Abstract

Two interrelated questions drive this work. First, what moral status does violence have within the framework of the Christian tradition which gives the command to love one's "neighbor" the status of fundamental moral principle? Second, can an ethics of the sort articulated in this tradition stand on its own as a coherent and complete moral system? ;In exploring these questions, I focus attention on the following forseeable situation, which provides a special problem for the sort of Christian ethics I explore, and which therefore serves as a testing ground for the satisfactoriness of that ethic: suppose one is in a situation in which, in order to prevent a malevolent aggressor from harming or killing an innocent person, it seems one must inflict violence on the aggressor. This circumstance is problematic for Christian ethics because in doing violence to the aggressor one seems not to love the aggressor properly, and in refraining from violence one seems not to love the aggressor's victim properly. The question is whether this problem can be resolved. Just War theorists have sought to resolve this problem by arguing that it is sometimes not contrary to love to do violence to a person. Christian pacifists argue that it is always contrary to love to do violence to a person, but that it is not likewise contrary to love to defend innocent persons by nonviolent means alone, even when such means seem likely to fail. Christian realists maintain that the problem cannot be resolved, and that the love ethic of Christianity fails therefore to constitute a coherent and complete moral system: its sphere of application must be truncated, and outside that sphere other principles must hold sway. ;I conclude that the pacifist solution to the posed dilemma is the right one, but that there is nevertheless one sort of violence that is not contrary to love: namely, the violence associated with properly administered punishment. While current systems of criminal punishment are not properly loving, one may find examples of loving punishment in such micro-communities as the family