Objections Answered | 14
14. The Enemies We Are To Love Are Our Personal Enemies, Not the Enemies of the State
Objection.
The passages of Scripture which have been quoted against retaliation and which inculcate love to enemies and the returning of good for evil
have reference to individuals in their conduct towards each other, but have no relation to civil government and are not intended as a rule of duty for one nation towards another.
They therefore have no bearing on the subject of war.
Answer.
Those precepts of the gospel appear to be binding universally without any limitation, and men have no right to limit that which God has not limited.
If the commands of the gospel are binding upon everyone in his individual capacity, then they must be binding upon everyone in any collective body, so that whatever is morally wrong for every individual must be equally wrong for a collective body.
A nation is only a large number of individuals united so as to act collectively as one person.
Therefore, if it is criminal for an individual to lie, steal, quarrel, and fight, it is also criminal for nations to lie, steal, quarrel, and fight.
If it is the duty of an individual to be kind and tender-hearted and to have a forgiving and merciful disposition, it is likewise the duty of nations to be kind, forgiving, and merciful.
If it is the duty of an individual to return good for evil, then it is the duty of nations to return good for evil.
It is self-evident that individuals cannot delegate power to communities if they do not possess it themselves.
Therefore, if every individual is bound to obey the precepts of the gospel and cannot as an individual be released from the obligation, then individuals have no power to release any collective body from that obligation.
To say that God has given to nations a right to return evil for evil is begging the question,
for it does not appear and cannot be shown that God has restricted the precepts of the gospel to individuals, or that he has given any precepts to nations as such, or to any other community than his own covenant people or church.
This objection makes government an abstraction according with the common saying, “Government is without a soul.”
No practice has a more corrupt tendency than that of attempting to limit the Scriptures so as to make them trim with the corrupt practices of mankind.
Whoever, for the sake of supporting war, attempts to limit these precepts of the gospel to individuals and denies that they are binding upon nations destroys one of the main pillars by which the lawfulness of war is upheld.
The right of nations to defend themselves with the sword is argued on the supposed right of individual self-preservation:
Since it is said to be right for individuals to defend themselves with deadly weapons, so it is lawful for nations to have recourse to the sword for defence of their rights.
But if these passages are applicable to individuals and prohibit them from acts of retaliation, and if the rights of nations are founded on the rights of individuals, then nations have no right to retaliate injury.