For part three of this “Versus Series,” I am focusing on the British writer C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) and his views on non-resistance and pacifism. To gain some context for this article, it would be helpful for you to go back and read Parts 1 and 2 of this series if you haven’t done so already. As was mentioned of Tolstoy in Part 2 of this series, as you read this article, it would be helpful to note that although I agree with Lewis and many of his views, I do not necessarily agree with all of his views expressed in this article. At the same time, my goal is to bring out the very best of his arguments in the most persuasive way possible as to try to convince the reader of his views.
C.S. Lewis was one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century. In his lifetime, he wrote many respected books including, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity. He also held positions at Magdalen College (a constituent college of the University of Oxford) and Cambridge University (a constituent college of the University of Cambridge).
As was true of Tolstoy, Lewis was no stranger to violence and warfare. Lewis himself fought in WWI. In fact, he “…was actually in the frontline trenches on his nineteenth birthday [November 26th, 1917] …”1 in France. So, Lewis experienced first-hand one of the most horrific wars the world has ever seen. At one point in the Great War, Lewis lost two of his best friends. On another occasion, Lewis sustained three shrapnel wounds that ultimately kept him off the battlefield through the end of the war.2 At the age of 40, Lewis was also in support of assisting in England’s WWII effort. At the start of the war, he actually tried to become an instructor of cadets but his offer was ultimately declined.3 During the second world war, he also gave multiple talks to the Royal Air Force, wrote some of his most famous works, and recorded his BBC Talks that would later become Mere Christianity.4
As can be seen by his support and involvement in both world wars, Lewis although a Christian, was by no means a pacifist. Sometime in 1940, Lewis gave a talk entitled, “Why I am Not a Pacifist,” to a pacifist society in Oxford.5 Lewis gave George Sayer a copy of the talk and it was eventually given to and published by Walter Hooper in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses.6 In this talk, Lewis carefully expressed his arguments and views on pacifism and non-resistance.
The reason I have chosen C.S. Lewis for the non-pacifist side of the argument is due to the richness of his insights on the topic both theologically and philosophically. Lewis had a true gift for tying both faith and reason together. This is one of the reasons that his books have sold millions of copies over the years. As to be expected, Lewis’s approach to the challenge of pacifism is very systematic and logical. My goal in this article is to draw out those arguments in such a way that readers will see the beautiful amalgamation of his faith and logic as he wrestled with this complex issue.
Lewis starts his talk, “Why I am not a Pacifist,” with a simple clarifying statement, “The question is whether to serve in the wars at the command of the civil society to which we belong is a wicked action, or an action morally indifferent, or an action morally obligatory.”7 Lewis points out that the question of whether or not one should serve their own country in war is ultimately a question of morality. It is either something we ought to do, something we ought not do, or something that makes no moral difference at all. A fourth option not mentioned by Lewis is, to serve one’s country in war is only morally justified if the war itself is a “just war.” In other words, if you are fighting for something overall good and just, like freedom for the oppressed, then it might be considered a “just war.” You could use the example of the Nazis fighting under Hitler as an example of what could be considered an unjust war. In this scenario, if it is an “unjust war,” then it would be considered a wicked action to serve. With that said, most pacifists, including Tolstoy, would likely conclude that there is no such thing as a “just war.” To say it another way, all war would be considered unjust.
So, what do we do with this important question of moral judgment that Lewis raises? According to Lewis, every moral judgment involves four key factors: facts, intuition, reasoning, and regard for authority.8 You could also add a fifth, which is checking your own passion for the subject. Lewis goes on to explain,
“Thus if I find that the facts on which I am working are clear and little disputed, that the basic intuition is unmistakably an intuition, that reasoning which connects this intuition with the particular judgment is strong, and that I am in agreement or (at worst) not in disagreement with authority, then I can trust my moral judgment with reasonable confidence. And if, in addition, I find little reason to suppose my passion has secretly swayed my mind, this confidence is confirmed.”9
Lewis then applies each of these criteria (facts, intuition, reasoning, and authority) to the statement, “It is immoral to obey when the civil society of which I am a member commands me to serve in the wars.”10 He does this in order to show whether or not this statement is ultimately justified in light of these criteria. In this article, we will look briefly at these four criteria and how they apply to the discussion of morality and war, spending the most time on “intuition” and “authority,” which is mainly where Lewis’s and Tolstoy’s arguments meet on the issue.
Facts
When speaking about facts and certainty, it is important to note that in the realm of moral certainty, we are not looking for the same confidence that we find in mathematics. That kind of certainty in most cases cannot be found. With that said, where do we find these “facts” that we are looking for when it comes to a discussion of war and moral judgment? Lewis would say that the facts come from experience and authority. And since we have only limited experience, the majority of our facts usually come from authority.11
The one fact that both sides, including Tolstoy, would agree on, is that war is overall disagreeable. The majority of people on both sides of the debate, do not like the idea of war and see it as a tragedy. With that said, Lewis states, “The main contention urged as fact by Pacifists would be that wars always do more harm than good,” and or Wars do no good.12 But is it true that wars always do more harm than good? As Lewis points out, many of us can think of counter-examples to this argument as we reflect on different wars throughout history. From the Greeks to the Romans, to Europe’s involvement in the great war, one could easily argue either way. Lewis would add, “It seems to me that history is full of useful wars as well as well as useless wars.”13 Overall, these ideas are merely speculative and you can’t convince someone of either. This is why Lewis concludes, “That wars do no good is then so far from being a fact that it hardly ranks as a historical opinion.”14
Intuition
Our next focus is on intuition. Lewis describes intuition as, “…there is the direct, simple act of the mind perceiving self-evident truth, as when we see that if A and B both equal C, then they equal each other. This act, I call intuition.”15 Intuition is something that is self-evident, meaning, it is something that doesn’t need to be demonstrated or explained, it is obvious.16 For example, the truths of mathematics can often be thought of as self-evident. Two plus two equals four. A second, example is, one’s belief that they are conscious. Both of these examples, assume propositions that need little evidence to show that they correspond to reality. According to Lewis, when it comes to the reality of war, “The relevant intuition seems to be that love is good and hatred bad, or helping is good and harming bad.” 17 It would seem that both non-pacifists and pacifists alike would agree with this intuition.
Lewis then paints a picture of how this “intuition” becomes more complicated in reality. Sometimes reality can mean, one’s “friend” A is in trouble at the same time as “stranger” B. If they are both drowning, one might pull “friend” A onboard at the expense of “stranger” B. This goes even further. If B is causing some sort of harm to A, “…sooner or later it involves helping A by actually doing some degree of violence to B.”18 In this scenario, if one decides to do nothing, it disobeys intuition. You must help one over the other “And certainly no one’s conscience tells him to help B, the guilty.”19 The only option is to help A.
He then applies this argument to nations as a whole. The only way to ultimately restrain an army or a nation from harming another is by war. Lewis would agree that war is not the first step one’s nation should take in settling disputes, but when tactics such as diplomacy do not work, then war is the only option a nation has to stop another nation from getting what it wants.
One might ask, “But shouldn’t one try to make everyone in one’s country a Pacifist?” To this idea, Lewis responds, “then you have handed over the state which does tolerate Pacifists to its totalitarian neighbour who does not. Pacifism of this kind is taking the straight road to a world in which there will be no Pacifists.”20 In other words, if your entire nation turns pacifist, what is stopping your totalitarian neighbor from taking over?
Authority
In the last section of Lewis’s talk, he turns his focus toward authority. For most Christians, this is where the rubber meets the road. Authority can be split into two main categories, human and divine. An example of human authority is the authority one’s own country has over them. As Lewis points out, if one is looking for authority from one’s country, most countries are in favor of a non-pacifist position. Tolstoy seemed to sense this as well. This is one of the reasons he denounced government altogether. With that said, both Tolstoy and Lewis recognized that human authority is not the final say. So, what about God’s divine authority? What did Jesus have to say concerning the issue of non-resistance? This is where Tolstoy and Lewis’s arguments really come to a head. Lewis spends the majority of his talk considering this question of divine authority.
There is not much to be said concerning pacifism in the Epistles of the New Testament. With that said, it can be pointed out that the Epistles are older than the Gospels, and much of what we know concerning early Christianity comes from these early writings. Some pacifists have pointed to the Apostle Paul’s thoughts in Romans Chapter 12 (in which he echoes the words of Jesus) as evidence for a pacifist position. Beyond that, there is not much to be found. That being said, Lewis points out, “…when we turn to Christianity, we find Pacifism based almost exclusively on certain of the sayings of Our Lord Himself.”21 In other words, if one wants to find out what the Bible has to say about non-resistance, one should look to the words of Jesus found in the Gospels. Lewis notes that it would be in vain to try to base one’s conclusions on Christianity in general. If anything, that would point toward a non-pacifist position. “The whole Christian case for Pacifism rests, therefore, on certain Dominical utterances, such as ‘Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”22 As did Tolstoy, Lewis turns his main focus to understanding Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount.
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 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. (Matthew 5:38-39, KJV)
To the Christian who says that this passage should be taken without qualification, Lewis is quick to point out that such a Christian should also take all other sayings of Jesus in the same way. He then goes on to explain that there are three ways of interpreting the passage, “Resist not ye evil.”
First, the “Pacifist interpretation.” The passage “…means what it says and imposes a duty of nonresistance on all men in all circumstances.”23 This description would match Tolstoy’s simple and literal interpretation of the words. For the pacifist, to use violence in any and all situations is in opposition to Jesus and his words.
Second, the “minimising interpretation,” “It does not mean what it says but is merely an orientally hyperbolical way of saying that you should put up with a lot and be placable.”24 For the “minimiser,” Jesus’ words are an overstatement or exaggeration meant to encourage people to be as gentle and forgiving as possible. Ultimately, Lewis doesn’t give much credence to this view and he assumed his listeners wouldn’t either. He believed the real challenge was between the first view (The pacifist) and a third view.
Thirdly, what I will call the “contextual interpretation” and ultimately Lewis’ own interpretation. “…the text means exactly what it says, but with an understood reservation in favour of those obviously exceptional cases which every hearer would naturally assume to be exceptions without being told.”25 Although Jesus meant what he said simply in regard to injuries that are committed to me by my neighbor and my desire to retaliate, we must not commit the fallacy of secundum quid. In other words, we must not “…confound what is true absolutely with what is true only under certain restrictions and limitations.”26 If the crucial factors are an injury caused to me by my neighbor and my desire to retaliate, then Jesus would say to denounce that desire. “No quarter whatever is given to the voice within us which says, ‘He’s done it to me, so I’ll do the same to him.’”27 With that said, once other factors are brought into the equation, the problem is altered.
What Jesus meant by his words was clearly understood by his original audience. If you are angered due to violence against you, control yourself and do not strike back. Lewis goes on to give some examples of factors where one might actually have grounds to resort to some level of violence. First, if a homicidal maniac is trying to murder someone, are you supposed to stand aside and allow him to get his victim? Second, should parents who have a child with a temper allow that child to hit them every time they get upset? In these scenarios, as with a teacher hit by a student and a soldier struck by their enemy, “your duties may be very different, different because [there] may be then other motives than egoistic retaliation for hitting back.”28
Good exegesis is imperative when studying the words of Jesus and the New Testament. Lewis makes the point, “Any saying is to be taken in the sense it would naturally have borne in the time and place of utterance.”29 With that said, it is not likely that Jesus was referring to war in his statements. As far as how the original audience would have received the message, it is more likely that his audience would have been thinking about the personal conflicts amongst villagers.
To bring in a broader biblical context, Lewis also raises the challenge of how to reconcile the Pacifist interpretation with Romans 13:4, and 1 Peter 2:15. In these two passages, we see the Apostle Paul and Apostle Peter approve of the magistrate’s use of force in their Epistles. With that said, according to Lewis, it does not seem that the specific passage found in Matthew or a broader biblical context gives any credibility to the pacifist position. He adds to this, “Any theory which bases itself on a supposed ‘historical Jesus’ to he dug out of the Gospels and then set up in opposition to Christian teaching is suspect.”30 That position puts too much weight on a theory for which there is little if any evidence for.
Conclusion
As was true of Tolstoy, there is much that can be said concerning Lewis’ views on pacifism. Overall, Lewis concluded, as long there is no reason to think your passion is getting in the way, by using reason to process through the facts, intuition and authority, it will most likely lead you to a non-pacifist position. I have done my best in this article to break down Lewis’ views and organize them in a compelling way for you. Hopefully, it has given you as much to wrestle with as it has for me. Whether you agree or disagree with Lewis’ arguments, I hope this article has challenged you to think well about the topic of pacifism. Next up for Part 4 of this “Versus Series,” I will be sharing my own views on Pacifism and the doctrine of non-resistance in light of the arguments of Leo Tolstoy and C.S. Lewis.
Footnotes
1 George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis (p.130) (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994).
2 George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis (pp.131-132) (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994).
3 George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis (p. 267) (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994).
4 George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis (p. 281) (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994).
5 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.18). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
6 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Harper San Francisco, 2001.
7 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.64). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
8 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.72). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
9 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.72). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
10 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.72). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
11 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.68). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
12 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.73). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
13 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.74). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
14 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.73). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
15 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.66). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
16 “The Home of Language Data,” Oxford Languages, accessed April 8, 2023, https://languages.oup.com/.
17 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.75). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
18 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.75). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
19 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.76). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
20 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.78). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
21 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.82). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
22 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.84). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
23 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.85). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
24 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.85). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
25 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.85). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
26 Coffey, Peter (1912). The Science of Logic. Longmans, (p.309) Green, and Company.
27 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.86). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
28 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.86). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
29 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.87). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
30 Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (p.88). Harper San Francisco, 2001.
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