Religion and the War. Yale University. Divinity School
On the contrary, the true God, as the God of righteousness, must be, we feel sure, on the side of right and justice, whichever side that may be. Being confident, therefore, of the justice of our cause, we feel that we have the best of reasons for believing that we are fighting on the side of God, as well as for the true well-being of humanity.
So far, good; but many among us proceed to put two and two together and find that they make five. If we are on the side of human rights and the will of God, and if God is sufficient for our religious needs, is it not clear that we may be absolutely certain of winning the war, whatever temporary reverses may have to be encountered? Moreover, especially since we have had our days of prayer for victory, are we not entitled to sing,
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, And this be our motto, "In God is our trust"?
Indeed, so satisfied are we with the logic of our position that multitudes of us would agree with the sentiment expressed by a British-American in the early days of the war, "If Germany wins this war, there is no God."
But there are reasons for doubting the correctness of this view. Right makes God's will, surely enough; but is it certain that the side whose cause is just will win the war, simply because it is the side of right and of God? Ultimately, we may be sure, right must prevail, for wrong is not the sort of thing that can permanently succeed; it contains within itself the germs of its own ultimate destruction. But nothing in history can be surer than that this ultimate judgment upon evil does not necessarily involve the defeat of all unjustified military undertakings. The side with the greater moral justification has not always won its battles, nor even its wars. It is not enough to have justice on our side; we must use our might on the side of right. Right has to be worked for, and sometimes it has to be fought for. That is the kind of world that—not unfortunately for our development, probably—we are living in. And the fighting is no sham battle. Its issue is not predetermined. It is being decided while the fighting is going on.
Moreover, with reference to prayer as a military factor, it is only fair to note that in the present war many sincere and believing prayers for victory have been offered on both sides. It is not intended to deny that religion of a certain sort is an important military factor; sincere and believing prayer for a cause that is regarded as sacred and just undoubtedly helps morale, both in the army and throughout the nation. But it is a factor which in this war has operated on both sides. Man has the capacity for misusing not only physical, but even spiritual forces. But, on the other hand, when prayer and religious faith encourage an easy-going attitude, and are thus made to some extent a substitute for effort, such prayer and faith cannot but prove a serious military hindrance, no matter how just the cause may be that they are designed to support. They may even conceivably make enough of a difference on the wrong side to lead to the defeat of righteousness.
These notions as to God's providence in war, which we have criticized as manifestly mistaken and dangerously misleading, are symptomatic of confused and muddy thinking on the whole subject of the providence of God in human history. How does God secure his adequate providential control of the course of history? One theory is that he has secured it by having absolutely predetermined from the beginning all events of nature and history, so that all process is the simple unfolding of what has been eternally decreed. There are the strongest ethical and religious reasons for refusing to accept this unproved and unprovable dogma. On the one hand, it would mean that man's consciousness of free agency and moral responsibility would have to be regarded as quite illusory, since what has been decided and made inevitable before man's life began cannot have been originated by man himself. On the other hand, this predestination doctrine would mean that God should be regarded as the real and responsible cause of all evil, including what we call human sin. No such God would be moral enough to be trustworthy or deserving of human adoration.
Another theory as to how God secures his adequate providential control of the course of events is that it is by various sorts of arbitrary or unconditioned interventions in external nature, as well as in human life, in order to realize the ends he may desire to accomplish from time to time. It has often been suggested, for instance, that a miracle of this sort took place at the Marne, preventing the German entry into Paris. But this theory is open to the objection that it raises three unanswerable questions. In the first place, how can we be sure that such interventions have taken place, particularly in the external world? How do you suppose it will ever be established sufficiently for confident rational belief, that only by special miracle were the German armies turned back from Paris in 1914? In the second place, if such special miraculous interventions do take place for the sake of preventing evil, why do they not take place oftener, especially in these times of unprecedented disaster to human life? A miracle like that of the Marne, such as would have turned the Turks back from the helpless Armenians, would have been much appreciated. But, for a third question, if such miracles were to take place as often as this theory of providence would seem to call for, what would become of the order of nature, and how could man learn what to expect, or how to adjust himself to his environment?
As against these theories of absolute predetermination and arbitrary intervention, we may point out that God secures his adequate providential control of the course of history in two principal ways, viz., by enough predetermination of events to give man a dependable universe to live in and learn from, and by enough intervention to admit of a response to man's need of the religious experience of salvation, that is, of being inwardly or spiritually prepared to meet in the right way and with triumphant spirit the very worst that the future may bring. The predetermined order of the laws of nature and mind exhibits the general providence of God. By means of this order, or in the light of consequences, God is teaching man both science and morality, that is, how to adapt means to the realization of ends, and what ideals and principles of action must be employed if the most desirable results are to be obtained. The "intervention enough" of which we spoke—if indeed it is to be called intervention—or, in other words, the response of the divine Reality to the right religious attitude on the part of man, is an exhibition of the special providence of God. When one has found the right relation to God and gained access to the divine power for the inner life, one is virtually prepared for whatever can happen to him. But, as we have indicated, his preparedness is primarily inner, spiritual. He is in a position to meet danger with moral courage, to gain the victory over temptation; to make the most of opportunities for service; to endure hardship, pain and privation, as a good soldier, with patience and cheerfulness; to face death—his own or that of others—and whatever there may be after death, with faith and equanimity.
There are two possible ways, then, in which God may exercise his providence in the events of human history. There is his shorter and preferred method, and his longer and more roundabout method. If the individuals concerned come into the right relation to God, there is the best possible guarantee that they will be made ready for all there may be for them to do and to experience, and thus conditions will be most favorable for the speedy realization of the will of God. But if this shorter, preferred method cannot be employed, because men fail to rise to the occasion as they might if they would rightly relate themselves to God, the divine providence will still be exercised, although necessarily in the less desirable, more roundabout way. God will let man choose the wrong way, through thoughtlessness or wilfulness, and then let him take the bitter consequences of failure, that he may finally learn to guard against similar mistakes and faults in the future.
Let us now return to the more particular question of the relation of the providence of God to the present war. Before discussing again the question with which we started, viz., as to the final outcome of the conflict, we may deal with some other aspects of the problem. In the light of what has been said of the two possible methods of divine providence, it may be denied that the war was providentially caused by God in order to curb other evils, such as softness and idleness, or the selfish pursuit of wealth and pleasure, or drunkenness and vice, or thoughtlessness and irreligion. It is true enough that in the face of war conditions some of these evils have been decreased, and the martial qualities of self-sacrificing courage and fortitude have been stimulated. But it is notoriously true that the advent of war introduces a host of evils, in some cases necessarily, in others almost as inevitably. Drunkenness tends to increase greatly, unless stern measures are taken for its repression. Vice, with the resulting transmissible diseases, ordinarily becomes much more prevalent. Hatred, cruelty,