Christianity Today
War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, although I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they are isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful … .(G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
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In March 2007 a small group of evangelical academic theologians and activists released An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror, a document that was subsequently published in The Review of Faith and International Affairs, along with a commentary by David Gushee, the lead drafter. What follows is my own effort—as an evangelical, a political philosopher, and a recently retired intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps with a long history of both scholarly and personal interest in these matters—to engage the issues they have raised. I hope that this response will give rise to further discussion and clarification of these vitally important matters, and help provide guidance for evangelicals who wish to speak coherently and responsibly on these and similar issues of public concern.
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This is no minor point between those of us who would defend the classic just war tradition against the pacifist and quasi-pacifist signatories to the Declaration. To illustrate my point that there is something profound at stake here, let me call attention to an illuminating passage from The Wine-Dark Sea, the sixteenth volume of Patrick O'Brian's masterful twenty-volume series of historical novels set in the Napoleonic period in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Captain Jack Aubrey, captain of the British ship Surprise, has taken captive the American privateer, Franklin. The sailing-master of the Franklin had been killed in the battle, but the owner of the ship, the Frenchman Jean Dutourd, survived. O'Brian's description is priceless:
Dutourd, a man of passionate enthusiasms, had like many others at the time fallen in love with the idea of a terrestrial Paradise to be founded in a perfect climate, where there should be perfect equality as well as justice, and plenty without excessive labour, trade, or the use of money, a true democracy, a more cheerful Sparta; and unlike most others he was rich enough to carry his theories into something like practice, acquiring this American-built privateer, manning her with prospective settlers and a certain number of seamen, most of the people being French Canadians or men from Louisiana, and sailing her to Moahu, an island well south of Hawaii, where with the help of a northern chief and his own powers of persuasion, he hoped to found his colony. (28)
Stephen Maturin, surgeon, natural philosopher, intelligence officer, and Captain Aubrey's closest friend, had met Dutourd before. Maturin, who holds decidedly more republican sympathies than his Tory captain, thought Dutourd, despite seeming to be benevolent enough, "to have been misled first by that mumping villain Rousseau and also by his passionate belief in his own system, based as it was on a hatred of poverty, war and injustice, but also on the assumption that men were naturally and equally good, needing only a firm, friendly hand to set them on the right path, the path to the realization of their full potentialities." (p. 32)
Upon the capture of his vessel, the prisoner Dutourd was brought to Captain Aubrey's quarters to formally consummate the surrender:
Doutourd's most recent sailing-master had been an exact, an orderly person as well as a tout skipper and an excellent seaman, and Doutourd handed over a complete set [of official papers] wrapped in sailcloth.
Jack looked through them with satisfaction; then frowned and looked though the parcels again. 'But where is your commission, or letter of marque?'
'I have no commission or letter of marque, sir,' replied Dutourd, shaking his head and smiling a bit. 'I am only a private citizen, not a naval officer. My soul purpose was to found a colony for the benefit of mankind.'
'No commission, either American of French?'
'No, no. It never occurred to me to solicit one. Is it looked upon as a necessary formality?'
'Very much so."
'I remember having received a letter from the Minister of Marine wishing me every happiness on my voyage; perhaps that would answer?'
'I am afraid not, sir. Your happiness has included the taking of several prizes, I collect?'
'Why, yes, sir. You will not think me impertinent if I observe that our countries, alas, are in a state of war.'
'So I understand. But wars are conducted according to certain forms. They are not wild riots in which anyone may join and seize whatever he can overpower; and I fear that if you can produce nothing better than the recollection of a letter wishing you every happiness you must be hanged as a pirate.'
'I am concerned to hear it … .'
Absent a commission or a letter of marque from a recognized member of the community of nations, the Franklin and the private citizen Dutourd were no more authorized to take "prizes" (attacking ships on the high seas) than were mere criminals (pirates) who did it for private gain. Indeed, they were in a moral sense worse than pirates seeking private gain, for they undermined the authority (in terms of the jus ad bellum the criteria of right authority) by which war could be waged. By doing so, the otherwise benevolent Dutourd was assaulting the laws and customs of war and undermining the just war tradition's insistence that "wars are conducted according to certain forms" and are not "wild riots" which anyone can join.
Captain Aubrey captures the proper Christian sensibilities in the matter in contrast to the rights-bearing, egalitarian, war-hating, poverty-hating Dutourd. Nobody familiar with O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin canon will mistake Jack Aubrey as a model of Christian piety. But he was formed in a Christian culture (in his case an Anglican one) that understood quite well that civilization, even in times of war, rests on certain forms and behaviors. That letter of marque distinguished what was owed to honorable combatants and what was not owed to proto-terrorists like Dutourd.
In thinking about how they should respond to moral challenges such as torture in an age of terror, or in an age of Islamic-style Dutourds gone mad, if you will, American evangelical academic theologians and activists must come to grips with the proper moral and political distinctions that Christians have struggled with throughout the ages. Just so, the framers of the Declaration might have reflected on the distinction that came to Captain Aubrey quite naturally, that whatever non-state terrorists are owed, they don't deserve the same "rights" as honorable warriors captured on the field of battle, and from there seek to explain just what is and is not owed to them. But those distinctions seem to have eluded them. (more)
