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August 18, 2007
Imprecations & Praying the Psalms
Doug Giles writes at Townhall.com about using imprecatory psalms. He will offend many, no doubt. I remember the experience of praying from the psalter a week or so after I had started to pray an abbreviated form of the canonical hours. On the morning of September 18, 2001, my very first morning back in the States after being away for nearly ltwo weeks, I walked down a residential street on the way to work and the quantity American flags startled me. It was perhaps only then that I realized how much 9/11 had shaken my fellow countrymen. I was praying matins and first hour and two phrases from the psalter jumped out at me:
"... like one forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave."
I could not but help think about the thousands who lie dead in the pit at Ground Zero, a massive grave of the slain.
And then from first hour: "The Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men."
I couldn't help but think of the 9/11 murderers. I know it is customary (and helpful) to read the imprecatory psalms (the verse above is hardly imprecatory, though it could set the stage for one) in light of Christ, applying the enemies to the demonic forces, the sins and passions that wage combat against the soul.
But I can understand how human it is to desire the destruction of a mortal enemy, especially in time of war. To be moved toward even cursing bloodthirsty treachery is understandable. It is cursed. But to pray for our enemies is Christian. We cannot ignore our Lord's words from the Cross, where all enemies are truly defeated in a much more potent way than we can even imagine. All of the psalms are our inheritance, to be prayed in and with Christ.
Posted by James M. Kushiner at 11:21 AM | Permalink
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I was looking over a "Cromwell's Pocket Bible" this week, a tract printed for our boys in 1898 (it claimed to have a Roundhead provenance, but I have no idea whether it did). Verses were divided by topics useful to the soldier in field; some imprecatory verses were juxtaposed with compassionate ones in a section headed, "To love your enemies as they are your enemies, and hate them as they are God's enemies."
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 18, 2007 11:25:51 AM
Cromwell's Pocket Bible
Cromwell, as in Oliver? There's a boy would have been difficult for my ancestors to love!
Posted by: bonobo | Aug 18, 2007 9:32:44 PM
I remember a conversation with my friend and his father (himself a conservative presbyterian of the theonomist veriety). My friend and I were dismayed by an e-mail of yet another friend, who was fighting in Afghanistan. It was of a personnel carrier being destroyed by American missile fire. The men inside died in visible agony in the inferno, and our friend was gleeful about it - basking in the glory of their death, on the basis of the 9/11 attacks.
We protested, but my friend's father said we were off base. His sentiment was none other than that of the imprecatory psalms, and therefore biblical.
Looking back, I really think this quite troublesome. Isn't it horribly dangerous and disloyal of us, as Christians, to read the Old Testament without interpreting it in the light of Christ? How did we come to this?
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 18, 2007 11:12:13 PM
>Isn't it horribly dangerous and disloyal of us, as Christians, to read the Old Testament without interpreting it in the light of Christ?
Why do you think your friends weren't interpreting it in the light of Christ?
>Cromwell, as in Oliver? There's a boy would have been difficult for my ancestors to love!
It is true that the greatness of Oliver Cromwell has not been appreciated by all but increasingly historians are moving past the propaganda. Try "Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy" by an Irish historian, Tom Reilly.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 5:03:38 AM
Mr Kushiner,
Do you read Fr Gregory's blog (Koinonia)? He recently posted a similar blog linking to the same essay.
Posted by: Anna | Aug 19, 2007 5:17:21 AM
If I understand the psalms rightly, they were not written "in light of Christ". That is, they were written by one of the People of God against those who had set themselves up as enemies of God and His chosen people, and not against the spiritual forces that war against men's souls.
God does have enemies, people who oppose His right to rule. Consequently, Jesus has enemies. While he certainly prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him, he also sternly warned the Jewish authorities who opposed him and his public ministry that they would "die in their sins" (lost, destined for divine retribution)if they did not accept him.
There is a place in the Christian experience to relinquish personal revenge against those who have harmed us while praying for God to bring justice upon the Earth which does in fact entail bringing to bear the effects of the curse upon those who are the enemies of God and his Christ.
Posted by: amtog | Aug 19, 2007 5:24:12 AM
>There is a place in the Christian experience to relinquish personal revenge against those who have harmed us while praying for God to bring justice upon the Earth which does in fact entail bringing to bear the effects of the curse upon those who are the enemies of God and his Christ.
And the saints in Revelations say “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 5:28:57 AM
...yes David, that scene from Revelation did come to my mind after I wrote my comment.
Posted by: amtog | Aug 19, 2007 5:31:40 AM
Dear AMTOG,
"If I understand the psalms rightly, they were not written 'in light of Christ'. That is, they were written by one of the People of God against those who had set themselves up as enemies of God and His chosen people, and not against the spiritual forces that war against men's souls."
Your understanding is incorrect, or at least insufficient. All the Scriptures are written "in the light of Christ" by virtue of God being their ultimate author. In particular, the Psalms were (and are) the prayer-book of Christ himself; they were used by him as such during his earthly ministry, and point to him as the Messiah. Therefore a right understanding of the Psalms (and the entire OT) must be one that conforms to a Christological interpretation. Thus, according to the typological interpretation of the fathers, "those who had set themselves up as enemies of God and His chosen people" are in fact to be understood typologically as being "the spiritual forces that war against men's souls." There is no contradiction between the two.
This can be clearly seen in the most famous (or notoroius) of the imprecatory Psalms, Psalm 137, with its difficult conclusion: "O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall be he, that taketh and dasheth by little one against the rock." (1885 RV translation, which is more literal than the KJV.) As Christians we do not and should not literally desire to take the infant children of e.g. Taliban terrorists and beat them to death against stones. Rather, "daughter of Bablyon" is to be understood in the same way as "Bablyon" in the Book of Revelation (Ch. 17-18), as the type of all evil opposed to God. It shall be rewarded as it has served us -- by being crushed under the heel of the second Eve,and dashed to pieces against her offspring, who (the Psalms tell us) is the Rock of salvation.
One must also be wary of misunderstanding "happy" here, which has a very different sense than in our modern culture. "Happy" in the OT means not an emotional feeling or reaction, but rather a state of life of good fortune or blessedness. In the general misery, poverty, deprivation and degradation of the ancient world, happiness was an exceedingly rare thing. It is dangerous to confuse the two, because that leads us to suppose wrongly that our fallen passions are the same as the will of God, who (in classical and correct theological terms) is "without parts or passions". The righteous wrath of God that works justice in (sometimes severe) mercy is something quite other than the human anger, rage, and lust for vengeance that are the broken and perverted reflections of it. There is such a thing as righteous anger by man on behalf of God; but we must be extremely wary of supposing our own anger to be such, lest we make ourselves God instead and justify unrighteousness.
Thus, I must disagree with my friend David Gray here. [Also on Cromwell, but let that go for now :-)] WfO is right in being dismayed by the reaction of his friend's father in being gleeful over the death of enemy fighters, who has made precisely this confusion. We may properly be grateful to God for protecting us and granting us victory over our enemies (insofar as we are truly serving God and they are therefore truly His enemies as well). That is the true sense of: “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” We may also in justice pursue victory against them by all licit necessary means. But these do not give us license to indulge our sinful passions by being gleeful over the sufferings of our enemies that occurs as a consequence of their well-deserved punishment. For to do so is to be gleeful over Christ's suffering, which He bore for the whole world, the unrepentant as well as the repentant, all of whose suffering is subsumed into His. It is to suppose that we are less unjust than they, that our sins are somehow less dipleasing to God than theirs and somehow inflicted less suffering on Christ. It is, in short, not just a sin of anger, but a sin of pride.
Posted by: James A. Altena | Aug 19, 2007 6:36:04 AM
>Thus, I must disagree with my friend David Gray here
That is not entirely unprecedented!
James, how do you parse:
The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 6:50:40 AM
And perhaps to clarify, we should take care to distinguish between our enemies, who are also God's enemies and therefore rightly and dutifully our enemies, and our enemies who are our enemies because of our personal sin and fallen state.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 6:59:05 AM
>>>And perhaps to clarify, we should take care to distinguish between our enemies, who are also God's enemies and therefore rightly and dutifully our enemies, and our enemies who are our enemies because of our personal sin and fallen state.<<<
The Paschal Verses of Resurrection Orthros are imprecatory in the extreme, having been cherry-picked from throughout the Old Testament for that very purpose:
Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered
And let his glory cover all the earth.
As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish,
As wax melts before the flame.
So let the wicked perish in the presence of God
And let the righteous ones rejoice.
This is the day that the Lord has made;
Let us rejoice, and be glad in it.
There is also the Troparion of the Holy Cross, militant in the extreme:
Save your people, O Lord,
And bless your inheritance,
Grant victory to our country [orginally, the Emperor] over the enemies [originally the barbarians]
And protect your people by your cross.
In both cases, the key is determining who is the true enemy. The Romans, the barbarians, the Persians, the Muslims, the Nazis and the Communists--all of these are mere avatars of Satan, who is the great enemy, and of sin, which is the Adversary's main weapon. We fight against those who by their actions are fighting for Satan and for sin.
Regarding those who decry our taking joy in the death of our enemies, I would distinguish between those who actually fight and do the killing; and those safely esconced at home, who take vicarious pleasure in it. The former is fully justified. Indeed, I think those who would have our soldiers kill dispassionately or with remorse place an unsustainable pyschological burden upon them and endanger their survival. But the latter do not share the danger, and do not pay the price for the killing, and so they are not justified in taking joy from it.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 19, 2007 8:40:34 AM
It is true that the greatness of Oliver Cromwell has not been appreciated
His greatness has never been in question. His loveableness is the subject of some divergence of opinion :)
Posted by: bonobo | Aug 19, 2007 9:25:38 AM
The imprecatory psalms are bracing when directed toward cancer cells and bacterial infections, as well as toward insidious sin.
Posted by: Kathleen Miller | Aug 19, 2007 10:55:36 AM
"It is true that the greatness of Oliver Cromwell has not been appreciated"
The Irish have a particularly difficult time appreciating his "greatness." Some silliness about creulty, theft, butchery, and a regrettable tendency toward massacre of the defenseless; and that thing about washing the greeen land in the blood of Papists.
Oh, and there was that little thing in Whitehall regarding the King (impetuosity?)
Other than that, a truly remarkable man. (Is there a Walter Duranty available to offer a re-appraisal of Oliver?)
Posted by: tony o | Aug 19, 2007 1:18:28 PM
"It is true that the greatness of Oliver Cromwell has not been appreciated"
The Irish have a particularly difficult time appreciating his "greatness." Some silliness about creulty, theft, butchery, and a regrettable tendency toward massacre of the defenseless; and that thing about washing the greeen land in the blood of Papists.
Oh, and there was that little thing in Whitehall regarding the King (impetuosity?)
Other than that, a truly remarkable man. (Is there a Walter Duranty available to offer a re-appraisal of Oliver?)
Posted by: tony o | Aug 19, 2007 1:20:57 PM
And perhaps to clarify, we should take care to distinguish between our enemies, who are also God's enemies and therefore rightly and dutifully our enemies, and our enemies who are our enemies because of our personal sin and fallen state.
Distinguish toward what end? Jesus said to love your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you. This meant precisely those sorts of enemies who are enemies of God and his Church - this was what Jesus himself modeled.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." This refers to real trespasses. Real evil done.
Speaking of the martyrs and their blood, one of the most profound witnesses to the historicity of Christ's forgiveness of those who crucified him is the change in the martyr tradition. The Maccabean martyrs hurled insults at their tormentors - something along the lines of "What you do to me now is nothing compared to what God will do to you, and boy will I enjoy watching it once he shows you who is really in charge." The Christian martyrs invariably were kind to their persecutors, praying for them, interceding for them, even helping them do their evil duty. This is a huge change, and it was made by them imitating their master.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 1:52:20 PM
This is a very serious question, by the way. Are we Christians different from the world in only our allegiance to Christ? Or must the cross shape our methods as well?
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 1:57:01 PM
>>>The Irish have a particularly difficult time appreciating his "greatness." Some silliness about creulty, theft, butchery, and a regrettable tendency toward massacre of the defenseless; and that thing about washing the greeen land in the blood of Papists.<<<
Actually, by the standards of his day, Cromwell was no better or worse than his contemporaries. Papists committed equivalent atrocities on Protestants in Europe (some little thing called the Thirty Years War comes to mind). Cromwell's genius is not mitigated by the atrocities committed by his troops (which, as I said, were just business as usual in the first half of the 17th century). As a military organizer, trainer of troops, battlefield general and strategist, Cromwell ranks near the top of his profession; among his contemporaries, only Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein, and Maurice of Nassau are in the same rank. Of these, only Gustavus also acted as chief of state--and it can be argued that Cromwell was a far better ruler.
The real Irish argument with Cromwell is that they lost, and reaped the consequences of that defeat. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I'm sure the Ulstermen would be complaining about that butcher Jamie Stuart. One of the consistent Irish shortcomings is a tendency to make excuses and not learn from failure.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 19, 2007 1:58:21 PM
>This is a very serious question, by the way. Are we Christians different from the world in only our allegiance to Christ? Or must the cross shape our methods as well?
Is the God of the Psalms a different God than that of the New Testament? Are the saints in Revelation sinning? To whom are the imprecatory Psalms addressed?
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 2:03:45 PM
>One of the consistent Irish shortcomings is a tendency to make excuses and not learn from failure.
Sort of an early form of the Palestinians.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 2:04:47 PM
Strangely, though, the Irish now have a state that prospers at least as well as the UK.
Posted by: Ed the Roman | Aug 19, 2007 2:11:59 PM
David,
The God of the psalms wants us to read them supremely through the light of his Son.
The saints in Revelation are saints we know (Stephen and Justin Martyr for instance), and we know indeed what vengeance they seek. They seek the plundering of Death and Hell, of the looting of men from every tongue and tribe and nation for God, of the utter conquering of the evil one by the bloody victor - who is the man who has conquered because he is the lamb who was slaughtered. Our entire notion of conquest, justice, and victory must be re-centered around the cross.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 2:12:27 PM
One of the consistent Irish shortcomings is a tendency to make excuses and not learn from failure.
Who would be a good candidate for the antithesis of this tendency?
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 2:13:30 PM
>>>Sort of an early form of the Palestinians. <<<
The Jews got there first. Not content with seeing their country ravaged and the Temple burned in AD 70, they tried to repeat the failed experiment in the Diaspora in AD 117, before following Bar Kochba's shooting star in AD 135--a rebellion that was far more devastating than the first Jewish War. And to show that old habits die hard, the Jews backed Julian the Apostate in 363, and then the Persians at the beginning of the 7th century. For consistent backing of losing horses, this is hard to beat.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 19, 2007 2:13:52 PM
>The God of the psalms wants us to read them supremely through the light of his Son.
What does that mean to you?
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 2:26:37 PM
Jim Kushiner gives fine examples of this in his initial post. For further depth on the subject, I recommend C. S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 2:29:30 PM
Well Lewis wrote something to the effect that the passage from the Psalms I had quoted wasn't really part of the scriptures or was not inspired. I don't find that terribly useful.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 2:39:09 PM
I don't think Lewis would have ever said that.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 3:29:46 PM
>I don't think Lewis would have ever said that.
I wouldn't have guessed it before reading it.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 19, 2007 3:56:04 PM
OK David, let me try to answer your question more fully. Let's take Psalm 1, and I'll show you what I think it means to read it "in the light of Christ."
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
Original Reading
Now, the plain original meaning of this psalm is rather obvious. A righteous man is one who chooses to spend his time away from bad men - wicked men, sinners, and scoffers. Instead of desiring their company and approval, he delights in contemplating the Torah of God - which includes the story of God's creation and redemption as well as God's outline of how his people are to live.
Holding fast to the Torah keeps this man firmly planted in God, and makes him successful in all that he does. This is in contrast to wicked men, who come to ruin. God "knows" the way of the righteous - in that deep Biblical sense of the word - walking in this way unites the righteous man to God in a way not wholly unlike Adam "knowing" his wife Eve. As they walk apart from God, the wicked simply wither away.
This is how an Old Testament (and presumably a modern) Jew would read this psalm. And this should be the first sense in which we read it as well. However, I believe that we Christians should go beyond just this reading, and read it in the light of Christ.
Reading in the Light of Christ
So, we should immediately think of the Son of Man who did not walk in the counsel of the wicked. He did nothing of his own accord, but only from the word he heard from the Father. Day and night, he was immersed in prayer, listening to his Father's will.
In all that he did, he prospered. All things were put under his feet - all his enemies were conquered - including that last enemy, Death itself. Yet we must keep in mind that this victory was done, paradoxically, through his apparent defeat on the tree of the cross. His body seemed to be destroyed, but did not see corruption or decay. He did not wither. And those powers that saw fit to put him to death were indeed destroyed (both the Priestly establishment and the Roman imperial powers), withering away, while his name is exalted over all other names.
The Lord knows the way of Christ - to know him is eternal life itself. To see him is to see the Father. Those who place their believing allegiance in him are united to him in love - love which is born of God and knows God. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life - for he cuts himself off from the knowledge of God. Such branches wither, and are fit only to be thrown into the fire.
The Relationship Between the Two
I don't think, after looking at Christ, we should ever look at anything the same again - even the Old Testament scriptures. We should obviously not be blinded to the Old Testament as it was read by the original authors, but we should see far more.
So, for instance, we would no longer be content to bask in the glory of how much a man visibly prospers by his adherence to the Torah of God, without speaking of Christ. For Christ redefines the very notion of Torah - being himself the Word and Law of God in person. Christ redefines the very nature of prosperity - it is not to be found in self-aggrandizement but in self-sacrificial service. To prosper means to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead.
We also cannot look down our noses at those formerly deemed as "wicked", "sinners", and "scoffers" - for the Lord of Life has invited those formerly cut off from the knowledge of God to his table. To exalt in one's own adherence to Torah, against these outsiders is to play the part of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. Do not call common what God has made clean.
So who are the wicked that wither away? Those who persist in rejecting the gospel, of course, but ultimately, if this be read in the light of Christ, we should see that corruption and decay and death itself ironically now corrodes, decays, and dies. This is done by means of the cross of the aforementioned blessed man.
So it is the same God who inspired those original psalms who also sent us his son. But that does not mean we are to read these in the same way, from where we stand. When that which is perfect has come, that interpretation that was in part must go away. When you've beheld the glory of the Only Begotten Son, you should never look at the Law and the Prophets the same again - or rather, when you look upon them, they only continue to point you back again towards what they were ultimately meant to reveal all along.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 4:11:09 PM
As I recall from reading Reflections on the Psalms a couple of months ago, Lewis said that he viewed some of the Psalms as expressing erroneous views that were inconsistent with New Testament teaching. So he did express the view that parts of the Psalms were erroneous or not inspired. He did state that allegorical interpretations of them were possible and useful, though.
For the record, I think he was wrong, but I give him credit for trying to find some usefulness for the passages he didn't like.
Posted by: V-Dawg | Aug 19, 2007 4:15:40 PM
Joe, was it you who thought of a list of premenant threads we need? Why don't you add a "Who put the Ire in Ireland?", right under "Refight the reformation"...
Some Lewis trivia for our thread:
"Plato in his Republic is arguing that righteousness is often praised ... but that to see it in its true nature we must separate it from all these [praises], strip it naked. He asks us therefore to imagine a perfectly righteous man treated by all around him as a monster of wickedness. We must picture him, still perfect, while he is bound, scourged, and finally impaled (the Persian equivalent of crucifixion). ... One can, without any absurdity, imagine Plato or the myth-makers if they learned the truth [about Jesus Christ], saying, 'I see ... so that was what I was really talking about. Of course. That is what my words really meant, and I never knew it.' "
I.e., in this sense, the psalms are christological.
(Reflections on the psalms, ch. X)
From Mere Christianity (which I do not have at my desk at the moment): in the section on courage, I believe: Lewis can respect an honest pacifict, though he thinks the pacificst is mistaken, but this business about going off to war with a long face about our duty to kill is just silly. Lewis recalls when he was a soilder in WWI, thinking that if he and some German ever shot at and killed each other simultaneously, the two of them would just have a hearty laugh together in the afterlife.
One may offer that as an ideal picture of how soilders should take joy in their job, as WfO's friend. It could be right or wrong. I don't know the details and probably couldn't judge properly even if I did.
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Aug 19, 2007 4:40:22 PM
Expressing views that we should not have, and not being inspired are not the same thing. The book of Job is inspired and entire chapters of the book are expressing incomplete and thus erroneous views. In fact - they are erroneous in almost exactly the same way as Lewis speaks of the psalms that gleefully want to see the bad man get his due. Job's friends are wrong, not in being totally and utterly wrong, but in only seeing part of the truth and not the deepest truth. God is just, and he does bring the wicked to ruin and exalt the righteous. Psalm 1 says the same sort of thing. But they don't see what it means for the anointed of God himself to suffer, and how this apparent travesty of justice actually fulfills the deepest justice of God and man.
To call this a denial of the inspiration of scripture is completely unfair. You might as well say that Matthew denies the inspiration of Hosea, when he says that "out of Egypt I called my son" was actually about Jesus rather than Israel.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 4:45:52 PM
Clifford,
I think Lewis, in that section of Mere Christianity, put forth the right attitude on such conquest that I wish my friend had had. A gaiety and wholeheartedness without a delight in hatred - loving your enemy as you do yourself.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 4:57:58 PM
I am with the Puritans on at least one thing. They thought that a truly godly attitude often required the combining of opposing virtues that people tended to have only one or the other of by nature. Some people are by nature hard and will easily be gleeful over an enemy getting his just deserts. Others are by nature soft and will gladly see the enemy be spared. I am not troubled by the idea of soldiers being gleeful over an enemy's death. I would only hope that there would also be later moments where other sentiments were held.
I would hope that these soldiers would pray for their enemies in appropriate ways. But the Old Testament especially does represent the idea of the joy of battle in a positive light. The New Testament may alter that attitude by addition. But I don't know that it could completely do away with it.
Posted by: Rick Ritchie | Aug 19, 2007 8:56:11 PM
>>>I would only hope that there would also be later moments where other sentiments were held.<<<
The proper time is when the battle--or better still the war--is over. Wellington famously noted after Waterloo that only a battle lost can be worse than a battle won. Many deadly opponents in war can and do become friends in the aftermath, Thus, after our bloodiest war, the War Between the States, Union and Confederate soldiers who had paired off on opposite sides of a fence with musket and bayonet formed close bonds of comradship through the shared experience of war. And each lamented the fallen of the other. Similar things have happened between British and German soldiers who fought against each other in the Western Desert (famously described as a "war without hate", probably because neither side had anything invested in possession of empty sand dunes). Airman of opposing forces almost always manage to form post-conflict friendships through their shared passion for flying.
In other cases, however, the war is too bitter, too personal for much forgiveness on either side--witness the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: no post-war reunions and mutual placing of wreaths there. Even on the Western Front, there were some Germans the otherwise easygoing Americans could not foregive--mainly the Waffen SS. And in the Pacific, little love was lost between American and Japanese--though the loathing of the Australians for the Japanese makes ours pale to insignificance.
I don't think soldiers as a rule give much thought to the enemies that they kill. For one thing, most can take comfort in the notion that they don't know for certain that they ever killed anybody. In the age of firearms, anyway, killing takes place at arms length. In the smoothbore age, though you held your fire until you could see the whites of their eyes, the basic inaccuracy of your weapon, and the use of volley fire made it impossible to determine who had killed who. Later, as weapons became more lethal at longer ranges, troops dispersed and took cover, leading to the phenomenon of the "empty battlefield". Most troops never saw who was shooting at them, and most never actually fired at a distinct target. Others dealt out death wholesale at a distancce with artillery (the main killer on the modern battlefield), and never got within miles of an actual live enemy. So there was little on that side about which to lose sleep. Most nightmares come not from what you do to the enemy, but what the enemy did to you and your friends. After all, that's where you have your emotional commitment.
It probably is not right or fair to expect soldiers to mourn their enemies. As I said before, this would almost require them to kill in cold blood, which would be psychologically and morally unsustainable. If there is any glee at the death of the enemy, it is mainly because those deaths mean that the soldier has a better chance to live. And having passed through the fire, most soldiers just want to forget. Leave it at that.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 19, 2007 9:16:00 PM
Stuart - you've seen Saving Private Ryan, correct? What I'm thinking of is something like the moment when they've taken the beaches, and a flamethrower unit engulfs one from behind. They see the Germans inside writhing in the inferno. A soldier stops his comrades, saying "Don't shoot - let them burn."
Though this is certainly understandable - having lost friends on the beaches of Normandy - I would hope we would recognize the Christian ideal is at least to keep firing, rather then just "letting them burn". If the command to love your enemies doesn't mean at least this, we've truly reduced Jesus commands to meaninglessness.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 19, 2007 9:23:18 PM
>>>Stuart - you've seen Saving Private Ryan, correct? What I'm thinking of is something like the moment when they've taken the beaches, and a flamethrower unit engulfs one from behind. They see the Germans inside writhing in the inferno. A soldier stops his comrades, saying "Don't shoot - let them burn."<<<
To some extent, hatred of the enemy, total depersonalization of the enemy, is necessary for physical and psychological survival on the battlefield. General Eisenhower was truly worried that American soldiers were too laid back with regard to the Germans, and to some extent this was true, up to the time we began to overrun Germany and discovered the concentration camps. Paul Fussell writes of Ike visiting one camp, and emerging grim-visaged, encountered an ashen-faced, tight-lipped GI standing guard at the gate. "Hate 'em enough, now?", Ike asked. The soldier nodded.
It was an understood rule that you just couldn't keep shooting until the last second and then surrender, as many a German machinegunner discovered to his dismay. Having shot up a platoon for an hour or so, the gunner would run out of ammo or find his position outflanked. Up he would pop, shouting "Kamerad, Kamerad". "Too late, Jack", was the invariable reply, just before some GI or Tommy plugged him. Other types of soldier were NEVER taken prisoner, just on general principles, among which were flamethrowers and snipers. I'm sure you can understand why.
Once you begin to understand the utter horror of the battlefield, you can also begin to understand why it has been the consistent policy of the Eastern Churches not to endorse the concept of "just war" and to consider all killing in war to be sinful. At the same time, the Eastern Churches have been careful to balance the pacifism found in the Fathers and among the monastics, with the recognition of the obligation of the secular authorities to ensure the safety of the people from foreign aggression.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 20, 2007 4:51:21 AM
Stuart: I am not disagreeing with the general thrust of your comments -- or those of anyone here -- but if I have read you correctly, you seem to hold the idea that on the modern battlefield members of the infantry and armor branches do directly engage the enemy but deal with them ''at arm's length.'' While that may be true at times, it is most definitely up close and personal at many other times. I could go on, but I think I will leave it at that.
Posted by: Dcn. Michael D. Harmon | Aug 20, 2007 6:16:00 AM
Sorry. "do NOT directly engage the enemy..."
Posted by: Dcn. Michael D. Harmon | Aug 20, 2007 6:17:34 AM
>>>Stuart: I am not disagreeing with the general thrust of your comments -- or those of anyone here -- but if I have read you correctly, you seem to hold the idea that on the modern battlefield members of the infantry and armor branches do directly engage the enemy but deal with them ''at arm's length.'' While that may be true at times, it is most definitely up close and personal at many other times. I could go on, but I think I will leave it at that.<<<
The present form of war we are waging sees a greater degree of close combat than more conventional wars. That's due to our fighting mainly in an urban environment with short lines of sight--the enemy pops up at very close range--when he bothers to pop up at all. The preferred American form of engagement, however, is to locate and isolate the enemy, cordon the area so he can't escape, and then engage him with standoff weapons, whether we are talking about attack helicopters, Hellfire missiles, JDAMs or artillery. In such cases, the enemy is not really observed up close and personal.
For this reason, and because the enemy chooses NOT to engage our troops directly, most of our soldiers know the enemy "apophatically"--that is, they know him by his works, the IEDs, the mines, the hit-and-run ambush, the sudden mortar barrage, the dead civilians, the mangled bodies of our casualties. And for this reason, the main cause of combat-related psychological disorders are not related to anything a soldier has done to the enemy, but to what a hidden and unseen enemy does to the soldier and his friends.
There are two real exceptions to this rule. The first are special operations troops, who do specialize in the mano-a-mano form of war (but not always: remember the SF guys on horseback with their laser designators and digital radios?). The other, paradoxically, are snipers, who, while they kill at ranges up to 1500 meters or more, are equipped with very powerful optical sights that bring them face-to-face with their targets, whom, more often than not, they actually spend considerable time observing before dispatching. This means that snipers, more than any other soldiers, get to know the enemy as human beings. They are also the only ones who dispatch the enemy in cold blood. For this reason, snipers are subjected to more rigorous psychological screening than most other soldiers (special operators are screened, but by other criteria). Before this was done, a lot of snipers had short shelf lives--they couldn't deal with the stress and the guilt--but I have not found any snipers of my acquaintance to be overly bothered by their jobs, or suffering from any sort of personality disorder because of it.
Aside from the screening process, I think this is due precisely to the sniper getting to know the enemy. When you watch a man for several hours, assemblig a bomb, checking out the best place to put it, waiting for the schoolbus to come along, you really get to know the type of man you are fighting. And you have no qualms about pulling the trigger. In addition to that kind of target, snipers are used most often to weed out others of their ilk, so there is a considerable agonistic element to the engagement: my skills against his skills, may the better man win (you poor bastard).
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 20, 2007 6:33:23 AM
I think it would be wonderful, of course, if any given Muslim would come to know the mercy of the Lord. However, I freely admit that when I hear of, say, a half-dozen terrorists killed in Afghanistan, my only real response is, "Thank you, Lord; that's six fewer men trying to kill my son."
Posted by: Beth | Aug 20, 2007 7:22:54 AM
"For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him who practices evil." (Romans, referring to the civil authority - at that time, largely the Roman army.)
The more I consider it, and read here, the more I think that little book (and again, whether it actually traces to Cromwell, I don't know) spoke with considerable wisdom. A soldier positively must steel himself to the necessary task - the enemy's destruction; at times, his mere moral destruction, allowing at least the possibility of reconciliation afterwards - but often lethally, instead.
I certainly cannot in good conscience arbitrarily decide to interpret all of the imprecatory Psalms as pure metaphor - look at David himself, a "man after God's own heart", who had lived out so much of what he wrote in them.
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 20, 2007 8:05:31 AM
Folks, I don't mean to completely throw out the meaning of the psalms condemning wicked men and (especially when you yourself are under oppression) begging God to bring them down. As Mr. Kushiner says, this is to be human, and it's totally natural for this to cry out to God for justice. Even our Lord urges us to "save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from the evil one".
But if you can't see the contrast between:
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
and:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
then...well...we've got a problem here, fellas.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 20, 2007 8:40:06 AM
Dear David,
"James, how do you parse:
"The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."
I would parse this the same way as the others. One may rightly rejoice in the working of justice, but not in the infliction of suffering.
We should remember that the Hebrews as a Semitic people (and an ancient one at that) share in the deeply embedded trait of Oriental cultures for hyperbolic rhetoric. (E.g. "the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds" is not a literal botanical description, but rather of way of saying that it is a very small seed). Thus to wash one's feet in the blood of the wicked is an extremely vivid bit of hyperbole to describe the completeness of the enemies' fall and destruction, while the linkage of "vengeance" and "reward" tells us that "vengeance" here means the recompense and retribution of God's justice, not the lust of fallen human passions for the vindictive infliction of suffering in and of itself.
"And perhaps to clarify, we should take care to distinguish between our enemies, who are also God's enemies and therefore rightly and dutifully our enemies, and our enemies who are our enemies because of our personal sin and fallen state."
Here, if I understand you rightly, I would agree with you. To answer WfO's question, this would pick up on my distinction between acting with zeal and righteousness to execute God's justice upon His enemies (who thus are, to the extent we so act, also our enemies) and acting from our fallen passions against those who are our enemies only, but not thereby necessarily enemies of God (i.e., we, or both sides, may be the ones in the wrong).
Dear Stuart,
"To some extent, hatred of the enemy, total depersonalization of the enemy, is necessary for physical and psychological survival on the battlefield."
I disagree. Depersonalization of others is necessarily a most grievous sin, and if it were truly necessary for the waging of war, then war would be absolutely prohibited to man by God. What is necessary for war is not the depersonalization of the enemy, but rather the right ordering of persons and causes. All obedience is owed to God as the supreme and perfect person, with all others subordinate to Him. If we fight justly in war (and I believe we can and do, but I won't re-argue that debate right now), then what we do in fighting it rightly is not to depersonalize the enemy, but rather to set the person and will of God first and foremost, and recognize that all other persons -- ourselves as well as the enemy -- are subject to that, and therefore act as necessary to truly and willingly serve as His means to His ends. To do so does not require one to personalize the enemy; it rather requires one not to commit the idolatry of supposing that his being made in the image and likeness of God makes him equal to God in essence, nature, rights, or claims upon us -- to "super-personalize" him, as it were. It recognizes that he is subject to punishment (including death) for sin, and that if we act rightly in war we are God's agents to execute the same. And the same applies to us. Even if and though we fight rightly for God in war, our deaths therein are likewise the due recompense for our own sins, even if those sins are not directly related to the war.
We can therefore in righteousness hate e.g. the Nazi concentration camp operators as Naxi concentration camp operators, and zealously desire to execute God's justice upon them, without hating them as persons per se, as being made in God's image and likeness, with an immortal destiny to salvation or damnation. We do not thereby depersonalize; rather, we punish the person for his evil works, but not for being a person, or by denying his personhood.
Finally, it is vital to our our salvation that even when we rightly desire the earthly death of such evildoers as just recompense, that we do not willfully desire and seek their eternal death; for the Lord "is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
Posted by: James A. Altena | Aug 20, 2007 8:44:04 AM
Here, if I understand you rightly, I would agree with you. To answer WfO's question, this would pick up on my distinction between acting with zeal and righteousness to execute God's justice upon His enemies (who thus are, to the extent we so act, also our enemies) and acting from our fallen passions against those who are our enemies only, but not thereby necessarily enemies of God (i.e., we, or both sides, may be the ones in the wrong).
What I'm reacting to James, is the implication that the injunction to "love our enemies" does not apply to those who are "God's enemies". Jesus was speaking, after all, to Israel as the people of God. The notion that certain groups, being "God's enemies", can therefore be given total war without pity should be repugnant to the Christian.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | Aug 20, 2007 8:54:24 AM
It was only after being kicked to the curb in a marriage that I began to truly recite the imprecatory psalms--and thus, really, all of them--with an understanding heart.
More recently, a realization has helped to cement the psalms brilliantly. It occurs to me that Christ himself heard, read, and learned David's verse not with a bemused, sinless detachment, but with utter empathy--even regarding the passages which bemoan horrible sinfulness.
That realization prompts me to land on my face on the floor, before him, with great frequency.
Posted by: Mairnéalach | Aug 20, 2007 9:01:32 AM
Re: C. S. Lewis -- the passage David cites is from "Reflections on the Psalms" and stands out like a sore thumb as one of Lewis' extremely rare failings. If I recall rightly, Lewis did not say that the Psalms were not Scripture (per se), but rather that he thought such content to be irreconcilable with the Gospel revealed by Christ, and had to be set aside.
As I have already suggested, the right way to read the imprecatory Psalms as a Christian is with the typological exegesis of the fathers, which is (pace Joe Long, if he meant this) not "metaphorical" but rather spiritual as opposed to merely literal. (For NT instances of reading the OT typologically, consider St. Paul on Sarah and Hagar in Galatians, or the Epistle to the Hebrews on Melchizedek.) My book review in Touchstone some years back (in the on-line archives) briefly summarized the basic pastric and medieval methodology, but one should turn to e.g. Robert Louis Wilken for a much fuller exposition. (Or even, I might add, to Fr. Reardon's daily reflections of the Scriptures on Touchstone's own web site.)
Posted by: James A. Altena | Aug 20, 2007 9:04:40 AM
"But if you can't see the contrast between:
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
and:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
then...well...we've got a problem here, fellas."
Wonders -
Yes, I think we see the contrast. And again, I think that little Scripture-for-soldiers tract resolved the paradox rather neatly. Loving and praying for my enemies is not incompatible with necessary battle - indeed allowing God's earthly enemies to triumph, when I have the power to stop them, is hardly an act of love for them.
Perhaps some of our Hebrew scholars might make sense of David's use of the word "hate". In the meantime I understand it in this context as fervent, righteous opposition to an enemy's evil - opposition which may well result in his physical destruction, in some circumstances. This makes a deal more sense to me than perverting the plain sense of the Psalmist.
James,
"Depersonalization of others is necessarily a most grievous sin, and if it were truly necessary for the waging of war, then war would be absolutely prohibited to man by God. What is necessary for war is not the depersonalization of the enemy, but rather the right ordering of persons and causes."
Semantics, methinks. A "right ordering of persons and causes", when it comes down to it, is going to mean "Tactical control of this streetcorner is worth the lives of (say) seven men, five of them 'theirs' and two 'ours'." That sort of grim arithmetic is, in practice, depersonalization. For purely practical purposes - most of them not nearly so horrifying! - we "depersonalize" all the time; I hardly think it rates the label "sin" - it would be impossible to navigate the average day with full, due attention to the humanity of everyone we must interact with or consider.
Posted by: Joe Long | Aug 20, 2007 9:15:36 AM
