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Remembrance Day. Exactly two months ago today, the people of the United States of America, and in particular, those in New York city and Washington DC were subjected to acts of cowardly evil. In fact, people from some 80 countries died as a result of those deeds. And, those on the ill-fated aircraft and in New York city were innocent civilians.

Following those events, not surprisingly, the U.S. declared war on those whom they concluded were the perpetrators, including the illegal Taliban regime in Afghanistan who continue to give safe harbour to the aforementioned perpetrators. This has sparked much debate, both within and without churches on whether or not war is an appropriate or justifiable response, both in this particular case, and in general. Today, being Remembrance Day, when, as we have done annually for many decades, we remember those who gave their lives for the freedom of others, including us here today, the question begs consideration. "From a Christian perspective, is war ever justified; does God approve of war?"

When we consider extreme divergences between the Old and New Testaments, surely one of the most marked is that of war. One cannot avoid observing how that the Israelites of the OT were often engaged in war, clearly condoned by God, even to the extreme situation where Saul is upbraided by Samuel, God's messenger, for not completing genocide on the Amalekites and their flocks. In contrast, there are no examples of war being condoned in the New Testament. Two things to be considered here: 1) What did our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ say, if anything, about war? 2) How did the early Church, and indeed the Church since then, deal with the God of war of the Old Testament?

The most often quoted phrase from Jesus, when Christian pacifists are called upon to comment on hostilities of any kind, including war, is from His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Before we turn to any of our Lord's other comments on war or warlike activities, it does bear mentioning that this well-known "turn the other cheek" exhortation does appear to be directed toward the behaviour of an individual, rather than any sort of collective admonishment. Even at that, I sometimes muse about situations: how does one "turn the other cheek" say, when one of your daughters has been raped in front of you and your other daughter, who is clearly about to receive the same if there is no intervention? That may sound extreme, but this does happen in many countries around the world today.

Otherwise, what are some of the other things that our Lord said or did during His public ministry? "And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be" (Mark 13:7). "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34). "he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one" (Luke 22:36). "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt. 5:9, the same chapter from which the "turn the other cheek" quotation comes). "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division" (Luke 12:51). "Or what king, going to make war against another king" (Luke 14:31). And what about those two curious episodes involving centurions? The first is in Matt. Ch. 8, immediately after Jesus has come down from delivering His Sermon on the Mount and a centurion comes to Him, pleading for Him to heal his servant. Jesus replies "Certainly, I'll come right away and heal him"'; but the centurion replies with words that we quote at every Eucharist, "Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." The servant is healed, and the episode ends; no mention of the centurion giving up military involvement. And then in Acts Ch. 10, where the centurion Cornelius seeks out Peter, who goes to his house, where everyone is converted, and receives the Holy Spirit. End of episode; no mention of giving up military involvement. Clearly, trying to find proof-texts that might be absolutely conclusive is not all that helpful in solving the issue.

How did the early Church attempt to resolve this? Well, they didn't really. Recognizing that our Lord's exhortation to "turn the other cheek" did indeed refer to individual behaviour, they proceeded on that basis. As we know from the history of the early Church, many believers were martyred rather than either respond with hostility to hostility, or to take up arms to defend themselves. The early Fathers, those who wrote many wonderful things about the faith, were rather silent on the issue of corporate war. Rather, their focus was on the individual. Origen (ca. 184-254) is perhaps the most interesting to read, as he does comment on the aforementioned problematic God-condoned wars of the Old Testament, confronting Marcion, who argued that the God of the Old Testament was "warlike, inexorable, and cruel" in contrast to the "Father of Jesus Christ" who was "gracious, compassionate, brought peace and forbade striving and war". Origen allegorized the holy wars of the Old Testament: "If the horrible wars related in the Old Testament were not to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, the apostles would never have transmitted the Jewish books for reading in the church to the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace". This spiritual sense which Origen means is clear: "If we serve in the correct way as soldiers under Jesus' direction, we must root out the vices in ourselves." This is echoed by other pre-Nicene Fathers - that war for the Christian believer is war against vices within ourselves - sin and the devil. To the very early Church, the term "soldier of Christ" dealt entirely with the individual believer fighting against temptation and sin.

As they generally existed under constant persecution, it is not surprising that the pre-Nicene Church believers never considered the possibility of their religion becoming the religion of their secular leaders. That all changed at the beginning of the fourth century when Constantine became the first Christian emperor. Many of us might recall that it was in a dream that he saw a vision of the Cross, accompanied by the message, "Conquer by this", re-emphasized shortly later by a vision of our Lord, confirming that he was to fight under the banner of the Cross. And so, for the first time, a nation went to war, under the banner of Christ.

A full century passed before it fell to St. Augustine to try to make some sense out of the inevitability of a Christian nation's responsibility to protect the good of its citizens. His argument is a little convoluted, and some will perhaps rightly accuse him of double-speak. Briefly, in complete agreement with the earlier Church, Augustine was not a fan of believers taking up arms; war was still not a good thing. However, he also recognized that a nation had a responsibility to ensure the provision of the peace that our Lord came to bring. Where he is accused of double-speak is when he rationalizes that the "turn the other cheek" exhortation refers to an inner disposition of the heart, which may be in apparent contradiction to the exterior act, as witnessed by Jesus' own example of not offering the other cheek when struck during his interrogation, and yet praying for His prosecutors "for they know not what they do." This split between interior and exterior allows Augustine to reach the position that while we should preserve those "kindly feelings" in our hearts, sometimes we must act "with a sort of kindly harshness".

Before we leave Augustine, some of his other observations are revealing. He did not see death as the evil of war, since the slain "will soon die in any case." Rather, "the real evils of war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power." He was clearly not a fan of the typical manifestations common to the battleground. The vices to which he refers are not merely the real evils in war, but also the objects whose destruction is the cause of a just war, for "it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake war." Beyond Augustine, we must really look ahead to Thomas Aquinas, some eight centuries later, for a fleshing out of the reasoning that for a war to be just there must be legitimate authority, just cause and rightful intention.

Many will perhaps too quickly criticize Augustine and Aquinas for their musings on justifying when a nation must go to war. What about the eastern Church? In my admittedly brief research, I discovered that their position is typically very concise, which we are often inclined to agree with in other areas, such as their seeing no need to know what happens to the bread and wine at a molecular level during the Eucharist. However, in the area of how the Church should view war, their brevity of position provides no real answer to the dilemma. It is entirely summarized as, "war is never good, but sometimes it is a necessary evil." At least in the case of Augustine and Aquinas, there was an attempt to explain what the necessary evils might be, how, when unavoidably, "war is the antidote to the evils of war", and was sometimes the only means to preserve or restore peace.

It is also wrong to point a backward finger at Augustine for the embarassment of the Crusades. If there is culpability there, it must surely lie squarely on the shoulders of Pope Gregory VII. The Augustinian just war tradition is about neutralizing the moral ugliness of war; it gives an ethical apparatus for Christians to alleviate the guilt of war. While Augustine made arguments for just war as a means to peace, that might seem today ambiguous, he never suggested that war was actually holy, or that war was sanctifying for the soldiers who fought. I'll not get into the whole long blot about indulgences and all that; most of us are functionally aware of that unfortunate part of Church history - certainly if we've been availing ourselves of the history papers being presented on Wednesday evenings. Suffice it to say that responsibility for the beginning of that whole unfortunate tradition rests on the shoulders of Gregory VII in the latter part of the 11th century.

A bit of a summary aside here, pulling together a theme that runs from earliest Christianity through the Crusades. This comes from Dominic Longo of Boston College in his paper, Confronting Our Tradition of Holy War, from a Christian Perspective. "Christian holy war is a war against the Other, whether interior or exterior ... Christian spiritual combat, that interior holy war, identified the adversary, the Satan, as the Other, in contrast to the Greek image in which the adversary is oneself. Origen exhorted Christians to learn from the spiritual sense of the Old Testament holy war stories to "root out the vices in ourselves." Constantine normatized Christian religion in the Roman Empire by waging exterior, physical holy war against the pagan forces of Maxentius. Augustine founded just war ethical reasoning by creating a split in the Christian person whereby the Christian loved the Other even as he killed him, all for the sake of the common good, which for Augustine meant the defence of Christendom. Gregory VII made way for the Crusades, in which soldiers destroyed the exterior Other - whether heretic or infidel - and in so doing were cleansed of the interior Other."

Where are we today, as Christians, in terms of how we should view war? Frankly, still struggling with the reality that our Lord made no absolutely clear and comprehensive statements in that regard. The issue of declaration of war is once again, out of the Church's realm of responsibility; she now is once again, as it were, on the sidelines. That, however, does not remove the burden of trying to understand God's will in this situation. In 1963, Pope John XXIII put forward Pacem in Terris. Very briefly summarized, it states that justice and peace are the reasonable goals of all nations - in that regard agreeing with Augustine - but that war should not be the means for achieving the same - being pre-Augustinian there. Realistic? God only knows, as wars continue unabated.

Remembrance Day. I for one, am most grateful to my father and uncles for unselfishly offering their own lives - "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" - for the peace and safety of their families and progeny. That meant participating in war. War is ugly. War brings out the worst in mankind. In closing I should like to share with you something written by one of America's most famous story tellers that should give all cause to ponder.

"It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

"Sunday morning came - next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams - visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabres, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! - then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbours and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honour, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation -

"'God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!'

"Then came the 'long' prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honour and glory...

"An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, 'Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!'

"The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside - which the startled minister did - and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"'I come from the Throne - bearing a message from Almighty God!' The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention 'He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import - that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of - except he pause and think.

"'God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two - one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbour at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbour's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"'You have heard your servant's prayer - the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it - that part which the pastor - and also you in your hearts - fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: "Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!" That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory - must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.'

"(After a pause.) 'Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.'"

Mark Twain: "The War Prayer"