What Then Says The Bible on the Subject of War? Alexander Campbell's Address on War (Part 2)

Campbell at 65

THE BIBLE & WAR

Campbell continues his insightful argument:

"It certainly commended and authorized war among the Jews. God had given to man, ever since the flood, the right of taking away the life of man for one specified cause. Hence murderers, ever since the flood, were put to death by express divine authority. "He that sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." 

"He gave authority only, however, to one family or nation, whose God and King he assumed to be. As soon as that family was developed into a nation, He placed it under His own special direction and authority. Its government has been properly called by Josephus, a distinguished Jew, a theocracy."

"It was not a republican, an aristocratical, or monarchical, but a theocratical government, and that, indeed, of the most absolute character, for certain high ends and purposes in the destinies of mankind - temporal, spiritual, and eternal. God was, therefore, in person the king, lawgiver, and judge of the Jewish nation."

"It was not simply for desiring a king that God was at one time displeased with them. It was for asking a king like those of other nations, and thereby refusing God Himself and God alone as their king. Still, He never made their kings any more than viceroys. He, for many centuries, down to the end of the Old Testament history, held in His own hand the sovereignty of the nation. Hence the kings ruled for him, and the high priest, or some special prophet, was the Lord's mouth to them. Their kings were, therefore, unlike other kings. They truly, and only they, of all the kings on earth, were "the Lord's anointed."

"The Jewish kingdom was emphatically a typical institution, prospective of a kingdom but not of this world, to be instituted in future times and to be placed under the special government of His only Son and Heir. Hence it came to pass that the enemies of Israel became typical of the enemies of Jesus Christ; and hence the temporal judgments inflicted on them were but shadows through which to set forth the spiritual and eternal judgments to be inflicted on the enemies of the Messiah's reign and kingdom. Whether, therefore, the enemies of the Jews fell in battle, or by any of the angels of death, it was God that slew them. Hence their kings and God's angels were but mere sheriffs, executing, as it were, the mandates of high heaven."

"It is, however, important to reiterate that God gave to Noah, and through him to all his sons and successors in government, a right to take away, in civil justice, the life of a murderer. As the world of the ungodly, antecedent to the Deluge, during the first 500 years of Noah's life, was given to violence and outrage against each other, it became expedient to prevent the same violence and bloodshed after the flood; and for this purpose God gave to man, or the human race in Noah's family, the right to exact blood for blood from him who had deliberately and maliciously taken away the life of his fellow. Had not this been first ordained, no war, without a special divine commission, could have been sanctioned as lawful and right even under the Old Testament institution."

"Hence we may say that wars were first allowed by God against those who had first waged war against their fellows, and consequently, as viewed by God himself, they were murderers. The first and second wars was reported in the annals of the world were begun by the enemies of God and His people, and hence the reprisals made by Abraham and Moses are distinctly stated to have been occasioned by the enemies of God and His people. But what is most important here is that these wars waged by God's people in their typical character were waged under and in pursuance of a special divine commission. They were, therefore, right. For a divine precept authorizing anything to be done makes it right absolutely and forever. The Judge of all the earth can do only that, or command that to be done, which is right."

"Let those, then, who now plead a jus divinum, a special divine warrant or right for carrying on war by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, produce a warrant from the present Monarch of the universe. What the God of Abraham did by Abraham, by Jacob, or by any of his sons, as the moral Governor of the world, before He gave up the scepter and the crown to His Son, Jesus Christ, is of no binding authority now. This is a point of much more importance than we can at present develop, and one which has been, so far as known to me, wholly slurred over in this great investigation."

"The very basis of the Christian religion is that Jesus Christ is now the Lord and King of both earth and heaven, and that His Father and our God no longer assumes to be either the lawgiver, judge, or king of the world. It is positively declared by Him that all legislative, judiciary, and executive power is now committed into the hands of One who is both our kinsman and God's only begotten Son."

"Two grand declarations that ought to revolutionize our whole views of civil government as respects its ultimate authority, and change some of our forms of legal justice, are wholly overlooked so far as they are of any practical value and importance. The first was announced by the Messiah immediately before His ascension into heaven; the other was publicly pronounced by an embassy from heaven immediately after His ascension. The former declares that "all authority" (exousia), all legislative, judiciary, and regal authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus Christ; the other affirms that God has made Jesus, Lord and Christ, or anointed Him sovereign of the universe. Kings of the earth and courts of high judicature are all under Him, but they do not really acknowledge it; few of them, perhaps, know or believe the fact that Jesus Christ has been on the throne of the universe for more than 1,800 years. Hence, the courts of England and America, the two most enlightened nations in the world, are yet deistical in form, rather than Christian."

 IN THE NAME OF GOD or JESUS?

"In every place where they have the phrase, "In the name of God," they ought to have, "In the name of the Lord." This is the gist of the whole controversy between the friends and the enemies of war, on the part of the subjects of Christ's kingdom. The coronation of Jesus Christ in heaven as Lord of all, His investiture with all authority in heaven and earth, legislative, judiciary, and executive, is the annunciation, on the belief and public acknowledgment of which the first Christian church was founded in Jerusalem, where the throne of David was, in the month of June, 1,814 years ago, A.D. 34."

"God the Father, in propria persona, now neither judges nor punishes any person or nation, but has committed all judgment to His Son, now constituted head of the universe and judge of the living and the dead. This simplifies the question and leaves it to the judgment of all. It is this: Has the author and founder of the Christian religion enacted war or has He made it lawful and right for the subjects of His government to go to war against one another? Or, has He made it right for them to go to war against any nation, or for any national object, at the bidding of the present existent political authorities of any nation in Christendom?"

"The question is not whether, under the new administration of the universe, Christian communities have a right to wage war, in its common technical sense, against other communities - as the house of Judah against the house of Israel, both of the same religion, language, and blood. This is already, by almost universal consent, decided in the negative. But the question is, May a Christian community, or the members of it, in their individual capacities, take up arms at all, whether aggressively or defensively, in any national conflict?"

"We might, as before alleged, dispense with the words "aggressive" and "defensive" for a mere grammatical, logical, or legal quibble will make any war either aggressive or defensive, just as the whim, caprice, or interest of an individual pleases. Napoleon, on his deathbed, declared that he had never engaged, during his whole career, in an aggressive war: that all his wars were very defensive. Yet all Europe regarded him as the most aggressive warrior of any age."

"But the great question is: Can an individual, not a public functionary, morally do that in obedience to his government which he cannot do in his own case? Suppose the master of an apprenticed youth, or the master of a number of hired or even bond servants, should fall out with one of his neighbors about one of the lines of his plantation, because, as he imagined, his neighbor had trespassed upon his freehold in clearing or cultivating his lands. His neighbor refuses to retire within the precincts insisted on by the complainant; in consequence of which the master calls together his servants and proceeds to avenge himself or, as he alleges, to defend his property."

"As the controversy waxes hot, he commands his servants not only to burn and destroy the improvements made on the disputed territory but to fire upon his neighbor, his sons, and servants. They obey orders, and kill several of them. They are, however, finally taken into custody and brought to trial. An attorney for the servants pleads that those servants were bound to obey their master, and quotes these words from the Good Book: "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh." But, on the other side, it is shown that the "all things" enjoined are only "all things lawful." For this obedience is to be rendered "as to Christ"; and again, "as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart." No judge or jury could do otherwise than condemn as guilty of murder servants thus acting."

"Now, as we all, in our political relations to the Government of our country, occupy positions at least inferior to that which a bond servant holds toward his master, we cannot of right as Christian men obey the powers that be in anything not in itself justifiable by the written law of the great King - our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. Indeed, we may advance in all safety one step further, if it were necessary, and affirm that a Christian man can never of right be compelled to do that for the state, in defense of state rights, which he cannot of right do for himself in defense of his personal rights. No Christian man is commanded to love or serve his neighbor, his king, or sovereign more than he loves or serves himself. If this is conceded, unless a Christian man can go to war for himself, he cannot for the state."

"We have already observed that the Jews were placed under a theocracy, that their kings were only vicegerents, and that they were a symbolic or typical nation foreshadowing a new relation and institution to be set up in "the fullness of time" under an administration of grace. In consequence of this arrangement, God was first revealed as the God of Abraham; and afterward, when He was about to make Himself known in all the earth, in contrast with the idols of the nations, He chose by Moses to call Himself the God of the Hebrews. As the custom then was, all nations had their gods, and by their wars judged and decided the claims and pretensions of their respective divinities. Esteeming the reputation and pretensions of their gods according to their success in war, that nation's god was the greatest and most to be venerated whose people were most successful and triumphant in battle."

"God, therefore, chose this method to reveal Himself as the God of the Hebrews. Hence He first poured out 10 plagues upon the gods of Egypt. The Egyptians worshipped everything from the Nile to the meanest insect in the land. He first, then, plagued their gods. Afterward, by causing the Jews to fight and destroy many nations in a miraculous manner, from the victory over Amalek to the fall of the cities and kings of ancient Palestine, He established His claims as supreme over all. Proceeding in this way, He fully manifested the folly of their idolatries and the omnipotence, greatness, and majesty of the God of the Jews."

"The wars of pagan nations were, indeed, much more rational than those of our miscalled Christian nations. No two of these nations acknowledged the same dynasties of gods; and, therefore, having different gods, they could with much propriety test their claims by invoking them in battle. But two Christian nations both pray to one and the same God to decide their respective quarrels and yet will not abide by the decision; for success in war is not by any of them regarded as an end of all strife as to the right or justice of the demands of the victorious party. Did our present belligerent nations regard victory and triumph as a proof of the justice of their respective claims, they would in the manner of carrying on their wars prove themselves to be very great simpletons indeed; for why sacrifice their hundred millions of dollars and their fifty thousand lives in one or two years, when they could save these millions of men and money by selecting each one of their genuine patriots and heroes and having them voluntarily to meet in single combat before a competent number of witnesses and encounter each other till one of them triumphed - and thus award, from heaven's own court of infallible rectitude, to the nation of the survivor the glory of a great national triumph both in heroism and justice? But this they dare not do, for these Christian nations are quite skeptical so far as faith in the justice of their own cause or in the right decision of their claims in the providence and moral government of God is concerned. To what purpose, we therefore ask, do they both appeal to the same God, when neither of them feels any obligation to abide His decision?"

"But as we are neither under a Jewish nor a Pagan government, but professedly, at least, under a Christian dispensation, we ought to hear what the present King of the Universe has enacted on this subject. The maxims of the Great Teacher and Supreme Philanthropist are, one would think, to be final and decisive on this great question. The Great Lawgiver addresses His followers in two very distinct respects: First, in reference to their duties to Him and their own profession, and then in reference to their civil rights, duties, and obligations..."

Alexander Campbell's Address on War Conclusion

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Alexander Campbell, Address on War, 1848. Edited.