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Benjamin Siegel

Professor Edmund Santurri

Religion 239B

7 March 2024

C. S. Lewis on War

Addressing war and Christian participation therein, twentieth-century apologist C. S.

Lewis expounds a version of the just war theory. This tradition asserts that war is justifiable in

many circumstances but places constraints on which modes of initiating and waging war are

morally acceptable. This essay will offer an explication and criticism of Lewis’s particular

argument. First, however, Lewis’s argument should be situated in its philosophical context. By

accepting the just war theory, Lewis rejects several other prominent stances from Christian

tradition: holy war (which claims that war is necessary when divinely ordained and that nearly

any means can be employed toward a divine end), Christian realism (which claims that war is a

tragic but necessary reality of this fallen world), and pacifism (which claims that war’s violence

cannot be justified in any circumstance). “Holy war” has largely been rejected by Christians and

non-Christians alike, often on the grounds that the concept offers an unbiblical justification for

immoral means toward a selfish end. Lewis also rejects Christian realism as a “sort of

semi-pacifism… which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it

with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it” (“Mere Christianity” 101). A complete

explanation of Lewis’s stance on Christian realism is beyond the scope of this essay, but he

seems to view it as a failure to fully commit to either of the noble and thorough positions one

might otherwise adopt: just war theory or pacifism. Thus, Lewis argues toward the rejection of

pacifism.

Interestingly, Lewis’s just war theory aligns with the majority view in both Christian

thought and broader modern thought; war is one of the few issues on which Lewis does not

directly oppose modernity. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that, while pacifists remain a minority
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by a significant margin, modernity’s obsession with individual rights lends their argument a

certain cogency. Adopting Descartes and contemporaries’ conception of the self as isolated

consciousness, modernity celebrates the individual and prioritizes autonomy and personal

dignity. Pacifism too embraces these principles, and one common defense of pacifism essentially

holds that individuals’ intrinsic dignity is too great to justify any violence that offends their right

to life. In a limited sense, then, Lewis’s argument against pacifism is an argument against

modernity’s ever-growing emphasis on individual rights as a moral priority.

In his 1940 address to the pacifist society at Oxford titled “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,”

Lewis rejects pacifism through appeals to both moral reasoning and authority. Lewis claims that

conscience involves the basic “facts of life” that make it possible to raise moral questions in the

first place, intuitions of simple good and evil, and a process of reasoning by which one arranges

these intuitions to determine an act’s virtue. As a substitute for or complement to such

argumentation, Lewis looks to “better and wiser” authority (“Why I Am Not a Pacifist” 68). The

quality of any given moral judgment depends on the quality of its components: facts, intuitions,

reasoning, and authority (72). In “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” Lewis examines each of these four

elements; he attempts to prove that pacifism does not adequately fulfill the standards of proper

moral reasoning and asserts that both human and divine power point to just war theory. He

effectively uses scriptural evidence to prove that any Christian who takes the Bible seriously as a

source of divine authority must reject pacifism, but he fails to establish the logical necessity of

denying pacifism with similar precision, as his argument presupposes other moral judgments that

he fails to defend.

First, Lewis addresses the facts at play. He claims the fact raised by Pacifists is that “wars

always do more harm than good” (73). He rejects this idea because it is a speculative position; to

know whether wars cause more harm than good or vice versa, one must be able to compare the

actual results of the war with what would have happened had the war not occurred (73). This is a

compelling argument. Indeed, it seems very likely that certain instances of historical fighting
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caused more good than harm; it is reasonable, for instance, to assume that there would be greater

harm if Hitler’s Nazism was allowed to spread without interference. The problem here is not the

quality of Lewis’s reasoning but the fact that he employs reasoning at this stage. Lewis

previously established fact as something distinct from reasoning. He states that he is referring not

to “moral facts” but to “those facts about actions without holding which we could not raise moral

questions at all – for we should not even be discussing Pacifism if we did not know what war and

killing meant” (68). Yet, here he takes a moral claim and attempts to classify it alongside “facts

of life”. In order to make a judgment concerning what constitutes “good” and what constitutes

“harm,” one must have intuitions – an understanding of “utterly simple good and evil as such”

(68). “Wars always do more harm than good” is a claim that weighs goods and evils; thus, it is a

moral judgment, an arrangement of basic intuitions about what is good. Such an arrangement of

intuitions is what Lewis calls reasoning. His definition of fact is inconsistent, and by considering

a moral question as his original definitions would have him consider “facts of life,” he

prematurely introduces a moral judgment.

Next, Lewis establishes relevant intuitions. Lewis defines intuitions as indisputable

understandings of good and evil. He writes, “[I]f there can be a difference of opinion which does

not reveal one of the parties as a moral idiot, then it is not an intuition” (69). Since intuitions are

moral understandings common to all, all Lewis can do is state truths that need no argument –

“The relevant intuition seems to be that love is good and hatred bad, or that helping is good and

harming bad” (75). Lewis rightly identifies one “relevant intuition” but fails to acknowledge the

possibility that other intuitions may also be relevant to the question at hand. He is right to claim

that the intuition he states requires no defense, but he is wrong to imply that his selection of this

intuition over others is similarly irrefutable. For instance, one could easily assert that “Human

dignity ought to be respected.” is another irrefutable intuition, and this intuition would be more

likely to lead to a pacifistic conclusion. In this way, Lewis again prematurely employs moral
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reasoning; he arranges intuitions by placing one in the category “relevant” and implying that

another must be placed in the category “irrelevant”.

Lewis then progresses to reasoning. He asserts that, in order to do good, one must do

some particular good to some particular person(s). By doing good to a particular person(s), one

must neglect other possible goods and other possible recipients of good (75). Thus, obedience to

the intuition “helping is good” requires that we help one at the expense of a neglected other.

Lewis further asserts that, in many cases, the intuition requires helping one person by doing

some sort of violence to another. That is, if person B wrongs person A, one must either (1)

disregard her intuition and refrain from helping or (2) help A, although it means harming B and

directly disrupting his aims. This successfully puts the pacifist in a difficult position, but Lewis

acknowledges that the pacifist could try to further her argument in either of two ways. First, she

might admit that violence is acceptable but insist that it not involve killing. Second, she might

admit that killing individuals is acceptable but insist that killing a multitude in war is

unacceptable (75-76).

Lewis’s response to the first falls short. He posits that the lesser violence is preferable to

the greater (killing) only if “it is equally efficient in restraining [the guilty] and equally good for

everyone concerned” (76). This statement assumes that efficiency of restraint is of great

importance and should be valued over other considerations, such as respect for individuals’

human rights. Can a person’s guilt restrict his dignity so much that efficiency of restraint

becomes a greater concern than his right to life? I do not intend to answer this question, but I do

intend to draw out the fact that Lewis assumes an answer to it. For Lewis’s argument to be valid,

he must justify the assumption that efficiency of restraint and good for everyone concerned are

indeed more important considerations than the guilty man’s right to live. There are competing

moral claims, and Lewis does not provide adequate justification for weighing them as he does.

Lewis’s response to the second potential way forward is more convincing. He asserts that “a

whole nation cannot be prevented from taking what it wants except by war” (77). Since an
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alternative method of stopping an entire nation is inconceivable, a pacifist is forced to maintain

that the death and pain caused by war are still greater evils than whatever extraordinary evil a

nation might pursue. Lewis rejects this view, claiming that it is a greater evil for a lower

religion/culture to overtake a higher religion/culture than for people to suffer and die in war.

Many would be inclined to reject this view at first glance. While they would certainly be justified

in accepting a more conservative set of valid justifications than Lewis himself, extreme historical

examples point to the validity of Lewis’s greater argument. Human experience reveals that there

are evils so great they are worth dying to prevent. We might return, for example, to the spread of

Nazism. A pacifist would have to maintain that mass acceptance of Nazism and all of its

implications are a lesser evil than men losing their lives in war; this is a very difficult position to

tie oneself to.

Concluding that there is no way to arrive at pacifism by moral reasoning, Lewis turns to

authority. The appeal to authority is interesting because it is relevant only for one who accepts

that the authority is, in fact, “wiser and better than himself” (68). That said, Lewis believes that

authority holds special importance in moral considerations because people approach moral

questions with a bias; moral questions typically arise from a desire to do or not to do something

(68-69). First, Lewis appeals to the special human authority of the English society to which he

belongs, pointing out that the society rejects pacifism by its declaration of war, centuries of

institutions and practices, and even centuries of literature that celebrates righteous war (80-81).

General human authority offers a very similar claim. Lewis provides examples that span place

and time – from Zarathustra to Montaigne, from Ancient Greece to contemporary England – to

prove that “the world echoes with the praise of righteous war” (81). Of course, some may

discount human authority, believing that a sinful world should not be used as evidence of what is

right. Lewis does not counter this critique but turns to divine authority; his discussion of divine

authority becomes, for the Christian, the most irrefutable part of his address. Lewis pulls

evidence from across the New Testament. For instance, when soldiers in the Gospel ask John the
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Baptist what they ought to do, John responds, “Do violence to no man and be content with your

pay” (Luke 3:14). Quoting St. Augustine, Lewis points out that it would be absurd for John to

tell them to be content with their pay if they were not to work as soldiers in the first place

(83-84). He also reminds the reader that the Pauline epistles approve of the magistrate’s use of

the sword, highlighting Romans 13:4 and 1 Peter 2:14 (87). Perhaps most importantly, he rejects

the pacifist interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount’s command that Christians “turn the other

cheek,” arguing (1) that the passage applies only insofar as violence is rooted in an egotistic

desire to retaliate and (2) that war would not have even been on the mind of the text’s original

audience, private people in a disarmed nation (84-87). Lewis’s scriptural evidence provides all

that a conservative Christian needs to reject pacifism; the divine word of God allows for war.

Thus, Lewis’s argument is ultimately successful for a Christian who trusts the authority of the

Bible but unsuccessful for a wider audience. While his appeal to divine authority is difficult to

refute, his appeal to moral reasoning rests on moral assumptions that require further defense.
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Works Cited

Lewis, Clive Staples. “Mere Christianity.” Signature Classics, HarperOne, 2017, pp. 1-177.

Lewis, Clive Staples. “Why I Am Not a Pacifist.” The Weight of Glory, HarperOne, 2001, pp.

64-90.