Pacifism (5)
595
Men who follow Jesus Christ, the dragon-slayer, must themselves become lesser dragon-slayers. And this is why it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. And to beat the spears into pruning hooks prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you fighting the dragon with a pruning hook. The Christian faith is in no way pacifistic. The peace that will be ushered in by our great Prince will be a peace purchased with blood. As our Lord sacrificed Himself in this war, so must His followers learn to do. Boys must learn that they are growing up to fight in a great war, and they must consequently learn, as boys, to be strong, sacrificial, courageous, and good.Future Men
If force in fact cannot be morally qualified, as the ideological pacifist will argue, then one will have to acknowledge that the entire criminal justice system is wrongheaded and that "criminal justice" as we understand it, whether in the domestic or an international context, is bound for failure and should be eliminated immediately as an utter waste of time and resources.War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Kindle Locations 1057-1058). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
It is not possible to disavow war absolutely without disavowing the task of establishing justice.
In its classical expression within the Western moral tradition, the use of force finds justification on four principal grounds: to protect the innocent, to recover what has been wrongfully taken, to defend against a wrongful attack, and to punish evil.76 The just warrior, then, takes up arms and enters conflict only reluctantly for the express purpose of protecting innocent human beings and preventing greater evil. The just-war position is made necessary by the fact that we live in the period of the "already but not yet," that is, in the temporal order that is characterized by human fallenness and penultimate peace. Like the pacifist, the just-warrior is committed to "putting violence on trial," in the words of one theorist; and like the pacifist, he will also evaluate life from the perspective of those who suffer and those who are potential victims.77 At the same time, unlike the pacifist, he will highly qualify peace and find deficient the world's definition of peace, fully aware that some forms of "peace" are oppressive, totalitarian, and therefore unjust.War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Kindle Locations 917-926). Crossway. Kindle Edition.
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2. J.C. Ryle (111)
3. Thomas Watson (108)
4. John Calvin (83)
5. John Piper (82)
6. J.I. Packer (76)
7. George Swinnock (69)
8. Louis Berkhof (62)
9. A.W. Pink (60)
10. C.S. Lewis (51)
11. Francis Schaeffer (48)
12. Gerald Bray (47)
13. B.B. Warfield (45)
14. John Owen (44)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (43)
16. Tim Keller (42)
17. Joe Boot (42)
18. Abraham Kuyper (40)
19. John Flavel (38)
20. Thomas Brooks (36)
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