Onward Christian Soldiers?

Recent events have once more invited a flurry of apocalyptic scenarios and rekindled the zeal of a distinctly American kind of patriotic piety. Left Behind, the series of runaway bestsellers by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, has reached its apogee now in a final installment that reportedly centers on Iraq (New Babylon) as the seat of Antichrist. Needless to say, this seat has been considerably mobile over the last several decades, depending on the most current nemesis of the United States.

The Memorial Drive Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced a nationwide prayer assault in the following terms:

One wonders whether Iraqi Christians (there are a good number, after all) could pray this same prayer. It is fairly obvious, in fact, that they couldn't, since it is not a Christian prayer for the aversion of war or for limited casualties in the event of war, but an American prayer for military victory.

Despite the appeal to God to show them how much he loves them, it is clear that they are enemies of God inasmuch as they are America's enemies. One might be forgiven for missing the part about God's forgiving grace at the cross, lost as it is in a cloud of imprecatory appeals ("patriot prayers") for Iraq's military defeat. Our brothers and sisters in Tulsa conclude,

That there is real evil in the world a Christian can hardly doubt and that there are just wars to be reluctantly but valiantly waged is part of the inevitable reality of a fallen world. Yet even American foreign policy is sometimes laden with the rhetorical overtones of a war between Christ (America and its democratic allies) and Anti-Christ (the current enemy). It is not enough that Christian theology allows wars under some carefully defined circumstances (just war); nearly any U. S. military action is practically considered a "holy war" by many evangelical Christians.

We talk a lot about the Muslim concept of Jihad, which (at least for radical Islamists) entails holy war, but ever since the victory of Constantine in 312 at the Milvian Bridge, where the recently converted emperor claimed to have seen a vision of a cross with the emblem, "In this sign conquer," the sad legacy of confusing the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of the world has left untold wreckage in its path. Casting themselves in the role of successors to King David, quite apart from any biblical warrant, medieval princes sent their knights into "holy war" to drive out of the land whatever "Canaanites" happen to oppose the kingdom of God: the holy Roman empire.

The problem with this imaginative narrative that justified atrocities from the crusades to slavery, manifest destiny and apartheid is that it not only finds no support from the Bible but is utterly antithetical to the way Christian scripture treats the relation of the kingdom of God to the kingdoms of this world. In the Old Testament, to be sure, a lot of space is given to telling the stories of holy wars and holy land, but that is because (as believers understand it, anyway) Israel was in fact elected by God out of the nations of the world to belong to the God of the covenant. However, Israel's tenure in the land was conditioned on faithfulness to that covenant and, as the Hebrew prophets recount in tragic terms, the outcome of that probation was their expulsion from the land and exile in Babylon. When will the exile be over? That was the question that everybody was asking in Palestine when Jesus was born and the New Testament answers it by saying that the Messiah himself, as Israel's representative, bore the sins of his people, Jew and gentile, and that now this international community of those who have faith in Christ constitutes the true children of Abraham.

If this is true, no nation can claim God as its political protector--if not the modern nation-state of Israel, then certainly not the United States. God does not covenant with nations, but (according to Revelation 5:9) with believing families "from every tribe, kindred, tongue, people and nation" who together constitute "a kingdom of priests to our God."

And if no nation can claim God's blessing in general, then it cannot presume on God's blessings with respect to war in particular. Many revolutionary zealots at Jesus' side were expecting the Messiah to overthrow Roman domination and reconstitute Israel as the holy land, cleansing the temple and driving out the godless. When Jesus came "not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance," evidenced by his penchant for hanging out with the wrong crowd, and even chastised his own disciples for wanting to execute the Last Judgment themselves here and now, confusion grew about what Jesus was all about after all. There was a time when God did ride into battle ahead of Israel's armies and maintain his presence in the Temple, but "the time is coming and now is," he said, when God's true worshipers will come to him as the locus of God's earthly presence. He is the Temple, the place where God dwells among his people. When he entered Jerusalem on a donkey, he was hailed as king by the throngs that turned against him, disappointed, when it appeared that his kingdom ended in defeat at the hands of the Romans. They did not recognize the true nature of that kingdom and what its king was up to in the way he established it.

There will be a time of final judgment, when he returns in glory, Jesus insisted. However, that time is not yet. For now, the wheat and weeds grow together. It is the planting and growing season, not the final harvest. It is the time of grace, forgiveness of sins, the announcement of God's "good news" to the ends of the earth. Only on the last day will there be a clear distinction between, much less separation of, the children of light and the rest.

The repeated emphases in the New Testament, then, is not that the Old Testament was wrong, but that it was provisional — a "schoolmaster to lead us to Christ," as Paul said. Through its myriad shadows and anticipatory figures, it pointed to the one greater than Moses, the faithful Seed of Abraham, who would fulfill God's destiny for Israel as the "light to the nations." If we are not to return to the shadows of the Old Testament theocracy, still less are we to invent national covenants that God has not authorized. Jesus Christ is David's greater Son, and to draw a line from David to anyone else or from Israel to any existing nation other than Christ and his international body is to tell a completely different story than the one the Bible tells.
Does that mean that there is no place for a Christian understanding of war? Not at all. Ever since the church father Augustine, who distinguished between the City of God and the City of Man in the ways we've been considering, attempts have been made to wrestle with how it is that people who profess to be Christians can go to war. The so-called just war theory, the premise of most western concepts of the ethics of war, is the product of that reflection. According to this approach, since no wars are divinely authorized in this age, any declaration of war made by a secular state must eschew confusion with any notion of holy war. The Christian's warfare, said St. Paul, involves spiritual rather than physical militancy.

Yet, Christians who serve in government, in the military and as citizens participate in the defense of national interests must engage in one way or another in physical conflict. While Christian convictions have long underwritten humane, principled and restrained just war ethics, the failure of Christians over the centuries to recognize their military engagements as purely secular affairs and their confusion of earthly empires with the kingdom of God have ended up taking with the left hand what was given with the right. No war is more vicious, no atrocities more freely legitimized, nor evil more easily justified, than those that purport to be executing God's redemptive purposes in history.

So between the extremes of pacifism and militarism, Christians ought to embrace a clear distinction between the kingdom of God and earthly conquests while allowing the just war ethic a renewed prominence in our reflection on when -- and when not -- to engage in that terrible action that is all too common and yet still all too necessary in this time that the apostles called "this present evil age."

1. Distinguish our heavenly and earthly citizenship without separating them or setting them at odds. This is the most difficult and yet foundational move in this matter. Jesus taught us to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." Even with the diabolical Nero in office, the Apostle Paul recognized the temporal authority, going so far as to call secular rulers "ministers of God" to hold evil and disorder in check. John Calvin's comments are to the point. Remember, he says, that we are "under a two-fold government,... so that we do not (as commonly happens) unwisely mingle these two, which have a completely different nature....Yet this distinction does not lead us to consider the whole nature of government a thing polluted, which has nothing to do with Christian men." Although these two kingdoms are different, "we must know that they are not at variance." Christians can and should be concerned about and involved in civil affairs, including patriotic support for troops, but in no way confusing national interests with those of the kingdom of Christ.

2. Recognize that while all effort should be made to avert any particular war, the fact of war is inevitable in a fallen world, where earthly judgment of evil must necessarily take place. Tyrants must be restrained as much as possible, injustices must be confronted, and borders must be protected. Christians do not simply put their faith in a closet for the time being when such actions are deemed necessary, but affirm the necessity of such defenses in a fallen world. By not confusing the kingdom God with either political and military pacifism or patriotism, they are better able to treat specific military conflicts as purely secular affairs. They neither curse nor bless military operations on any explicitly Christian basis. This does not mean, of course, that Christian convictions do not offer wisdom that leaders should heed when contemplating this ultimate and tragic option. As argued above, centuries of Christian reflection gave rise to the just war ethic that has had enormously positive benefits. Even when western nations, including the United States, have engaged in unjust aggression and committed flagrant atrocities, they have been called to account by fellow powers and their own people precisely on the basis of their supposed commitment to these higher principles. It is perhaps time to re-educate ourselves in just war theory, working our way through Augustine, Luther, Calvin and more recent writers on the subject.

3. Bear in mind that God's providence is mysterious and secret. Based on Deuteronomy 29:29, we are to carefully distinguish God's secret predestination from his revealed will and plans. We know, for instance, that God hates injustice; we do not know that he wants Saddam Hussein to be evicted from Iraq. The former is revealed in scripture, while the latter is not. Apart from scripture, we do not know what God has planned for Iraq, America or any other nation. This is true in our own guidance as individuals. Scripture gives us tremendous wisdom for our decision-making, but it does not give us access to God's predetermined plans.

4. Don't read the Bible as though it were "tea leaves." The Bible is about God and his plan of redemption for the world in Jesus Christ; it is not about America or the headlines on CNN. Nostradamus is not a part of the biblical canon. Illustrated in the examples above (end-times scenarios like Left Behind and patriotic prayer movements), scripture is often misused by means of allegorizing. Allegorizing is a common fallacy in the history of biblical interpretation. For example, we are all familiar with the ways in which Old Testament Bible stories become moral lessons: "Dare to Be a Daniel"; "Five Smooth Stones for the Goliaths in Your Life," etc. Often, these stories are taken out of their context. We forget what God is doing then and there at a certain point in redemptive history and instead we simply use these stories for our own purposes. This happens also when we allegorize the history of Israel as our own individual story or as the story of our nation, our particular congregation, etc. "Christendom" is the history of one long allegory. It is the tale of a secular empire re-telling the story of Israel around itself instead of, as the New Testament does, around the person and work of Christ. This fallacy is alive and well in our day, as the examples I've cited illustrate.

5. Think critically and pray diligently. Since there are no easy answers, we have to analyze news reports, official statements and the arguments of experts drawing largely on common sense. But common sense does not equal common conclusions. We must give each other latitude in coming to different conclusions. In hindsight, it is easy even for those who supported the Vietnam conflict to now be more critical of entering and sustaining the war. Similarly, committed Christians will have honest disagreements about whether war with Iraq is justified under the present circumstances. Even those who agree in principle (viz., just war theory) will find disagreements in practice (strategy, execution, policy, etc.). There just is no "Christian" position on the latter, including whether to go to war in any specific instance. Christian leaders and citizens must therefore turn to God for wisdom, through prayer and meditation on scripture. Although this will not give them any justification for claiming to know God's will beyond what is revealed in scripture, God has promised to give wisdom to those who seek it from him.

6. Remember that all civil actions taken in this age, whether by Christian or non-Christian rulers, serve the same purpose: to restrain evil, not to eliminate it; to hinder injustice, not to banish it; to execute temporal and provisional judgments not eternal and final ones. An earlier strike on Iraq was given the code name "Operation Ultimate Justice," but this is in effect to claim to be God ourselves. Our hope is in the Lord who made the heavens and the earth and who became flesh in order to save not only souls but people and not only people but "the whole creation," as Romans 8 so marvelously explains. This gives us an "already" / "not yet" eschatology. In other words, "the age to come" is breaking in on us through the preaching of the Gospel in word and sacrament, but only on the last day will the announcement be heard, "Now have the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ and he shall reign forever." For now, the kingdom of Christ lies hidden, like Christ in his earthly ministry, under the form of suffering and the cross. Only when Christ returns will his body be transformed into his glorious likeness. And only then will Christ's kingdom be victorious in power, driving evil from the earth and executing a final judgment of the world. Until then, we need the secular sword to restrain evil, but we also must not mistake that secular power for the eschatological judgment that awaits the world on the Day of the Lord.

7. Finally, we need to constantly recall that the church of Christ (though not America!) is in a missionary situation during this age between Christ's two advents. While there will be wars and rumors of wars until the end, some of which will involve Christians (sometimes on both sides of the battlefield), the church as the church does not take sides. When it does (as the examples above again illustrate), our witness in the world is considerably weakened. At his holy table, Christ does not ask whether a communicant is Iraqi (even an Iraqi soldier) or American, but whether he or she comes to him in repentance and faith. Are public prayers for American soldiers offered in such a way as to give the impression that God is our national mascot? One thinks of war memorials and regimental flags hanging in English churches or American flags in the front of our own sanctuaries and wonders whether there is still some confusion in our understanding of the great commission and the spiritual and international character of Christ's kingdom. There is nothing wrong with attaching "Old Glory" to our car antennas, but let us leave them in the parking lot on the Lord's Day. May we do our duty to both our heavenly and national citizenship without giving to either a cause for reproach.

Michael S. Horton, Ph.D., is president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and associate professor of apologetics and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California (Escondido, California). 

My concern was not about a few silly college students protesting but rather my understanding was that the newly elected President was elected based on an anti-American platform. With any politician I understand that they emphasis certain policies in order to get elected and then back off a pure idealogical position once they are elected. Nevertheless, if the current President is against action in N. Korea it appears we would have to spend a considerable amount of political capital secure his support for an ROK invasion of N. Korea. Your point about the missle launch is the type of event that could sway their government and hopefully renewed cooperation. Your contention that are troops in S. Korea are only a symbolic deterrence appears to me to be correct. However, that symbolism seems to me to be important and the removal of those troops would send a message to the region that would not be to our benefit in the short term.

i am not certain that i have made my point clear for which i am at fault. My contention is that Kim Jong Il has all but taken out an advertisement in the Washington Post saying that he has hostile intentions and will attack either the United States or the Republic of Korea (south Korea). i seriously doubt that we will have to worry about initiating combat with the DPRK.

Let me tell you this about our South Korean allies: They have one of the toughest armies on the planet! The Korean Capitol Division joined the United States in the Vietnam war. Within two months the Viet Cong and NVA AVOIDED their sector! The Koreans had a rather unique and accurate way of doing "body counts"...they simply cut an ear off a dead enemy, and put it on a necklace. In point of fact, the ROK has been preparing for this war since the last one ended. Colonel David Hackworth, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam conflict visited Korea in 1994 when Kim Il Song died and his observations of the preparations of the ROK for that war are interesting. His conclusion then was that we ought to pull our forces out of Korea, and perhaps back to Japan. The Koreans of both North and South have an almost religious fanaticism about protecting their land from foreign invasion, including each other.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the People's army of the DPRK is pretty tough too. When that conflict flares up (not "if"), The Eighth US Army will be on the short end of the stick for a while, having only half of the Second Infantry, the 25th Light Infantry Division out of Hawaii, the Third Marine expiditionary force out of Okinawa and the other half of the 2nd ID out of Ft. Lewis, WA. The Japanese, only being about 500 miles away will no doubt send an entire Corps (3-5 divisions) for a start, and the Austrailians will no doubt send a division.

Iraq it will NOT be! You can count on the fact that we and our allies are going to take HUGH causualties on the ground, and inflict even larger ones.

The China question seems to me to be most delicate and complex in this situation. Potentially I see China as our greatest threat in the long run. It would not surprise me to learn that China offered to the U.S. the willingness to take out Kim Jong but the U.S. refused not wanting China to occupy half the Korean peninsula. Your analysis about Kim's lack of rational decsion making abilities and his Marxist ideology seems to me to be the strongest arguements for action against his regime. Without China's support Kim must feel "boxed in" and his willingness to engage in evil actions because he has nothing to lose probably increased.

China is indeed, the real big question. Will they support us? Will they move on Thaiwan? (i doubt this, they don't have the amphibious assets to put troops ashore, and it is suspected that Thaiwan has nukes too, not something that you want to find to be true the hard way!). As i have posted previously though, they do business with the ROK to the benefit of both, and want that to continue, and Kim Jong Il just may be crazy enough to launch one at Bejing if his back is against the wall.

I was unaware of much of that information. (38) My senses tell me that once Saddam's regime is gone and we feel relatively comfortable regarding the security of Iraq we will start to spend the political capital necessary to resolve the N. Korean problem. While I believe the case against N. Korea will be driven by more contemporary issues the facts you provided should certainly be part of our case against N. Korea.

The main problem i see in our future is logistical. Those units in Iraq will have to be rested, refurbished, and refitted, (assuming that they are not tied up with years of "occupation duty"). We have neither sufficient combat power to project, nor the rapid deployment capability to get what we do have to a certain point quickly. Rumsfeld's comments about being able to fight a two-front war are pipe dreams. Maybe we could do it if we took every cargo ship, airliner, and activated all Reserve and National Guard formations in the country, And took veterans my age (mid to late 40's) and younger who would only need a refresher basic (i'm still in decent shape).

We should not be so "doom and gloom", because in the final analysis, God is STILL sovereign over His Universe. i am actually optomistic, because i see it ending differently than in a big mushroom cloud. Look, the N. Korean Generals are not stupid, (else they wouldn't be generals), and can count just as well as we can. They know that they can only sustain operations for about 60 days given their logistical base, and they know how the conflict Must end. It would not surprise me to see one of those generals ensure that the "Dear Leader" dies from "acute Lead Poisoning" (rapidly ingested!), and they cut a deal with the allies as quickly as possible.

Again, thanks for facts that I was unaware of. I had heard that Russian Siberia was oil rich but unaware of the Sprately Islands. It puzzles me why Russia has not taken greater advantage of that resource. I can only guess that they are still developing these wells for production. I agree we have appeased N. Korea long enough and hope to see the screws start to tighten here very soon. Thanks for your service to our country.

Put simply, Capitol. Siberia is one of the most hostile environments on the Planet, second only to Antartica. There is virtually no infastructure, and the climate is hospitable only about three months of the year. The Russians have simply never had the money to exploit what is the world's biggest treasure house. Putin's reforms are stablising the government, so look for that to happen soon.

My service was no big deal, it was in the worst US army in history, the post-Vietnam army of Ford and Carter. It amases me the madness that a human being will tolerate.

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