LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—ED. The Spectator] THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT SIR,—There are some grounds for a conscientious objection to fighting in any war which, although I do not myself think them valid, certainly deserve respect, but one ground is continually given which it is to me amazing that anyone who reflects for five minutes can suppose to have the slightest value as an argument. Mr. H. R. Williamson, in his letter to you published in your number of January 12th, actually seems to make it the sole ground. "Conscientious objection to war," he says, "rests finally on the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
If you take the " Fundamentalist " view of the Old Testa- ment, then the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," was really written by the finger of God, with the other nine com- mandments, upon tables of stone. But then all the rest of the Old Testament, which forms the context of the Ten Commandments, was dictated by God, and this makes it plain that God was far from disapproving of all killing. He is shown very often countenancing and helping, even command- ing and leading, the wars waged by Israel. He commands, on occasion, the slaughter of whole tribes, and the prophet Samuel, acting as God's minister, "hacks in pieces" the king of the Amalekites "before the Lord." When Phinehas found a man of Israel consorting with a Midianite woman, he took a javelin and "thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly" (Numbers xxv. 8). God expresses signal approbation of his action. Now when a Modernist is confronted with these passages, he says, "Yes, of course, much in the Old Testament is on a lower level of religious apprehension ; we need not suppose that when God is described as approving of the action of Phinehas, the char- acter of God, as we know it now, is revealed." Thus it is open to a Modernist to hold that the killing of man by man is always displeasing to God, and he can dismiss the passages in the Old Testament in which God approves of killing as, to that extent, untrue.
But a Fundamentalist cannot possibly take that line. All these '3assages, he holds, were dictated by God Himself, and are of as unquestionable authority as the Ten Commandments. For him the Sixth Commandment can- not mean that God disapproves of all killing, but only of un- authorised killing, what we call " murder " (As a matter of fact, the Hebrew word does mean "murder," not killing in general ; a quite different word is used for the killing of men in battle). On the other hand, the Modernist, with his view of the Old Testament, cannot accept as historical the story of the giving of the law. The prohibitions in the Ten Commandments have for him Divine authority only in so far as the religious and ethical ideas at which Israel had arrived when the story was written have been confirmed in the subsequent experi- ence of Israel and of the Christian society. If the Modernist happens also to be a pacifist, he will hold that the killing of man by man is always displeasing to God, but he will not be able to base this belief upon an acceptance of the Ten Commandments as literally written or promulgated by God. The argument, therefore, that Christians must not kill in war because one of the Ten Commandments says "Thou shalt not kill," implies that you take a Fundamentalist view of a particular passage in the Old Testament, and a Modernist view of the rest of the Old Testament. The absurdity of this should be fairly obvious.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
Previous page
