1. We turn first of all to the Sermon on the Mount. And it is only a short section of the Sermon on the Mount that we have directly to do with. The passage is Mat_5:38-48. This is how it reads in the Revised Version: “Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
“Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat_5:43-48).
Now it is not necessary to treat the Sermon on the Mount as though it were an ethical text-book, every word in which was to be taken literally and baldly like a stage in Euclid’s propositions. That would be a grave fault of interpretation. It is plain that we are not dealing here with a sermon at all, but with a summary, in the manner of St. Matthew, of our Lord’s Galilean teachings. The passages collected into one place by St. Matthew are to be found scattered in many places in the Gospel of St. Luke. They constitute the texts of sermons or the rememberable sayings, perhaps those frequently repeated. Such repetition may account for there being two differing collections of Beatitudes. We do not know what qualifying words or what context may have accompanied them. No honest interpreter, also, can pretend that in daily life we even begin to obey literally such commands as to give to every one who asks us, and to lend freely without security. We are aware that that would be wrong; it would soon reduce society to confusion and ourselves to poverty. Nor do we understand the exhortation to take no thought for the morrow as forbidding us to insure our lives, or arranging to meet future financial demands upon us.
But all these passages have, in fact, a very easily comprehended meaning. We are to be liberal and open-handed, we are not to spend our strength in worrying over the means of life, but are to live with some of the careless gladness of the birds and the lilies of the field; we are to live with the melody of the bird and the colour and scent of the lily, instead of being overwhelmed by grinding care. The expression “Resist not evil,” then, must be subject to the same canon of interpretation.
2. The interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount will occupy the next chapter, and we may pass from it for the moment. Is there any other teaching of Christ’s to be considered?
(1) One passage upon which reliance is generally placed for the justification of war is that in which He bids His disciples buy a sword, under the new conditions of universal hostility, even selling their coats to provide the means. The passage is confidently taken to justify war by men whose judgment must be respected; but surely the context makes that interpretation impossible. The bewildered disciples, as much bewildered as the modern interpreter, immediately answered Him by showing that they had two swords already. He sadly replied, “It is enough” (Luk_22:38), deprecating explanation since they had been too dull to understand Him. He was only contrasting, in His own vivid way, the new conditions with the old. They had once gone forth into a world where welcome awaited them everywhere. Now the deadly hostility that was bringing the Master to death would turn upon the servant too. The sword would be the symbol of human relations in future, even within families that had been united before He came to be the test of a higher loyalty. We shall not take literally the “sword” which He saw interposed between mother and daughter! That He as little intended the other “sword” to be taken literally is sufficiently shown by the sequel. As soon as one of those swords was applied to the only purpose for which swords were made, the Master issued a stern rebuke. We are apparently to infer that the swords were to be purely ornamental: His disciples must sell their coats to buy them, but they must never be used. And if we want to prove this inference, it is enough to point out that the disciples never did use those swords till the final victory was already won. The Church fought the Roman Empire single-handed, the forces of love and suffering pitted against all the brute force in the world. Never once in all those generations did it occur to them to sell their coats and buy swords for literal revolt against the Roman Empire. They won their victory by dying and not by killing, and it was the greatest victory that the world has ever seen. It is strange (is it not?) that they should have unanimously agreed to ignore a command which modern interpreters think so plain
(2) Is any significance to be attached to the eulogy addressed to the centurion (Mat_8:5 ff.)? Mr. Emmet thinks there is, at least when coupled with the generally sympathetic attitude of the New Testament to soldiers, and the free use of military metaphors. “The conclusion is not, of course, that war is a good thing, but that Christ and His followers can hardly have regarded it as always and unconditionally sinful. One who held all forms of betting to be unconditionally wrong would hardly have special and unqualified praise for a bookmaker, or illustrate his religious teaching freely from the procedure of the betting ring without any reminder that he was drawing a comparison from an unholy trade.” [Note: C. W. Emmet, in The Faith and the War, 192.]
(3) In Mat_18:21 ff. the scope of forgiveness is explained as being practically limitless—“till seventy times seven”—while the duty itself is insisted on in general terms in the Lord’s Prayer and in other similar passages in the Gospels. The same holds good of the Epistles, the most important passages being Rom_12:14 ff. (Render to no man evil for evil. . . . Avenge not yourselves, etc.); Eph_4:26; Eph_4:32; Col_3:13; 1Th_5:15; 1Pe_2:21. This teaching echoes the teaching of Our Lord without adding anything fresh or introducing any very significant qualifications.
The subject of Christ’s attitude to War is discussed fully by Dr. James Moffatt in the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, by Dr. C. J. Cadoux in The Early Christian Attitude to War, and by Professor W. P. Paterson in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
3. But Christ’s words must be interpreted by His acts. A somewhat undue stress is sometimes laid on His cleansing of the Temple, since we are not told that He actually used force against any individual; Joh_2:15 alone mentions a scourge, and this was apparently used only to drive out the cattle—perhaps a sufficient answer to the extremists who argue that force should not be used even with animals I At the same time the whole incident does show that when Our Lord found Himself confronted with an abuse He did not content Himself with mere rebukes, but took active and even violent measures to remedy it, while it is really very difficult to believe that if the Temple police had been alive to their duty and had found it necessary to resort to physical force to expel the intruders He would have disapproved.
The small cattle-whip does not figure very successfully as a symbol of material force. And does any one seriously suggest that it was by a display of force that He did His deed? The miracle of it lay in the tremendous exhibition of purely moral force. Angry men who could have overwhelmed Him immediately by weight of numbers shrank before Conscience as it blazed forth through His eyes.
Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is.
But force was soon enough to win what it thought to be revenge! [Note: J. Hope Moulton, in London Quarterly Review, Jan. 1915, p. 39.]
4. Some indication of the mind of Christ has been found in His conduct when tempted by Satan to use force. The temptation was to secure a right end by the use of wrong means. When the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were presented to His mind and heart, and the fulfilment of His whole purpose promised in the offer that they should be given to Him, the thought and hope were altogether right. For the world to come under the dominion of Jesus Christ was the very thing to be longed for, the perfect blessing of man, the fulfilment of the purposes of God—“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace” (Luk_2:14). But it was made conditional on an act of evil worship. Is Satan to have a place in our life? Are these evil instruments that men invent things for Christ’s people to use towards His kingdom? Is it not a kind of worship of Satan? an acknowledgment of him, and an acceptance from him of help towards the Kingdom? Did Christ invent these things? or did He give a place for them?
There is an illuminating passage in the “Holy War” where the missionary of Diabolus is pleading that his master may still have some place in the town of Mansoul, even after it is restored to Emmanuel, pleading in a miserable kind of way after place after place is refused, for a less and less place, without any sense of self-respect. The answer is always express and absolute—He is not to have any place at all—and never will by Emmanuel’s consent. And if a thing appears to be of Satan we must give it no place either, but go on towards the redemption of the world as our Master did. One of the pathetic fallacies of the day is that the War was a war to end war. War cannot end war. If war is ever ended, it will be by self-sacrifice, and patience, and humility, and love, and by nothing else. St. Paul says that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds. Though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh, casting down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against God.” Militarism is one of those high things, and we want to overcome it. But will it be overcome by itself? Never. Satan does not cast out Satan. If militarism is ever to be overcome it will only be by patience, meekness, gentleness, faith, love, sacrifice. [Note: L. Bartlett, The Spirit of Christ and War, 9.]
