The repentance of Theodosius I is one of the most treasured moments in Church history. The emperor’s humble obeisance, stripped of his finery, humiliated before the bishop is an icon of the church’s claims on the state.
Less well remembered was Theodosius’ sin: the summary execution of some 7,000 Thessalonian attendees at the local circus days after a mob had murdered imperial officials in a riot. Theodosius’s actions are sometimes exaggerated to have been issued in a fit of overzealous wrath, but the measure was in fact perfectly rational and even symbolic. The emperor was in the middle of a campaign against pagan faiths and mores and the poor morals they encouraged. The riot at Thessalonica was just the latest of several eruptions of popular discontent with the reforms.
In this case, a celebrity charioteer had been imprisoned for taking an underage male lover in defiance of an edict outlawing pederasty that Theodosius had reissued the month prior. Though there are stories that Theodosius attempted to retract the execution order too late, context suggests the measure was calculated rather than capricious. The setting was opportune. Theodosius, like all Christian leaders, considered the immoral spectacle of the games to be a hotbed of pagan vice. Kettling the mob that had killed the officers in the very arena that had whipped up their passions must have seemed an appropriate punishment to fit their crime. That it was a collective punishment was also logical—the legionnaires killed men, women, and children—since nothing chills dissent like fear. It all made grim sense: a bracing restoration of imperial authority, punishment for evildoers, and cleansing a degenerate populace to make way for good Christian morals to revivify the empire.
Theodosius’ massacre may have been an excessive display, but it was not outside of the normal realm of statecraft, either ancient or modern. Today, we call it “establishing deterrence” and it is done in the same way: collectively punishing an unruly or problematic population. Public statements may lament innocent loss of life as erroneous or unavoidable, but it is not hard to see how the violence done to innocents is a salutary side effect in the effort of instilling fear in an enemy or rival. Theodosius’ violent order in Thessalonica was guided by raison d’etat, or the logic of states, for whom violence is the primary tool of its coercive power to establish order within its territory and contend with rival powers without. It is not hard to see why an excessive display of force was likely not an unfortunate result of a garbled order given in a fit of pique, but rather exactly the point of the whole tragic episode.
Raison d’etat was not good enough for Ambrose of Milan who, though he had a strong political acumen and valued his relationship as a vocal supporter of his Christian emperor, nevertheless understood that his position as bishop obliged him to report directly to a higher will than that of the imperial see. While the power of the sword itself may have been entrusted to governing authorities by God, (Romans 13:1-5) Theodosius’ disproportionate use of that power on a crowd of innocents mixed with the guilty was just as much an offense to God as the sexual excesses his decree was meant to curb. The circumstantial vagaries of the situation and the capacity to offend did not prevent Ambrose from refusing Theodosius the Eucharist until he had done a lengthy and public penance.
The episode is instructive. Today, raison d’etat is ascendant with few challengers either inside or outside the church, especially in the case of foreign wars. How ought Christians respond to the ever-increasing proliferations of foreign wars, made ever more horrific and destructive by new technologies, as the nations rage against one other?
The Church’s primitive pacifism, which once entirely outlawed any individual Christian’s participation in the armed forces, is a good place to start, but not to end. While it made a straightforward application of the Lord’s command to “turn the other cheek” in every situation that might call for the use of violence, they did so under guard of an empire which had brought great swathes of the world to peace through violence. Wholesale pacifism could only ever be the special preserve of the church’s marginal status. When the empire endorsed Christianity, believers were invited for the first time into official state functions which could not avoid providing for its defense and the administration of justice, often through force.
While it is fashionable today in some quarters to declare Constantine’s conversion as an unmitigated disaster for the moral purity of the church, maintaining a purely pacifistic stance would have practically meant leaving the fighting to someone else. Contemporary academic theologians are romantics, not prophets, when they exhort today’s church to artificially reacquire marginal status so as to return to the pure pacifism of the primitive Church. As it grew in influence in the empire, the early church was correct to take on the responsibility of its defense rather than outsourcing it to so many “sabbath goyim” as it were. Since the legitimacy of state authority is God-ordained, and the power to order itself is indivisible from its use of authorized force (and especially considering Christians, even while marginalized, enjoyed the benefits of a well-defended state), then they could not reasonably avoid participating in its defense. A return to pure pacifism, even if it were possible, is a dodge, not an answer, to the questions our violent age poses to believers.
However, the early pacifism must not be forgotten, since it defined a radically different posture toward violence at the outset. The earliest believers understood that the Lord intended to do more than simply restrain their hand from vengeance against others. Even in situations where violence would be understandable or even justifiable, Jesus commands his followers to look for opportunities to do mercy instead. Jesus’s command to love our enemies and bless our persecutors finds no exceptions in the scriptures and goes a good deal farther than the restraining commands of the mosaic law. The Lord commands his disciples to take every opportunity to act positively toward the good of others, leaving the work of vengeance and, it must be said, even individual self-defense, to the hand of the Lord. Through the cross, one could say the Father had sent his Son as an ambassador on a diplomatic mission to all of the peoples of the world. Warfare, from then on, could only be the devil’s work or a response to it.
So began a long tradition of Christian reasoning about Just War from the perspective that God does not delight in the death of anyone, but in repentance and faith through submission to Jesus Christ. It would not be an overstatement to call this a revolution of morals. Up until Christianity became the order of the day, war was simply monarchical prerogative, whether in a low hum of border reaving or in larger campaigns aimed at acquiring large territories or winning martial valor. But the coming of the Christ had set a different program for all who believed in his name, prince and plebian alike. Therefore, raison d’etat could no longer totally govern any Christian state’s decision to wage war nor its conduct in war. Instead, the use of violence itself had to answer to three major conditions before it could even be countenanced: legitimate authority, a just cause, and limiting itself to what was necessary to remedy an evil.
Over time, Just War doctrine lost its religious impetus, firstly as it gave way to the ambitions of burgeoning nation states, and later in favor of articulating more “objective” criteria that could appeal to anyone regardless of their recognition of the dominion of Christ. Regarding rival powers as made “in the image of God” was discarded in favor of several limiting principles which, it was thought, could appeal to anyone: legitimate authority, just cause, right intention, last recourse, a reasonable expectation of success, discrimination between combatants and noncombatants, and proportionality between a war’s objective against the probable loss of life it would take to achieve it.
Today, it is arguable that Just War, even in its non-religious form, does not govern our world’s leaders’ decisions. Useful as they may be, the above tenets are little more than the niche preserve of scholars, human rights lawyers, and (even more rarely) some churchmen. So, they do not guide either our leaders’ decisions to go to war nor our expectations for their conduct in war. Advances in technology have reduced neither the scope nor the deadliness of the world’s battlefields, only the risk to the aggressor. “Targeted” missile strikes from the air usually mean demolishing entire buildings, often with many innocents and families inside, in order to eliminate a single enemy VIP. “Double tap” strikes, whereby a single location is bombed twice in quick succession in order to kill any rescuers that might rush to the scene, are still employed by allies and enemies alike. Rampant mercenaryism insulates state authorities the world over from the consequences of their orders. Basic necessities like water and food are cut off from entire population centers. Noncombatants (journalists, medics, aid workers) are slaughtered with such frequency that it is very hard to maintain that the pattern of these incidents are purely accidental. This should not surprise us. For raison d’etat, “collateral damage” achieves the salutary effect of instilling fear in an enemy population. As in Thessalonica millennia ago, the innocent dead are features, not bugs.
Perhaps more disturbing than the above disregard for jus in bello is the routine lack of reflection in considering a causus belli. It has become sadly routine for wars to be launched without any definition of success at the outset. The idea that retaliation against an enemy supplies its own justification for war, in my view, bears the primary responsibility for the protracted conflicts of our century. Most often it has been the unwillingness to define objectives with any greater specificity than: “Destroy Enemy” or “Liberate Country.” Rallying cries like these have supplanted reason, and so wars go on endlessly without any definition of what might bring them to an end. The “national interest” is invoked as an entirely self-justifying reason for violent intervention, but it is not sufficient. Other frequent rationalizations for prolonging conflict also offend Just War doctrines. For instance, it is not a just cause to elongate a war in which there is no chance of success solely to degrade an enemy’s capabilities or make their victory as pyrrhic as possible. These aims are indistinguishable from vengeance, and they are out of bounds for anyone who believes that “vengeance is the Lord’s.”
Looming over all of this is the specter of nuclear weapons, whose very design is to win a war by collectively demolishing an entire population center. While we continue to complacently assume their use would be unthinkable, the above abuses meted out over time have resulted in conflict zones that have achieved the equivalent of several nuclear blasts. If things continue to go as they are, then it is hard to see what will be left to the realm of the unthinkable, and apocalyptic weapons will become the new convention. The price for our wars will be paid in cities, and the earth salted by radiation.
How ought Christians confront our violent century, emerging on the heels of the most violent century in human history? First, we should not be surprised that pagan norms largely guide our world’s assumptions, from life inside the womb to marriage and gender. In all sectors of modern life, the Lord’s teachings are sidelined to for the convenience of a surging neopaganism, and the battlefield is no exception.
Second, we should return to the basic assumptions of the early church, be unafraid to state plainly that when it comes to war, we are not for it. While they may be necessary, while we must be willing to fight them, the Church cannot allow itself to slip into a comfortable posture of blessing warfare as just another tool in the belt of routine statecraft. There are other ways to handle rivals, and they must all be exhausted before war may be considered. We should be the first voices to discriminate between a just cause and an unjust one, to insist on discrimination between combatants and noncombatants, and strictly refuse to countenance any forms of collective punishment.
Third, we should take every opportunity to speak up for every opportunity of peace. We should be the first voices to demand our leaders articulate the circumstances under which a war would actually end before supporting it at all. Naturally a good deal of casuistry will be necessary, since judgments always take place in shifting circumstances: but this is a challenge the Church has met well in medical ethics and other spheres. There is no societal sphere outside of Christ’s lordship, and this goes for international relations as well as our domestic culture.
Finally, it is simply not a sign of moral weakness nor is it a heretical excess of empathy to invoke the Golden Rule when we think about war. One way that love for enemies is practically worked out is considering how we would feel to see our neighborhoods reduced to rubble or our houses flattened on top of our children. Before we cheer the same overseas, or simply swallow it as a grim necessity, we ought to keep the suffering of others in mind.
None of this means that we should be slow to defend the innocent, or refuse to take up arms when necessary, but we should not be content with the state rationales for initiating against an adversary or even retaliating against one. Punishing an enemy or eliminating a rival is not itself a justification for violent action. We must first answer to the Lord’s bias against violence. His sacrificial death offered forgiveness, not only for the sins of those who currently believe in him, but those of the whole world who do not yet know him. This binds Christians in every circumstance to be partisans of mercy.
The emperor’s penance has been painted and retold down the ages because it manifests the supremacy of the wisdom of God over and, when necessary, against raison d’etat, restraining the excesses of national interest and imperial ambition just as it checks the very human urge for vengeance against an adversary. It would not be too strong then to generalize the Church’s default position in any human conflict as anti-war, for though it may be necessary, every war is evil. The label comes just as naturally as Pro-Life or Pro-Family. There is nothing disloyal or ungrateful toward our homeland about this posture. We, like everyone else, are children of an earthly nation and we serve and pray for its health and safety. Yet it is the peacemakers who will be called the children of God.
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