[x] Crossway+ members can shop select books and Bibles at 50% off in our 2024 Christmas Gift Guide. To receive your order by Christmas, choose UPS Next Day Air.

Podcast: Was Jesus a Pacifist? (Tom Schreiner)

September 06, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Love and Conquer

In this episode, Tom Schreiner discusses whether or not Jesus taught a form of pacifism, and how we should square Jesus’s command to love our enemies with the way that God’s people were commanded to conquer (and even devote to destruction) their enemies in the Old Testament.

ESV Expository Commentary

ESV Expository Commentary

Three New Testament scholars offer passage-by-passage commentary through the narratives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, explaining difficult doctrines, shedding light on overlooked sections, and making applications to life and ministry today. Part of the ESV Expository Commentary.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

0:51 - Key Passages in the New Testament

Matt Tully
Tom, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Tom Schreiner
It’s great to be with you, Matt. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about Jesus’s teaching on peace and non-violence in the New Testament, how that does or does not fit with what we see in the Old Testament, and then how we as Christians should actually apply that teaching to our lives today. There is a lot there to cover, so I wanted to start first with looking at some of those key passages in the New Testament where we get a glimpse into, what many would say, as Jesus’s pacifism. His pacifistic ethic, so to speak. One of those passages is in Luke 6. Could you start us off by reading Luke 6:27–30?

Tom Schreiner
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.”

Matt Tully
What are some of the different ways that Christians interpret this passage and others like it? There are a few other parallel passages that follow along the same lines. How would Christians interpret this passage?

Tom Schreiner
I think with verses 27 and 28 there would be pretty much universal agreement. One of the things that stands out in Jesus’s teaching is that we’re to love our enemies. I don’t think that contradicts the Old Testament, actually, and some people disagree on that. There are some people who think that Jesus is standing against the Old Testament, but I don’t think that’s so. I think we have some indications in the Old Testament that we’re to love our enemies, but at least there is a clarity here in what Jesus says about loving our enemies. But it gets more controversial when we get to verses 29 and 30, because this is where some have read it as endorsing pacifism. Where he says if anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also; and then if anyone wants to take your coat (your outer garment), don’t hold back your shirt or your tunic (inner garments) either. I heard years ago, in terms of an interpretation, Ron Sider—I wonder if people still know that name, but he’s a good brother in the Lord and he’s a pacifist. I remember him interpreting passages like this and saying, If our enemies are on the border, per Jesus’s teaching, we should let them come in and slaughter us because that’s what Jesus is saying. If someone wants to injure you, you turn the other cheek. That pacifistic view, which really goes back to some early Anabaptists and Mennonites in the sixteenth century, I think that’s been attractive to people in recent years. We all know that war is horrible. I think we would all agree, if we’re thinking carefully, that both sides in war sin. So, Jesus’s teaching, if you take it in a pacifistic way, there is something—and I’m not a pacifist and I don’t interpret the passage this way—but there’s something really attractive about that. There’s something extremely noble about it.

Matt Tully
Wouldn’t some go on to say that even beyond that there is also something very straightforward about that reading? It seems like the plain meaning of the text in this case would just be that he’s saying what he’s saying, so we should just apply it as faithfully as we possibly can. But you say you’re not a pacifist, so why do you think maybe that plain reading, or simple reading, of Jesus’s words doesn’t do it justice?

Tom Schreiner
I think it’s very similar, if I could use an analogy to get around to answering your question, in Matthew where Jesus says don’t take vows, don’t take oaths. A simple meaning is you ought never to take an oath or take a vow in a court of law. Some in the Anabaptist tradition hold that view. But I think (and I’m going to kind of back in by talking about oaths) one of the interesting things is there’s that plain admonition, but when you actually begin to look at the New Testament, it’s interesting to see that Paul engages in oath formulas. In 2 Corinthians 1:23 he calls God as his witness. There are several texts where most scholars agree that Paul is using an oath formula to certify the truthfulness of what he’s saying. Then, of course, in Hebrews 6 we have God himself taking an oath to guarantee to us human beings the truthfulness of what he’s saying. We are weak enough that we need not only God’s word but an oath to guarantee to us that God is speaking the truth. I bring that up because those words about oaths and vows come from the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke it’s a different context, but it’s the same content. Whether this is the very same occasion in which these words were given, probably Jesus said these things often. He taught these sorts of things often. But let’s just look at this text. He says if anyone hits you the cheek, offer the other also. I actually think it’s a little bit clearer in Matthew because Matthew talks about the right cheek. What we have here is not someone hitting you on the cheek to kill you or to even beat you up in a fight, but what this is is an insult. You’re slapping someone with the back of your hand on the right cheek. This is hard enough, right? Jesus is saying if someone insults you, don’t reply. Here’s the first thing I want to say: Is Jesus literally saying if someone slapped you on the right cheek, turn to him the other? I would suggest no. That would be artificial and weird. If someone insults you, I don’t think Jesus is saying to offer them to insult you more. So what’s the point of the passage? The point of the passage is don’t have revenge in your heart. I remember reading years ago Watchman Nee—I don’t agree with everything he says—but I remember reading him and his comment on this passage really struck me. I think I include some idea of it in the commentary.

Matt Tully
Can you remind our listeners who Watchman Nee was?

Tom Schreiner
Watchman Nee was a Chinese Christian and he wrote lots of books. I remember one on Ephesians. It’s a great title and if I remember correctly it was Sit, Walk, Stand. That’s a nice way of thinking about Ephesians. You sit in the heavenlies with Christ, you walk with Christ, and then you stand against those spiritual forces. He wrote another book called The Normal Christian Life. He had, and I think he still has today, a big impact in China. I don’t know the exact dates of his life, but somewhere in the 1900s.

Matt Tully
That sounds about right.

Tom Schreiner
When I was a new Christian in the 1970s, I was reading Watchman Nee. What he said about this passage is he said you could turn the other cheek to someone and mechanically and outwardly obey what Jesus says and be full of hatred, full of rage in your heart. I think that’s an important insight. Jesus isn’t about the literal action here. There’s nothing wrong with turning the other cheek, but I don’t think that’s the point of the passage. I think the same is true with the next statement. I don’t think Jesus is really saying that if someone takes your coat say to him, Hey, do you want my shirt? I think Jesus is saying to sit loosely to someone taking your things. If someone is mistreating you, have a spirit where you’re trusting God enough to not clutch onto those things and have a spirit of revenge. Here’s one thing I want to say. If someone were to say, Now you’re taking away from what Jesus is saying. You’re trying to minimize what Jesus is saying, my reply is, I don’t think so. I think it’s extraordinarily difficult—I think it’s impossible—for us not to be filled with revenge in those situations. Think if someone has insulted you. What I’m saying about this passage I think fits with what Jesus is asking us to do. Jesus is saying, Don’t be filled with revenge in your heart. I can’t do that on my own. I think this causes us to depend on the Holy Spirit to fulfill this admonition. I don’t think I’m minimizing what Jesus is saying. So I would argue, and I think it fits with the majority Christian tradition, this passage is wrongly appropriated to say you can’t engage in self-defense, that there’s no place for war. I would count myself—and I’m not an expert on this—as a just war theorist, first developed by Augustine. But I think there’s a very simple way to think about this. Jesus is saying your focus here is not on personally requiting people who mistreat you. But if—and we can think of a family situation. I’m a father. If a killer comes into my house and wants to kill my family, is Jesus saying here that is wrong? I would say no, he’s not saying that. Protecting the innocent—which would include your family—is a good thing. It’s not wrong; it’s actually right. If you write that large, that’s really what the just war theory is all about. The just war theory is really applying what you do in your family—if someone came in to, God forbid, rape your wife—you would, if at all possible, restrain that person for justice’s sake, for love’s sake. It’s not because you hate the person who is doing that, but to protect the innocent. Here’s another point I would make, and you can jump in any time, Matt. I think when we look at these saying in Matthew and Luke, we have some interaction here with the Old Testament. Anabaptist interpreters tend to think that Jesus is abolishing what the Old Testament says, but I don’t think that’s true about justice. I don’t think he’s abolishing the Old Testament. I think he’s helping us rightly understand it.

14:36 - Key Passages in the Old Testament

Matt Tully
One of the things that you mention is that some people will take passages like this and they sort of see a contrast between what Jesus is saying in the New Testament—maybe even other authors in the New Testament, but especially Jesus—with what we see in the Old Testament. You’ve already said you don’t think that’s the right way to view this, but could you unpack that a little bit more? One example from the Old Testament, in the first few verses of Deuteronomy 7, God commands Israel to enter into the promised land and to “devote to destruction” (Deut. 7:2) and show no mercy to the people who are living there. I think for a lot of Christians, and non-Christians, that just feels very different, and perhaps even contradictory, to not just the specific things that Jesus said in the New Testament but even the whole ethos that he seems to give off as a person. So they wonder how those fit together. How do you see those examples of violence and aggression in the Old Testament, often at God’s command, fitting with Jesus’s admonition to love our enemies?

Tom Schreiner
That is a difficult question, and there are some who want to reject those texts even as the word of God. I’ve run across more than one person who would claim to be an evangelical who will say, Well, supposedly God said to engage in destruction, but that was just the bad attitude of the Israelites. I think that’s really impossible to sustain exegetically.

Matt Tully
At least if we want to hold to an inspiration, inerrant view of Scripture.

Tom Schreiner
That’s right. Exactly. I think the first thing I would say is God holds the right to take people’s lives when he wishes, and he takes lives in different ways. God is sovereign over life and death. We read this in a number of scriptures. For example, in Hannah’s song. God kills and God makes alive. God brings down to Sheol and God raises up. If God gives the Israelites a command, as his people, to wipe out a certain civilization, he has the right to do that. I think we would want to say—and I think most Christians would agree on this—there are covenantal differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Israel as a people was both a spiritual people and a political entity—a governing entity. And, of course, as the church of Jesus Christ we’re not a nation. We’re in every nation now. There’s no particular nation that today is God’s people. But Israel as God’s people was charged to purify the land and put to death the people in it. It’s very interesting to read Genesis 15 because in that passage God says to Abraham, No, Israel will not enter this land yet because the iniquity of the Ammorite is not yet complete. So God was patient. It was four or six hundred more years (depending on your dating) before the people in those lands were punished by God. God was very patient. I think everyone would agree that there is no war today that is to match the war the Israelites were to carry out on the people of the land. They were to kill, in many cases, every man, woman, and child and burn everything in the city. They didn’t do that in every case, but in many cases there was total destruction. I think most would agree that was a unique situation. If you hold to inerrancy and infallibility, God gave that specific command to the Israelites. Interestingly, if the nations were outside the land, Israel was to try to negotiate a peace with them. They didn’t have the same call to annihilate every man, woman, and child. We have to recognize there are some specific differences between the testaments. But then, I think to get to your question, I don’t think the New Testament itself, and Jesus’s teaching is rightly interpreted to say, that war itself by definition is evil. I don’t think Jesus is addressing that question per say. Jesus is talking about personal relationships. I think it’s very interesting to look at Romans 12 and Romans 13. At the very end of Romans 12, Paul says something very similar to what Jesus says. He says, Don’t avenge yourselves. Don’t take vengeance on others, but if your enemy mistreats you, feed him and give your enemy something to drink. Treat them with kindness. Don’t requite them. Don’t take vengeance on them. Overcome evil with good. So I want to just pause right there again and say those are nice words, but that’s amazing. We all have to confess our sins here. Just to think of that requirement is something that is very much in the spirit of Jesus. But the very next passage in Romans 13 Paul turns to the government. There Paul says the government has a responsibility to carry out justice. The government does not bear the sword in vain. Which, by the way, I think is talking about capital punishment. I think there’s a principle in that passage that governing authorities play a role that individuals personally do not. If you put what Jesus says with the Old Testament or with what Paul says in Romans 12 and Romans 13, I think we can put it together this way: personally and individually, we are not the agents of justice in the world. Jesus teaching us and Paul teach us, Don’t take vengeance. Have a spirit of forgiveness and non-retaliation. But governing authorities have a responsibility to protect their citizens and to see that justice is done. It’s an imperfect world, but there are instances where I think it is right and good to defend, by violent means, people from those who want to inflict evil on others. The first thing we have to say is, of course! In every situation like this, the good guys—are there good guys?—the good guys sin too, because it’s not a perfect world and there’s no perfect war. But we have to be careful of not being naive and simplistic. Yes, the side that’s in the right will sin in the war and there’s no excuse for that, but that doesn’t mean the war itself was wrong.

Matt Tully
It’s interesting that in the way you’re phrasing this you’re kind of saying the New Testament seems to suggest that there’s a certain appropriateness for governing authorities to wield the sword, in a way, and to pursue justice that individuals don’t have the right to do. It feels like a particularly interesting teaching today in light of where we’re at as a culture. It seems like more than ever before there is a certain skepticism about the state’s use of force in the pursuit of “justice.” There is maybe more than ever before perhaps an openness to personal judgement in pursuit of justice, even with things like violence. How do you think about that? It seems like Scripture presupposes that the governing authorities are truly pursuing justice, and yet we look around and maybe we see that there are examples where it doesn’t seem like that’s actually happening or that’s the facade behind which people are doing wrong. How do we actually take and apply this teaching today when it seems like that happens?

Tom Schreiner
It’s complex because we also have Revelation 13. The state can also act as a beast, as an antichrist. Surely, the governing authorities put Jesus to death. The governing authorities mistreated Paul and the apostles in Acts.

Matt Tully
So it’s not like Jesus and Paul were naive about how morally upright and virtuous the government would always be.

Tom Schreiner
Exactly. It’s fascinating because some people will read Romans 13 as if Paul never thought of (because he says to obey the government because it’s a force for good)—some people have read that passage and will say, Paul wrote that when Nero was in his good phase as the emperor of Rome. By the way, Nero was the emperor who had a relatively good phase and then he really went towards the evil side towards the end of his reign. Some people will read that and say, Well, Paul wrote that when Nero was good and he didn’t really think of the fact that the governments could do wrong. My response to that is are you serious? Paul read the Old Testament. He saw what Pharaoh did to the Egyptians. He knew about Nebuchadnezzar and he knew what Rome did to Jesus. Paul wasn’t naive, so it’s complex. Governments can be forces for evil. The biblical writers know that. There are times to resist government. Even in the twentieth century we think of the horrors of the Nazi regime. We can think of the regime in North Korea today. Every government has to be judged in terms of relative terms. No government is perfect. Some governments are better than others. That’s obvious. With all the problems the United States has, there’s a reason immigrants want to come to the United States. We’re not guaranteed that it will be a good place to be forever. We could turn into a very evil regime. Obviously, there’s evil here too. I’m not being simplistic. Some governments are better than others, that’s obvious. That’s been true all through history. So, Christians reflecting on just war theory have argued we have to use discernment. Is the war truly a just one? That takes moral reflection in terms of motives and aims and intentions. Those are complex issues. The hope is that leaders will exercise that kind of prudential judgement before engaging in violence. I would say that vigilante violence is ruled out. You can always think of exceptions and exceptional cases. Obviously, if someone’s coming to kill—maybe I shouldn’t say obviously because not everyone would agree—and destroy people, I think there’s a place for self-defense. But I’m very hesitant about vigilante justice being carried out by people. We’re talking about an extraordinarily complex thing. The Reformers talked about is there a place for a lesser magistrate to rebel against their superiors. You could use an argument like that (I’m not going to solve this issue today) to justify the Revolutionary War. You had lesser magistrates in the colonies who were saying that what the British government was doing was fundamentally unjust and therefore resistance was valid. Obviously, that’s debated and that would be a rare situation. But there are lower leaders for whom I think the principle is right. In our country, states could resist the federal government if they felt and had good moral reasons to say that the federal government was requiring things that are fundamentally unjust.

Matt Tully
Is there anything to the view, in your opinion, that in the New Testament Jesus is introducing some kind of new social ethic that in some way advances the morality we see in the Old Testament? Maybe not a contradictory ethic, but in some way takes a step forward. Or do you think that would be a misreading of the Old Testament?

Tom Schreiner
I don’t disagree with that. I think there’s an intensification and a clarity in Jesus’s ethic, and we don’t have that same kind of clarity in the Old Testament. I think we understand how to read the Old Testament better after hearing what Jesus says. So, I think there is an advance in Jesus’s teaching. I don’t think it’s fundamentally at odds with the Old Testament, but there’s a clarity and intensification of what it means. I think it’s there in the Old Testament—think of the Ten Commandments. Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, but you have that tenth commandment. I believe that tenth commandment informs all nine. At the end of the day, I think you see Jesus drawing that out, even in the Sermon on the Mount and the sermon on the plain. Jesus says do not murder. If you look at it through the lens of coveting, it doesn’t just mean don’t murder, but don’t be angry. So I think it’s there in the Ten Commandments and other sayings in the Old Testament as well, but it doesn’t have the same kind of clarity. Jesus says, You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you. There are big debates on how to interpret those sayings in Matthew 5. Some people think Jesus is actually advancing a new ethic over against the Old Testament. I lean towards the view—and good people disagree on this—that Jesus is rightly interpreting the Old Testament, not contradicting it in those statements.

31:50 - Did Jesus Bring Peace or a Sword?

Matt Tully
Another passage, or collection of passages, that I think are important for this conversation is Luke 12:51 and others like it that sound a different note than what we’ve just heard Jesus say earlier in Luke. He says, “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And again in Matthew 10:34 it’s even more stark: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” What was Jesus getting at in these verses?

Tom Schreiner
I don’t think (and I think most would agree here) this has anything to do with physical war and violence.

Matt Tully
So the sword is metaphorical.

Tom Schreiner
The sword is metaphorical of the division that comes in families and social units because of faith in Jesus. That’s happened in my very own family. When I came to faith in Jesus, those of my family members who aren’t believers are still friendly to me, but there was a division that came about. We can think in most places in the world the culture of the United States and the Western world is quite different, but families are so tightly bound together and everybody in the family believes the same thing. Jesus is saying, No, I’ve come to bring division because some are going to belong to me and some are not. That’s going to cut in two (separate) those family units. Many, many people could still tell that story all over the world today. They love their family, but they love Jesus first. I think Jesus is saying, Don’t think when you become my disciple everybody in your family is going to necessarily agree with you. If you come from a Christian family, that’s a wonderful privilege and joy if everyone is a believer, but many people don’t have that experience and many people haven’t had that experience.

Matt Tully
Broadening it out from families, is it appropriate to even apply those words and that reset expectations. It seems like in the last fifty years or so there has been a certain breakdown of a culture that Christians have enjoyed where many, many people in our culture were at least claiming to be Christians in some way or another. We kind of see that changing over the last few decades. Would this passage speak to that at all and our expectations on that front?

Tom Schreiner
I think that’s a very good question, and I think so. I’m older, so I remember days where—and obviously, the Christian faith has always been opposed—but clearly, the opposition is more overt than it was when I was younger. I think it can be hard—and maybe it’s harder for older people than younger people, generally, because older people have this expectation that we’d be respected for being Christians. Before I was a believer, I knew I should be a Christian and follow Jesus. I didn’t even really know what that meant, but I grew up in cultural waters where I knew I should be following God. I don’t think most unbelievers now think that. So yes, we live in a different cultural arena and there are unique challenges. I think one of the challenges is we all want to belong. We want to be at the center of what’s happening. Maybe it was a bit of an illusion, but I think Christian’s of past generations in the United States felt, Well, we are at the center. Now we know in a more clear way that we’re not. We’re clearly at the margins, but that’s been the story of the Christian faith throughout history.

36:29 - Application of Key Passages

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to what would be the correct application of some of these passages that we’ve looked at, specifically when it comes to what Jesus is teaching us about the use of violence and the use of force. Let’s start with the simplest one to explore. How do we apply these passages to the issue of self-defense? Do Christians have the right to use violence to defend themselves when they’re attacked?

Tom Schreiner
Yes, I think Christians do have the right. Since I think these passages are talking about being insulted and mistreated, I think Christians would agree you want to use the minimum of force necessary. Not the maximum, but you are permitted to do what you can to restrain evil. I think that is legitimate. I do not interpret these texts as saying if someone wants to come up and beat you up or kill you that you simply should receive that. I think you can defend yourself.

Matt Tully
An important distinction there that I think you drew out earlier was that you would be able to use force and violence to stop the attack, but you’re not then going further and pursuing “justice.” You’re not doing more violence in order to punish. That would be something that you would leave to the state. Is that right?

Tom Schreiner
That’s right. Exactly. It’s the state’s role to make things right, but I think if someone is going to inflict physical harm on you, you can restrain them in an appropriate way. Our laws in the United States have been formed by the Christian faith, and I think our laws reflect that. You can defend yourself, but the defense needs to be restrained. It’s interesting in the Old Testament that the if the thief comes during the day, the Old Testament says you can’t kill him. I don’t think that applies literally today because the thief today may come with a gun. But in the Old Testament there’s the recognition that they’re not going to hurt you during the day.

Matt Tully
Interesting. So that is what is assumed behind that command?

Tom Schreiner
I think so because they say if you kill them at night you’re off.

Matt Tully
What about a related issue—not defending your own self, but defending other people. It could be your family or it could be just someone who is weaker or more vulnerable than you are. Are there any other ways that we would apply Jesus’s teaching in that situation?

Tom Schreiner
I think it would be very similar. The defense of others who are about to be harmed I would actually argue that is the loving thing to do. Jesus is teaching if someone wants to insult you or mistreat you or take advantage of you, don’t let revenge grow in your heart. But to stand by—and I think this is true in terms of the whole canon of Scripture—but to stand by and to allow other people who you love, or maybe you don’t love, to be mistreated, who are innocent to be killed, wounded, raped, maimed, or brutalized I think is actually unloving and unjust. So again, you want to use the minimum of force necessary. We can think of a contemporary example. I think I read recently of a case where a guy rushed the cockpit of a plane, and the people on the plane restrained him. They didn’t beat him up; they just restrained him. They got on him—maybe they gave him a punch or two, I don’t know. But I think what they did was absolutely right. Who knows what his designs were, but presumably he wanted to bring the whole plane down. It was right for him to be restrained, so they restrained him. As you pointed out in an earlier question, they weren’t the judge and the jury. He was delivered over to the authorities when the plane landed. But I think that’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about. I think most of us who have an informed moral judgement would say, Yes, that’s the right thing to do in that situation. You saved the lives of hundreds of people by restraining that person on the plane. Let’s take that illustration a little further. If the restraint reached the place where you had to kill him, I think that would be just. Hopefully it doesn’t require that, but if it requires that, then I think killing in that case to save the lives of many other people would be justified.

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to that third category, perhaps the most debated and contentious of all—the issue of war in general. Would you say that Jesus’s teaching supports the notion of a just war?

Tom Schreiner
Yes, I think so. As I argued earlier, I don’t think Jesus is contradicting the Old Testament, but rightly interpreting it. Of course, there are some complexities there that we talked about, but I think the just war theory writes large what we are talking about at the personal level. Some wars are easier than others. I think most would agree that in World War II what the Nazis were doing was unjust and that they needed to be stopped and they needed to be restrained. What the Allies did—although the Allies committed sin, obviously, and did wrong here and there and maybe a lot of times—but the overall aim of the war was just because they were preserving the lives of people from a really brutal dictatorship that was mistreating many people. And, of course, we know now even the full extent of those they were putting to death. So there are instances where going to war is right. That’s an extraordinarily difficult situation. We pray for our leaders and it’s not always easy to discern what the right thing to do is, but I think those who say that the pacifist response is the only right moral response, I think that they’re mistaken.

Matt Tully
So it’s not that you would be arguing that any specific war or every war is always just. It’s just that there is a category permitted in Scripture for the idea of a just war, and then maybe Christians would disagree and debate does this war meet that threshold for justice or not.

Tom Schreiner
Yes. I think Christians have developed, starting with Augustine, very careful criteria to assist us in determining whether a war is just, and that’s not always easy. I remember I read many years ago a book by Novak titled Moral Clarity in a Nuclear Age. That’s an extraordinarily difficult question: Should you ever use nuclear arms? But I think that book is a very helpful book, even if you don’t agree with Michael Novak, to assist us in thinking through what does it mean in a nuclear age to abide by a just war theory.

Popular Articles in This Series

View All

Podcast: Help! I Hate My Job (Jim Hamilton)

January 06, 2020

Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.

Crossway is a not-for-profit Christian ministry that exists solely for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel through publishing gospel-centered, Bible-centered content. Learn more or donate today at crossway.org/about.