James Diddams: Scott Redd is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary, both the Washington, D.C. campus and the New York City campus, and the Steven B. Elmer Professor of Old Testament. So, if everyone would please give a warm welcome to Dr. Redd.

Scott Redd: Thank you, James, and thank you, everyone, for being here. It’s an honor to be able to join this conversation. It’s been a pleasure and a real treat over the last few years, since this conference began, to get to be a part of this from time to time. I’m always benefiting from and being sharpened by such a high level of conversation; it’s always beneficial to me. So, it’s a thrill to be with you all this afternoon.

Just to give you a bit—you may have heard from my introduction—I’m a professor of Old Testament. So, a little different than the usual fare at a Christianity and National Security conference. My background is in Semitic studies, the Semitic study of texts—Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic, Akkadian, across the board. I studied that over at Catholic University. But I’m also a child of Washington, D.C. I grew up with people who worked in the state at multiple levels, and so it was always a part of the conversations—the kitchen table conversations, as it were—in my household.

Coming up here and taking over this campus at RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary, we decided that we wanted to help serve that community that Susan was just talking about. Susan Gates, actually, is one of our graduates from RTS Washington. We wanted to serve that community too. We wanted to be able to go out and help that community—that is, really, Christians trying to think about how to do the different aspects of statecraft in a way that is not just kind of on the edges of their faith, but really a fulfilling, satisfying, wholesome outworking of their faith.

The talk I’d like to give today is really coming from that point of view. I’m not on the practitioner side so much as on the biblical theologian side, establishing—basically, we’re going to talk about four themes that undergird what could be a beneficial, generative, fruitful Christian view of national security. Okay, so that’s the goal right here. I’m not going to go down; we’re not going to have a lot of policy talk. It’s going to be more, “What are the theological ideas that take us all the way back to the groundwork of our faith, that can influence us as we’re thinking about national security?”

I’d like to do this: I’d like to talk about four major themes that come out of Scripture—four themes, four major values—that should inform our view of national security. Then I want to have about six reflections on those—just some practical reflections going down the road. What might this look like? Now, this is not meant to be the end of the conversation. This is supposed to be generating, getting the juices flowing for someone who takes Scripture seriously and wants to think about their Christian faith in terms of the work that they get to do, whether that’s national security, legislation, healthcare, education—you name it. We want people to be able to think in a more full-bodied way out of their faith.

So, here are the four themes that I want to highlight. Here are the four themes: Divine kingship—this could be called Divine sovereignty, but it means something a little different than what people usually mean by Divine sovereignty; creation theology; final judgment; and then, lastly—these are two themes, but I’m going to present them together—sincere faith/love of neighbor. Because it’s putting these two together that actually makes some significant impact for the way that we think about national security.

I want to talk about those four values, those four themes. Then we’re going to look at six reflections in the world of national security out of these themes that might guide us moving forward and actually help to form what we might call a distinctly Christian approach to national security.

So, the first one is this: Divine kingship. This just gets at this basic idea that we find in Genesis, but throughout all of Scripture—that God is a Creator King. He creates the world. As a matter of fact, if you’re coming at this from an ancient Near Eastern point of view, that story that we get in Genesis 1 is a story of His house being built. He’s building a house—a palace, as it were—and everyone knows that. Whose job is it to build things, to build cities, to build houses? That’s the king’s job. That’s what the king does. This is why the book of Gilgamesh ends with the story of Gilgamesh reflecting on the city that he has built and talking about all he’s achieved. This isn’t what priests do; it’s not what prophets do. This is what kings do.

So, God is showing Himself to be a king as well. He builds His palace, and then, like any good ancient Near Eastern king, what does He put in His palace? He puts Himself—or, rather, He puts His image. So, it’s important for us to remember this: There are two important aspects going on here. One, God rules over all of humanity, whether humanity knows it or not. God rules over them. Okay? Man plans his way, but the Lord guides his steps, says the Proverbs. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” What are we just talking about—America? Just talking about Israel? No, no. The world and all who dwell within it. The whole world is owned by God because He has created it. He doesn’t own it because He bought it; He owns it because He made it as King.

So, not only is God King, though—this is the fascinating thing—He’s now put us in His image on this earth so that we, as humans—this is a uniquely Christian, biblical point of view—we, as humans, reference something greater than ourselves. Just by being human, no matter who you are around the world, you reference something beyond this, what Charles Taylor calls the imminent frame. You are referencing the Divine King Himself.

That has implications for how we interact with each other, doesn’t it? That has implications for how we do politics—or what we might call how we order our lives together. If you’re dealing with some other animal, that’s going to have a different effect. But if you’re dealing with the image of God, who bears reference to the Divine King who created us, then that’s going to affect the way that you do your relationships, how you order your lives together.

But not only that—being made in the image of God has implications in Genesis 1, doesn’t it? The implication being that we are called to go be like kings. Both man and woman are called to go out and be royal in the work that they do—fill the earth with more of those images and have dominion over it or subdue it. That word is very much a ruling, kingly word in the Hebrew. We’re meant to go out and have dominion over the earth. It’s something that all humans are called to.

Now, even once the fall comes, that calling for humans to go fill the earth and subdue it is not taken away. It’s not abdicated. As a matter of fact, it’s restated again in the covenant with Noah. So, we know that this extends beyond the fall, though the fall has affected the way that we go about that work of imaging the Divine King.  

Okay, we’ll come back to implications later, but I just want to start with this idea of divine sovereignty. Let me give you a couple of oppositions to this as well, because this would have been radical in the days of Moses to articulate this sort of belief system. The belief system of the ancient Near Eastern countries would have been much more topsy-turvy, right? It would have been much more wild. The cosmos was a theater in which all of the deities were at war. None of them were, in a Creator kind of way, being distinguished like God is distinguished from the earth. They might have created aspects of the cosmos, but the aspect of the cosmos they created is the only thing they have jurisdiction over. Or, if they created it, they had to create it out of another god whom they had to kill in order to make the creation be what it is.

So, when you go to Baal, you have to remember you’re trying to convince Baal to be on your side, but there’s no sense that Baal rules over the whole of the cosmos, right? This is what Abraham is learning the hard way over the course of his life, isn’t he? He’s called out of Ur, but when he goes to Egypt—when he has to flee the promised land to go down to Egypt because of a famine—what does he do? He says, “Well, now I’m going to Egypt. Adonai must not rule there, so I need to go lie about who my wife is and say she’s my sister,” and kind of have this little ruse that they do. But what does he learn? He soon learns that even in Egypt, the Lord reigns. 

Then he has the same situation in Philistia with Abimelech, and what does he learn? The Lord reigns there. And then Jacob has the same—excuse me, Isaac has the same story happen with him there. What are they learning? They’re slowly learning this is not a family deity. This is not a deity who just rules over certain natural phenomena. As the psalmist says, The earth is His; the world is His.” He rules over it because He founded it. He created it.

So, the next theme—that’s Divine kingship. The next theme is this idea of creation theology. This flows out of this idea of Divine kingship. Humanity is set aside especially as imaging the King, right? And yet, there’s this other way in which we see the Creator in the world that He’s created, and that’s through this idea of creation theology.

Now, this is more—it’s not less than natural theology or natural law—but this is more than natural theology and natural law. This gets back to this Old Testament, very Semitic, ancient Near Eastern idea that the characteristics of the Godhead, just like all of our human ethics, are imprinted right in creation. You can see His character there.

Now, we get this early on in Genesis 1. As God’s creating creation, what does He do? He says it’s tov. He keeps saying everything He makes is tov. It’s sweet, it’s good. The root of tov is this idea of sweetness. So, it’s not just good in a moral sense; it’s good in a pleasing sense. And then, of course, He makes humanity in His image, and what does He say? It’s tov meod—it’s very good. “This is very good, what I’ve made here.”

The Bible unpacks this idea of creation being good over the course of the rest of progressive revelation, because it reflects God’s good character. In Proverbs, we see wisdom at creation, where Lady Wisdom is singing her song. She depicts herself either as a little girl or as a master craftsman. The word is a hard one to translate, but I think “little girl” actually fits better with the context. She depicts herself as a little girl at creation. She’s kind of dancing and rejoicing as the Lord is forming the earth. The picture is that she’s being woven into it, so that you learn wisdom by looking at creation. 

You want to know God’s wisdom? Go to the ant, sluggard. Consider her ways; see her industriousness. Go look at a lizard on a rock, as the author of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) says. You watch the sun as it moves through the sky; it tells you something about the effervescence or the passing-away quality of this existence that we have on earth. The idea being here that not only are all humans made in the image of God, but all humans are experiencing God in creation around them, whether they recognize it or not.

Now, of course, Paul makes quite a big deal about this—the Apostle Paul in Romans 1. He actually says, while you will not learn everything you need to know about God in order to understand the gospel from creation, in Romans 1, what does he say? You can see. You can see in all creation. Everyone can—everyone does—see the invisible attributes of the Godhead displayed in creation. Everyone has this opportunity to either honor and glory in them, or to reject them and to turn away. If they do that, then their heart becomes darkened, and their thoughts become futile.

It’s important to remember that in this world that God has created, His characteristics are to be seen all around it. So, we have Divine kingship—a God who makes creation, which is kind of what John Calvin calls “the theater of His glory.” That’s what creation is—it’s the theater of God’s glory. He then builds creation to be that. Creation is constantly bearing witness to God, both through us in ourselves as those who bear His image, but also as those who are in creation.

That leads us then to the next theme. So, Divine kingship, creation theology, and then next, final judgment. Final judgment is this idea that God has built a world that testifies to Him. He’s put in that world people who reference Him—people who reference the transcendent—and that they are inevitably moving towards a kind of final judgment. Now, that final judgment is not just negative. I know we often think of it just in a negative way, as kind of the sad part of the story when we talk about it. But we really have to recognize this as final justice. This is when all wrongs are put to right. This is when those who have been oppressed will see someone recognizing their oppression, their exploitation, and their abuse, and will say it for what it is.

We have to remember that about God. When God introduces Himself to Moses on Sinai, Moses says, “I want to see You.” The Lord says, “Well, you can’t see Me. I’d wipe you out if you saw Me. But you can see the backside of My goodness.” Then the Lord passes in front of him and sings this song about His character. He says, “The Lord, the Lord…” It’s a song about His name, really. And what does He begin with? Merciful—loves to show mercy and compassion. Then what’s the second thing He says? But is totally just—will not acquit anyone, but will visit the sins of the father to the third and fourth generation, which is probably meant to be a deterrent to the father. “You will see the ramifications. Maybe you don’t care about yourself, but your kids are going to be affected by this. Your kids’ kids are going to be affected by this. You’ll probably see this in your lifetime.”

What does Moses learn? God is 100% merciful, but He’s 100% just. We need to recognize that about our Divine King, who’s made this world to reflect His glory, that we are all moving towards justice. In other words, again to drive home this point, human history is not “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.” This is not a random warp and woof of events that we’re just caught up in the midst of. This is inevitably moving towards justice.

As an aside, this isn’t just about national security; this is about all of you. You have a desire for justice that feels deeper than just solidarity with the species, right? You have a desire for justice that is more than just you making sure your friends or your cronies make it in the world. We also have a desire for love and mercy and compassion that feels deeper than just our own selfish desires or selfish needs. The Christian, the biblical worldview, is telling you that there’s a reason why that is. There’s a reason why love feels like more than just a chemical reaction going off in our brains. There’s a reason why atrocities seem worse than just something I don’t want to have happen to other humans because I have some kind of species relationship to them. The atrocity actually does have a transcendent meaning.

Okay, and the same is true with justice—that all of humanity is moving toward that end. So, the Christian who’s involved in the work of statecraft, whether that’s national security or wherever, does well to care about justice, but also does well to remember that our God is a just God and that He will bring that justice to bear on Earth, whether we see success in those realms in our lives or not. That will come to bear, and we’re right to desire it.

Okay, so Divine kingship, creation theology, final judgment, and then lastly, sincere faith/ love of neighbor. This is important because this is really getting at this idea of a liberty of conscience, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion. Notice that nowhere in Scripture is hypocritical or compulsory faith celebrated. As a matter of fact, even in the Old Testament—people might say, “What about Israel?”—even in the Old Testament, it was not enough to have compulsory, hypocritical faith. As a matter of fact, this is the thing the prophets talk the most about. 

This is what Samuel convicts Saul of when he comes back and saves the animals that he should have sacrificed, and he’s keeping them for himself. And what does Samuel say? “Does the Lord want the fat of rams? No, He wants your faithfulness.” He’s not looking for you to just go through the motions. 

In the New Testament, we see the New Testament covenant community articulating the same thing. Jesus is a God, who is a King, who is a Messiah, who declares His gospel, and His whole method is to have His gospel declared so that people might be persuaded and swayed to faith. Notice, He tells you, “Go, go preach the gospel to the villages, and when they reject you…” What does He say? Does He say, “Go put a militia together and go back into the village?” No. What does He say? “Wipe the dust off your feet.” That’s on them, right? “I want sincere faith. I don’t want whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones.” 

Most of His interactions with the religious authorities of His day are calling out their hypocritical, false, insincere faith. The biblical faith is an authentic faith. It’s not just about saying the words in front of a few witnesses; it’s about true belief. However, it is also an outworking faith—it’s a faith that begins within and works its way out into the world around us. 

That’s the whole idea of the Shema, the great prayer of Deuteronomy 6:4–9: “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad”—“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” So, therefore, what? Love Him with your heart, right—internally. But don’t let it just stop there. It’s not just about a private faith. It’s supposed to come out to your soul—which King James says soul, but it’s soul in the old way, right? It’s soul in the sense of how we say it still shows up in modern English a little bit when we talk about planes crashing and ships sinking, and we say there are 135 souls on board. We don’t mean 135 ephemeral spirits, right? We mean 135 people. 

“Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. Love Him with all of your soul.” Moses is going to come later and say, “I mean like yourself—where you stop and the world begins.” But then, what’s next? “Love the Lord your God with all of your strength, all of your effect, your estate out there in the world.” Moses tells us what he means by that. He says, Therefore, put these words on your heart. Put them on your hands and your face. Put them on your gates and your doorposts. Talk about them when you’re on your work trips. Tell your kids about them and your family. Your love of the Lord needs to be projected all over the face of the Earth, and yes, that includes the work of statecraft.

I would argue, by the way, that’s just building out that cultural mandate that we got back in Genesis 1 to fill the Earth and subdue it. So, God calls us to a sincere but expressive faith. One of the ways that faith is meant to find expression—what’s the second commandment according to Jesus and everybody He talks to? The first one is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and strength. But the second one is to love your neighbor as yourself. 

That situation that you desire, that creates the groundwork for sincere faith—you should desire that for your neighbors. And as the apostles find out, as the disciples find out, neighbor does not just mean religious or ethnic comrade. When Jesus is unpacking “Who is my neighbor?” He actually deliberately uses someone from a different ethnic and religious background—that is, the Samaritan. This is, by definition, a global concept of loving neighbor. 

So, that means that when we go about the work of national security as Christians, we’re not wrong—let me argue this—we are not wrong to recognize the dignity of those with whom we’re talking and working. As a matter of fact, Eric Patterson was talking about that—the importance of being truthful and honest in our relationships, showing dignity, not showing partiality. The Hebrew way to say that is “not lifting up faces”—some faces over other faces, right? 

So, this is value one, or reflection one, on our four values. Because we believe in this idea that all humanity bears the dignity of the Divine King, when we interact with humanity, we do well to always approach them with a spirit of respect, of truthfulness, of mutual flourishing, of shalom.

Abraham Kuyper says the job of the public theologian is to increase common grace, to maximize common grace as much as possible with everyone around you, regardless of their religious beliefs. I should want Russians to have common grace maximized. I should want the Iranians to have common grace maximized in Iran. As Christians, we should desire those kinds of things because we desire them to see themselves made in the image of God and to be able to give expression to that image-bearing self that they are. 

However, we also have to recognize the Fall. I think Christianity, the biblical faith, gives us an incredibly powerful application in terms of how to deal with other people. We both recognize the beauty of everyone that we see in this room. You can walk into a room like this and be overwhelmed by the humanity and recognize that it is actually more beautiful than just the sum of our parts. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that we get to interact with one another—it’s a beautiful thing. 

And yet, because of the Fall, we also recognize these humans who are made in the image of God can also do gravely terrible things, right? We should never be shocked when we see evil in the world around us. The Fall gives us an answer to that. 

I remember—I don’t know why, but when I was thinking about this, what came to mind was way back early in my childhood, okay, in the 70s. I remember this idea. Jimmy Carter had run as a Christian to be president. His faith was very public, and it was a big part of his persona as president. If you remember, the Soviets went into Afghanistan. One of the things was that they had said they would not, okay? And after they did invade Afghanistan, he came out and he had a press conference where he said he was shocked—shocked that they deceived him. He was shocked that they lied. 

To a certain extent, I want to say, as a believer, you shouldn’t have been too shocked, right? This is something that humans do. So yes, meet with people. Expect the best. Show dignity. Honor them when we’re going about the work of international policy. And yet, at the same time, recognize that sin has broken the world, and we should always, always be ready for that contingency, always be watching for it and be on guard against it.

However, with that said, we do begin to get what Augustine will later call a Just War Theory out of Scripture, out of these ideas. For instance, Israel is a common topic when someone starts talking about statecraft and Christianity because you go, “Well, I’ve got ancient Israel. Isn’t that a state? Why don’t we just do whatever they’re doing?” 

The problem with that is a variety of reasons. As someone who teaches the prophets, I would argue the prophets didn’t expect that to happen. I would definitely argue that the apostles and the disciples didn’t see that as happening. As a matter of fact, when Paul sees civil laws for Israel—like capital offense laws and that kind of thing—when he applies them into his present day, he applies them into the life of the church. These are the covenant communities that are now realized in the life of the redemptive community of the church. 

Without going all into that—there are all kinds of things we could talk about down that road—let me point this out: We don’t just get rules for how Israel is supposed to deal with the countries that are in the promised land. When people talk about foreign policy in Israel, you often think, “Well, the ḥerem ban, right?” This ban against all the people who live in the land. 

Now, we could talk about the ḥerem ban as well. I’d love to have—we could do another 30 minutes talking through that because I think it’s a fascinating topic. But I would point out: Notice Moses says those countries are special, okay? Not only is it special, it’s very limited in terms of what you’re able to do. When they don’t do it well, the Lord says it’s okay when they show mercy—like to Rahab and to the cities that deceive them into covenants. Remember that. Interestingly, those cities are involved in the restoration community after exile, much later. They’ve been totally absorbed into Israel, okay? So, just keep that in mind when we’re talking about the ḥerem ban.

But notice Moses actually also gives rules for how to go out to the other nations. So this, presumably, is kind of like rules for how nations ought to interact. In Deuteronomy 20, we learn that when you’re aggressed by another nation, you should always sue for peace through diplomacy first. It says things like, “Don’t take the young men who just had kids; they need to raise their families.” He’s got all these special rules, which is actually something we can learn something from as well. 

But notice this idea: You’re not supposed to go out with your guns blazing right away. This is the beginning of a Just War Theory, right? You’re supposed to actually first exhaust every other option before going to war. Check out Deuteronomy 20 if you haven’t before. It’s interesting—the rules for warfare. Now, He does tell you what happens when they don’t respond to diplomacy. Then He talks about how you go to war. 

One way that you go to war is openly and honestly. You go to war truthfully about why you’re going to war and what’s happening. You don’t just have a culture of constant war. You go to war with clear parameters and objectives. When you go to war, you have a definition for what it looks like to win the war. That, again, I think, gets both at the truthfulness and the honesty that we’re called to, but also the mercy of not having ongoing mission drift from one thing to another. 

Recognizing that you go to war—the military’s job is to win, fight, and win the nation’s war—and to do that with efficiency and with as little additional damage or collateral damage to innocents as possible.

I think the Scriptures also affirm the idea of treaties. And I’m not just talking about the fact that all of God’s relationships with humans are based on treaties—what are called suzerain-vassal treaties. But you also have multiple parity treaties throughout Scripture. Jacob and Laban enter into one. Jethro and Moses enter into a kind of parity treaty. We actually find that Israel is entering into treaties over and over again with other nations. 

Think about how treaties are organized. You have the two kings come together, and it begins with a prologue that recalls the benevolence between the two nations. If one king is an imperial king, then it’s usually his benevolence toward the little king, as it were—the vassal king. But you can also have just benevolence, like how “we’ve been friends for so long.” Then, you have a series of stipulations that bind you in this relationship. Then, you have a series of sanctions in case the stipulations are not followed. You then draw in witnesses, and you complete it with a ratification ceremony.

That’s just the common treaty form of the ancient Near East. I remember teaching this in our Institute of Theology and Public Life, and one of our students who worked in the State Department said, “And that’s also the outline for the NATO treaty.” You go check around—it actually is. It’s kind of a common-sense outline for treaties. 

Now, I’m not saying that NATO is therefore a biblical treaty or something like that. Bear with me. But what it is telling you is this: It is good and right for nations to be coming together, creating alliances, and working together. 

Yes, their job—Romans 13-esque—is to care for the people who are put under their authority. That is what we call national interest, right? And yet, there’s a value to us working in alliances. We see this with Solomon and the northern kingdoms north of Israel, who interact through alliances with him to help him in the building of the temple. We see this, if you read between the lines in the prophets—not all alliances with the ancient empires were bad things. The problem with Israel is when they enter into an alliance and they trust in that alliance more than they trust in the Lord. Again, this gets at their redemptive aspect, right? But their alliances with Babylon, their alliances with Assyria, and their alliances with Egypt are not always described negatively by the prophets. It’s interesting.

So, what have we said so far? Diplomacy—well, the image of God plus sin gives us a powerful app on how we deal with other people. Diplomacy first. The value of treaties, number three. We’ve talked about this in extension, but just to point this out: fourth, truth and honesty in negotiations. This extends to the rules of war, as we said, having clear parameters. 

Okay, number five—I’ve got two more reflections. We already talked about this a bit with the idea of sincere faith and love of neighbor, but that our foreign policy should be concerned with the work of religious liberty. In other words, we should be concerned with being about the work, as Christians. Remember, I’m not saying these are the rationale for America to do a thing, but as Christians who are involved in national security, we should be interested—like Eric Treene, who’s in charge of the Religious Liberty Initiative for the Justice Department under Bush and Obama. He was concerned with and interested in creating contexts in which sincere faith can be pursued, persuasion can happen, truth can be spoken, and people are free to live out their religious liberty. 

And that’s not just for Christians. Because of love of neighbor, we ought to want and desire to see this for everyone, not just for the Christian church. I know that’s somewhat controversial in some Christian circles today. So, we should be a respecter of religions and religious liberty in our foreign policy as well, as Christians who are involved in this.

And then lastly, the value of transnational flourishing—a transnational shalom. It is good for us to recognize our national interest. That’s why we should be doing what we do when we’re going out to the field. That’s our responsibility, just like as you go out into the world, you love your family, you love your close friends, you care for them, and you’re concerned with them. And yet, that doesn’t mean that you should not be interested in or about the work of growing and extending shalom in the world around you. 

Again, I think this is an extension of our call. It gets to our deep DNA as humans to fill the Earth and subdue it. But not only that, you see other examples of this throughout Scripture. There’s the case of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar is depicted in his dream as a great tree, and it’s talking about his empire. Under the great tree, all of these animals and all the creatures of the Earth are finding peace and shalom. It’s presented as a good thing. 

We miss it often because we get to the rest of the story. Nebuchadnezzar then takes credit for everything, and that’s the problem, right? He says, “Yes, this is all because of my greatness.” But notice how he’s depicted. His empire, rather, is depicted as a beautiful, good thing. It’s a place where peace and shalom is happening—something that we too should desire for the world: to see flourishing, to see, again, as Abraham Kuyper said, common grace maximized for those around us. Not just for the church—but definitely for the church—not just for the church, but for the whole world. That should be our desire in this time as we await our Lord to come back and establish His good and just and consummate reign.

Thank you very much.

Q&A

Do we have time for some questions? I think we’ve got about five minutes or so. In terms of those reflections, those are by no means exhaustive. This was just, as I was going through the values and the themes, the kind of things that were popping up as I was thinking about the implications of these things in real life. 

Any questions? Someone back there?

Question: Thank you very much for speaking with us today. My name is Rosemary. I’m with Liberty University. I just wanted to ask, in relation to your point on clear parameters for what it means to win a war, looking towards the threat of the Axis of Evil—China, Russia, Iran. What would winning a war with them actually look like, and what would those parameters be?

Answer: Oh, that’s a big question, right? Well, what would winning a war with the Axis of Evil powers look like? That would have a lot to do with the context in which the conflict was entered into. 

Now, recognizing—I mean, I think we’re seeing a kind of, you know, we talk about ideas of a Cold War, but we’re not talking about a Cold War right now. We’re talking about going about the work of—and it’s been what we’ve tried to do with China particularly—is engage them economically, engage them culturally in other ways, which has had a mix of effects, right? If you’ve been to Shanghai recently, it feels very different than it did maybe 30 years ago. It’s kind of incredible how present consumerism and capitalism is there. And yet, it’s also been over the last five years that the party has gotten much more strong, and some of the effects that we were hoping for haven’t taken place.

But I think what we’re talking about, what we’re looking at there, by engaging with economic and political means, is a worthy strategy. A Christian can do that and feel as if they are doing a worthy thing. Now, going to war with China or Iran—it would be very hard without looking at the context. You’d have to see what it is exactly that brought about the conflict. Are we talking about the invasion of Taiwan, or are we talking about some kind of increase in the tensions right now between Israel and Iran? What was the thing that brought about the conflict? And it’s out of that you’re going to have to decide what the clear parameters are and the objectives are for the battle.

Typically—and these are things that reasonable people can also disagree about, right? As you saw with the Iraq War, for instance, the desire to go in there and to have a regime change—the parameters and objectives were met almost instantaneously. And yet, because certain things weren’t followed through with, there was a continuous period of conflict. I think we actually did see the drift that needed to be addressed over and over again, and it became a much longer conflict than anybody was hoping it would be.

So I think, again, once you go in, what is the pretense, what’s the predicating factor? And then out of that, you’re going to decide what winning the war looks like. It might be just mollifying the nation’s ability to operate in a certain way—like taking out nuclear capabilities and that kind of thing—or it might be something more, you know, closer to what we saw with World War II. There was one clear objective that had to happen: Germany had to be stopped. There couldn’t be a good peace plan with the Nazi Party. This had to be a complete victory.

Sure, one more? 

Question: Thank you so much. My name is Mariah Barnell. I was wondering how this applies with the just war parameters that were set up by Augustine and then expanded by Thomas Aquinas and subsequent Church Fathers. How do the parameters of just war and also the four theological values that you laid out—how can we apply that to modern warfare, in as much as, like, unmanned vehicles such as drones or even AI robots that are going around and just deciding on their own who to kill and who not to kill?

Answer: Yeah, okay. That last one—that last part of the question—I didn’t think you were going to go that way. That’s fascinating, and, yeah, I think what we have to do is… AI is a whole new area of conversation for us, isn’t it? Particularly as AI is just aggregating human knowledge, we have to ask ourselves, what are the inputs that we’re giving it? And you can’t just set it off to go do its own thing.

But in terms of drone warfare and everything, to a certain extent, drone warfare is an incredible, life-affirming—can be a life-affirming—technology, right? Because suddenly now, you can engage in battle almost—it’s in a way—okay, bear with me—it’s analogical to sending out David against Goliath, right? We get to protect the rest of the army and let the battle be fought in a very kind of small, contained way that doesn’t threaten widespread death and loss of human life. Now, I’m not saying David and Goliath are the same thing as drone warfare, but just—it’s a similar rationale. That’s why you’d rather have someone flying a drone from the desert of Arizona than actually being in a plane where their life is at risk.

Now, of course, you then have to remember that first point about divine kingship and the image of God. While you’re protecting your troops, it goes to a lot of other kinds of rules and constraints that just war theory puts on combat. Are you minimizing the death of innocents, right—of innocent people, individuals, and that kind of thing? So, I think you have to take that into consideration, even though the temptation is going to be, “Well, our guys aren’t in trouble, so let’s just go, you know, flatten the field,” right? 

That’s the thing—that’s the temptation you’re going to have to deal with. It’s much easier to press a button. There’s that moral distance when you press a button that you don’t feel when you’re on the field of combat. I think that’s going to be an issue that not just ethicists, but chaplains and counselors, are going to have to deal with, because they’re going to be dealing with people who are coming out of those kinds of situations. 

The kind of moral injury that you sometimes hear talked about—Mark LiVecche has written a good bit on this—it raises some questions about moral distance. When you have a moral distance, what does that mean in terms of moral injury, particularly when death is happening from a joystick and a button press? So, I think we have to, with all these new technologies, as Christians, be thinking innovatively about how we’re applying our values into these new spaces. 

I think they’ve got incredible impact. Again, I think it’s very powerful. These are generative ideas. One of our graduates just wrote—he just wrote his dissertation on applying just war theory to enhanced interrogation techniques. His name is Porter Harlow. You can find his book—it’s been published. He’s a good example of taking something that’s a very old idea—it’s one of Christianity’s only distinct contributions to national security questions—but taking this very old idea and applying it into a modern context with some modern implications. 

Thank you.