Following the Prince of Peace
A Christian Witness Against War
What Christians through the centuries have said about violence, the sword, and the way of Jesus — from the Early Church Fathers to Spurgeon, Moody, Bonhoeffer, and beyond.
This post gathers the Christian witness against war from across two thousand years of church history. It is not primarily a political argument. It is a spiritual one. The question it asks is simply this: what does faithfulness to Jesus look like when the drums of war begin to beat? What have faithful men and women said — not just in our time, but throughout the centuries? Their answers are worth hearing.
The Early Church: "A Christian Must Not Kill, Ever"
Before Constantine, before the church was entangled with empire, Christians held a remarkably consistent position on violence. The earliest believers understood, from the teaching of Jesus himself, that their warfare was not of this world. Their testimony is striking in its clarity and unanimity.
We, who used to kill one another, do not make war on our enemies. We refuse to tell lies or deceive our inquisitors; we prefer to die acknowledging Christ.
Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD)
This was not an isolated sentiment. The early church, drawing from the non-violence of the Sermon on the Mount and the example of Jesus himself — who went as a sheep to the slaughter and told Peter to put up his sword — had a settled conviction that bloodshed was incompatible with the holiness called for in the body of Christ. They had a keen sense of 'Be ye holy; for I am holy' (1 Peter)."
The story of St. Martin of Tours captures this vividly. Born in 316 AD, Martin was the son of a Roman soldier and was himself drafted into the imperial army as a youth. When the Emperor prepared his troops for battle near the Rhine, Martin made a declaration that would mark him for all time:
Hitherto I have served you as a soldier: allow me now to become a soldier to God… I am the soldier of Christ: it is not lawful for me to fight.
St. Martin of Tours (316–397 AD) — to the Emperor Julian before battle
Martin's refusal was not cowardice. He offered, by all accounts, to stand unarmed on the front lines. He was willing to die — he simply would not kill. It is a distinction that cuts to the heart of what Christian witness has always been at its most faithful.
Scripture and the Sword
The biblical case for Christian nonviolence is not built on a single proof text. It runs through both testaments. Consider what God said to David, a man after His own heart, when David wished to build the Temple:
And Paul, writing to the church at Rome, places Romans 13 — so often invoked to justify Christian participation in state violence — in the immediate context of Chapter 12, which commands:
The governing authority of Romans 13 carries the sword as God's servant — but Christians are explicitly told in the chapter immediately before it that vengeance belongs to God alone. Christians are called to be the light of the world, not the sword of the LORD.
Martin Luther: Better Ten Times Dead
The Protestant Reformation did not abandon this witness, even as it is often remembered otherwise. At Marburg Castle, when the German princes sought an alliance with Luther to defend themselves against Charles V by force of arms, Luther made a striking declaration:
We cannot in conscience approve such a league inasmuch as bloodshed or other disaster may be the outcome… Better be ten times dead than that our consciences should be burdened with the insufferable weight of such a disaster and that our gospel should be the cause of bloodshed, when we ought to be as sheep for the slaughter and not avenge or defend ourselves.
Martin Luther — at Marburg Castle, on the proposed military alliance
Luther's name was given to him on the Feast of St. Martin of Tours. Whether by providence or coincidence, he too understood that the gospel must not become the cause of bloodshed.
D. L. Moody: "I Could Not Take a Gun"
Dwight L. Moody, the great 19th century evangelist whose campaigns filled halls across America and Britain, held convictions on war that are rarely quoted alongside his revival sermons:
There has never been a time in my life when I felt that I could take a gun and shoot down a fellow-being. In this respect I am a Quaker.
D. L. Moody
Moody was no pacifist ideologue. He served near battlefields during the Civil War in a relief capacity. But his convictions about the Christian and the sword were clear and consistent.
Charles Spurgeon: "Long Have I Held That War Is an Enormous Crime"
No voice in the 19th century evangelical world was louder or more widely read than Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the "Prince of Preachers." And few voices against war were more forceful. Spurgeon did not hedge. He did not soften his language for patriotic audiences. He said what he believed:
We are up to the hilt advocates for peace, and we earnestly war against war. I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that, if a nation is driven to fight in its own defence, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervene as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy's slaughter.
C. H. Spurgeon — Annual Conference Address, Spring 1880
Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale.
C. H. Spurgeon — "India's Ills and England's Sorrows," 1857
I always rejoice to find a soldier a Christian, but I always mourn to find a Christian a soldier… The followers of Christ in these days seem to me to have forgotten a great part of Christianity.
C. H. Spurgeon — Sermon: "Christ our Peace"
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Narrow Way, Unarmed
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is often invoked as a counterexample to Christian pacifism — as the man who proved that sometimes, in extreme circumstances, violence is required. But recent scholarship has challenged this reading decisively. The book Bonhoeffer the Assassin?: Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking argues that Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance has been mythologized, and that his theology remained deeply committed to the nonviolent way of Christ. What is beyond dispute is what Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship:
To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenseless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer — The Cost of Discipleship
That is the way he described. Narrow. Unarmed. Preferring to suffer injustice over committing it. Whether his own final choices perfectly embodied that way is a matter of debate — but his teaching is not.
André Trocmé: A German Soldier Who Would Not Kill
One of the most powerful stories in the Christian pacifist tradition begins not with a theologian or a preacher, but with a young German soldier billeted in a French home during World War I. André Trocmé, then 13 years old, considered himself "a young patriot" given to "uncomplicated nationalism." Then he met a German soldier named Kindler, who refused to carry a gun. Kindler told the boy simply:
A Christian must not kill, ever.
Kindler, German soldier — speaking to young André Trocmé, c. 1915–16
Those five words turned André Trocmé's understanding of patriotism upside down. He went on to become the pastor of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, the French village that sheltered thousands of Jewish refugees during the Nazi occupation — not with guns, but with hospitality, courage, and a nonviolent faith that cost many of them dearly. Trocmé's Christianity was not passive. It was actively, heroically peaceable.
The Heart of the Matter: It Is Not About Pacifism
This is perhaps the most important clarification of all. The Christian witness against war is not, at its root, a political position called "pacifism." It is something far more personal and far more demanding. As Keith Giles wrote:
Personally, I am not at all interested in a world filled with pacifists. Pacifism, in itself, is of no interest to me whatsoever. But what I am very interested in is a world filled with people who love Jesus and take His commands seriously — including His commands to love our enemies, and practice extravagant, preemptive love to everyone within arms reach.
Keith Giles — "It's Not About Pacifism"
The category "pacifism" is modern and political. What the saints of the church described — from Justin Martyr to Martin of Tours, from Luther at Marburg to Moody in his tent meetings, from Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle to Bonhoeffer in his prison cell, from Trocmé sheltering refugees to the unnamed soldier who told a young boy "a Christian must not kill, ever" — was simply obedience to Jesus. The narrow way. The way of the cross.
It has often seemed a minority within the church. But it has never disappeared and the strand has always been there. And it deserves to be heard today.
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