I have been studying a bit on war in the Christian tradition. It’s mainly an attempt on my part to reconcile the sermon on the mount with Church history. Why should a religion founded on such a pacifist as the Jesus of the sermon on the mount have such a long history of war and executions? This is one of the most popular secular and agnostic critique and disenchantment with Christianity as a historical institution and one that is most haunting to my own involvement with Christianity.
I’ve swayed from a Republican Just War advocate in light of the Irag War (and 9/11) to a harsh Hauerwasian condemner of all war in the name of the crucified Messiah (and my own disillusionment with the development of the conflicts in the Middle East). Two books I found extremely helpful in thinking through the way war is treated in the Bible and Church history were John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus (for the former) and Roland Bainton’s Christian Attitudes Towards War and Peace (for the latter).
Bainton’s findings in his historical survey were intriguing and disturbing. He found that three views on war have been held throughout Christian history: just war, crusade, and pacifism. What shocked me most, coming as I do from a Conservative Baptist tradition that strongly advocates a strict adherence to the teachings of Jesus (which didn’t exclude those crazy commandments in the Sermon on the Mount), and the five points of Calvinism, was that the Crusade mentality had been revived in the church by none other than the Calvinists (especially the Puritans) who I had been taught to admire for their piety and radicalism.
Here I was striving to radically follow the teachings of Jesus and admiring all things Puritan when I find that in one seemingly crucial point (it made all the difference for Jesus and consequently our atonement), they differed radically. So here I am with earnestness, wanting to figure out, how Calvin was able to dismiss the radicalism of the Sermon on the Mount. What justifications were made for war and execution and were they legitimate? If anyone has any suggestions on books to go to I’d appreciate it. I’m starting in the best place I can think of: the Institutes.
