§ 1. That old dispute concerns, not indeed whether it is lawful to wage war at all, but whether it is lawful for Christians. For thus Julian the Apostate reproached them in mockery: the other cheek must be given to the man who gives a blow; therefore vengeance must not be taken by war. The Manichaeans also prohibited war altogether; Saint Augustine refutes them in Book XXII, chapter 74, Against Faustus the Manichaean: “Nor should he wonder at or recoil from the wars waged through Moses, because in them also he followed divine commands, not raging but obeying; nor did God rage when he commanded those things, but rendered to the deserving what they deserved and crushed those who deserved it. For what is blamed in war? Is it that men who will someday die are sometimes killed, so that those who will live may be subdued in peace? To reprehend this belongs to the timid, not to the religious. The desire to harm, the cruelty of vengeance, an unappeased and implacable spirit, the savagery of rebellion, the lust for domination, and anything similar—these are the things that are rightly blamed in wars. Wars themselves are often undertaken by good men so that these things may also rightly be punished, against the violence of those who resist, when either God or some legitimate government commands them and when those good men are found in that order of human affairs in which the order itself justly constrains them either to command some such thing or to obey in such matters.”
Otherwise John, when soldiers came to him to be baptized and said, “And what shall we do?” would have answered them: “Cast away your arms, abandon that military life, strike no one, wound no one, lay no one low.” But because he knew that, when they did these things in military service, they were not murderers but ministers of the law, and not avengers of their own injuries but defenders of the public safety, he answered them: “Extort nothing from anyone; falsely accuse no one; let your pay suffice for you.” But because the Manichaeans were accustomed openly to blaspheme John, let them hear the Lord Jesus Christ himself commanding that this pay be rendered to Caesar, which John says ought to suffice for the soldier: “Render,” he says, “to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” For taxes are paid for this purpose, that pay may be furnished to the soldier for necessary wars. Deservedly, too, he praised the faith of that centurion who said, “And I am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it”; he did not command him to desert that military service.
Wycliffe is accused of the same error by Thomas Waldensis. Cornelius Agrippa, the arch-magician, held the same opinion. So did Erasmus. Luther judged the matter according to his passion and uncontrollable anger: he forbade war to be waged against the Turks because the Turk himself was the scourge of God; against the Pope and the Catholics he commanded it and caused them to be attacked.
§ 2. The whole of the Old Scripture teaches that war is not unlawful by its nature, nor prohibited by God. Abraham in Genesis 14 conquered in war the kings who had conquered; Moses and Joshua occupied Canaan by the right of war. For although God had given them that land, he nevertheless willed it to be obtained by arms. Indeed, he also dictated the laws of war. Numbers 10:9: “If you go out from your land to war against enemies who fight against you, you shall sound with trumpets of alarm, and there shall be remembrance of you before the Lord your God, that you may be delivered from the hands of your enemies.” And in chapter 21:14 the Book of the Wars of the Lord is cited; these were without doubt deeds performed with the Lord’s approval. And Deuteronomy 20:1: “If you go out to war against your enemies and see cavalry and chariots, and a multitude of the enemy’s army greater than you have, you shall not fear them, because the Lord your God is with you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And when the battle is now drawing near, the priest shall stand before the battle line and shall speak thus to the people: ‘Hear, Israel: today you join battle against your enemies. Let not your heart be afraid; do not fear, do not yield, nor dread them, because the Lord your God is in your midst and will fight for you against your adversaries, to deliver you from danger.’ The officers also shall proclaim before the army, throughout the several divisions: ‘Who is the man who has built a new house?’” And a little afterward: “And when the officers of the army have fallen silent and made an end of speaking, each one shall prepare his own companies for battle. Whenever you approach to capture a city, you shall first offer it peace. If it receives the offer and opens its gates to you, all the people who are in it shall be saved and shall serve you under tribute. But if it is unwilling to enter a treaty and begins war against you, you shall besiege it. And when the Lord your God has delivered it into your hand, you shall strike everything of the male sex in it with the edge of the sword, except the women and children, the beasts of burden, and the other things that are in the city. You shall divide all the spoil for the army and shall eat from the spoils of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you,” and so forth.
The books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles, and Maccabees also are full of the history of wars. And in Hebrews 11 the Apostle says that the saints through faith conquered kingdoms and were valiant in war. John the Baptist did not forbid military service; neither Christ nor Peter released the centurions from their oath. For they acknowledged that the license to wage war was given by God. Indeed, the prayers and alms of the centurion ascended before God, and he also had soldiers who feared God. There were also Christian soldiers in wars of old. The Thundering Legion is very well known, which, having obtained rain by prayer, saved the army; so too the Theban Legion, which endured martyrdom through repeated decimations. Tertullian, Apology, chapter 42, records that Christians served as soldiers together with the gentiles. But what he himself thought is not entirely clear, for it is certain that he disapproved of the military service of his time under pagan emperors because it was bound up with idolatry.
In On the Soldier’s Crown, chapter 11, he says: “For, that I may approach the crown itself of the military crown, I think it must first be investigated whether military service is altogether suitable for Christians. What sort of thing is it to reconsider incidental questions when the fault lies in the antecedents? Do we believe it lawful to superimpose a human oath upon the divine one, and to answer to another lord after Christ, and to abjure father and mother and every neighbor, whom even the Law commanded to be honored and loved after God, whom the Gospel also will thus honor, making Christ alone of greater account? Will it be lawful to be occupied with the sword, when the Lord declares that he who has used the sword shall perish by the sword? And will the son of peace engage in battle, for whom it will not be fitting even to litigate? And will he administer chains and prison and tortures and punishments, though he is not the avenger even of his own injuries? And now, will he either stand guard for others more than for Christ, or also on the Lord’s Day, when he will not even do so for Christ? Will he keep watch for the temples which he has renounced, and dine there where the Apostle does not approve? Those whom by day he has put to flight by exorcisms, will he defend by night, leaning and resting upon the spear by which Christ’s side was pierced? Will he also carry a standard, the rival of Christ, and ask a watchword from a prince, though he has already received one from God? When dead, will he also be disturbed by the trumpeter’s trumpet, he who awaits resurrection by the trumpet of the angel? And will a Christian be burned according to military discipline, he for whom it was not lawful to burn, to whom Christ remitted the punishment of fire? How many other things can be observed among the offenses of military duties, to be interpreted as transgressions? The very transfer of one’s name from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a transgression.
“Plainly, if faith comes later and finds some men already engaged in military service, the condition is different—as with those whom John admitted to baptism, and as with the most faithful centurions, the one whom Christ approves and the one whom Peter catechizes—provided nevertheless that, once the faith has been received and sealed, either military service must immediately be abandoned, as has been done by many, or every precaution must be taken that nothing be committed against God, things that are not even permitted outside military service, or, finally, one must suffer for God what the pagan military oath equally prescribed. For military service will not promise impunity for offenses or immunity from martyrdom. Nowhere is a Christian anything else. There is one Gospel and the same Jesus: he will deny everyone who denies and confess everyone who confesses God; he will save the soul lost for his name, but, on the contrary, destroy the soul gained against his name. Before him the faithful civilian is as much a soldier as the faithless soldier is a civilian. The state of faith does not admit the plea of necessity. There is no necessity of sinning for those whose one necessity is not to sin. For someone is also pressed by the necessity of tortures or punishments to sacrifice and directly to deny; nevertheless, discipline does not connive at even that necessity, because the necessity of fearing denial and undergoing martyrdom is stronger than that of escaping suffering and performing one’s duty.
“Moreover, an excuse of this kind overturns the whole substance of the oath, so that it loosens the fastening even for voluntary offenses. For even the will can be maintained to be necessity, since it has something by which it is compelled. Or rather, I will have laid down these principles and the other cases of official crowns, in which that plea of necessity is most familiar, since either offices are therefore to be avoided, lest we fall into offenses, or martyrdoms are also to be endured, that we may break away from offices. Concerning the first form of the question, the unlawfulness even of military service itself, I shall not say more, so that the second may be taken up. Unless I expel military service with every effort, I shall thereafter have challenged the military crown in vain. Suppose, finally, that military service is lawful up to the matter of the crown.”
He has the same view in On Idolatry, chapter 19: “But now the question is whether a believer may turn to military service and whether military service may be admitted to the faith—even that of the common soldier or any inferior rank for whom there is no necessity of sacrifices or capital judgments. The divine and human oath do not agree, nor the sign of Christ and the sign of the Devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be owed to two, to God and to Caesar. Moses carried a rod, and Aaron a clasp; John is girded with leather; Joshua leads an army; and the people made war—if it pleases one to make sport of the matter. But how will he make war—indeed, how will he serve even in peace—without the sword which the Lord took away? For although soldiers had come to John and received a form of conduct, and although the centurion also had believed, the Lord afterward disarmed every soldier by unbelting Peter. No uniform assigned to an unlawful act is lawful among us.”
The very learned Pamelius thinks that Tertullian rejected military service not absolutely, but because it had not been free from idolatry; for he reproves not Christian fellow-soldiers but the placing of the crown upon the head. Yet let this also have been an error of Tertullian. For us it is established by certain reasoning that military service is in itself legitimate and honorable, though dangerous and, for the most part, corruptive of morals. Military service did no harm to the centurion whose faith had no equal faith in Israel. The Church numbers among the saints Alexander, Theodore, Mercurius, Florian, Quirinus, Victor, Ferreolus, Romanus, Julian, Modestinus, George, Exsuperius, Anastasius, Gallicanus, Marcellus, Charlemagne, Arsacius, King Louis, Vitalis, Ursus, Longinus, Marcellus, and Nicostratus. Then she numbers entire legions or cohorts, such as those of Achatius, Maurice, Gereon, Castulus, Cyrion, Gregory and Maurus, Theodosius, Callistratus, and others, who were soldiers in such a way that they nevertheless flourished with outstanding praise for piety and martyrdom.
§ 3. If anyone seriously and from his heart condemns every war, I judge him to be not only a heretic but also a traitor to the state; the former belongs to the theologians, the latter to the magistrate. For since all beasts know their own weakness and by what means they can go against an enemy; since we also arm ourselves against lions and tigers; and since nature also planted in us a certain impulse to defend life and repel enemies, without which life cannot be lived, it cannot be denied that there is a just defense against a robber, thief, or adulterer. Neither faith nor any divine law has abolished natural law. Rather, just as it permitted defense against a serpent, against a scorpion, and against other beasts, so it permitted defense against impious robbers. For those who are borne toward injury by malice and desire are worse than those who are borne toward it by nature.
If, therefore, it was lawful for David to rise against the bear and the lion and tear them apart, why should not his sling also pierce the forehead of Goliath when, like a dead dog, he curses the armies of the living God? Because the power to resist unjust violence is given to every private person, much more does it belong to that prince whose office is the protection of his subjects. What father does not crush a snake lying in wait for his son? What shepherd does not snatch a sheep from the mouth of a wolf? And shall a prince not defend a city over which a barbarous enemy is hanging, about to rage against fortunes and bodies with avarice, lust, and cruelty? Wars, therefore, must be undertaken so that we may live in peace without injury. It is not merely honorable but also necessary when violence offered by force is repelled by force. Nature has imposed this law upon beasts, custom upon nations, reason upon the prudent, and necessity upon all.
§ 4. Therefore, in the state there must be an established ordering both of war and of peace. “It is necessary,” says Aristotle, Book VII, chapter 14, “to be able to conduct affairs and wars, but more to cultivate peace and to enjoy leisure; and to have the capacity to do necessary and useful things, but more to do honorable things.” Other deficiencies may therefore be overlooked in a prince, but to be a commander is a sovereign virtue. No state can endure unless it cultivates the military art. For since men are carried with great desire to seize the possessions of others, where they see no obstacle, there they rush. Therefore, if the prince is not warlike, or if he has cowardly commanders, for that very reason let him expect war. For others will make an attack, as the Danites did upon Laish, and others upon others.
§ 5. Where, then, are the Savior’s commands concerning the offering of the other cheek, Matthew 5? Where is the law of the Apostle, Romans 12, “Not defending yourselves, but give place to wrath”; and Matthew 26, “Put your sword back into its place”? Did not God himself say, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay”? If, therefore, vengeance is prohibited and endurance of injuries is commanded, war cannot be waged by a Christian.
I answer that the gentiles once abused these passages in order to say that the Christian faith was destructive of the state. Thus the illustrious Volusianus speaks in his letter to Marcellinus, as it appears in Augustine’s Epistle 4: “And then, further, that his preaching and doctrine are in no respect consistent with the customs of the state, inasmuch as, according to many, this is known to be his command: that we ought to render evil for evil to no one; that we should offer the other cheek to one who strikes us; that we should give our cloak to one persisting in taking away our tunic; and that we ought to go twice the distance with him who has wished to compel us to go. He asserts that all these things are contrary to the customs of the state. For who would permit anything to be taken from him by an enemy, or would not wish to repay by the law of war evil deeds to the plunderer of a Roman province? And the other things that can be said to the point, let your Reverence understand.”
Saint Augustine answers in Epistle 5. First, clemency by which enemies are forgiven is useful to the state; for in this way Rome was made great and wealthy from being small and poor, because citizens preferred to forgive an injury they had received rather than pursue it. Cicero too, flattering Caesar, said that he was accustomed to forget nothing except injuries. Second, evil is to be overcome in good when the defeated man is led to repentance, not by the strength of one who rages but by the benevolence of one who endures. Accordingly, the thing must be done when it appears likely to profit the man for whose sake it is done, and it must be done with that intention even if another outcome follows. Third, care must be taken that patience, which is better than anything that an enemy can take away against one’s will, is not carried away by a desire for vengeance. Fourth, those commands pertain more to the preparation of the heart, which is inward, than to the deed performed openly, so that patience with benevolence is maintained in the secret of the mind, but outwardly that is done which appears capable of profiting those whom we ought to wish well.
He adds that neither Christ offered the other cheek nor Paul, but that they further rebuked the unjust judge. Therefore, those commands of patience must always be retained in the preparation of the heart, and that very benevolence, lest evil be rendered for evil, must always be fulfilled in the will. Yet do not suppose that Augustine sophistically approves benevolence in the will but cruelty in the deed. He shows most clearly that, while patience remains, without desire for vengeance—indeed, with a preparation to suffer joined to benevolence—others can be corrected and wars waged. “Many things,” he says, “must be done even to the unwilling, who are to be punished with a certain kindly severity, since regard is to be had for their advantage rather than their will—a thing which their writings have most splendidly praised in the ruler of a state. For in correcting a son, however severely, paternal love is surely never lost. Nevertheless, that which he does not wish and which pains him is done, though he seems to be healed by pain even against his will. And by this reasoning, if that earthly state keeps the Christian precepts, even its wars will not be waged without benevolence, so that the defeated may more readily be provided for within a peaceful fellowship of piety and justice. For he from whom license to commit injustice is taken is usefully conquered, since nothing is unhappier than the happiness of sinners, by which penal impunity is nourished and the evil will, like an enemy within, is strengthened.”
They say, indeed, that a prince can wish every good thing for his enemies except a good mind; for all good things, if the mind is evil, become hostile. I would wish a good mind especially for enemies, for if they are furnished with it, they will be friends—unless they are enemies by right. Accordingly, those precepts of Christian gentleness neither bind the judge’s hands so that he may not punish criminals nor the prince’s so that he may not destroy an enemy. Rather, this is their admonition: that neither publicly nor privately should we rage with anger, hatred, or the delight of vengeance; that we should endure adversities; and that if our patience is useful to the aggressor, we should maintain it both in heart and in deed. If by our patience he is provoked to a greater injury, let us maintain benevolence in the heart and apply a harsher medicine in deed, just as a father retains love both when chastising and when indulging.
Each man’s right remains to him. A Christian is accustomed to yield in his private affairs; in public affairs a prince is sometimes accustomed to yield, but sometimes to oppose all the strength of the kingdom when he judges that necessary. Nor is it strange that this gentleness of mind is required of us, since neither a city nor a camp can stand unless many men pardon many things in their fellow citizens and fellow soldiers. But even in the struggle and heat of battle, reason, not anger, ought to rule. So even the gentile governors of empires decreed.
Seneca, On Anger, Book I, chapter 11: “For what else is it that diminishes the barbarians, though so much stronger in body and so much more enduring of labors, except anger, which is most hostile to itself? The gladiatorial art, too, protects its practitioners; anger lays them bare. Then what need is there of anger when reason accomplishes the same thing? Or do you think that the hunter is angry with wild beasts, either when he pursues those that flee or receives those that tremble? Reason does all things without anger. What else destroyed so many thousands of Cimbri and Teutons poured over the Alps in such a way that not a messenger but rumor carried to their people the report of so great a slaughter, except that anger stood to them in place of courage? As it sometimes strikes down and lays low what is before it, so more often it is its own destruction. What is more spirited than the Germans? What is fiercer in assault? What is more desirous of arms, amid which they are born and nourished, and which alone they care for while neglecting other things? What is more hardened to every endurance, since for the most part they have provided neither coverings for their bodies nor shelters against the perpetual rigor of the climate? Nevertheless, Spaniards and Gauls and the men of Asia and Syria, though soft in war, cut them down before a legion is sighted, for no other reason than their irascibility.”
For the same reason it is also dangerous to mix a drink for men about to fight by which they may in some fashion be deprived of their minds and not perceive their own dangers. The Turks use opium, which arouses a kind of fury in those accustomed to it. This is nevertheless ruinous, since those whom frenzy, not reason, leads are less fit both to administer and to receive command.
Therefore, a spirited prince will wage war, for a robber must be dealt with by arms, not decrees. Soldiers are the fortifications of cities and the sinews of kingdoms. Without the military art, whatever is acquired belongs to the enemy, because it cannot be defended. Cicero shows this sufficiently in For Murena: “Military virtue excels all others. It won a name for the Roman people and eternal glory for this city; it compelled the world to obey this empire. All civil affairs, all these splendid pursuits of ours, and this forensic praise and industry lie hidden beneath the guardianship and protection of military virtue. As soon as the suspicion of an uprising has sounded, our arts immediately fall silent. And if this is so, the forum, I think, will yield to the camp, leisure to military service, the pen to the sword, shade to the sun. Finally, let that thing be foremost in the state because of which the state itself is foremost among all.”
David himself teaches how dear military affairs were to brave men and lovers of the state, for he had thirty mighty men besides his armies. It is a divine oracle that kingdoms will perish unless kings cultivate military service: “I shall take away the mighty man and the man of war, the judge, the prophet; and the effeminate shall rule over them, and the people shall fall.” Accordingly, when several unwarlike princes succeed one another, or one effeminate prince has vigorous adversaries, the state cannot stand for long. It is also a sign that a state is most badly constituted if military practice is neglected in it; for where there are no good laws, there cannot be good arms. Care for military affairs is therefore necessary for the prince. Every region must be traversed; mountains, rivers, cities, and ports must be considered, for the unarmed cannot be safe among the armed. Everyone harasses the unarmed; they fear the armed. Finally, it must be held that not a diadem or scepter but iron is the protection of a kingdom. An unarmed scepter invites robbers. Plato, in Book VII of the Laws, commanded that so great care be given to war that he wished even women to handle arms.