“How Augustine deals with Matthew 26 and Jesus’s rebuke of Peter for taking up the sword in his defense — ‘all who take the sword will perish by the sword’ — is of particular importance for the development of the just war tradition in Christianity in the centuries that follow. One response to this incident is already at hand. What was appropriate in the time of the apostles is not appropriate in a day and age when kings and nations have succumbed to the gospel. Augustine, however, does not pursue this line of argument. Instead, he takes up the important theological question of sovereignty over life and death and who has legitimate authority to take life. Discussing the commandment ‘thou shall not kill,’ Augustine argues that God is sovereign over life and death; God alone has final authority over life and death. The reason that the people of God are not to kill is not because life is sacred but because we do not have the authority to kill. Yet, Augustine argues, God shares that authority with human beings in two cases. First, God delegates or shares authority over life and death with those who have the responsibility of governing. Therefore, when these persons wage just wars or put to death wicked persons, they are not violating the commandment. The second case where God shares authority over life and death with human beings is in those instances where God explicitly commands someone to kill. Augustine has in mind here various instances in the Old Testament, drawing from the experiences of Moses, Abraham, Jephthah, or Samson, where God commands persons to wage war or kill in ways that do not immediately and self-evidently correspond to what is commonly recognized as just. Augustine’s reasoning is simple. If God explicitly commands one to kill, then the killing is just, even if we do not understand it, because God is just and could not or would not command otherwise.
“This reasoning informs how Augustine interprets Christ’s prohibition of ‘taking the sword.’ What is at issue in this prohibition is the authority to take life. And as Augustine interprets it, ‘taking the sword’ is a matter of killing without the authority to do so. The authority to kill is granted either by the explicit command of God or by means of the authority God delegates to the governing body. Hence, when one kills with the proper authority, one is not ‘taking the sword.’ Rather, one has, in a sense, been given the sword by God, either directly as an explicit command or indirectly through the power granted to governing authorities.
“What is remarkable about this theological justification of killing and war is what it does not say, what it does not permit. Killing is deemed not to be murder when that killing is done under the auspices of the governing authority. Notice what this omits — killing in self-defense. On this point, Augustine writes: ‘As to killing others in order to defend one’s own life, I do not approve of this, unless one happen to be a soldier or public functionary acting, not for himself, but in defence of others, or of the city in which he resides, if he acts according to the commission lawfully given him, and in the manner becoming his office.’ Thus Augustine, even as he leads the way in establishing the legitimacy of just war in the Christian tradition, like Ambrose before him does not permit lethal self-defense. Augustine makes this point in a rather striking manner in the midst of a discussion with a secular ruler about the propriety of capital punishment. Specifically, Augustine is discussing how persons who have persecuted and even killed members of his congregation ought to be treated by the secular courts once they have been apprehended. He argues that it would be better that the murderers be released from custody, even if such a move put the members of his congregation at risk, than that the murderers be executed, for, he observes, Christians would rather be killed than kill.
“This prompts us to ask what is driving Augustine’s vision of just war. Already we have seen that part of the rationale for just war is the political good of maintaining a certain peaceable order so that human life and community may flourish. But Augustine’s reservations with regard to Christian lethal self-defense suggest that something else is also at work. After all, clearly just war as Augustine understood it was not simply a matter of protecting the innocent, since there are times when innocent Christians would prefer not to be protected with lethal force but instead face unjust death. What is the point of a just war according to Augustine if it is not self-defense? On what grounds is he not a pacifist?
“Augustine was once pressed on this point by a secular magistrate, who on learning about the Christian faith concluded that Christians were pacifists and so could not participate in the defense of the city. Augustine responded by arguing that the Christian refusal of vengeance and their willingness to suffer and even die at the hands of their enemies was born of the hope that evil persons might learn from the example of Christians what is to be valued truly and that through the patient goodwill of Christians they might be prompted to repent, reform, and restore the peace. As he said, ‘we do not ask for vengeance on our enemies on this earth. Our sufferings ought not constrict our spirits so narrowly that we forget the commandments given to us. . . . We love our enemies and we pray for them. That is why we desire their reform and not their deaths.’ And, he points out, such a course of action (reformation and reconciliation via prayer) would certainly serve the welfare of the city far more than the miseries that inevitably accompany the violence of even just wars.
“Yet, as we know, this does not preclude Christian participation in just wars. Rather, it changes the point or intent of Christians going to war. As Augustine suggested in the passage just quoted, Christians are to love their enemies, and just war creates no exception to this. It is not as if Christians are called to love their neighbors, except when going to war against them. To the contrary, the commandment to love our enemies holds even in the midst of war. While it is perhaps not difficult to discern how waging a just war could be a form of love as one goes to the aid of an unjustly attacked, innocent party, it is more difficult to see how just war could be a form of loving one’s enemy neighbor. But according to Augustine, it is. Indeed, Augustine writes that the failure to love destroys the justice of one’s otherwise just actions in confronting a wrongdoer.
“In Augustine’s view, just war is a form of love insofar as it is a sort of ‘kind harshness.’ It is a kind harshness in the sense that the intent in waging a just war is the same as when Christians forgo self-defense: love of enemy for the sake of the enemy’s repentance and reformation. It is harsh because it is an effort to help one’s enemies against their will by punishment. But it is nevertheless a kindness because this punishment is a service to the defeated in the form of restoring justice and peace and depriving persons of the license to act wickedly. Thus a just war is one waged with mercy as it aims at taming disordered passions and vices. It is in this vein that Augustine exhorts the just warrior to ‘be a peacemaker, even in war so that by conquering them you bring the benefit of peace even to those you defeat.’
“But what about the deaths that inevitably occur in the midst of war? Does Augustine’s rosy picture of just war as a kind of benevolent punishment or tough love gloss over the reality of killing and death in war? Augustine is well aware of the death and destruction that happens even in the midst of a just war; although, we twenty-first-century people would do well to note that wars were not always as deadly and bloody as they tend to be today. Augustine recognizes the real possibility of killing and death, but he insists ‘it ought to be necessity, and not your will, that destroys an enemy who is fighting you.’ In other words, killing and death are possibilities, but they are not what a just war aims at. Rather, the aim of a just war is that the unjust enemy will turn from their wicked ways, make amends, and rejoin the community of peace and justice.”
— from Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather than the State (Brazos Press, 2009)