A Theological Reflection on War and Peace - God Never Allows War

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

This book attempts to prove that God would never allow human beings to kill or fight as enemies to each other. This meritorious work tries to clarify that there are two apposing views on the war or killing or violence in the Bible. Passages in the Bible which supports God's permission for war are disproved as views of human writers. Passages which oppose war/killing are pointed out as truths similar to God's truth. The book presents the probable truth that is meant to satisfy all open minded theologians.

Mr. L. Seikholen belongs to Kuki Community in North East India and is a member of the Kuki Christian Church, India. He did Bachelor of Theology (B.Th.) and Bachelor of Divinity (BD) from Serampore College, Serampore, West Bengal and his Master of Theology (M.Th.) at Gurukul Lutheran Theological College & Research Institute, Madras (Chennai), during 1992-1994. He has been teaching Theology since 1989 and Christian Theology since 1994 at Trulock Theological Seminary, Manipur, India.

It may not be so easy to stop wars between nations by writing and publishing books on war and peace. Books on war and peace in the past might or might not change the world's attitude to war. No religion seemed to condemn war and killing completely. Even Christianity does not have systematic condemnation of war. It is probably true to say that Christianity inherited its positive attitude to war from Judaism or the Old Testament. Thus, writers of the New Testament do not deal with condemnation of war systematically. Since the Old Testament mostly have positive attitude to war, writers of the New Testament too seemed to take for granted that war is an unavoidable evil in the world which cannot be eliminated until the end of the earth.

This book is an attempt to prove that God would never allow human beings to kill or fight as enemies to each other. The book tries to clarify that there are two apposing views on war or killing or violence in the Bible. One view claims that God permits and supports wars between his people and their enemies. This line of thought would sometimes picture God as warrior or even as captain of the army of God (Israel or Judah).

The second view is that God was/is against any act of violence, killing or war. God is always opposed to any kind of ill attitude towards others. Both of these views are made by human beings according to the understanding of the world of that time. Out of these two views the second appears to be much closer to the will of God. In line with this, attempt is made here to prove that God never allows war/killing of any kind between his people.

Some chapters are especially dedicated to deal with passages which have positive view on war. According to the Old Testament, Israelite leaders like Abraham, Moses, judges, kings were taken to accept war as a part of the life of God's people. They all waged war with the view that God not only allows them to fight with other nations, but even joined their wars with other nations as captain of the army of Israel. Some chapters are dedicated to have a critical study of these passages.