Война

You wrote down... that your N., seeing that you were reading the book of the Right Reverend Theophan, with irritation, pointing at the book, said: “Let him prove to me that the Church is right in allowing murder in war, when Jesus Christ said: “Thou shalt not kill.” But, firstly, it is not the Church that is engaged in equipping troops and sending them to the scene of hostilities to kill enemies, but the state power, which in such cases may not obey the Church, especially if this power is in the hands of a non-religious government, as, for example, in Turkey. There, sending soldiers to war, the Sultan not only does not ask the Christian Church, but also does not pay any attention to it. Consequently, the Church has nothing to do with it at all. In our country, however, the Church also takes part in military operations, but in what way? While state power sends soldiers to punish daring and rebellious enemies, the Holy Church, on the contrary, inspires soldiers not to spare their own lives, to shed their own blood for the Holy Orthodox Faith, the state, the king and the dear fatherland. So she prays in holy churches for the slain soldiers: “For the repose of the souls of all Orthodox soldiers, who laid down their lives in battle for the faith, the king and the fatherland.” N. Yours may still object: “At least the Church does not prohibit killing enemies in war.” But if she is prohibited from doing this, then she must collide with state power, and in this case some of the soldiers will go over to the side of the Church, while others will remain on the side of the government, and mutual massacre will occur, and the enemies, having learned about this, will freely invade our fatherland. Will this really be better? And if, let’s add to this, if your N. were the first to fall into the hands of enemies who freely captured our fatherland, for example, the Chinese, and they began to saw him alive, how would he then begin to philosophize about the war? It would be interesting to listen. Secondly, to the above words of your N., who attributes the word “thou shalt not kill” to the Lord Jesus Christ, we will answer that the Lord did not give this commandment at all, but only brought this commandment from the Old Testament: You have heard what was said to the ancients (i.e. in the Old Testament): you shall not kill (Matthew 5:21). The real commandment of the Lord is as follows: But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother in vain is subject to judgment (Matthew 5:22). You see that the Lord does not prohibit murder, which was forbidden in the Old Testament, but, as the Perfecter of the law, he tries to eradicate from the human heart the very passion of anger, from which people sometimes even go as far as murder. From this, thirdly, one can see that the Lord, teaching people the commandment not to be angry, was not talking about war at all, since He came to earth not to found a visible state, and not to write state laws, but in order to save people, and therefore was a Teacher of Morality and taught people moral lessons that applied, as they still do, to each person in particular. In our opinion, we can simply put it this way: “When fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel, everyone look after himself, then things will be good.” Therefore, the Lord warned people, even threateningly, saying: Judge not, lest ye be judged (Matthew 7:1), directing His followers to pay more attention to themselves and their salvation (2, part 1, pp. 203-204). You might be interested in: