Welby confuses Christ with Tolstoy

In the midst of the wholesale murder of Christians by Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury has called on Christians not to use violence in self-defence.

This entreaty was a veiled reference to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically Matthew 5:39, where Jesus talks about turning the other cheek. It was also yet another demonstration of His Grace’s dubious grasp of theology.

For talking about nonviolence in this context isn’t just bad geopolitics. It’s also bad Christianity.

In this world a successful society cannot be built on the Sermon on the Mount, especially when understood in a literal, mechanistic way. Nor can the Christian cause be advanced by selective quoting from the scripture.

Tolstoy was a past master of that art. He too loved Matthew 5:39, using it to claim, among other things, that Christianity is incompatible with military service:

“It should not be allowed that a man, true Christian, should be a member of a society that has an army and military institutions.”

The novelist wasn’t in the least bothered that his take on Christianity differed from Jesus’s – since, according to him, Christ wasn’t divine, his views were as good as Tolstoy’s, and usually nowhere near as good.

Yet, though Christianity is a pacific religion, it’s far from being pacifist.

In fact, during his time on earth Jesus himself was a member of a society that had an army. Moreover, when he received the Capernaum centurion and heard him out, Jesus did not demand that the officer give up the service as being contrary to his faith – even though one did not get to command a company in a Roman legion without being an expert killer.

Rather than waxing indignant, Christ was effusive in his praise of the officer’s faith: “When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”  

Nor is Matthew 5:39 readily reconcilable with his 10:34, where Jesus says “I came not to send peace but a sword.” This is not to say that the two verses can’t be reconciled. It’s just that the whole issue is much more profound and subtle than His Grace seems to realise.

Even though no great thinker has ever extolled violence, they all mournfully admitted that sometimes it’s necessary. For example, Aristotle, with his unsentimental reading of human nature, wrote in Politics that “There must be war for the sake of peace.”

Christianity too, while accepting that war is evil, has always believed that there exist evils that can be even worse. If such evils can only be stopped by violence, then in that instance violence is to be condoned.

That is why the church, including such seminal figures as St Augustine of Hippo (whose The City of God first expressed the concept of just war in Christian terms)and St Thomas Aquinas, has always blessed righteous war for as long as it stayed righteous – and damned unjust war for as long as it stayed unjust.

Denying Christians the right to use violence in self-defence against evil also obliterates in one fell swoop the entire history of the church, especially its crusading arm.

His Grace clearly doesn’t believe that the Crusaders, along with the heroes of Poitiers, Lepanto and Vienna, were true Christians. Yet it’s conceivable that without those men Europe would be a caliphate now, and Archbishop Welby an ayatollah.

Would allowing such a development have been consistent with Christian teaching? Tolstoy thought so. So, evidently, does His Grace.

The Archbishop then helpfully informed the faithful that the Christians being slaughtered by Muslims are martyrs and, as such, will ultimately triumph over evil  despite “their cruel deaths, the brutality of their persecution”.

That much is true and, when it can’t be avoided, true Christians accept martyrdom with courage and humility. It’s also true that martyrdom is a necessary qualification for sainthood.

But actively seeking, rather than nobly accepting, martyrdom smacks more of Islam than of Christianity. Suicide, after all, has been treated by some great theologians as a worse crime than murder, and, unlike murderers and traitors, suicides are traditionally denied Christian burial rites.

Suicide is condoned by many Eastern religions, especially those that regard this world as inherently evil and preach escape from it. However, Christ taught salvation of the world, not from the world.

Refusing to lift a finger to save one’s life is tantamount to suicide, and His Grace ought to have pondered such things before delivering himself of such ill-considered opinions.

One suspects that, unlike Pope Francis, the Archbishop is opposed to the West’s intervention in Syria, Iraq and wherever else Christians are being murdered.

It is true that such intervention would be disastrous – but only if undertaken for wrong reasons and, consequently, in a wrong way.

As the US, with Britain bringing up the rear, has demonstrated beyond doubt, intervening in that region for the purpose of introducing democracy and building nations is worse than criminal. It’s stupid.

However, intervening for the express purpose of protecting Christians and Jews, and punishing those who do them harm would be consistent not only with secular but also with Christian morality, which after all calls for defending those who can’t defend themselves.

The right end would dictate the right means: any Western action in the Middle East should be purely punitive, with the punishment meted out to be sufficiently cataclysmic to have a strong deterrent value.

In parallel, Western governments should generously and unconditionally provide refuge and help to our own co-religionists in the Middle East. I am sure that not even Nigel Farage would object to such an act of Christian mercy.

Yes, we should all pray for the martyrs, those being murdered for their faith. One wishes His Grace urged us to do just that, rather than indirectly promoting a course of action that’s bound to produce more martyrs to pray for.