A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. Mark Vander Vennen is a Toronto theatre artist and free lance writer with a special interest in the arms race.
Evangelicals and the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, edited by Dean C. Curry, foreword by Archbishop John J. O’Connor. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984.
In May 1983 the American Catholic bishops rocked U.S. Catholics with their substantial pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response”. The reverberations reached even the corridors of the U.S. government: the letter disturbed President Reagan, and it placed former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, for example, in an awkward position: how must he. as a policy-maker and a devout Catholic, respond?
The reverberations were felt elsewhere. Also in May 1983 hundreds of evangelicals representing most political persuasions met in California to discuss “The Church and Peacemaking in the Nuclear Age”. This meeting was the first of its kind. Out of that gathering emerged the idea to offer an evangelical response to the Catholic bishops, and out of that idea emerged this book: Evangelicals and the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter.
The book’s structure mirrors the bishops’ letter: I. Biblical Perspectives on War and Peace; II. The Just War in a Nuclear Age; III. The Morality of Deterrence; and IV. Promoting Peace in a Nuclear Age. Frequently the several entries under each heading represent different, even opposite, positions on the arms race. The authors are political science professors, government officials, and political researchers, and they are all evangelicals. As the back cover states, rather coyly: “In keeping with the pluralism that is part of the Protestant tradition, the authors represent a wide variety of theological and political perspectives, from which they address this complex issue which confronts all Christians.”
I find three entries exceptionally strong. In “Biblical Justice and Peace: Toward an Evangelical-Roman Catholic Rapprochement,” Richard Mouw discusses historical developments within the Catholic church which paved the way for the bishops’ letter. Mouw does invaluable spadework for evangelicals. who often know little of the Catholic tradition which informs every page of the bishops’ letter. In “Jus in Bello: Discrimination. Proportionality, and Nuclear Weapons.” Theodore Malloch and James Skillen rigourously apply the just war criteria to the nuclear arms race. And in “Arms Controlled or Uncontrolled: Policy Options.” Robert De Vries takes us on an invaluable and scarcely done (in Christian books) pilgrimage through past, present, and potential arms treaties and negotiations.
Yet for me the book rebounds from the arms race to the state of the church in the 1980s. This is perhaps inevitable in a book which seeks to be an evangelical response to the Catholic bishops – a book whose most transparent feature is its opposing viewpoints. It is as a reflection of the evangelical church that this book has value. The swirling discussions of the morality of nuclear arms, deterrence, countervalue versus counterforce, intent, graduations of intent, whether carried on in this book or others, have little to do with the actual pressures and conflicting forces fuelling the arms race. They have more to do with the authors or institutions from which they come.
If there is one thing which unites the evangelicals in this book (aside from their faith in God, which is significant and which I say in faith), it is what I would call a certain Scriptural illiteracy. Each author, regardless of his position, is at his weakest when appealing to Scripture. There is a bitter irony in this: it was a reclamation of Scripture which caused the Protestant churches of the Reformation to break with the Roman Catholic church. The authors make glib appeals either to Scripture or to the principle that God requires different things of persons and nations, neglecting altogether that vast chunk of Scripture which is addressed specifically to nations (except Romans 13, which they do not subject to the Reformation dictum, a dictum they long ago abandoned: “let Scripture interpret Scripture”). Christians may not use texts as policy statements; but evangelicals have lost the clue to God’s ways with respect to war and peace as revealed in Scripture. And in history: we do not see, for example, that aspects of the French revolution are direct strategic ancestors of today’s appeal for “realism” and a “rational approach to the arms race.” If the French revolution taught us anything, it is that reason and terror are not opposites.
The clue is transparent.
But in certain respects these comments are unfair. Eerdmans and the authors should be commended for Evangelicals and the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter. Not only do evangelicals interact with each other in it, but they also speak to Roman Catholics. The book is a real step towards healing within the Body of Christ – without which there is no prophetic witness.