Living In the City of God
Moses and Abraham Lincoln
“And Moses sent them to war, a thousand of every tribe…” – Numbers 31.6
“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and
leave you only with the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom” – Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Lydia Bixby, who lost five sons in the Civil War
There are parts of the Old Testament that might be renamed “the art of war”, the battles, the tactics, the heroes, and the numbered of conquered are so great. The modern world has not changed much. You can not pick up a newspaper or turn on a television without being aware that war and the threat of war are part of our daily lives. But, as Christians, what does it mean that we participate in the killing of our fellow man, or, at the very least that we stand by and do nothing as the killing escalates.
Several of the most important figures in the Bible were great warriors. Moses and David could raise armies and defeat enemies as well as any generals in chronicled history. In Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Joshua, Samuel and Kings the term “war” is mentioned almost a hundred times. Oddly, in the New Testament, the word war appears less than twenty times, and half of these are in The Revelation to John.
The Bible is clearly one book and one canon, but the covenant of the Christian faith is no covenant at all without the New Testament following the Old. And, while the Old Testament is a book of war, the New Testament is not.
In the history of the Western World, war is an honorable profession. Count the number of generals who became President. Many historians would chose Churchill and Lincoln as the two great political figures among the English speaking people, at least over the last two hundred years. If it had not been for the wars that defined them, this level of regard would be unlikely. To a large extent, the history of the major Western countries is defined by the wars that they fought and either won or lost.
But, there is no call to earthly wars in the New Testament.
Lincoln was a consummate wordsmith. In his letter to Lydia Bixby, he writes with care that her sacrifice has been laid “upon the altar of freedom”. That phrase moves us, as citizens of free nations and as Christians to the heart of the matter, because we have both the altar of our Christianity and the altar of freedom. We have our duty to Christ and our duty to the principles that men should live free from tyranny. But, they may well not be the same duty.
There is a value in reading some of the central documents that form the basis of democracy. The Declaration of Independence makes the point that it is the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God that are evoked as justification of the rights of man. The Magna Carta begins by saying that it is to “the honour of God” that we will have a “better ordering of our kingdom”. To read these documents, and many others, it is clear that their authors believed that the human institutions, created for noble reasons, were being created because this is the way God would want it to be. God would want man to be free. According to their authors, God would want man to be happy, and he would want man to prosper. There is certainly plenty of support for this in the Bible. Even Paul makes the point that “he was free born” – Acts 22.28
Everything appears to be reconciled then. God wants us to be free. Our own governments are based on our freedom. The points of view seemed reconciled. That is until the freedom is threatened.
We are left with this conflict, at the very least. Are the call to the altar of God and the call to the altar of freedom the same thing, or, are there circumstances, like a war to protect our freedom, in which we must take the lives of others, where the loyalties to the two imperatives cannot be honored without conflict?
Thomas Aquinas makes a case for what has become known as a “just war” in his Summa Theologicae. An entire set of rules for entering a “just war” (Jus ad bellum) has been put in place over the years as well as rules for conducting the war (Jus in bello). But, through the lens of Christian theology, we should still be concerned with how this series of justifications works, because it is based on judgments made by men, judgments that are subject to both warping and broad interpretation.
The rule for engaging in a “just war” could be spelled out ad infinitum. They include criteria such as whether the war is declared by the proper authorities and whether it is the only resort after all others have been exhausted. However, these are existential and relative justifications made by men on both sides of a war.
Abraham Lincoln gave the one of the best summations of the issue in his Second Inaugural Address. Speaking of the two sides in the conflict he said “both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the others.” And later in the address, “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.” Lincoln had just been the primary agent of waging the most bloody war in the history of the United States, and yet he clearly sensed the irony of invoking God as an ally in war. It is a tragic irony that would have been lost on many wartime leaders.
But, Lincoln does provide us a path to an answer about the dilemma between the altar of freedom and the altar of God. “The Almighty has his own purposes”. Lincoln appears to have understood that taking sides in war did not appear to be among them.
There may be good reason that war is mentioned so infrequently in the New Testament outside Revelation. Would a God who sent his Son into the world to die for mere mortals and to act as their advocate have an interest in the justification for men’s wars? “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…”1 John 2.1 It would appear not.
The war for the souls of men is not a war to be fought on the earthly battlefield where men slaughter each other based on the judgments of other men. “…yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” - James 2.11
The fighting of war, and the altar of freedom are in men’s domain. The judgments about going to war and the decision to kill belong to man. The altar of freedom and the altar of God are not the same thing. It is left to His mercy to look upon our conduct in war as well as peace as He examines the fabric of our lives.
Moses and Abraham Lincoln
“And Moses sent them to war, a thousand of every tribe…” – Numbers 31.6
“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and
leave you only with the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom” – Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Lydia Bixby, who lost five sons in the Civil War
There are parts of the Old Testament that might be renamed “the art of war”, the battles, the tactics, the heroes, and the numbered of conquered are so great. The modern world has not changed much. You can not pick up a newspaper or turn on a television without being aware that war and the threat of war are part of our daily lives. But, as Christians, what does it mean that we participate in the killing of our fellow man, or, at the very least that we stand by and do nothing as the killing escalates.
Several of the most important figures in the Bible were great warriors. Moses and David could raise armies and defeat enemies as well as any generals in chronicled history. In Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Joshua, Samuel and Kings the term “war” is mentioned almost a hundred times. Oddly, in the New Testament, the word war appears less than twenty times, and half of these are in The Revelation to John.
The Bible is clearly one book and one canon, but the covenant of the Christian faith is no covenant at all without the New Testament following the Old. And, while the Old Testament is a book of war, the New Testament is not.
In the history of the Western World, war is an honorable profession. Count the number of generals who became President. Many historians would chose Churchill and Lincoln as the two great political figures among the English speaking people, at least over the last two hundred years. If it had not been for the wars that defined them, this level of regard would be unlikely. To a large extent, the history of the major Western countries is defined by the wars that they fought and either won or lost.
But, there is no call to earthly wars in the New Testament.
Lincoln was a consummate wordsmith. In his letter to Lydia Bixby, he writes with care that her sacrifice has been laid “upon the altar of freedom”. That phrase moves us, as citizens of free nations and as Christians to the heart of the matter, because we have both the altar of our Christianity and the altar of freedom. We have our duty to Christ and our duty to the principles that men should live free from tyranny. But, they may well not be the same duty.
There is a value in reading some of the central documents that form the basis of democracy. The Declaration of Independence makes the point that it is the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God that are evoked as justification of the rights of man. The Magna Carta begins by saying that it is to “the honour of God” that we will have a “better ordering of our kingdom”. To read these documents, and many others, it is clear that their authors believed that the human institutions, created for noble reasons, were being created because this is the way God would want it to be. God would want man to be free. According to their authors, God would want man to be happy, and he would want man to prosper. There is certainly plenty of support for this in the Bible. Even Paul makes the point that “he was free born” – Acts 22.28
Everything appears to be reconciled then. God wants us to be free. Our own governments are based on our freedom. The points of view seemed reconciled. That is until the freedom is threatened.
We are left with this conflict, at the very least. Are the call to the altar of God and the call to the altar of freedom the same thing, or, are there circumstances, like a war to protect our freedom, in which we must take the lives of others, where the loyalties to the two imperatives cannot be honored without conflict?
Thomas Aquinas makes a case for what has become known as a “just war” in his Summa Theologicae. An entire set of rules for entering a “just war” (Jus ad bellum) has been put in place over the years as well as rules for conducting the war (Jus in bello). But, through the lens of Christian theology, we should still be concerned with how this series of justifications works, because it is based on judgments made by men, judgments that are subject to both warping and broad interpretation.
The rule for engaging in a “just war” could be spelled out ad infinitum. They include criteria such as whether the war is declared by the proper authorities and whether it is the only resort after all others have been exhausted. However, these are existential and relative justifications made by men on both sides of a war.
Abraham Lincoln gave the one of the best summations of the issue in his Second Inaugural Address. Speaking of the two sides in the conflict he said “both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the others.” And later in the address, “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.” Lincoln had just been the primary agent of waging the most bloody war in the history of the United States, and yet he clearly sensed the irony of invoking God as an ally in war. It is a tragic irony that would have been lost on many wartime leaders.
But, Lincoln does provide us a path to an answer about the dilemma between the altar of freedom and the altar of God. “The Almighty has his own purposes”. Lincoln appears to have understood that taking sides in war did not appear to be among them.
There may be good reason that war is mentioned so infrequently in the New Testament outside Revelation. Would a God who sent his Son into the world to die for mere mortals and to act as their advocate have an interest in the justification for men’s wars? “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…”1 John 2.1 It would appear not.
The war for the souls of men is not a war to be fought on the earthly battlefield where men slaughter each other based on the judgments of other men. “…yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” - James 2.11
The fighting of war, and the altar of freedom are in men’s domain. The judgments about going to war and the decision to kill belong to man. The altar of freedom and the altar of God are not the same thing. It is left to His mercy to look upon our conduct in war as well as peace as He examines the fabric of our lives.
posted by douglas mcintyre at 8:15 AM
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