Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the 4th way podcast. We are continuing our discussion in rebuttals to Christian nonviolence. In this episode, we are specifically looking at CS Lewis' speech on why he wasn't a pacifist. Since his speech is pretty long and he covers a lot of topics, and since most of those topics have been discussed in previous episodes, I'm really just gonna break down the responses pretty briefly and try to reference some of the previous episodes to give you some more depth if you would like to follow that up. Before we get into Lewis' rebuttals, I do wanna say that CS Lewis is like one of my heroes.

Derek: 00:46

Lewis, GK Chesterton, like 2 of my more modern, favorite Christian authors, writers. And when I found out that Lewis had this this speech, that just kind of, attempted to demolish the position of pacifism, I was pretty nervous because, I mean, there are lots of great minds on the side of nonviolence like, Spurgeon. Nevertheless, Lewis is a pretty pretty big mind and he's he's very thoughtful. And so I, by no means, took a look at this as something that I just wanted to come out of the gates and smash. I wanted to to really hear what Lewis had to say because I thought Lewis might be able to persuade me from becoming a pacifist.

Derek: 01:35

And I really did wanna be persuaded to not become a pacifist because there are lots of groups of people in the world that I would love violence to be done to. Certain sorts of criminals, who do terrible things to kids and to women. Certain groups like ISIS. You know? I I like the idea of violence.

Derek: 01:57

I really, really do. And and so I did want to be persuaded away from it, especially because it'd make me more popular. Being a pacifist, adhering to nonviolence isn't really a popular position, and one that almost all groups of Christians are gonna kinda snub their nose at and think you're you're a weirdo, super liberal, crazy, hippie, whatever. So, anyway, point is, I I really did want Lewis to be right here. And so I did hear him out.

Derek: 02:30

And he I do respect him very much. Nevertheless, I think he's wrong. And hopefully, I'll be able to point out some of that to you. So here we go. Lewis' first point is that we can't know pacifism produces better results than war.

Derek: 02:50

And, essentially, what what Lewis is saying is that, you know, pacifists are these idealists and, you know, they think that what they're doing is so peaceful and good, but they can't know that their restraint in killing and doing violence is actually producing less killing and violence. They just can't know that. And once again once again, we come back to this consequentialist ethic. And while Lewis would probably say he is not at all a consequentialist, I mean, you see consequentialism come up in just about everybody's ethic at some point or another. And it rears its ugly head here for Lewis.

Derek: 03:37

And Lewis is is essentially saying, whether he would admit to it or not, he's saying that, look, the thing that produces the better results, that's the thing that we should go with. I mean, that's ends justify the means morality right there. Pacifism, at least the pacifism that, that I would, adhere to, that I would promote, would say it's Christian nonviolence. I'm nonviolence because of the ethic of Christ and because of the value of humanity. And it really doesn't have anything to do with results.

Derek: 04:14

Results are good, and if I can get those results, that's awesome. But to compromise in order to do so, I don't wanna do that. I would not promote that. So to Luce's first point, I say, I don't really care if you can prove that pacifism produces better or worse results or war produces better or worse results. That's not the point for Christians, Or at least it shouldn't be the point for Christians.

Derek: 04:40

Nevertheless, we did take a look, I believe in episode 4, at how there is actually a lot of evidence that pacifism does better than the alternative in terms of long term restoration and good. It's more successful. So, Lewis didn't have that empirical evidence on his side. But now that I have it, I could say, well, even though results aren't, don't determine morality, I'm sorry, Lewis, but, the evidence is on my side. The other problem I have with Lewis' point here is that he really can't consistently apply his ethic, this consequentialist ethic.

Derek: 05:22

Lewis is assuming this particular, particular definition of good. And it it it seems like I don't know exactly what his his definition is, but it seems like what he's saying is, okay, pacifists believe that less harm will come to people if they just refuse to kill. And even though war kills people, in the end, choosing to kill some people, particularly evil people and unjust people, might in the long run end up creating less suffering and death. And so I would guess that for Lewis, suffering and death are probably his metric for what determines good. Well, if that's the case, then he's going to have some problems consistently, being a Christian.

Derek: 06:13

Because if that's really how we are defining good by reducing harm to others, then man, how evil is, is our God? Because he could have mitigated absolutely all harm whatsoever. There could have been zero harm to anybody. All he had to do was not create. Well, we believe that God is good.

Derek: 06:37

And so there must be some definition of of good. The ultimate definition of good must not be based on whether or not harm and death come to some people. There's something bigger than that. There's something, more comprehensive than that. And I think the problem with Lewis's statement here is that his assumption that he knows what ultimate good is is problematic.

Derek: 07:06

And what what his assumption of the definition of good does is it allows him, as a consequentialist here, it allows him to say, I am going to choose war. I'm going to choose to kill people to uphold my definition of what good is, or what I think good is. Instead of, what I would say as a as a non violent Christian is that, look, I can't really discern what this ultimate good is. I can't I'm not omnipotent, I'm not omniscient. I don't I don't know whether my what my action does is going to bring about the end that I really intend.

Derek: 07:48

I I don't know what's gonna happen with what I do. And so my metric for action is not perceived ends or, some murky, murky definition of good that I've tried to discern and formulate. I know that ultimate good for me is adhering to the means of Christ, obeying God, because to obey is better than sacrifice. And so God calls me to withhold vengeance, to not return evil for evil, to turn the other cheek, to take up my cross, to lay down my life, and I'm gonna do that and trust God for the end, trust God for the metric. And even if it looks like immediate results are not going my way or the way that comports with what I think is good, I know that my God will bring all things together or work all things together for good because I am in Christ.

Derek: 08:49

And so I can trust in that. I'm not a consequentialist like Lewis is here and like most of us are, in in at least one area of our life. Alright. Onto Lewis' second point. And in this point, Lewis says something that just really gets under my skin by this point, but I have to put myself in, the shoes of those who adhere to violence.

Derek: 09:14

And it's something that I thought too for for a while. And that is, Lewis says, pacifism means doing nothing. Right? To be passive. That really just bothers me because, and we've gone through this in a number of episodes.

Derek: 09:31

I think episode 5 was 1, where I talked about specific examples of pacifists. We talked about Bulgaria and, and Denmark. Episode 7, where we talked about Saint Cyril saying that, well, to refuse to do harm to your enemy in order to save your friend, that's not that's being passive. We really we just explored this to death. Roman, the second, part of Romans 13, which I believe was episode 13, we talked about what, what positive justice might look like.

Derek: 10:04

I mean, we've really we've really hammered this to death. But, yeah, I do also have to remember that that Lewis, the the pacifist Lewis was responding to were liberal pacifists. They weren't, from my understanding, they weren't Christian pacifists. So from my understanding of what the liberal pacifism, at least of of Lewis' day was, is it's it's sort of like humanism. It's just this, you know, humans are basically good and we just have to, you know, we have to kind of prop up that that goodness of humanity.

Derek: 10:40

And, you know, this was the the post world war one group where they thought, okay, this is the war to end all wars. We've we've learned our lesson. Humans have have learned now because we've seen just the the great horror and we won't do this again. And they were they were idealists who were kind of turning a blind eye. And and that's very different than the type of non violence that I I, adhere to.

Derek: 11:07

Which is that we recognize humans are fallen or depraved. If you think back to, to the if you were able to to see the link I I posted of Clay Jones and his discussion of evil, he makes very clear that evil and violence and atrocity, that's not inhuman. That's what humans do. And I am not a naive pacifist. I'm one who says that Christ called us to cross and suffering.

Derek: 11:38

I expect that that type of thing is going to happen. I live in a terribly fallen and evil world and evil will befall me and or people around me that I love. I expect that. But the power of love is what I am to adhere to. Not, retaliatory violence.

Derek: 12:02

Not, taking up control into my own hands. The way that I'm going to respond is through love. And that largely comes through not vindictive justice, but through positive justice, which is to which is pure religion. Right? To help the orphan, to help the widow, to love the oppressed, to be the voice for the powerless.

Derek: 12:26

That is, that is what Christian non violence is. It is, it is not doing nothing. It is not being passive. So on to Lewis's 3rd argument. His 3rd argument says essentially that war has been universally accepted and we owe government our service.

Derek: 12:45

So that's sort of, sort of 2 arguments there. And and first, my first response to this would be Lewis needs to take a look at the early church, because no, violence has not been universally accepted. And it's not just, like, moderns like Gandhi or MLK who came after Lewis who supported nonviolence, but you do have people like Spurgeon who came before Lewis. You've got the early church. And, I'm sure there are probably some others in antiquity who who argued such a thing.

Derek: 13:20

But Lewis is right. Most people throughout history haven't. But the early church in Christ did. Even if you don't think Christ did, at least the early church did, which I think helps to clarify what Christ said. Nevertheless, I mean, essentially, the this first part of his argument that has been universally accepted, that's just an appeal to authority.

Derek: 13:44

And it's really an a bad appeal to authority too. Because when when you look at antiquity and all of these cultures, and then you compare that to the early church who was promoting nonviolence, do you really wanna say that, we are going to judge our ethic of violence based on ancient Greece. And, well, they they realized that war was important and that nonviolence was stupid. Do you wanna base it on the ancient Canaanites? Do you want to base that on ancient, imperialistic Rome?

Derek: 14:20

Do you like, who do you wanna base this consensus on? All of these powers who had this huge self interest in this warmongering, bloodlust for territory and conquering other, inferior peoples? No. I mean, so it's an appeal to authority. And secondly, it's an appeal to secular, irreligious or not irreligious, but, authorities that are not filled with the spirit and have just, evil behind them.

Derek: 14:51

It dismisses the first 300 years of church history and what was going on and what they were saying. And so Lewis' appeal is essentially to secular secular authority and authorities post 300 AD, after the Constantinian change in government. So I I really just don't find, his appeal to authority, good. Especially when you look at Jesus and how he upended a lot of these appeals to authority, of sorts. Where he does these these kind of counter cultural, upside down things.

Derek: 15:33

The last, first, and just all of these counter cultural things that he does to upend the authorities of his day. Yeah. So, I feel like I feel like Lewis' claim here is just antithetical to to how we see Jesus upend things to the things he said, and to early Christian authority. And as far as Lewis's claim that we owe the government our service, I mean, that that gets us into some some uncomfortable territory again where, okay, I'm in I'm under the American government and, the Germans were under the German government. In World War 1, that means Christians in these separate governments owed each of their own governments their service so that the government could make them go, make these Christians go and try to kill each other.

Derek: 16:28

That that doesn't make any sense. I think you can look back to the the Romans 13 episodes that I did previously and and kind of hear how that would be hashed out. But here I would I would refer especially to, you know, in the book of Daniel it talks about how the types of people God appoints in governments are lowly. You can see that that governments are God's ministers. And then in first Peter especially, this book about really how we're supposed to deal with with wayward governments.

Derek: 17:01

And yeah, we, we submit to them, but we don't obey them because our citizenship is in heaven. And if my government calls me to go and kill somebody else, I may submit to them. And submission doesn't mean obedience. Submission might be, hey. Look.

Derek: 17:18

Government, you're gonna tell me to go kill my fellow Christian. I'm not gonna do it, but here are my hands. If you wanna cuff me and take me to prison, go for it. Here's my neck. If you wanna chop off my head, go for it.

Derek: 17:31

I'll submit to you. I'm not gonna resist. You can have have your way with me. That's fine. But I obey God rather than men.

Derek: 17:40

That's what it means to submit. It doesn't mean to do to do the wrong thing, especially illogically, where I'm trying to justify and moralize Christians going out and killing each other. That that just doesn't make make any sense that we owe the government our service. I don't know where we see that at all in the Bible. To Lewis's 4th point, Lewis says that almost all great minds declare that war is good and pacifism is evil.

Derek: 18:13

So once again, this is just like point number 3. I just refer you back to this appeal to authority. This maybe isn't quite so much authority. I guess it is because he appeals to great minds, but maybe more of an appeal to consensus. Once again, it throws out the early church leaders and people like like Spurgeon, and Lewis didn't know it yet, but, minds like, Martin Luther King Junior.

Derek: 18:39

And this this argument just doesn't really do anything for me. Point number 5. And this one, maybe out of out of all of Lewis' points, really hits me the most. Because up until now, I feel like Lewis's arguments have been extremely weak. But this one, I think, hits home.

Derek: 18:59

Lewis says that pacifism rests on ambiguous claims of Jesus, which are applied inconsistently. Now, I think Lewis could be right here, and we'll we'll maybe get to to a way in which he might be right in just a second. But thus far, throughout this podcast series, I have made a whole biblical case. We have talked about all sorts of rebuttals. And, you know, maybe maybe you think, it's not a 100% clear, but I think I've I've made the biblical case maybe, a 70 30 case for pacifism.

Derek: 19:37

As far as the Bible goes, when you when you incorporate all of the other evidence, especially the early church verifying what Jesus said and and, the inconsistency with the the violent approaches, particularly just war theory, I think we've got a pretty strong case. But, anyway, we also discussed how Christ's life is not just words and how they're prescriptive, how he is the image of God. That was, I think, episode 8, talking about the the messianic role. So I I really think Lewis is off base here how these aren't ambiguous claims because Jesus lived his whole life in in a particular manner and caused Christians to be like him in in particular ways, in the laying down of their life and not taking up vengeance, etcetera. It just so happens that that people decide that certain things Jesus says are ambiguous because they're they're hard to carry out.

Derek: 20:43

And, that that's just what I find. I find that that people, people think that Jesus is ambiguous where they don't want him to be clear. And that's where Lewis gets me. And I think Lewis would probably get most of us, here in the west. And that is Lewis goes on to say, one example of of how pacifists are inconsistent is that Jesus also says, give to those who ask.

Derek: 21:17

So if your neighbor comes and asks you for something, give to them. That's really hard for me. I know that I am materialistic. I've got a lot less than a lot of people I know, but I'm still materialistic. You could probably just go look at all of my Amazon orders over the past year and, look at our budget and what we spend our money on.

Derek: 21:42

Look at where we live, look at what we wear, and I can guarantee you that I am materialistic. The problem I have with with Lewis's statement here is what I've come to discover with my acceptance of pacifism is not that the words of Christ remain ambiguous, but my sin and my refusal to adhere to Christ's teachings are clear. My evil has been clarified with the clarification of Jesus's words. I, I am much more apt to believe that Christ's words are harder than they are easier. And I'll, I'll give it to Lewis here.

Derek: 22:29

He's right. Pacifists a lot of times do say that Christ said don't, don't do any violence. And that's easy for me because I'm not in a country where persecution exists. I live in a community that's pretty safe. I don't have to worry about really putting my money where my mouth is when it comes to nonviolence.

Derek: 22:52

But when it comes to material things, yeah. I do. And so Christ's words there have remained ambiguous in my life. And Lewis is right. We're inconsistent.

Derek: 23:05

But I wanna acknowledge that this inconsistency doesn't prove pacifism wrong. It proves just how wicked we are in our refusal to to follow Christ's words and in our willingness to, to muddy the waters of what he was teaching. Because what Jesus taught was radical. It was not easy. And you can just see the way that people reacted to to Jesus' teachings.

Derek: 23:31

Why don't we react that way when we read the gospels? Because it's not transformative. It's not radical because we, we make it metaphor. So, yeah. Lewis hit the nail on the head here.

Derek: 23:44

And and, hopefully when we get into the next series that I'm thinking about doing, we'll explore a bit more of of how Lewis' admonition here to to take to be more consistent as a pacifist has really been helpful to me in in our ministry in Romania and working through the evil that's in our own hearts, the materialism. I hope we'll be able to get into that, in in a bit. But I want you to know that I do think Lewis is right here. We are inconsistent. But that by no means, no means, disproves non violence.

Derek: 24:24

Instead, it proves how radical Christ's teachings are and how far we have to go to be like Christ and and what we need to work on. Number 6, Lewis says that pacifism is essentially just self interest. It gets you out of sacrifice. And I would say, okay. That might be true of liberal pacifists who are, you know, humanists and think that, you know, they're just kind of on the sidelines rooting for humans to do the good that they know they can do.

Derek: 24:57

But that shouldn't be true for those who adhere to Christian non violence. Because adhering to Christian non violence doesn't simply mean the avoidance of doing violence or evil, but it takes on this more, this holistic justice approach, which says that there's that the majority of justice is positive justice. It's the things that we do to uphold life. Christian nonviolence doesn't, avoid the call to self sacrifice. Instead, it's just saying I'm only willing to sacrifice self.

Derek: 25:36

I'm not willing to sacrifice others. Lewis' position says, hey, you should be willing to sacrifice yourself by going and trying to sacrifice others in war. And that, we talked about that in one of the episodes with with Patton, where, I can't remember exactly the quote now, but he basically says that, no dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. But he won, by by making some other poor bastard die for his. So Patton was essentially saying, hey, self sacrifice is overrated.

Derek: 26:11

Don't sacrifice yourselves. Your goal is to go and make the other person sacrifice for their country so that we win. And that that's kind of what I mean, Lewis wouldn't say that in those those words, but that's what his idea kind of promotes. It's just saying, hey, look, since pacifists aren't willing to sacrifice the lives of others, then really they're self interested. And Lewis' vision here, of course, is that, well, if I say I'm a pacifist, then I don't have to put my neck on the line by going into war.

Derek: 26:44

And, okay, that's sort of true. Although you do have an exception like Desmond Doss who, who wouldn't carry a gun but went in the war as a medic. You don't really have many pacifists doing that sort of thing. But you can look further back, you can look at the Quakers who were pacifists and who were a large part of the abolition movement. Ideally, people who are nonviolent should value life so much and should count their lives as lost, like Martin Luther King Junior, in his beautiful quote, a few episodes ago.

Derek: 27:17

We should count our lives as lost and there should be no less self sacrifice. The difference should be that as a nonviolent individual, I am not willing to sacrifice others. And my my view of all life as being sacred, even enemy life, should mean that I'm willing to sacrifice for more people than the violent are willing to sacrifice for. So that kind of sums up Lewis's 6 main main points. I think almost all of them are extremely weak except for the 5th point.

Derek: 27:54

And the 5th point isn't strong. It just points out hypocrisy. Which I think is warranted and which we need to work on. In the end, I feel like Lewis is fighting straw men, of of sorts. At least if if if you're gonna use Lewis to attack my position of Christian non violence, I think Lewis' Lewis' arguments are basically a straw man, of my position because it it's really fighting against secular pacifism.

Derek: 28:28

The secular pacifism of Lewis's day. And that's an easy target because they're idealistic humanists who don't acknowledge the the sinfulness of humanity and who kind of, and who don't promote the positive justice, and the inherent value of humanity. The 2 bases from from which I think, my Christian nonviolence really, really flows and gets its power. And whereas Lewis's, willingness to do violence, seems to largely be grounded in a consequentialist ethic where he thinks that the ends justify the means. My my proposal for Christian nonviolence is grounded in objective moral law, and and what God teaches us and what Jesus shows us and how he reveals God to be.

Derek: 29:22

It's grounded in the objective value of all humans and it is hopeful. It's not idealistic. It's hopeful because of the assured victory that we have and the promise that God is just and will bring vengeance. And however he does that, but it is not mine to do. And so while I sit here, making this podcast, I am hopeful, even though I recognize that the world is evil, I'm hopeful that God will bring about good through all things.

Derek: 29:56

And I trust that God will bring justice. And I can relinquish control because the ends are not mine to determine, the means are mine to follow. God desires obedience rather than sacrifice. And that's what I seek to do, to obey. But that's all for now.

Derek: 30:16

So peace because I'm a pacifist. And when I say it, happy.