Dr Greg Bahnsen - A Christian View of War: The Conducting of Wars (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Well, I'm grateful that you could all be back on the second evening of our three evening series on a Christian view of war. Last evening we began the series by looking at the source of wars. And I hope that you will remember that I called you at that time to a carefully articulated theoretical basis for our evaluations and judgments regarding war. I told you at that time that there is far too much emotional rhetoric and knee jerk responses, too much sloganizing, too little analytical thinking and above all, too little biblical thinking about this subject. It is a large subject. I don't pretend that in three evenings I can cover it in the depth that it really deserves. But I am glad that we have three rather than one shot at doing that. In our opening last evening, I hope that I demonstrated from God's word to you that the source of wars is sin in a twofold sense. First, sin is that from which war arises. Sin is the occasion and cause that leads to violence being used against one another, nation against nation. However, sin is also the source of war. In that, war becomes the tragic remedy that is necessary to stem the violence arising from selfish sinful desires. We cannot avoid the conclusion that war is always a sign of spiritual failure, spiritual failure on the part of that sinful nation or set of individuals that are assailing another group of people. War is a sign of spiritual failure because of the sinfulness that's in the hearts of men that leads them to war against each other. But war is also a sign of spiritual failure because this means the ways of peace have not conquered that sinfulness that has led to the violence now needing redress. At the end of last evening, I made three general applications of the biblical exposition that we have looked at. The one was that categorical pacifism is unrealistic, is unloving, and is unbiblical. We cannot, if we read the Bible honestly and fully from COVID to cover, draw the conclusion that war under any and all circumstances is wrong and displeasing to God. Sometimes peace isn't possible. Sometimes peace is not just. Sometimes love and justice demand that we engage in warfare. In fact, warfare can be an outworking of Christian faith, as Hebrews, the 11th chapter shows us. The Lord that we serve is described in the Bible as a man of war, Jehovah of armies, and consequently, the pacifist response is not the Christian response to the question of war, I said. Secondly, in conclusion, and this brings us to tonight's topic that war must be just. War may not be categorically ruled out as a moral option for the Christian. However, war must be just in the eyes of God. There must be a just cause for entering the war. There must be a right to enter the war. There must be a just way to prosecute the war in order to avoid God's displeasure. We must remember that war is always a sign of sin and therefore must be handled in God's way. Last night I said as a third conclusion, that there can be no hope of doing away with war until its root cause, sin, is adequately dealt with first. And that topic will be taken up tomorrow evening as we look at the end of wars. But for this evening we will be considering then my second conclusion from last evening about the need for justice in war. And so I come to the conducting of wars as our topic and would like to read for you as we begin the 20th chapter of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament law of God, the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 20. When thou goest forth to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses and chariots, and a people more than thou, thou shalt not be afraid of them for Jehovah thy God is with thee, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be when ye draw nigh unto battle that the priests shall approach and speak unto the people, and shall say unto them, hear, O Israel, ye draw nigh this day unto battle against your enemies. Let not your heart faint, fear not, nor tremble, neither be ye affrighted at them. For Jehovah your God is he that goeth with you, and to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. And the officer shall speak unto the people, saying, what man is there that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man dedicated. And what man is there that hath planted a vineyard and hath not used the fruit thereof? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man use the fruit thereof. And what man is there that hath betrothed the wife and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her, and the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, what man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart melt as his heart, and it shall be when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall appoint captains opposed at the head of the people. When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be if it make thee answer of peace and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that are found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. And when Jehovah thy God delivereth it unto thy hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women and the little ones and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself. And thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies which Jehovah thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations, but of the cities of these peoples that Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. As Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee that they teach you not to do after all their abominations which they have done unto their gods. So would ye sin against Jehovah your God when thou shalt besiege a city a long time in making war against it to take it? Thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an axe against them. For thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man that should be besieged of thee only the trees of which thou knowest that they are not trees for food thou shalt destroy and cut them down, and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee until it fall. And thus far. The reading of God's holy word. I would imagine that the reading of this passage is something of a surprise to many of you. I know that when I first began to study the ethical question of war, it seemed to me that I had been prejudiced, I guess, by my teachers and whatever else. What other influences that were there that the Bible would say. Some very vague, general things about war that we would then have to make a tough time applying. Because of the generality and the sparsity of material. But when you turn to Deuteronomy, chapter 20, you see that the Bible has a lot to say. And we could read other chapters as well. The Bible has a lot to say about the conducting of wars. Jehovah is a man of war. Jehovah wishes for wars to be conducted properly. Jehovah has rules for warfare. Because, you see, Jehovah does not give to men the indiscriminate authority or right to engage in violence and take the property and lives of other people. When it does become appropriate to engage in war, God yet retains his sovereign disposition in the matter. And all those who engage in warfare, those who are the captains and those who are the leaders, and those who are the judges and magistrates and kings that involve a people in a conflict like that will answer to God for the way in which the war is conducted. War does not then become some kind of cosmic moral king's act where you can step outside of the sovereignty of God and the law of God and just do as you please in order to gain the outcome of victory. The biblical ethic is not an ethic of any means to the end, as long as the end is a good one. Even the means for a good end must be good and must be appropriate in God's eyes. And so this evening I'd like to speak to you about the subject of just war. What it would require for a war to be just in the eyes of God. According to the Westminster Confession of faith, chapter 23, section 2, it is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate when called thereunto in the managing whereof, as they ought, especially to maintain piety, justice and peace according to the wholesome laws of each Commonwealth. So for that end, they may lawfully now, under the New Testament, wage war upon just and necessary occasions. This is, as most every paragraph in the Confession of Faith, a brilliantly worked out, carefully crafted style of the biblical approach to warfare. This has always been the reformed position. Whether you use the Westminster Confession or other symbols to express it. The Westminster Confession tells us what our church heritage is, and that is that war may be waged even in the New Testament, even by Christian magistrates, but only upon just and necessary occasion. Waging war is lawful then, when the occasion is a just one. And what would constitute a just occasion for war? Well, if we read the Confession of Faith carefully and execute it properly, I want you to notice these three words in particular. For that end. Let me read the entire sentence, or at least the Relevant portion. It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, and they ought to maintain piety, justice and peace, so that for that end they may lawfully now, under the New Testament, wage war under just and necessary occasion for the end of piety, justice and peace. War powers As I taught you last night From Romans the 13th chapter, war powers are an extension of the police powers of the stone. As the state has been instituted by God to maintain piety, justice and peace, to use the language of the confession, so for that very same end, magistrates may engage in war. The object or aim, the rationale for engaging in war against an external enemy is no different than that object which is engaged by the magistrate when he punishes an internal criminal, a criminal that's internal to the state. In the same way that we wish to protect citizens and their property against unlawful assaults, so for that end the maintaining of piety, justice and peace, the magistrate may engage in war. Therefore, a just war. In the Reformed tradition of theology and ethics, a just war is a defensive war to protect the lives and property of citizens who are under the magistrate's jurisdiction, or in some cases to protect the civil order itself. If those who are waging war are simply trying to destroy the very fabric and order and lawfulness of the society itself, a just war is a defensive war to protect the lives and property of the citizens which are under the jurisdiction of the magistrate. In the outworking of this basic Protestant Reformed view of warfare, what we call a just war theory, there have been, well, any number of ways in which put into details, but I'd like to give you six elaborations now upon this notion of a just war. And I will not have time this evening to go into all the historical background for them, but we'll see in a few moments why there is a biblical basis for much of what you're going to hear in this elaboration as well. Let's say six things further then, about what a just war would be. First of all, according to just war theory, the cause and intention of a war must be just. The cause of the war and the intention, or if you will, the aim of the war must be just. The war must have limited objectives and objectives which are just in the eyes of God. I have already suggested to you that that would include such things as protecting the innocent who are threatened or to restore order in the society. An end that would not be a just occasion for war would be that of conquest. Wars must be defensive and therefore do not exist, do not have the Moral sanction of God for the sake of conquest. Secondly, in a just war, there must be a right to intervene with violence. And the declaration by the lawful government of its intention to do so. There must be a right to intervene with violence in the declaration by the lawful government of its intention to do so. This right of intervention will become the focus of our thoughts later on in this evening. And so I'll come back to it then and say more about it. But the point here is, it's one thing to say that something is happening in the world that is unjust and calls for rectification and respiration. And it's another thing to say I have the right to be the one who engages in that just cause. There's a difference between a cause being just and someone having the right to police the matter. And so the second point in a just war is that one must have the right to intervene. And. And the right to intervene must be declared by the lawful authority. The Vietnam experience in this country, I think, demonstrates to us in a tragic way the disaster as well as the treachery of not having a declaration of war. Where you see so many hundreds, indeed thousands of our soldiers in Vietnam were killed with equipment that was supplied to the enemy by people in this country who were making many dollars off the transactions. Many of the people in this country who engaged in what I consider to be an almost treasonous involvement in their opposition to the war would have not been able to do the things they did. Visiting the enemy, being photographed there, having great public relations campaigns to demonstrate Hollywood personalities being against the war. That sort of thing would not have been possible with the declaration of war. Because that then would have been open tre and it would have been punished. It is wrong for us to send our soldiers into a conflict and then not protect them with a declaration of war. Meaning that everyone else must be in support of or completely quiet about the matter anyway. Second point is there must be a right to intervene and a declaration by the law of government that it's doing that. Thirdly, in a just war, the war is a last resort. If you have a just cause and a right to intervene, you still don't do that unless it's the last resort. Because peaceful negotiations need to be attempted first. Or if I can put it in the language of what we were talking about last night, in a just war, appeal must first be made to right before recourse is made to might. One does not just automatically seize upon the army's strength or the Marine's strength and go and take care of the matter, one must first use what we would as Christians consider an appeal to the justice of God, to right and wrong, to negotiation before one then uses violence. Fourthly, even when these three conditions have been met, a war is not just unless it is entered with the probability of success. We don't like to hear this, but it's one of the root facts of life that not all just causes can be successfully prosecuted. And it is unjust to ask for a vain sacrifice of property, money and lives. It is unjust to ask for the taking away of the freedom and life of an individual when the prospect of success in that venture is not great. A just war is when entered with the probability of success. Fifthly, a just war is one where the cost that is to be incurred is not thought to be a greater evil than that which is to be remedied. If you stop and think about it, there are probably some bad things happening in the world that we might be able very successfully to take care of. But the cost of taking care of them would turn out to be a greater burden, a greater evil to us than the remedy of those evils themselves. That has to be taken into account. And then sixthly, the means which are employed in a just war, the means that are employed when violence is inflicted upon another, must be both discriminate and proportionate. A just war is not an all out war just doing whatever you can to obliterate the enemy. A just war is a war that carefully distinguishes civilians from combatants. It is a discriminate use of violence and it is a proportionate use of violence. To put it very simply, we do not engage in overkill for the sake even of a just cause. The violence that is inflicted must be only that which is sufficient to restore the peace that has been destroyed by the aggressor nation. Well, these six points are fairly commonplace in what is called just war theorizing. And I would suggest these points can be biblically supported. Most of them we'll see even in the quick survey that I'm going to do. However, before we can go and talk about just warfare, we need to take a few moments before we look at the buy and ask ourselves, do we really want the Bible to be our guide in the conducting of wars? For those who take an antagonistic position to that will be very quick to tell us that the Bible cannot be our guide. Because when you look at the Bible you see what has come to be called holy wars of Jehovah. And do we really wish to say that we are in the Same position as Old Testament Israel, that special nation chosen by God to be his redeemed people that elect holy nation being sent by God into war. Do we really wish to say that we, perhaps because we're a Christian nation, have the right to go out and destroy communism anywhere on the globe and so forth? Do we really want to take that mantle upon ourselves of holy war? So we need to stop for a few moments and considered the special place of holy war provisions. The crusades of God. In the Bible, it is true that God gave positive command for a particular time and place to impose a special curse of mass capital punishment upon the Canaanite tribes when Israel occupied the land. And I believe that this guidance from God has a unique role in the history of. Of redemption. That is to say, what we read in the Bible about God's provisions of holy war has a unique place, not a normative, not a common, not an ongoing, morally valid place in our reasoning about war. For you see, we have to distinguish between the acts of God on the one hand, and the laws of God on the on the other. God may particularly act to destroy certain Canaanite tribes and in the process give a particular revelation for that specific occasion. No one doubts his right to do it. Of course, many people would accuse the morality of the Bible of being barbaric because God did send Israel into the land to wage holy war. I don't hold to that view. God has the right to do with his own creation whatever he wishes to do. However, the fact that God has chosen to do that at some point in the past does not make his act and specific command a law. That is a standing policy directive for his people. The laws of God have a general and abiding warrant or guidance for his people that the directives for holy war do not. Why did God send Israel into the land to do such a massive job of destruction? Well, I believe that as the judge and Lord of the universe, God condemned the Canaanites to death for their abominations. That's what the Bible would tell us. And God chose to use Israel as the tool of his judgment. And in the process he gave revealed instructions. Then for what we call holy war. God declares the Canaanite tribes to be under his curse and to be properly punished by his people, Israel. And then there are instructions for carrying that out. We, however, are not God. We are not free to judge over men and to judge over nations in the way that God very properly can and does. We must be governed and we must be limited by the law of God, which is the policy directive for all men and all nations. And because I believe there is no new special revelation today which would warrant judgmental wars of aggression. What we read in the Old Testament about holy war is not a direction to us, even if we consider ourselves a Christian nation. For God's people do not take up the physical sword to advance his cause, to advance his kingdom in the world. As we'll see tomorrow night, the kingdom of God comes by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And therefore, when we read of the Old Testament account of Canaan and how its iniquity was full. If you have time, Genesis 15:16 or Leviticus, the 18th chapter, you'll notice that God has declared his opposition to the Canaanite tribes. Specifically because of their abominations, because of their perversions. And if we had the time, I might tell you a little bit about Canaanite perversions. And I think you'd understand why God was so incensed against them. They practiced morally reprehensible things. And because Canaan's iniquity was full, God's condemnation was absolute. Turn your bibles to Deuteronomy 7. I'd like to read for you what this amounted to. Deuteronomy 7. The first five verses to begin with. When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land, whither thou goest to possess it, who shall cast out many nations before thee? The Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Seven nations greater and mightier than thou. And when Jehovah thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them, then thou shalt utterly destroy them. The Hebrew is, you shall devote them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For he will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods. So will the anger of Jehovah be kindled against you. And he will destroy thee quickly. And thus shall ye deal with them. Ye shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asherim and burn their graven images with fire. Verse 16. And thou shalt consume all the peoples that Jehovah thy God shall deliver unto thee. And thine eye shall not pity them, neither shalt thou serve their gods. For that wilt be a snare unto thee. And Jehovah thy God will cast out those nations before thee by little and little thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beast of the field increase upon thee. But Jehovah thy God will deliver them up before thee, and will discomfort them with a great discomfiture until they be destroyed. And he will deliver their cage into thy hand. And thou shalt make their name to perish from under heaven. There shall no man be able to stand before thee until thou have destroyed them. The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with. Thou shalt not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein. For it is an abomination to Jehovah thy God. And thou shalt not bring an abomination into thy house and become a devoted thing like unto it. Thou shalt utterly detest it. Thou shalt utterly abhor it, for it is a devoted thing. And then In Deuteronomy, the 20th chapter, which we've already read this evening, but just want to remind you of verses 16 to 18. But of the cities of these peoples that Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy the Hittite, Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Pharizite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. As Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee that they teach you not to do all their abominations which they have done unto their gods, so would you sin against Jehovah your God. You notice that God says that his judgment is so extreme, is so absolute, that these nations are, as we say, put under the ban. They are devoted as a whole burnt offering before God. There is to be no peace with these nations, no alliance with these nations, no marriage with these nations, no religious furniture from these nations, and no survivors from these nations. Indeed, not even the cattle, not even the sheep of these nations are to be spared. No breathing thing is to survive when God devotes such a people to destruction because of their abomination. Deuteronomy 7 tells us specifically in verses 6 to 11, that Israel did this and was chosen by God to do this, as Israel's special election would require, that is to say, because of God's unique relationship with Israel. Verse 6. For thou art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God. Jehovah thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession. Above all peoples and upon the face of the earth. Jehovah did not choose you, did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all peoples, but because Jehovah loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he sware unto your fathers, that Jehovah brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know therefore that Jehovah thy God, he is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant of loving kindness with them that love him, and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and repayeth them that hate him to their faith to destroy them. He will not be slapped to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments and the statutes and the ordinances which I command thee this day to do them. Israel, you are doing this not because you have a special right in and of yourselves. You are doing this because you are my chosen people, and I did not choose you because you offered anything great and rejected to me. I set my love upon you, and I am a covenant keeping God. And as I promised to give this land to your fathers, I do now fulfill that promise and give it to you. But in the process you will be my tool of judgment and I will repay to the face those who hate me and perform these perversions. Numbers 21:14 we read of the wars of the Lord, wars of the Lord that are carried out because of the special relationship and in a way that reflects relationship with Israel to jehovah. In Joshua 3:5, we see that the soldiers had to be religiously dedicated. In Exodus the 30th chapter, each of the soldiers was to be ransomed before the lord. In Deuteronomy 23, verses 9 to 14, we see that there's a special cleanliness of the camp that is due to God's sacred presence there. That's the reason why every soldier had to have a paddle so that when it was time for him to to go to the bathroom, he could dig a latrine and cover over this defecation. Because God walks in the midst of the camp. There is a special sacredness you see about this army of the Lord. And in Deuteronomy 21:4 we've read the Lord went with Israel into battle. Well, all of this is just to say that Israel is not in the same situation as the United States of America, born of France or of Great Britain or of China or any other nation. Israel had a special relationship to God. Israel had special rules from God for a special occasion of going to war at his direction and according to his command, and to bring about his judgment upon abominable nations that were in the land. Later in the Bible we read of God giving special revelation for particular wars in Israel's history. In fact, the whole story of Saul ends up with Saul wanting direction from the Lord. But as the Bible says, God did not speak to Saul by dream, or by the Urim Thummim or by prophet. God was silent before Saul as an indication he no longer was directing him. God gave special revelation for specific occasions and a very special kind of mass warfare that does not fly to us because we are not Israel. We are not that specially chosen nation, and we have not been called to execute the judgment of God upon the perversions of the nations. However, in our scripture reading that we read early this Evening from the 20th chapter of Deuteronomy, you will notice that there are laws given by God that are specifically distinguished from what we've just been talking about. There are laws given by God which are not for the special occasion of holy war. In Deuteronomy 20:10, we read, when thou drawest not into a city to fight against, and then proclaim peace unto it. Wait a minute. The rules for warfare when a nation is put under the ban devoted are there shall be no peace whatsoever, regardless of the desire of the people there. In verse 14 we read, but the women and the little ones and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself. In terms of the holy war provisions, they were forbidden to take anything as spoil for themselves, and no living thing was to be left alive. And then verse 15 and 16 are particularly important. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations, verse 16 says, but of the cities of these peoples. Shall you then practice holy work. The utter destruction. And so God has given instructions in his law not only for the special occasion of devoted holy warfare, but God has also given instructions for situations that are not of that sort at all. And it's very clearly delineated for us of those nations that are not part of the Canaanite tribes that God is wiping out. You shall war with them in the following way when the occasion arises. And let's look at some of these laws for warfare that God has given us. Exercising his sovereign Disposition as moral judge even in the conducting of war. We read in Numbers, the first chapter, verses two and three, that the age at which a man could be drafted was 20 years, and the sex of those to be drafted was male. How the males 20 years and older may be drafted in the following way. However, we see in Deuteronomy 25:8 that even when a draft was used, conscription into military service was used. There were exemptions for the draft in the first place. Anyone who has newly built a house cannot be drafted. Someone who has newly planted a vineyard cannot be drafted. The whole point of war is what? The whole point of war is to preserve homes and families and property. And therefore, for the sake of homes and families and property, those who have newly done these things do not need to give up their right to enjoy them, but they must first have a year of they must first move in and dedicate their house before God says, you may take them into war. In fact, in Deuteronomy 25:8, we read as well that someone who is newly engaged or married is not to be drafted either. He is first to have a year with his wife to make her happy. And so not everyone could be called into the drafts, because after all, God is preserving the families, the homes and the property of Israel in such a war. And therefore those who have yet to enjoy those things are not to be deprived of them by being taken into war. But there's more. God also says that those who are fearful, the faint hearted, are not to be drafted. Well, how would we like to practice that today? Anybody who is. You see, there is great common sense to this, and it's mentioned the rationale for it's mentioned right here in the Bible. You take someone who does not have the heart or disposition to go out and to fight in that way, and he will actually become a burden, if not a threat to his colleagues, to his fellow soldiers out on the field. And so those who are fearful are not to be drafted. In numbers 1 48, 49 and elsewhere. If we had come to look at it, you'd see that the Levites, those who are called to religious servants, are not to be drafted. And so God does allow the draft under very circumscribed situations. Those drafted must be 20 years old, they must be men. They must not include those who have just become married or have built a house or planted a vineyard, or the fearful are those who are engaged in religious service to God. But more than this, we see that there are rules for war that need to be applied in our Day and age when we go to the conducting of a battle. In Deuteronomy 2010:12, we read, when you draw near to a city to fight against that, you must proclaim peace unto the city first. That is, before you go to violence, you must offer articles of peace that will prevent that from happening. And if they are willing to abide by those, then they become your tributary. That's fine, verse 12. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. Notice you don't misunderstand. Attack that city even after it declines the convenient articles of peace that you offer even then. The first step in the war is to besiege the city. You're to wipe them out, starve them all, cut off their supplies, because it would be better to do that than to go in and violently take away human life. So peace must first be offered, then siege is to be used before violence becomes the course of the war. Moreover, we know that In Luke the 14th chapter, verses 31 and 32, Jesus shows us in one of his illustrations of the cost of discipleship, that no king goes to battle without first counting his army and the army of the king that's coming against him and asking whether he has had good opportunity, opportunity to win that war. One must count the cost. And Jesus says, if you don't have what it takes to win, then you've got to go out and offer conditions of peace to the one against whom you're fighting. So many of the provisions that we saw earlier in what was called the just war theory are found in the Bible. Broadly or specifically, a just war must be fought for a just cause, self defense. It must be fought when there is a right to enter into the battle and with a declaration of war. And it must be fought in a particular way, offering peace ahead of time, not using total destruction, being proportionate and discriminate in the use of it. And I suppose the strongest support we have for that provision is in this 20th chapter of Deuteronomy, verses 19 and 20, a passage that has, I think, mystified many people when they look at it. It says that when you besiege a city a long time in making war, you shall not destroy the trees thereof. By wielding an axe against them. You're able to eat of those trees, but you're not to destroy the fruit trees of the land. You may cut down non fruit trees, but then only for the use of the wood and making bulwarks and against the city and laying siege to it. What this tells us is that total destruction of a culture and total destruction of its livelihood is not the godly way to wage war. There are to be no wars of annihilation unless God has put a culture under the ban. In the case where God says a certain people are devoted to him and no living thing is to be left alive and that nation is to be totally destroyed and remembered no more, then there might be a war of annihilation, but not in wars of self defense, not in wars that are described in Deuteronomy 20 that aren't these holy war occasions. In those situations there is to be no war of annihilation. War is to be waged against the combatants and not against the earth, and thus destructive power must be used discriminately. Now, perhaps in our question and answer period, you'd like to know more about this. But I will say really briefly now that I don't believe that this automatically rules out a discriminating use of nuclear weapons. It is true that a nuclear weapon is going to destroy fruit trees in a situation. But again, we have to be looking at the local illustration that we find in the law of God and asking what is the general principle that we apply in our day and age? We are not to wage a war of total annihilation, but a discriminate use of war at whatever level the machinery and science of war has advanced to which in this case is nuclear weaponry, at whatever level a discriminating use of that could be under some circumstances appropriate. All I'm saying is that nuclear warfare is not automatically ruled out, provided it is used in terms of the general principles of warfare that we've already looked at. Turning from the conducting of the war in terms of discriminate and proportionate use of violence, I want to focus now as we come to the last part of this evening's discussion on the just cause of war, which I've already described to be defensive. There is in the Bible no warrant for aggressive warfare as a general rule for just any nation. I want you to stop and think about the significance of that silence. Sometimes we can fallaciously appeal to silence. However, I don't believe this is fallacious. For you see, no one has the right to take another man's property, to take another man's freedom, take another man's life without warrant from God, and therefore the absence of any warrant from God in his work for aggressive warfare is a deafening silence. Morally speaking, nobody may take it upon himself to stand in judgment over the life and poverty of another. If God has not sanctioned the killing of another individual. You know very well we consider that murder. If God therefore has not sanctioned aggressive warfare, those who die in that situation have been murdered. God does permit killing, of course, in the Bible, for self preservation, self defense, and God does permit killing for lawful execution. However, that even in the case of lawful execution, not everybody has the right to execute, but only the powers that be have been invested with the sword by God. The fact that some man has committed a capital crime doesn't give us the right to get a vigilante party together and go out and execute him. Only the constituted lawful authority of the state may do that. So there are cases where killing is approved by God, lawful execution and in self defense. In Old Testament Israel, According to Deuteronomy 17:16, horses were limited. And as many of you will be aware, the horse in the ancient world was an offensive weapon in terms of warfare. Israel was not to be an aggressive nation after taking the land, and there was to be no standing army in Israel. Deuteronomy 29 indicates that there were no regular officers in Israel, but rather, it would appear from a study of more text than we have time to look at tonight, that Israel used a militia system that was called upon for special purposes. Israel was to engage apart from holy war only in defensive war. And from a moral standpoint, that principle of God's law would apply to all nations. Unless God has warranted their use of violence in the taking of life or property or freedom from others, then it is immoral. Of course, a defensive war might involve what we today would call preventative warfare. It is sometimes the case that you in defense, take the first step to strike against your opponent when you have indication, a clear indication of that opponent's intention to attack you or your country. Now that gets to be very tricky, and I don't feel it's my calling tonight to lay out all the rules and limitations on that. But we will say in general that a defensive war does not preclude the fact that we may strike first, but only when there is a clear intention part of this nation to war against us. So in order to save human life, we might take the first step and stop that from happening. Just wars, therefore, are defensive wars. And this leads me to the most controversial point, perhaps in all of my presentation, perhaps in all of my presentation. And that is, well, what about the issue of intervening in the affairs of another nation for good causes? What about waging crusades toward just ends in other nations? I've already indicated to you that a just War, however, needs to have not only a just cause, but it must also involve the right to intervene. There have been many crusades waged in the history of the Western world and in our own nation for what are good causes to make the world safe for democracy? We've entered into war. We have engaged in war to end all wars. We engage in war to rescue the oppressed. We engage in war to protect the world against nuclear proliferation. And on and on the list could go all very good causes to engage in a crusade. But the issue before us tonight now is do we have a right to intervene? To expend money and blood for the sake of that cause? Remember, a cause may be good and yet we don't have the right to interfere. Might stop and think about this in terms of family affairs. It is good for parents to teach their children to brush their teeth. It is good for parents to teach their children elementary rules of manner to narcissist. But now, if your next door neighbor happens to be very lax on that, perhaps utterly irresponsible on that, and he does not teach his children to brush their teeth and to show manners at the dinner table and so forth, do you then, because it is a just occasion, that is the children should learn these things, do you then automatically have the right to go into your neighbor's home and to take over the control and one of his children? Obviously not. We believe as Presbyterians to change things to the sphere of the church. We believe that there are things that are done by people in professedly Christian churches which are contrary to God's word. We believe there are things that are done that are sinful and engaged in without repentance by people that are in other congregations, Sometimes even by the leaders of those congregations. The question is, do we then have the right to excommunicate these people if they are not under our lawful jurisdiction? May the Presbyterian Church, may this local congregation enter into the affairs of the local Methodist, Baptist, what have you church and engage in church discipline there? And we would say, absolutely not, because that is not our lawful jurisdiction. The fact that a cause is just does not mean that just anybody can become the police power in dealing with the injustice that is being rectified. There must be a right to intervene. Therefore, the moral issue is going to become one of jurisdiction. The circumscribed area of lawful authority for the state. I believe that the circumscribed area of lawful authority for the state is its own citizen and not the citizens of another land or another nation. Do nations accrue moral responsibility in the name of justice for what happens in foreign regimes? If so, where does God tell us this? Where does God tell us we have the right to intervene in another nation, even in a just cause? And the answer, I think, is that deafening silence. He does not. The misguided messianic pretensions of states should be avoided. For you see, good intentions and even a just cause are not sufficient to make the action of war morally right. Indeed, the book of Proverbs warns us against meddling in the quarrels of others. Proverbs 20:6. The book of Proverbs warns us against becoming surety, becoming guarantees for other people. Proverbs 11:15 and Proverbs 17:18. We cannot guarantee the freedom of other people. We cannot guarantee their just treatment, and it is not our business to do so. Now, at this point, in discussions of this nature, the thing that I hear most often is another kind of analogy used. The analogy that says, well, don't we have an obligation as Christians to help our neighbors? If your neighbor was being attacked, wouldn't you have an obligation to go over and help him, to defend him? And likewise, don't we as a nation then have an obligation to help the oppressed of this world when they are attacked, to protect the world against nuclear proliferation or whatever the cause may be? And in answer to that, what I think is skewed reasoning, fallacious reasoning. We must remember that what I choose to do is one thing, but I have no right to choose for another whatever I would choose to do. So if my neighbor, let's say that my next door neighbor's wife is being abused by her husband, and I have knowledge of this, it's one thing for me to say I need to step in and help in that situation, which may very well be right. It's another thing for me to go to Carl and say, carl, you must go do this. For you see, I can choose to give up my life, my freedom, my money, my security for good just causes. But I cannot choose that for you, nor can you choose it for me, nor can the United States choose it for individuals who have not chosen that for themselves. Politicians who choose intervention by war, you must remember, are always expending the lives, money and freedom of others. And they have no right to do that except where God has authorized. They have no right to take jurisdiction and apply the police coercive powers of the state, except where God authorizes. The state is an agency of coercion. And whenever the state decides to help one person or to help one group, it must coercively take that help from other people. See, the state may decide it would be really wonderful to give $10,000 to every Presbyterian. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be a blessing for every, let's just say every conservative Presbyterian. Now wouldn't that be wonderful if all the good Presbyterians in this world got $10,000 more and the state just says, well, we'll do it then. Sounds like a good idea. Now where do you think that money is going to come from? The state is going to tax people in order to do that. And the people who are taxed are going to be people who are not benefiting from the $10,000 dole, although they were in tax as well, allegedly. But you see, non Presbyterians have got to pay then for the $10,000 gift to Presbyterians. And the state doesn't have the right to effect that transfer of funds. Nor does the state have the right to choose my son's blood for the sake of its political ends, even if it is a just cause. Because the question is whether God has authorized the state, the United States of America, to intervene in the affairs of another nation. Has God made the United States of America the policeman of the world? And so the moral issue is one of jurisdiction, the circumscribed area of lawful authority in which the state can exercise the power of the sword. I believe therefore, that if we look at the factors that enter into a just war, we may be inclined to say that some of the military conflicts, even by our own wonderful nation, the United States of America, have not been just wars. The Westminster Confession of Faith says that a Christian magistrate may enter into warfare upon just and necessary occasion. I'd like to make three quick applications and also mention three qualifications or two qualifications on this thesis before I open up the floor for questions with you this evening. The first application is that the Bible would therefore teach us the right of selective conscientious objection. Conscientious objection is the moral right people have to refuse support for an ungodly war because the Westminster Confession and more importantly the Bible behind it, teach that warfare must be waged upon just occasion and in a just way, and where there is a right to intervene, that people have the moral right to object to warfare when those conditions, those requirements are not met. That means that conscientious objection is to be selective. Not all wars are unjust. Conscientious objection as a categorical form of pacifism is also condemned by the Bible. However, where a war is unjust, one may be a conscientious objective. And that means you're going to have to be selected. And here's the problem I need to lay before you as the people of God and citizens of this land. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled out prohibited selective conscientious objection. For someone to make appeal to conscientious objection to avoid support for an ungodly war, one must claim to be a conscientious objector across the board, categorically, which is not what our confession of faith, not what the Bible teaches at all, but nevertheless, the first application of tonight's message about just warfare is that there is a selective use of conscientious subjection that is warranted by God. The second thing I'd like to say in closing, and this by way of qualification of what you heard me saying tonight, please remember, brothers and sisters, that we have to distinguish between the moral support that we give a political administration and the moral support we give troops who are carrying out the decisions of politicians. That is not a minor point. It may be the case that I cannot give moral support to a political regime because of decisions it has made. That does not mean that I do not give moral support to those troops who are under the high command of that regime. The troops who are carrying out the decisions of the politicians are in a completely different situation, logically and morally than those who have made the decision decisions the troops are carrying out. The moral responsibility for war, be it just or unjust, is going to fall upon those who are ordained and answerable to God for administering justice. That is to say, moral responsibility for war will fall upon the highest power of those who make policy in the state. And so, although I for one, am convinced that we have no jurisdiction or right to be waging a war in the Middle East, I also am a fervent supporter of those compatriots of mine who are over there fighting the war for. You see, it's one thing to say that the highest command is wrong in what it's doing and another thing not to support those who are there doing something in the interest of justice. Thirdly, and with this, I'll end, another qualification to be borne in mind is that biblical realism calls for moral decision decisions to be made even after a primary decision which is immoral has been made. Once an immoral decision has been made, we don't say, okay, well, all the other bets are off. We don't have to do any more moral thinking. As long as we're dealing with an immoral decision. Everything Else has got to be cancelled. Let's take the case of polygamy. Man has, let's say, three or four wives. Let's just say he has two wives. After he has married this second wife, which the Bible would not condone, we have to ask the question, does this mean then that he goes back and he does that? Does he cancel the covenant of marriage that he's made with his second wife? And the answer is no. Even the Old Testament law had provisions to prevent the abuse of polygamy. Even though God condemned polygamy, a person who divorces for an unjust cause and marries another person may never go back and marry again his or her first spouse. That according to Deuteronomy chapter 24. The fact that it was wrong to divorce in the first place doesn't mean you can go back and change that after an intervening marriage is there. The Bible tells God's people to avoid slavery, considers it a social condition to be avoided at just about any cost, and yet when a person has made a covenant to be a slave, he or she must serve out the terms of that slavery. Indeed, as Psalm 15:4 tells us, whenever we take an oath, we swear even to our own hurt. We are obligated to live up to our obligation. So all I'm getting at is we could go through the Bible for more illustrations of time allowed. Sometimes an immoral decision is made, and after that decision is made, other questions come up that don't take us back to the reversing of the immoral decision, but ask, well, what is the moral thing to do now? What do we do once the first mistake has been made? And with that in mind, I would suggest to you that when a nation enters into a just cause without the right to do so, and therefore is engaging in an unjust war, there still remains the further ethical question of what should we do now? Now that the troops have been committed, now that all of this time and money and effort has gone into it, what do we do now? And I want to suggest that first of all, sometimes pulling out of a military conflict at that point can create worse conditions than that which you went to rectify. I'm not going to pretend to be a judge of whether that's the case right now in our own circumstances. But I do know that that's certainly a theoretical possibility. The ones you engage in it, if you then let things go, leads you to a worse situation than what you went in to take care of. Moreover, the commitment that we make to our soldiers when they are set into a Theater of war does not ask that they themselves commit their sacred honor and even their blood for a losing cause that needlessly destined some or maybe all of them to die. The tragic thing about Vietnam is that that's exactly what we did with our troops. We sent them into battle and then prevented them from winning the war. We could have. By the way, I'm not sure maybe some of you strategists will correct me. I believe that we didn't lose any battle, any major battle in Vietnam. When we lost the war, the hands of our military personnel were tied for political purposes. You see, that's wrong. Soldiers should not have to go and fight and put their lives on the line under such circumstances. Sometimes the pulling back and sometimes the compromising of your objectives militarily is an unjust threat against the lives of your own people. I would remind you as well, in closing that converted Roman soldiers who were obviously in an army that did not follow the rules of just warfare, but rules of conquest, converted Roman soldiers were not instructed to leave the military automatically. Jesus countenances one who follows him and knows what it is to be under command and does not tell him to leave the army. In the preaching of John the Baptist and of Jesus, we do not read instructions for soldiers that the first thing they must do is get out of the military. Sometimes commitments are made and we follow them out, even though we are working for a high command which does not have the approval of God. I wish I could give this to you in a way that would not seem complicated and confusing. And it's going to be difficult to make moral, discriminating judgments. But if I tried to oversimplify this, I would not be faithful to my calling as a minister of God. I have tried to tell you, I think, what the Bible teaches on the subject of just warfare. And I think it's only fair that I give you a few moments to ask questions or to challenge what you've heard tonight. Tomorrow evening, Lord willing, we will talk about the end of wars and what we do about our Christian obligation to subjugated and oppressed people and what our hope would be to see warfare end in this world. But tonight, I'll simply limit my question and answers to the subject of just warfare. Who would like to be first? Going back to your analogy, seeking to protect your neighbor's wife from her husband who's abusing her. Yes, and you can buy you can choose to do that yourself, but you couldn't, for example, ask someone else to engage in that with you or demand they do so. I couldn't coerce him to do so. Right, right. In a situation where you have one nation that for one reason or another decides to intervene in the affairs of another, could there possibly be a just waged if it was left on the level of a strictly voluntary situation where only those soldiers who volunteered to do so would be involved? Right. The question has to do with the possibility of a nation providing soldiers to an oppressed nation to defend itself. And I think the answer to that is yes. But let's remember the terms of the illustration we have here. Not the government of the third party nation coercively sending people into battle or coercively taxing people for the support of the war effort. What you have here is a strictly voluntary thing done on an individual basis. And therefore, let's say the United States of America, many people in the United States, Christian people, are concerned about some Muslim tyrant doing things that he shouldn't do in the Middle East. Conceivably, the nation that is being oppressed in the Middle east could put out a call to the world to any concerned parties to come help us defend ourselves. And in that case, a young man, 19, 20 years old in the United States could choose to take it upon himself to pay his way to the Middle east and to enlist to help out those oppressed people in the same way that that same man could choose to become a missionary, could choose to use the money from his work to support the poor in India or whatever it may be, as long as it's individual and completely voluntary, then there's no difficulty difficulty with it. It's when the police power, the coercive power of the state is enlisted to engage in a conflict which is not under its jurisdiction that we have the moral problem that I've talked about tonight. Yes, sir. I mean, if the mother saying, Yeah, the question is whether there's biblical warrant for something like the Geneva Convention, where certain agreed upon norms of treatment, humane treatment in war for POWs and so forth will be followed by nations that are combatives. And I think that just looking at Deuteronomy 20 and other passages we could have, we'd say in general, of course, there is biblical warrant for that because warfare does not fall outside of the domain of God's moral order. And for that reason there is a right and a wrong way to wage war. And I've mentioned some of the right, the wrong ways in that matter. The strange thing about that, I think we all feel is, well, these people are going to battle with each other and ready to Just wipe out the other army. It's interesting that they would sit down and very politely say, but we'll treat each other humanely when it comes to POWs and that sort of thing. But war we see should be waged justly. It may sound paradoxical, but it should be waged humanely. We wage war humanely when we distinguish between combatants and citizens. And I think the Geneva Accords are nothing more than an extension of that principle that we're saying POWs, once they are no longer combatants, they should be treated in a particular way and they shouldn't be treated unjustly and so forth. So I think there is now particular agreements may be controversial and I'm not prepared to talk about those. But I'd say in general that's not right thing to do. The sad thing is that when you wage war with non Christian opponents, you have no reason to expect them to live up to the Geneva Accords anyway. And on the other hand, if you're waging war with a Christian opponent, shouldn't be waging war. And so we'll talk about that tomorrow night. How peace will be achieved on earth when we recognize those sorts of paradoxes. Yes, sir. I think you're talking in reference to number one, that Levi's. Yes. Any reason why should not fall here? No. Levites were allowed to do the same. So a Levite could enlist, but you could not force him to go to war. Likewise, a pastor today cannot be. Well, morally ought not to be constrained, scripted, but he could sign up. And back in the days of Vietnam, many men sadly with duplicity decided to go into the ministry all of a sudden because that was an easy way to get exemption from the draft. Second question. Is there ecclesiastical history where the Church itself has taken many times and invented? The question is when may the Church take up arms, engage in warfare? And in a sense the crucial issue is it defensive or is it not? The church may never take up arms to advance its just cause in this world, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. We'll talk about that tomorrow as well. But false with the weapons of our warfare are not world warfare not carnal? We don't wage war that way. We use the spiritual weapons provided to us by God for the preaching of the gospel and so forth. On the other hand, God's people have sometimes been persecuted either by a tyrant internally or have had to defend themselves from an external foreign aggressor. And God's people have as much right to defend themselves against that as those who are not God's people. That is a human privilege. The law of God says as human beings you can defend yourself against attack. And in that sense, the church then would have the right to take up arms in self defense. However, I would be very quick to add that in so doing, I don't see that as the church. I don't see the church doing that as the church. I see that as people in the church doing it, as people who have the right to defend themselves as the church. There is never a museum for carnal weapons of warfare, although people who are in the church may resort to carnal weapons of warfare when they have to defend their own lives. Back here, Yes, The question has to do with Deuteronomy 20:13, where we read that when you're waging a war that is not a holy war, a war of devotion, that all the males may be smitten, but not the women and the little ones. In another passage we read that in some cases a woman who is married could be smitten, but not a virgin. That, however, is not the one before us. But the question is, is this one of the ongoing rules of warfare that we would say when we're engaged in a defensive war, we can smite all of the males of the city? And I would answer no. I believe that the defensive war that we would wage in our circumstances would allow for us to kill all of the men, if that's what it takes to finally stop this and the aggressor. But as I think it's pretty obvious to you, you can stop the aggression of another culture short of wiping out all of its men. So I would not see that as one of the continuing principles that we follow in the war today. In looking at that question, because this is a chapter that contains things that are with us today and are not with us today. I would simply remind you, not with any embarrassment, but it's just a fact of life that in reading the law of God and interpreting it, we have to draw careful distinctions. And sometimes we don't do it right. I may not be doing it right tonight in some cases myself, but it's not an easy task. It calls for giving our sanctified best efforts and doing our homework. Stay down here. If a godly nation, if there was a godly nation in the state of the United States, how might we be deal with the terrorism aspect where you don't have necessarily a nation involved, but a group that hides behind various nations or gets some of its arms and support? How might that be done in a biblical way? Yeah, the question is how From a biblical standpoint, could a godly nation deal with terrorism where you have terrorists that have the cloak of protection, hiding of a. Of other governments and so forth? And I'm not sure that God has given me the wisdom or insight to tell you specifically what the logistics of eliminating a terrorist threat would be. But on the moral question, I do think we have the right to protect ourselves against terrorists. And when we do have clear evidence that some other nation is protecting the terrorists that are in fact coming, and let's say, blowing up libraries and airplanes here in the United States of America, we do have the right to fight against that nation, for it is in essence putting the cloak of its authority over the actions of the terrorists. In that sense, that nation has declared war on us and we have the right to defend ourselves against it. Now, how do we go about sorting it out and finding them and doing that is of course a question that apparently no one has figured out yet. How to do that points us to another thing with this all in tonight, tomorrow evening, we'll be talking about war again. But now the end of wars and the very fact that you have the possibility of terrorist threats and it's so difficult to ferret that out and to get defense against it should remind us that in the end, the answer to the problem of war is never going to be found with more violence. As clever as we get, and as many rules for warfare as we look at, in the end, there's going to have to be a whole other approach to putting it into war in this world. And I'll give you a little hint. I believe that the answer to that is going to be to send missionaries and not bombs. Let's close with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we do come to you tonight acknowledging that the issues that are before us as your people are difficult ones, but we're not totally prepared to answer them. But we do wish to answer them clearly and faithfully in a way that brings glory to your name. We pray that you would help us to understand where the state has proper authority to use the coercive power of the sword. We do pray that you, those states in which we live, help the United States of America to bring its policy and its decisions and actions into greater conformity to your law, to your standards for justice and for warfare. We would pray tonight, Father, even as we have compatriots of ours and friends of ours and relatives of ours who are engaged in a violent encounter in the Middle east, that your hand of protection would be upon them and that where that cause is just, it will be prosecuted to victory. That we will bring about a more just and peaceful situation where we have gone. And those who have done evil, those who are guilty of great wickedness and the maiming and destroying of human life, would be brought to justice through this action. We do ask that you would protect our armies and bring them home safely to us. We do pray as well that you would open our hearts to the instruction of your word. That every action and every deed would be conformed to the law of God, would be circumscribed by it, and that you'd open our hearts as well to see that in the end the difficult questions of war will never be resolved and will never have peace in these matters until we learn your way of peace. And toward that end, we ask that you would forgive our sins and bless our witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, bonsoninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.