectively — not their rulers, not their individual sinners, but the cities as entities. The criterion is precise: they have witnessed the signs and have not converted their way of life. And Jesus himself makes the comparison: "On the day of judgement, the fate of Sodom will be more bearable than yours." Two elements in this text: collective responsibility is real — a city can be accountable for its response or non-response to the light received. Aggravation by knowledge — Sodom is less guilty than Capernaum because Sodom did not see what Capernaum saw. Responsibility grows with the light received. The Tower of Siloam (Lc 13:4-5) — the complicating text This passage is exegetically indispensable and often forgotten in this discussion. Jesus says explicitly that the eighteen people crushed under the tower were not more sinful than the others. He refuses the mechanical schema: calamity = punishment of the victims. But he immediately continues: "If you do not repent, you will all perish in the same way." The logical structure is therefore subtle: the calamity is not a precise retribution on the victims, but it is a warning addressed to the survivors. It is not "you suffer because you sinned" but "you will survive if you convert, and you will perish if you do not." Collective responsibility is maintained, but displaced — from the past towards the future, from punishment towards appeal. III. The Typology of Jonah — The Heart of Your Question Mt 12:39-41; Lc 11:29-32 Jesus cites Jonah as the only sign he will give his generation. And what interests him in Jonah is precisely the motif of collective conversion in the face of the announced calamity. Nineveh is not a virtuous city — it is the capital of the Assyrian empire, the military imperial power that devastated Israel. And yet it converts, collectively, from the king down to the animals. What Jesus underlines: "The people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah — but here is something greater than Jonah." The implication is direct: if Nineveh — military empire, enemy of Israel — was able to convert, the present generation has no excuse. What you identify here is correct: in the logic of Jesus, every city, every nation is a potential Nineveh. The schema is: — Human collective existence is exposed to calamities (including war). — These calamities are warnings, not mechanical retributions. — Collective conversion is possible — Nineveh is the proof. — The absence of conversion in the face of signs aggravates collective guilt. — War, in this framework, is not a tool of foreign policy but a symptom of a human order that refuses conversion. IV. What This Implies for Our Central Question This framework adds a dimension that our previous exchanges had not integrated: Jesus does not treat war as a political option to be evaluated morally, but as a symptomatic calamity of a collective spiritual state. This is a structurally different position from just war theory and even from ordinary political pacifism. It does not simply say "war is bad" — it says: war is the sign of a world that has not heard the call to conversion. It has the same status as famine or earthquake in a disordered cosmos. And like the Tower of Siloam, it does not precisely punish the guilty — it strikes collectively and calls collectively to repentance. In this logic, the question Jesus poses to a nation at war is not "is your war just?" but "what does this calamity tell you about your collective spiritual state?" This is a complete reversal of the problematic. A nation that invokes God to legitimise its war is therefore, in this framework, in the exact position of Capernaum: it has received the light, and uses it to justify what that light condemns. This is the maximum aggravation of collective responsibility — not ignorance, but conscious diversion. Synthetic Conclusion Integrating all the exchanges, the position of Jesus on war can now be formulated with greater precision: Jesus does not produce a doctrine on just or unjust war because that is not his category of analysis. He sees war as a symptomatic calamity — like earthquakes and famines — that strikes a disordered collective order. He maintains real collective responsibility, aggravated by the light received and not followed. He proposes Jonah as a universal model: every human city, every nation, is a potential Nineveh, exposed to calamities for want of conversion, and capable of avoiding them if it responds to the call. Within this framework, the question of the legitimacy of war is already misposed — it is a question that presupposes a framework that Jesus refuses.