When a Nation Wages an Unjust War: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
When a Nation Wages an Unjust War
Just for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that you are in a nation waging an unjust war.
It has been said often enough that war reveals a nation’s soul. When that war is unjust, the revelation is painfully clear. Christians then find themselves standing where Augustine once stood—between an empire’s ambitions and the searching demands of the Gospel. Augustine understood that the tragedy of human history forces believers to navigate between the City of God and the City of Man. Moreover, he understood that the Church must not surrender its conscience to the state, precisely because the state, in moments of crisis, will press for a loyalty that edges toward idolatry.
The question, therefore, is not theoretical. It is pastoral. What does a Christian do when their country pursues a war that conscience, reason, and the tradition itself would call unjust?
The first task is to name the injustice without hesitation. Moral clarity is not arrogance; it is obedience. Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas established that a war lacking just cause, right intention, proportionality, and legitimate authority is simply not a war that Christians may support. The believer, therefore, must first refuse the seduction of euphemisms. “Pre-emptive strikes,” “surgical operations,” and “limited interventions” are rarely what they claim. The Christian must call violence by its proper name.
Reinhold Niebuhr would remind us here that nations are notoriously incapable of self-criticism. Collective egoism is more dangerous than personal egoism, which means the Church must serve as society’s conscience. The task is not to be naïve about evil, but neither is it to baptize national fear as righteousness.
Once an unjust war is recognized, the Christian must decide how to refuse. The refusal may take the form of conscientious objection, public dissent, withdrawal from material complicity, or clear rejection of propaganda within one’s own community. Christians have always paid a cost for such fidelity. The early martyrs understood this. So did the confessing church under Hitler.
This is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer becomes more than a historical reference. He becomes a mirror. Bonhoeffer saw that the German church’s capitulation was not sudden; it was incremental. In the light of a war of aggression, the state asked for silence, then acquiescence, then approval, and finally complicity. His refusal—both theological and practical—was rooted in the conviction that the Church’s first allegiance is to Christ, not the Reich. Faithfulness required saying “no” when the nation demanded “yes.”
Martin Niemöller followed a similar path. Initially supportive of the new National Socialist government, he later recognized how the state was appropriating religious authority to sanctify its violence. His famous lament—“First they came…”—was not the cry of a bystander but the confession of a man who realized the dangers of delayed resistance. His witness teaches that Christians cannot wait until the machinery of injustice is fully built before speaking. By then, the cost is greater and the options fewer.
Christians must speak aloud the truth they discern. Private conviction, without public witness, becomes a safe harbor rather than a moral stand. The prophets understood this. Jesus understood this. Augustine understood this. The confessing church understood this. The believer must testify to the truth, even if the truth is unwelcome.
Public witness can take many forms: preaching, writing, organizing, voting, protesting, advocating for peace, and supporting those whose lives have been shattered by the conflict. Silence in the face of unjust war is not neutrality; it is consent. Augustine would say that such silence cedes the moral terrain to the loudest voices, which, as we know, are often the least rooted in the Gospel.
An unjust war creates victims—refugees, soldiers, families torn apart, communities destabilized. Christians must place themselves firmly alongside the vulnerable, not the powerful. Bonhoeffer wrote that the Church must not simply “bandage the victims under the wheel of injustice,” but must “jam the wheel itself.” Standing alongside the vulnerable is not sentiment; it is action. Moreover, solidarity is not selective. It does not distinguish between “our” civilians and “theirs.” A refugee child is not an enemy combatant. A captured soldier is not a prop in a national drama. A grieving mother on the other side of the border is no less precious to God. Christians should stand where Christ stands—among the wounded.
Every unjust war forces Christians to confront the nature of his or her allegiance. The nation is temporal. The Kingdom is eternal. The nation demands unity. The Gospel demands truth. The nation rewards conformity. The Gospel rewards faithfulness. The believer must understand the difference.
The path is seldom easy, yet the Church has walked it before. Bonhoeffer walked it. Niemöller walked it. Countless unnamed believers have walked it. Their witness reminds us that the Church does not exist to bless the ambitions of empires, but to bear the truth of Christ in a world that repeatedly forgets it.
The tragedy of an unjust war may reveal a nation’s soul. The response of Christians in such a moment reveals the soul of the Church as well as their own.
Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
Excellent.
I was thinking through this with my Bible open to Matthew 25.
My conscience is pierced by the reality that no one else needs to die for me. No one else, ever.
How great the Father’s love. This is how we know what love is: Jesus gave Himself for us.
There is no such thing as a ‘just war’…
Muff
The phrase “just war” often sounds like a contradiction, and in many cases it has been misused to sanctify violence that should never have been tolerated. However, the Christian tradition did not develop the concept in order to justify war. It developed it in order to restrain it.
From Augustine of Hippo through Thomas Aquinas, the point was never to make war righteous, but to place strict moral limits on when force could be used and how it must be restrained. In fact, the theory functions less as permission than as a series of barriers—just cause, proportionality, last resort, protection of noncombatants—conditions that most wars fail to meet.
History shows how often governments invoke the language while ignoring the discipline behind it. That abuse leads many people to conclude that the entire concept is meaningless. I understand the impulse. Yet without moral criteria, the alternative is not peace but simply the normalization of total war.
So the real issue is not whether Christians should abandon the idea of just war. The real question is whether Christians have the courage to apply its standards honestly—especially when their own nation fails them.
What practical steps can enlisted soldiers take if they are convinced the orders they are given are illegal or immoral? Is conscientious objector status only for draft deferment or can active soldiers apply the doctrine as well?
Filbertz,
I’m not an expert, but this is an important and difficult question, because the moral burden placed on enlisted soldiers can be immense. History has made it clear that “I was only following orders” is not a sufficient moral defense. The judgments following the Nuremberg Trials established that individuals have a responsibility to refuse manifestly illegal orders, even within a military chain of command.
Practically speaking, soldiers seem to have several avenues available to them.
First, U.S. military law recognizes the obligation to refuse unlawful orders. If an order clearly violates the law of armed conflict—such as targeting civilians or prisoners—a soldier is expected to refuse it and report it through the chain of command. Military legal officers (JAG) exist precisely for situations where the legality of orders must be examined.
Second, conscientious objector status is not limited to Vietnam era draft deferments. Active-duty personnel may apply for it. The Department of Defense has a formal process through which a service member can request discharge or reassignment if their convictions against participation in war have become deeply held and sincere. The process typically involves written documentation of belief, interviews with a chaplain and a military psychiatrist, and review by commanding officers.
Third, soldiers who believe they are being ordered to do something illegal or immoral can request clarification, ask that the order be put in writing, or seek counsel from legal or chaplaincy channels. Those steps create documentation and ensure that concerns are taken seriously.
None of these paths are easy. Refusing an order or seeking conscientious objector status can carry personal and professional consequences. Yet history—from the abuses exposed at My Lai to the lessons drawn after the Nuremberg proceedings—shows why such safeguards exist. Military discipline is necessary, but it is not absolute. Law and conscience remain higher authorities.