Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc

"What Would You Do If ...?" An Exercise in Situation Ethics

Author(s): John H. Yoder
Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall, 1974), pp. 81-105
Published by: on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40017751 .
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 "WHATWOULDYOU DO IF . . . ?"
AN EXERCISE IN SITUATION ETHICS1

John H. Yoder

ABSTRACT

This article takes up the stock anti-pacifist question, "What would you
do if someone dependent upon you were being attacked . . . ?" for
serious analysis as an ethical case. It is shown that this question does
not bear the relationship to the issue of using violence in war that it is
usually assumed to have. The author illustrates how some who use the
casuistic test question tend to prejudge the decision by assuming a view
of reality less open than that of Christian faith.

Sooner or later, in any effort to speak carefully about the issue of war and
peace, someone calls for what seems to him to be the most obvious testing point.
If I move beyond the statement that a given war is ineffective or illegitimate, to
argue that all war is wrong, the challenger must test me for consistency by
asking whether I would not defend my own (wife, daughter, mother) against an
insane or criminal assailant.
There is something uncanny about the uniformity with which it seems
self-evident to all kinds of arguers, from the seminary professor to the draft
board member, that this question represents fairly the issue of war, and that its
conclusiveness as an unanswerable refutation of pacifism is practically
self-evident. Nonetheless I propose to look seriously at this situational paradigm,
in order seriously to explicate the logic behind the Christian commitment to

JRE 2/2 (1974), 81-105

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82 YODER

unwavering suffering love. I must only ask that the reader be patient with
plodding analysis, in order to move the question from the visceral to the rational
level.
Beginning with the most general clarification of the nature of the analogy
argument itself and the extent of its validity, I propose to advance step by step
toward greater precision in identifying all the dimensions of choice it demands,
seeing it in the light of Christian ethical accountability. Along the way it shall be
kept in mind that the paradigm of personal threat is hypothesized because it is
thought that it applies self-evidently to the argument about national defense. It
will therefore be fitting, along the way, that the extent and validity of such
parallel reasoning be tested.
The way the question is put arises very naively and authentically from the
ordinary language of lay ethical debate. It is in that same key that this present
outline was initially pitched, as a workshop contribution in a gathering of
Christian educators. As the text now undergoes recasting to serve at the same
time as a specimen of ethical method, the temptation is strong to replace the
original text with a discussion of metaethical self-consciousness. That would
however deny something of the point of the argument itself, which is that
ethical discourse properly arises out of the deepening self-critique of ordinary
argumentation. The refinement of its tools will proceed most fruitfully through
the patient identification of all of the issues subjacent in the ordinary language,
rather than dictating from outside the specific debate what superior insight
indicates to be a better way of arguing. The first person singular is retained in
the text in recognition of the ad hominem quality of the entire argument, which
cannot be set aside in ordinary debate the way it can in logic.

Some General Considerations

The assumptions underlying this entire argument, although they may be

unconscious or may appear self-evident, must be brought out into the open if we
are to deal soberly with the issue. There is no such thing as a simple situation
dictating a particular line of action. No situation is self-interpreting. Only within
the context of prior assumptions about how to take the measure of a given
situation can the situation itself have any meaning. Thus before we can carry on
a serious analysis of the suggested crisis case, we need to move these assumptions
up to the level of awareness.
1. The way this challenge poses an ethical problem in terms of a case where
I alone have a decision to make assumes determinism. It assumes that the
relationship between persons is at bottom one which unfolds according to a
mechanical model; if I turn the machine one way it will follow one course
inevitably, if I push a different set of buttons the machine will clearly operate in
another direction. It is assumed that I am the only party making decisions in the
total process. The attacker is so pre-programmed that he will not be making any

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 83

more decisions. His only desire is like an automaton to do the worst evil he can,
or the particular evil he has fixed his mind on. Nor are there elsewhere in the
total situation other persons whose actions might get in the way of the
outworking of the mechanism, which I am therefore solely responsible to steer.
This deterministic assumption raises an issue I shall need to return to later
with regard to specifically Christian understandings of the person and will of
God. At this point two other observations are necessary. The most obvious is
that this mechanical model is extremely unrepresentative of the nature of a
decision process in case of war. With all the various parties making decisions
about how to govern history, it is evident that no one of them can actually
foresee what is quasi mechanically sure to happen if he decides this rather than
that. Others are acting at the same time, changing by their actions the situation
upon which the decisions of each agent will impinge.
Even on the small scale of the individual assailant, it is not logically
necessary to assume that the decisions I make are the only decisions being made;
that there are only two pre-programmed tracks on which events can go, and that
I at a particular point will make the choice between them.
While thus refusing to admit the validity of the determinist assumptions of
the questioner, I can concede that a commitment to those assumptions may be
in some sense self-fulfilling. If I tell myself there are no choices, there are less
likely to be other choices than if I expected them, and still less than if I felt a
creative capacity (or duty) to make them possible.
2. The challenge assumes, if not omnipotence, at least my substantial
control of the situation. It is assumed that if I seek to stop the attacker I can. In
some cases this may be true but in many cases it is by no means certain. The
more serious the threat which the attacker represents, the less likely is it that I
will actually be able to stop him by the means at my disposal.
The classical theory of the just war properly includes the criterion of
probable success. It is not reasonable to fight a war which one is sure to lose, for
then society would suffer both the evil which one inflicts and the evil which one
hoped to prevent: certainly this is a worse outcome than if one had willingly
accepted the evil, however great, which threatened.
A simple logical analysis suffices to show that it can not be generally the
case that violence is likely to be successful. In any war at least one side loses. In
some wars no side wins. Thus, on the simple basis of an honest calculation of
probability the chances are less than even that I will be able to bring about what
I consider a successful result by harming the other party. This is true on the
small scale because the attacker is a physically powerful or armed person taking
the premeditated offensive; it is true on the international level because of the
many dimensions of a war which can not be manipulated with certainty even by
superior power.
The assumption of a closed system all of whose possible outcomes we have
surveyed, which is the combination of points 1 and 2 above, is one of those

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84 YODER

which cry out for rebuttal in lay debate. Leo Tolstoy reminds us that if we are
not informed about the social utility of the future life of both the assailant and
the victim, it is not possible on pragmatic grounds to explain why the guilty life
is worth less than the innocent one.2 Dale Brown argues the same point in
another direction by claiming the freedom to stipulate further unforeseen data
in the situation. Such playful redefinition of the question is not logically
convincing, but that is its point: it dramatizes how much the apparent
self-evidence of an argument depends on certain assumptions about what are
held to be-but might not be-the facts.
3. This argument presupposes, if not omniscience, at least very full and very
reliable information. Not only does it assume that events will unfold in a
mechanically inevitable way; it also presupposes that I am quite reliably
informed about what that unfolding will be like. I know that if I do not kill the
aggressor he will do thus and so; and I know as well what will probably happen
when I do seek to take his life.
Once again, this reasoning is questionable even on the individual level, since
the outcome of any kind of a fight is not predictable. Even more must this be
the case if on the international level. Any ''scenario" in which the military
planner seeks to foresee how he would behave in hypothetical circumstances
makes assumptions about the psychology of the enemy. The American military
"think tank" planners who in their war gaming constantly make assumptions
about how the Russians or the Chinese will react to a variety of nuclear
"scenarios" must pretend knowledge of how any reasonable Chinaman will
respond to such-and-such a stimulus; knowledge of such detail and precision that
the plan for the unfolding of various kinds of hypothetical wars and war threats
can be calculated out by the computer.
As soon as a situation exists in which several agents are making up their
minds at once, each acting on the basis of what he thinks others think, and each
acting partly with the desire to deceive the others, the one thing we can be quite
sure of is that we cannot possibly have sure knowledge of what is going to
happen or of the ultimate difference it will make if just one of these agents does
this instead of that.
The ethical theorist will recognize that at these three points- namely the
mechanical modeling, the illusion of control and the illusion of complete
knowledge- I have simply been restating some of the classical theoretical
objections to "consequentialism" as an ethical structure. It should not be
thought, however, therefore that the challenger who asks, "What would you
do ... ," is a consistent consequentialist or that I am seeking to represent
consistently some other logical type. Not all of the phases of the argument in
favor of arming to destroy the burgler are consistently consequentialist, as we
shall note later as we observe the glorification of heroism which may underlie
the majority alternative.
4. The paradigm poses the question as an individual matter. Not only does it

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 85

thereby become quite unrepresentative of the social and institutional dimensions

of war; it is even untrue to the reality of the particular case in point. The person
directly attacked is also a responsible being and would properly be part of my
decision-making process. If this person shares my value commitments then she
would be guided by some of the same considerations of regarding a proper
attitude toward the enemy as those which guide me. It would be certainly
improper for me as a third party in the conflict to deal with her enemy in a way
she would not want me to. If we posit that the victim is even more deeply part
of myself through the bond of family loyalty, then this commonality of the
decision becomes even more fundamental.
5. The logic of this approach assumes my righteousness. Not only does it
assume that I am able to calculate what would bring about the desired outcome;
it also authorizes me morally to be judge, jury, and executioner in my own case.
It assumes that I am morally qualified to be honest with the hard decision even
when it involves weighing my welfare and interests over against those of another.
This shorting out of critical objectivity may be the most visibly improper of the
five assumptions, even on the individual level. When we move to the level of the
group or the nation, there is even less reason to assume that a center of power
and decision making is capable of standing in judgment over its own selfish
temptations. As Reinhold Niebuhr long since pointed out, it is generally even
less possible for a group to be completely or consistently unselfish than for an
individual. Thus the danger of being one-sided, of being judge, prosecutor, and
executioner in one's own case, is increased precisely where the power is greatest
and the capacity for self-criticism the least.
6. By definition, the threat to my interests is defined in such a way as to
exclude the possibility that the other party in the picture might have reasons for
behaving in the way I perceive to be wrong.
There is no room left open for the possibility that the offender might be a
Jean Valjean, only looking for bread for his hungry children in the home of
someone who has more bread than they need. There is no room for the
possibility that the offender might be an oppressed person, in the style of the
theories of Frantz Fanon, whose human dignity is dependent upon his rising up
and destroying a symbol- an innocent symbol, that makes no difference- of the
oppressive order.

The Emotional Twist in the Picture

We have noticed that some of the assumptions made about my

responsibility to take the life of an assailant become more questionable when
extended to the level of war. This is even more evident when we look at certain
less logical dimensions of the problem. To shift the problem from the level of
war, or the general level of "love thy neighbor," to the specific case of my
protecting my loved ones has a quite specific logical impact; or I should rather

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86 YODER

say that it has the definite effect of making logical thought more difficult.
1. This is the kind of argument which the logician calls ad hominem. It
moves away from the ethical decision at issue and brings in considerations of
personality and my picture of who I am. Instead of discussing what is generally
right or wrong, it personalizes and emotionalizes the problem by making it my
own self-defense, by involving elements of social disorder and sexual menace,
with the unspoken suggestion that if I do not respond to the brutal threat in a
brutal way I will not be a man. It reminds me that I often do not live up to my
principles. These emotional overtones are irrelevant to the discussion of the
conditions under which it is morally justified or obligatory to take the life of
another human being, yet the case is stated so as to maximize them.
Not only is this stock case one in which an emotional appeal is made to my
virility (or lack thereof) as the defender of those entrusted to me: it tends in
other ways as well to be a sexist argument assuming that the potential victim is
in either case a dependent being, subject to being disposed of by a stronger male.
She who is the prey participates only as an object.
2. Especially is this emotional dimension visible in that this argument seems
to describe the question as being whether to protect someone else, whether to
love my neighbor by taking care of someone, other than myself, who is in need.
Sometimes this aspect of the argument is spelled out at greater length when the
critic says, "I would have the right or perhaps even in some cases the duty to
sacrifice my own welfare in order to be loving toward an attacker, but I have no
right to sacrifice the welfare of others for whom I am responsible."
We must pierce through the screen of this apparent altruism and point out
that it distorts the real nature of the argument right at this point. It is an
altruistic form of egoism or an egoistic form of altruism when I defend my wife
or my child because they are precisely my own. This argument does not suggest
that I would have the same responsibility to defend the wives and children of the
Vietnamese who are being attacked by my countrymen; it does not suggest any
special concern for the wife or child of the attacker. The reason I should in this
argument defend my wife and child is not that they are my neighbors, innocent
third parties, but that ultimately they are mine. This is in other words once more
an act of selfishness, covered over with the halo of service to others but still
self-oriented in its structure.
To recognize the dimension of self-centeredness is not to claim that all
questions are closed. 'Thou shalt not seek thy own interests" is not a generally
accepted moral axiom. The necessity of a measure of self-love can be argued on
the grounds of values entrusted to man's care, on the grounds of psychological
health, or in other serious ways. Or, granting that all selfish behavior is
regrettable, one can still claim that selfishness in the defense of the innocent is
to be preferred to selfishness against the law. Still, the conversation is served by
recognition that this is the subject; the question is not "Shall one be
altruistically heroic?" but rather "When is violent self-defense of oneself or one's
own called for?"

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 87

It can be argued that the preference for the defense of the one closest to me
is not "selfish" in the reprehensible sense of that term, since it is a part of loving
and serving everyone, which must simply begin closest to home. The "near
neighbor/' it can be claimed, represents for me the neighbor as such. Whatever
be the strength of this argument, it is still a kind of justification for egoism.
When I threaten the life of the aggressor, he is the one I am dealing with; he is
the near neighbor in that particular context. To distinguish between two near
neighbors, and to say that the nearness of my family member must take priority
over the nearness of my victim is structurally a form of egoism, which needs to
be justified. That argument cannot be worked through here. It must suffice to
recognize that its justification is not prima facie evident for Christianity as it is
for ethical systems which locate value in the self and its relations. Christianity
relativizes the value of self and survival as it affirms the dignity of the enemy and
offender. In the face of this specific Christian claim, what seems prima facie
evident becomes arguable.
Another basis for making more plausible the discrimination against the
assailant is the measurement of guilt or innocence. This is a more objective
criterion. It does not have the same weight for the Christian, who proclaims that
forgiveness has at least some social relevance, that it would have before a
tribunal committed to the law of reprisal. "Guilt" does not have the same
meaning for minds formed by modern psychology as it did for the fathers of the
just war theory. Yet I would not seek to deny that this is a significant
consideration. The victim may be stipuiated to be innocent of any provocation.
But to demonstrate that my defense of this victim is not egoistic I would need to
demonstrate, at least in principle and as much as lies in my power, a concern for
other innocent victims. The reference above to Vietnam is thus not
inappropriate.

War is Different

There are serious points at which the analogy between self-defense and war
does not hold at all. If I could agree that it might be my Christian duty to
defend my family against an attacker by killing, I could still with complete
consistency reject all war.
1. In the case of the individual attacker, it is the guilty person who would be
the target of my defensive violence. I would not run very serious risk of harming
innocent bystanders. Even less would I go to his home to destroy his family.
This is one clear point of difference from modern war. Who is the aggressor in
nuclear war is not always fully clear; but it is clear that most of those who suffer
from modern war are not attacking us. In fact, the airman or missileman who is
actively attacking, like the top statesman or the general who made the decisions
to attack, is less likely to be harmed than most categories of civilians in the line
of fire.4 This is even more strikingly relevant when we observe that part of the
argument for the recent war in Vietnam was to keep Americans from needing to

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88 YODER

defend themselves "on the beaches of California." This means that the total
Vietnamese tragedy, even the very fact that "we" chose to "defend" the South
against the North, became a matter of using Vietnam as a place to fight China.
Then to be fair with the logic the image of the invader must be turned around. It
is the American forces which are entering someone else's homeland on the
grounds that it might be the distant purpose of their neighbors to attack us. This
would be like a man who would enter my house saying he must fight my wife
because my neighbor might some time want to attack his home.
2. In the case of the local personal threat, the attacker and the victim and I
all live in the same legally organized community, subject to the same legislation.
We all know that he is committing a crime according to the law of the land and
that if he were apprehended by the police he would be liable to be punished for
it. If I then act in self-defense, in the^place of the absent policeman, that
defensive action is subject to review by the police or the courts. Itwill only be
justified by them if I can demonstrate the nature and the certainty of the threat.
Even the action of the policeman himself, if he were there, would be subject to
review. None of this applies in the same simple way to war, where there is no
such unambiguous definition of what constitutes aggression or what constitutes
innocence. There is usually no higher court to adjudicate whether what claimed
to be legitimate defense actually was that. There is no regular procedure of
review whereby it is determined whether a nation exceeded the legitimate use of
preventive force.
3. In the defense situation the victim would be clearly in our own home,
with no question of our "legitimate authority." In war the aggression is rarely so
clean-cut, and the defense seldom stays on its home terrain.
4. Defending my home would demand a minimum of preparation; it suffices
to have a weapon in the house. In war, however, resort to this method is
unthinkable unless a nation has been making costly institutional preparations for
years. Having a gun in my house, if the neighbors know about it, might poss/b/y
have a deterrent effect upon their efforts to break into my house, but the piling
up of armaments tends to increase rather than to decrease international tensions.
The development of contingency plans make ^possible types of military
operations which otherwise could not occur. I could have a pistol in my dresser
drawer and be sure that its use would be a last resort. But when that last resort is
institutionalized on an international scale, it becomes just one more increment
on the preplanned escalation of usable "instruments of politics."
5. The possibility that any one individual at a given time will make a
decision about whether to resort to violence is increasingly less real in a military
case, whereas it is the essence of the personal paradigm. It is a real option when
the question, "What would you do if ... ?" is put to an individual. It is not a
real option, on the other hand, that anyone, even the head of a government,
would at a specific time and place make a free decision for or against war. Thus
the dimensions of emotional pressure, split-second decisiveness, and unique
momentary risk which characterize the hypothetical case, some of them tending

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"WHATWOULDYOU DO IF . . . ?" 89

to push toward justifying the killing of the individual offender, are not
representative of preparation for and continuation in war.
6. It is possible that having a gun in the house might not completely change
the atmosphere of our family relationships, but it has been demonstrated that
turning a national economy over to the military-industrial-communications
complex does bring about a great change in the character of the nation's life.
The very effort to defend freedom (i.e. national sovereignty) generally entails a
real sacrifice of (internal political) freedom.
7. The attacker in this paradigm is clearly and solely the guilty one. His
brutality may well be partly the product of his^environment, and views will
differ as to whether this extenuates his moral blameworthiness; but in any case
he is clearly now the aggressor, without right or reason for his attack. This is
seldom this clearly the case even for local and personal deeds of violence.
Nevertheless we have taken the paradigm as an occasion to unfold the logic of an
ethic of love. But in war the isolated single act of unjust brutal attack, in which
the innocent party or an unselfish bystander third party would be capable of
stopping the attacker, is especially difficult to find. All sober political thought
warns us to avoid the "devil" and "ruffian" theories of international conflict.
Much of the drama and some of the confusion of the unending debate about
pacifism as a social stance, as a personal discipleship, and about the link between
the two comes to the surface at this point. Mohandas Gandhi and Thomas
Merton were ready without embarrassment to acknowledge the legitimacy of the
violent defense of one's immediate family or self, without seeing therein any
qualification or compromise of their systematic rejection of all strategic and
tactical organized violence in social or national causes. That they were quite
right in feeling no necessary inconsistency is the point of this paragraph.
The same kind of healthy sense of proportion was also in Leo Tolstoy's
response when the stock question was pat to him by William Jennings Byran at
the occasion of a visit. "Tolstoy replied with his stock answer that in all his
seventy-five years he had never met anywhere this fantastic brigand who would
murder or outrage a child before his eyes, whereas in war millions of brigands
kill with complete license. 'When I said this,' Tolstoy concluded, 'my deal
companion, with his characteristically quick understanding, did not let me
finish, laughed, and agreed that my argument was satisfactory'" (Simmons,
1946:623. This exchange was recounted repeatedly by both Tolstoy and
Bryan-e.g. in Smith, 1971:38).
The ability or the willingness to use the stock argument for purposes of
clarification must never lead us to forget that it radically misrepresents what is
really going on in the institutionalization of social coercion.
The test case as posed does not only differ from war. It also abstracts out of
general social responsibility by not including the feedback of my choice into the
long-range social hygiene. If in order to be able to protect my loved ones I
should have a gun in the house, what then does it do to a society for every
householder to have a gun? Is a society in which every citizen is prepared to take
the law into his hands one in which there will be fewer crimes?7

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90 YODER

How Many Options?

Now we come to the decision itself. The model for decision making as the
questioner conceives it is that of a yes/no decision. The only choices which the
question offers are defense, which must necessarily be lethal, and non-defense
which is sure to permit the worst to happen. This is a wrldly illegitimate way to
pose the problem. There are certainly several different possible kinds of
outcome. To set the discussion up as if there were only two is to prejudice the
argument.
Let us then open up the core of the question by identifying the varied
options. We cannot, and need not, claim to allot to each a probability percentage
figure; it will suffice to say that each is possible.
I. One possibility is unmitigated tragedy. There is the possibility that the
attacker would be able fully to carry out his evil designs; this would be,
according to the argument, pure catastrophe, an evil God would not want to
permit, an event which forever after will be looked on with horror. This is the
eventuality which the critic assumes must be excluded at all necessary cost.
II. Another serious possibility is martyrdom. Some suffering, though
recognized as evil, has its place in God's saving purposes. We are all going to die
sometime, in any case; so are our loved ones. Then it is irrational to look at this
problem as if innocent death were in all situations at all costs absolutely to be
avoided. In many cases, which come with time to be seen as very important,
even as representative of the true character of the church, Christians have held
that the death of a Christian believer, as a result of his behaving in a Christian
way at the hands of the agents of evil, can become through no merit of his or her
own a special witness and a monument of the power of God. The death of that
Christian disciple makes a greater contribution to the cause of God and to the
welfare of the world than his staying alive at the cost of killing would have done.
For ever after it is looked on with respect. Why not accept suffering? Jesus did.
Lest it be thought that this consideration injects into our discussion
sectarian, irrational, or emotional, or illegitimately religious considerations, it
should not be forgotten that Marxism, nationalist movements, and the civil
rights movement have their martyrs as well.
II/A. The victim as martyr. If it should happen that such an unjustified
attack should befall someone when there was no defender around, many would
speak of such an innocent death as more than the effect of mindless hazard.
Some would judge such suffering to be pointless, or even to be a proof of the
non-existence of God or the evil nature of reality; but for others such a slaughter
of innocents can fit in a meaningful way into a renewed commitment of the
survivors to work for the kind of world in which such things do not happen.
Il/B. Myself as a martyr. But the more congruent application of the concept
of meaningful sacrifice would be for me to intervene in a way which without
destroying the aggressor would refocus his attack upon me instead of upon the
originally intended victim. To risk one's own life to save that of another is a kind

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"WHATWOULDYOU DO IF . . . ?" 91

of heroism which often seems fitting when the danger comes from a fire or a
natural disaster, a runaway vehicle or a military enemy; why would not my
risking myself to give the intended victim a chance to escape or get help be the
first logical alternative in this case?
III. There might be another way out. Any honest contemplation of the
future must admit uncertainty of prediction; never are there only two choices.
Then an unforeseen happy outcome cannot be logically excluded. In logical
analysis we may subdivide this category further.
Ill/A. The "natural" way out. Within a given situation some way might
come to mind to disarm the attacker emotionally; I might creatively find a
loving gesture, I might rise to a psychological height of moral authority. I might
be able to consider the attacker as a redeemable person in need of love, and find
ways which the writers of the scenario had not thought of to save the situation.
My undefensive harmlessness might disarm him psychologically.8 I might use
non-lethal force, or a ruse.9 If money is part of what he wants, I could hand it
over. I might interpose myself and let the intended victim escape. Such saving
solutions are reported with striking frequency, throughout the great body of
religious biographical literature, as having been found (or rather "given") in tight
spots in the past. Such saving options, it stands to reason, are more likely to be
looked for, and thus more likely to be found, if the agent in question is not
trigger-happy, and still more if he is not even armed. I am less likely to look for a
saving solution if I have told myself beforehand that there can be none, or have
made advance provision for an easy brutal one. I am more likely to find it
creatively if I have already forbidden myself the violent easy answer. I am still
more likely to find it if I have disciplined my impulsiveness and fostered my
creativity by the study and practice of a non-violent life style.
It should not be thought that such unforeseen, creative or coincidental
deliverances are limited to those who would interpret them in terms of Christian
ethics. Non-lethal violence, or ruse, or the disarming gesture of unexpected
respect are possible for anyone.
Ill/B. There might also be such a thing as a "providential" way out The
above possibilities (I to II/A) and those below (IV/A and IV/B) are sketched in
the form of theologically neutral speculation about what the logically accessible
human possibilities would be. We shall have occasion later to ask more fully
what effect it would have upon our discussion if we took more seriously some of
those attitudes toward "historical possibilities" to which Christians are
committed. Yet for the sake of completeness in the outline we should list
already at this point that additional "impossible possibility" which Christian
thought has traditionally referred to as "providential" escape. Whatever the
modern mind may think of the category of miracle, it has had an undeniable
place in the history of Christian thinking about how to look at one's future. We
cannot be sure what the Apostle meant by assuring his readers (1 Corinthians
10:13) that they would not be subjected to any tests but that there would be a
"way of escape." Certainly all biblical faith, and Christian consensus until

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92 YODER

recently, has affirmed a providential direction of the affairs of men toward that
end which is described as "good for them that love the Lord."
Since one of the characteristics of providential deliverance is that it does not
fit into any predictable or manipulable pattern, it is impossible to say from the
perspective of scientific or historical objectivity, or metaethical logic, whether
this category of the "providential" is really distinguishable from the category
which we referred to above (Ill/A) as the natural but unpredictable "way out."
That kind of saving outcome combines coincidence and imagination to produce
a result which, although unforeseeable, can after the fact be explained fully in
visible causal terms. Whether or not the Christian conception of providence or
miracle is dependent on our being fully able to prove after the fact that the
saving event could not be explained in causal terms, is a major philosophical
problem which we can hardly attack here, and need not. We need only take note
that the classicalChristian way of looking at one's future as being in the hands
of God logically can provide grounds for being freed from the iron-clad
assumption that in the face of a given threat there are only two options, both
lethal, which need to be considered.
IV. Or I might try to kill him. This is the only possibility, over against
option I (tragedy), which the argument as usually put takes seriously. It will lead
to one of two outcomes.
IV/A. I may succeed in killing him. I would do this on my own authority
but with the confidence that it is done in the name of some larger moral
authority which commends or demands the defense of the innocent. Legally, I
would trust that my action could be seen as the exercise of emergency policy
powers vested in every citizen by the common law. The questioner assumes this
will be easy to do.
IV/B. But logically there is another possibility. I might also fail to kill. I
might add the lesser to the greater evil. We would then suffer them both. This is
then the greatest evil, namely that I might seek to defend the innocent but might
fail to do so and only make matters worse. If the aggressor disposes of superior
force (which is likely, since he was prepared for the attack), if he has the
unthinking incautious drive of the perverted or alienated spirit which will not
stop for fear or pain (which is also likely, if he is as inaccessible to reason as the
stock argument assumes), or if he is a better shot than I, then my effort to stop
him with his kind of weapons may very well only make the matter worse,
causing greater suffering than the other options; not only in the sense that both
the victim and the attacker will be killed, but also in that he may well wreak his
wrath on more persons-than if he had not been opposed and further enraged.
We can now align the tableau of the conceivable outcomes in our model
conflict:
I. Tragedy;
II/A. Martyrdom for the intended victim;
Il/B. Martyrdom for myself;

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO I F . . . ?" 93

Ill/A. Natural "way out";

Ill/B. Providential "way out";
IV/A. Successful killing;
IV/B. Unsuccessful killing.

We can clearly rank these as to desirability. IV/A would be an evil; it would

end a life and deprive that person of any chance of repentance or growth.
Outcome I (tragedy) is obviously more evil in the thought of the questioner,
since it justifies the killing (IV/A). But IV/B is still worse, as the cumulation of
the two evil outcomes. The other four options (I I/A and Il/B, Ill/A and B)
would however be acceptable, even saving or "happy" outcomes. We need not
try to weigh them mathematically in order of desirability or probability, but
they are all morally positive, while the other three are negative.
It is first of all evident as we proceed to evaluation, that by exercising
myself the option of attempting IV(killing), I would effectively close the door to
all three or four of the possible saving solutions (II, III). None of those can
happen if I choose to seek to kill. This must mean that I
do not trust God to work things out along the lines of II
(meaningful suffering) or Il/B (providence). It means that I do not trust myself
to be courageous or creative enough to find another way (Ill/A). And further, it
opens the door to the worst outcome of all (IV/B) which could not happen if it
were not for my exacerbating intervention. To renounce IV/A on the other hand
would be the path of trust (Childress, 1973) and faith because it leaves the doors
open to providence (Ill/B) and/or to martyrdom (II); it is not lazy; it faces the
challenge of creating another way (Ill/A)". This renunciation is furthermore
responsible; for it prevents the worst (IV/B).
Once, then, we are able to move out of the emotionally colored common
description of this dramatic encounter, and to think soberly about the choice it
offers, it immediately becomes visible how logically preposterous it is to assume
that only two of these eventualities (I, IV/A) are to be taken into consideration.
We have no way to judge before the event how probable each of these outcomes
would be; but that they are all logically possible no one can deny. It is thus
illegitimate to pose the question as a choice only between the two worst evils.
Instead we must choose among several paths. It is only the option for violent
defense (IV/A), which my challenger assumes is the best, which makes possible
the worst evil of all (IV/B).
Closer analysis will make it appear less clear than at first sight that
outcomes I (tragedy) and II (martyrdom) are ultimately distinct. From the
perspective of some religious interpretations of suffering, it might be that there
is no tragedy which is not at the same time a bearer of redemptive potential. On
the other hand, from the perspective of a utilitarianism which would deny all
over-arching meanings, it might be that the category of meaningful sacrifice for a
"cause" would become unthinkable. Precise testing of the mutual exclusiveness
of the categories sketched above is as difficult as estimating their mathematical

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94 YODER

probability. All that is needed for our purposes, to face the challenger who
assumes that the only alternative outcome to his violent intervention is an
unacceptable evil, is to render evident that in most value systems there can be
such a thing as a morally acceptable evil.
The problem thus loses much of its emotional power, and the proposed
violent solution loses its self-evidence, as soon as one takes inventory of the
many variables at work in a situation and the several options. Certainly for
anyone standing within that particular stream of human history which we call
the Christian Church it must be denied that death is the greatest evil which one
can suffer, since a believer's death for a reason relating to God's will and His way
is a part of His victory over evil within this world, so that (II) the acceptance of
suffering is not unthinkable. Certainly anyone whose vision of the drama of
human conflict is deeper than that of the television western has some awareness
of the complexity of historical causality and some notion of how seldom things
turn out the way men have predicted, especially when what they have been
predicting is wholesome fruit to be borne by violence. Thus the unforeseen
creative solution (Ill/A) clearly belongs in the picture.10
It was not as a mere debating maneuver that we have looked thus carefully
at the logic of this challenge. Nor is it only a gesture of respect for the asker of
the questions, or a testimony of our readiness to meet any question.11 By
moving back from the dramatic test case to the logic which it represents, and
then comparing this implicit logic within an open, sober survey of the
possibilities available, we are able to see more clearly what could be called the
implicit eschatology of reliance on violence. Instead of trusting to the course of
events, to my own consecrated imagination (and that of my protegee) and to the
providence of God, right there in the situation, to choose among various
available alternatives, at least two or three of which could be saving alternatives,
constructively meaningful for those involved, the question assumes not only that
it is licit but as a matter of fact that it would be my moral duty to close the door
on all those saving possibilities by choosing on my own authority the one which
is sure to be destructive (IV/A), the only choice which opens the door to the
serious possibility of the still worse outcome (IV/B), and to do this on the
grounds that there would be one other outcome (option I) which would be more
harmful to my own loved one than the other destructive alternative.
To state the matter more broadly, especially as it is made to apply to the
case of war: by assuming that it is my business to prevent or to bring judgment
upon evil, I authorize myself to close the door upon the possibilities of
reconciliation and healing. When I take it into my own hands to guarantee that
events will not turn out in a way that is painful or disadvantageous to me, or
illegal, I close off the live possibilities of reconciliation which might have been
let loose in the world.

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 95

The Doctrine of Providence and the "Way Out"

as Methodological Issue

The unfolding of the scale of options presented above is not uniquely

focused upon pointing up the presence of the status of option III, the "way
out." Yet it may be that for some purposes that option represents the primary
methodological challenge of this outline. It stands for a way in which an ethical
approach which many would consider as "principled" refuses to be counted out
of the discussion of pragmatic utility. It is thus proper that we turn to it
specifically for the light it may throw on the issue of method.
The body of data is impressive. At the center of the Hebrew Scriptures lies
the recitation of those mighty deeds whereby JHWH dependably saved those
who trusted Him without their being able to manipulate the fulfillment of that
promise through their own wisdom or strength (see Yoder, 1972:78ff.). The
annals of Christian hagiography are full of the accounts of such unhoped-for
deliverances. The British Quakeress A. Ruth Fry (1939) has gathered scores of
anecdotes from many centuries and many faiths. The amount of narrative given
for each case hardly enables classification with any logical precision, but clearly
both of the types of "way out" identified above are widely represented in the
lived history of the Christian movement. As a specimen which can stand for a
much larger legacy of anecdotes, we may cite the factually-based episode from
the life of Gladys Aylward (Burgess, 1957:80), reproduced in the Ingrid
Bergman film "Inn of the Sixth Happiness," when the small, unarmed,
unaccompanied, foreign missionary lady disarmed through sheer moral power a
crazed prison inmate who had been massacring his fellow prisoners with an axe.
Though the biographer makes little of it, Miss Aylward's missionary teaching was
pacifist in other ways as well (Burgess, 1957:124). Another such case of
unforeseeable deliverance is reported by black evangelist Tom Skinner (1968)
from the life of New York street gangs. Further such testimonies were gathered
by Adin Ballou, under the heading "The Safety of Non-Resistance," in his
Christian Non- Resistance (1846-see Lynd, 1960:39-44), and by Henry T.
Hodgkin (1923).
It is striking that the expectation of such deliverance, together with the
assumption that it would be wrong to have it out violently, should crop up
repeatedly in contexts, especially in missionary biography, where there has been
no explicit thought or traditional teaching about pacifism or non-resistance as an
ethical norm. I.e., it arises naturally out of a particular religious perception of
the world and of oneself as in the hand of God; it is not a forced product of the
rigidity of non-violent principalism.
One most genuine testimony to this kind of creative confidence in the "way
out" is the voice of Johannel Hamel, pastor in communist East Germany. His
struggle in the particular cases he is thinking about is with the issue of truth and
falsehood, not that of killing; but the shape of the problem of calculating versus
uncalculating obedience, closed system versus open history, is quite congruent.

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96 YODER

Shall a Christian in a communist land make an issue of honesty? of his faith? of

respect for the rights of individuals? Or shall he lie low and seem to accept the
system and its injustices? Shall he thus live a lie? Hamel answers with the images
of God's "making room" or "opening doors" as the believer walks obediently a
step at a time.
In the midst of idolatry, no less rampant in Babel than it is today, God creates
opportunities for his people to co-exist with those blind
Babylonians .... Time and again God creates loopholes, so to speak, open
space in the midst of closed systems of unbelief and hatred of God. Here the
possibility is offered and realized for doing the good, reasonable, and
well-pleasing, although these systems theoretically seem to leave no room for
such action. (1959:98f.)

Where people take their place in this self-movement of the Gospel, there opens
usually by surprise, a door by which they can get on in their earthly life. To be
sure most of the time this door is only visible in the last moment. One must
have enough faith to run against a door/ess wall up to the last centimeter, in
the certain hope that God who leads one in this way will not allow his people
to break their heads .... More than once we have believed ourselves to be
finished. . . . Then in the last minute God stepped in and made it clear to us,
so clear that we were ashamed of ourselves, so that he only needs to move a
little finger to make things come out quite otherwise than we could have
foreseen. (1960:26f., our italics)

This is not speculative logic-chopping ethical theory; it is living testimony with

experience to illustrate it.
The Christian understanding of divine providence is not only that it might
sometimes provide a "way of escape/' but that for Christians to testify to such a
vision of God's care and to trust in it is a positive obligation.1 2 This affirmation
lies behind any meaningful understanding of prayer. If I now act not only on the
assumption that I can foresee no creative alternatives, but on the further
assumption that there are no divine possibilities available which I do not foresee,
and thus justify a choice limited to one of the two most undesirable outcomes
which can be foreseen, choosing namely the one which I feel would be least
undesirable to me and mine, am I not assuming that God has no redemptive
intention in this situation? Or that if God has such an interest, I am his only tool
for bringing it about, which I can do only by my own final choice of the lesser
evil? Does not the Christian belief in resurrection, not simply as one
dead-and-gone event but as God's pattern of action in human experience, mean
that it is precisely where we do not see how a given situation can possibly be
worked out that God might demonstrate his saving intent? Precisely because it is
He who must act, I cannot suggest how that might be; but it would be logical to
assume that if he is to act at all in a saving way, my having tried to settle the
matter on my own in a destructive way would be little help to him.
"Providence" in classical Christian thought, like "the Lordship of Christ" in
Pauline thought, designates the conviction that the events of history are under

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 97

control in ways that are beyond both our discerning and our manipulating,
although their pattern may occasionally be perceived by the prophet, and later
will be celebrated by the community. Modern Western humanism, both of the
Christian forms prevalent since Constantine, and of the post-Christian forms
which have arisen more recently, rephrases "providence" into the duty of every
individual to participate in making history come out right. It would seem
formally that the two attitudes are alternatives. I cannot claim effectively and
finally to have taken history into my own hands and still celebrate and trust
another Intelligence whose power is fulfilled in my weakness and whose wisdom
makes use of my ignorance.
The sources cited here are Christian. Yet it should not be thought that only
Christians, or only adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths, evidence some kind
of trust in providence. The Marxist confidence in the dialectic of history, the
democrat's trust in the vox populi, the radical's trust in "the Revolution," or
even the oriental's mistrust of visible evidence and the logic of contradiction,
may all in some contexts shield religiously consistent behavior from the
short-range critique of the consequentialist.
What concerns us here is not the quantified verification of this or that
report. We need only to identify the meaning, for ethical logic, of the adequately
documented possibility of such experiences as will lead those who undergo them
to conclude that there has been a way out that they could not have foreseen. If
there has once been such an exception to the closed predictability of the
fulfillment of his evil designs by the aggressor, or if there have been even several
tjmes-the believer would say many times-such saving events, then the impact
of that observation reaches far beyond the interest of the narrator who recounts
the specific cases. It must be taken account of in the logic with which we
henceforth put the question. Whenever the threat of destructive aggression seems
to leave us no outcome but defensive violence, the possibility of a less violent
outcome is always logically there. Until it has been tested, it cannot be said that
the decision-making paradigm has responsibly identified the least evil. In making
this observation about the logic of ethics, we are involved in no quantitative
prediction about how many times the less violent solution can be found or can
work. That depends on many variables, including the extent of my trust that it
might be available. For the present argument it suffices to have seen that if it can
ever be the case that such conflict can have an outcome such that after the fact
one says, "shooting him was not the best option," then the logic of the challenge
has forsaken its seeming open-and-shut quality and has become a calculation of
probabilities.
The demonstrable possibility of a "way out" is the positive side of the
defensive argument that the paradigmatic case has been hypothetically
constructed so as to predispose a particular outcome. This is what is meant by
Joan Baez (1968) with the maxim "if you have a choice between a real evil and a
hypothetical evil, always take the hypothetical one." Dale Brown argues in the
same mood, claiming the right to add hypothetical detail (1970).

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98 YODER

This writer is less inclined than Brown or Baez to insist on challenging the
logic of debating with hypothetical cases, because of the agreement for the sake
of debate to take the stock case seriously. The point they make is however
intrinsically valid: it belongs to serious casuistry, i.e. to conscientious respect for
the specificity of concrete decision, that the hypothetical definition of specific
ethical challenges may properly be challenged by asking for greater precision in
detail. That challenge itself is one of the ways to testify that situations are less
hopeless than the initial description of the challenge wants to make them seem.
Tolstoy rephrases the same point: "why should a non-Christian . . . decide
to kill the criminal in order to defend the child? By killing the former he kills for
certain; whereas he cannot know positively whether the criminal would have
killed the child or not." What Tolstoy, Baez and Brown validly say is clothed in
the language of ordinary discourse, "the challenge is only hypothetical."
Literally that is not a valid argument against the use of an hypothetical
paradigm. It is however valid as an indirect way of saying that the paradigm must
be responsibly expanded in such a way that the possible way out is also part of
the hypothesis. It is for this that our affirmative argument above is calling.

Other Dimensions of Specifically Christian Orientation

With one exception the above text has met the logical challenge in its own
terms, namely as a hypothetical test of how consistent one could be in meeting a
conflict situation. Nothing about the argument has been specifically illuminated
by any religious conviction. The one exception noted was the recognition that
Christian belief in divine intervention in human affairs (Ill/B) makes the
deterministic model of the decision process even less adequate.
There are however other specifically Christian convictions which would
throw additional light upon this situation. Thus it might be that on the grounds
of intelligent secular humanism- or some other religion- one could morally be
driven after all in extreme circumstances to violent defense of the innocent, but
that this would still not be a position one could justify on specifically Christian
grounds.
Such considerations have been out of the argument up to now, not because
Christian commitment is an epilogue to be appended after all the important
analysis is done, but in order to avoid giving room for the deus ex machina
misunderstanding, the reproach that Christians call in the transcendent
dimension to avoid realism in dealing with life as it is. This analysis has thus
reversed the habitual thought patterns of Christian ethics in order to meet the
challenge on its own terms. The intention has been to demonstrate that there is
nothing arcanely irrational about Jesus' way of facing conflict. Yet the reason
for accepting Jesus' way is not that it is not irrational, not that one can make a
case for it on other grounds, but that it is one's confession. Neither is my
acceptance of Jesus' way founded in the confidence that, if you really put your
mind to it as this essay seeks to do, you can be reassured that there might be at

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 99

least a fighting chance of a safe way through the brutal encounter. The central
answer to "What would you do if ... ?" is not "I would work creatively at Ill/A
and pray for Ill/B and be willing in the crunch to settle for II"; for this would be
to accept the legalist's predilection, against which I have already protested, for
testing positions by borderline cases.
The earlier comments on the limited validity of this test case centered on
the ways it fails to prove what it sets out to show. In full logical analysis we
would need to recognize other limiting assumptions which do not necessarily
bear on the logic itself, but point to further variables which make the specimen
less representative. One of these is the assumption that my choice as potential
protector is the only one involved. But what of the potential victim? Would she
properly share in the choice of how she should be defended? The argument is
usually phrased, "I have the right, and perhaps as Christian an obligation, to
choose the risk of death for myself, but I cannot leave others to that fate." But
if the potential victim shares my readiness to choose the risk, and her decision is
part of my community of choice, the argument falls away. It then appears that
the test case must be further stipulated, if we are to have an argument at all, to
be one where the potential victim is asking for the attacker's death.
Let us look then once more to this text experience in an attempt to make it
not merely a limping parable for the issue of war, but also an occasion for the
concretization of Christian faith.
1. Christian love of the enemy goes beyond the bounds of decent
humanism. Any respectable person will try to do to his neighbor as he himself
would like to be done to, not simply out of reciprocal self-interest but because it
is part of his own self-respect to discipline himself by this standard. Thus on
general humane grounds it is possible to affirm an obligation to deal with the
neighbor, not as he deals with us, but as we would wish to be dealt with, and
thus to rise above the level of simple retaliation. But Jesus goes well beyond this
kind of moral superiority. In his own life and career and in his instructions to his
disciples, the enemy becomes a positively privileged object of love. Because we
confess that the God who has made himself known and has worked out our
reconciliation in Christ is a God who loves His enemies, at the cost of His own
suffering, we are to love our enemies far beyond the extent of our capacity to be
a good influence on them or to call forth a reciprocal love from them. In other
philosophical and ethical systems, "the neighbor" may well be dealt with as an
object of our obligation to love; but Jesus goes further and makes of our relation
to an adversary, the "enemy," the special test of whether the love we have is
derived from and mirrors the love of God.
Counter to the general assumption that Jesus simply restated the command
of the law to "love thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. 19:13, cited by Jesus in Matt.
22:40 and Mk. 12:28ff.), T. W. Manson (1960:60ff.) shows that Jesus' "new
commandment" was uniformly that his disciples should love as he loved, or as
God loved them. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is designated by Jesus as the
center not of his own teaching, but of the law which he fulfills and transcends.

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100 YODER

The central answer to the "what if . . ." question therefore is that I would
seek to deal with that offender as God in Christ has dealt with me, or (to say the
same thing in "secular translation") as I would wish to be dealt with. The
capacity for this simple humane loving deed is not only not dependent on being
able to "put one's mind to it" and think through the options; this thinking
through of the options itself may make obedience harder. The simple loving
Christian or the simplistic Francis or Tolstoy may well be nearer to obedience
(and to simple honest secular human-ness) than the casuist for whom this essay
is written.
2. The Christian's loyalty to the given bonds of social unity is loosened by
his decision to follow Christ. In various phrasings in the Gospels Jesus calls his
disciples to forsake not only houses and land, but even father and mother, and
even spouse and child. Without leading us to take literally in the modern
emotional meaning of the verb what Jesus says about "hating" one's near
relatives, any consideration of what this phrase means must at least make us
question our assumption that the first test of moral responsibility or of virility is
the readiness to kill in the defense of one's family. This is dramatically stated in
the great Luther hymn, "A Mighty Fortress." Where the English translation
reads, "Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also," the original German
says, "They seize wife and child; let it take its course!"
This is not on Luther's part the mere poetic exaggeration of the
hymn-writer. Luther taught the duty of non-resistance on the personal level.
Only at the behest of a legitimate government was violence admissible. For
Luther our paradigm would have had no weight, since the difference of levels
was theologically crucial for him.
3. It has already been conceded that this classic Christian understanding of
providence, although clearly attested in the tradition, might not be accepted by
modern debaters. The same is true of classical Christian understandings of a
transcendent life: eternal life, the resurrection of the dead, Heaven and Hell. We
cannot impose such conceptions upon our modern challenger, but we can at
least ask him to understand that, for those who do stand within historic
Christianity, one or the other of them may reinforce the readiness to accept the
cost of obedience when driven by love toward the hostile neighbor. If there be
such a thing as hell, some kind of extension or reaffirmation beyond death of
the meaning of life, conditioned by the self-centered, shallow kind of life one
has been leading, then it would be most likely that my killing the attacker would
seal for him that destiny. I would take away from him any possibility of
repentance and faith. I would be doing this in order to save from death someone
who-pardon the piety if you don't like the phrase, but it is a meaningful
Christian stance- is "ready to meet her Maker." To keep out of heaven someone
who wants to go there ultimately anyway, I would consign to hell immediately
someone whom I was supposed to be in the world to save.
4. Committed Christians see in their faith not first of all an ethical stance
about which they want to be consistent, a set of rules they want to be sure not

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"WHATWOULDYOU DOIF ...?" 101

to break; but a gracious privilege which they want to share. They guide their
lives not so much by "How can I avoid doing wrong?" or even "How can I do
the right?" as by "How can I be a reconciling presence in the life of my
neighbor?" From this perspective I might justify firm non-violent restraint, but
certainly never killing. Most of the time the committed Christian testifies in
theory that God intervenes in the lives of selfish creatures to change those lives
and that he does so through his children; when is that testimony tested if not
now, when I am invited to act toward this aggressor on the assumption that
there can be for him no change of heart?
5. We spoke before of meaningful suffering as a concept honored in many
movements which are devoted to historically important causes: Communism has
its Rosa Luxemburg, Castroism has its Che, Americanism has its Alamo. But for
the Christian to bear the martyr's cross is more than this; it is to share in God's
way with His world. How then could I possibly be led along the path of innocent
suffering, which the New Testament and much later Christian testimony indicate
is in some sense a normal one for at least some Christians to need to follow at
least sometimes, if in my pragmatic managing of the situation I have excluded
this as the one thing that must not happen?
6. We identified at the outset the limits of the validity of a self-centered
decision-making process. Dangers of self-interest and the inevitable limitation of
factual knowledge underlie any decision when made by an individual. A
specifically Christian loyalty would lead us now to be still more pointed about
this matter. Whereas common sense tells us that people tend to be selfish and
that this tends to influence their perception of things, Christian faith goes
further. It warns me in particular that I u$e my self-centered control of my
decisions as a tool of my rebelliousness, as a way of solidifying my independence
from my Maker. Christian thought labels as "pride" that rebellious autonomy
which I insist on despite the fact that ultimately, if not overcome by His grace, it
means my own destruction. Common sense says that any person is limited in his
capacity to observe and evaluate the facts by his particular point of view and the
limits of his vision; but Christian faith tells me that my selfish mind, my
impatient and retaliating spirit, and my adrenalin positively warp the way I
perceive the facts in order to make them reflections of my self-esteem and my
desire to be independent of my Creator and of my neighbor. Thus while
common sense argues for modesty about my capacity to make a valid decision
all by myself, the Christian understanding of sin calls for me to repent of the
very idea that I might make a decision completely on my own.
The real temptation of good people like us is not the crude and the crass
and the carnal, as those traits were defined in popular puritanism. The really
refined temptation with which Jesus himself was tried was not crude sensuality
but that of egocentric altruism; of being oneself the incarnation of a good and
righteous cause for which others may rightly be made to suffer; of stating in the
form of a duty to others one's self-justification.
I do not know what I would do if some insane or criminal brute were to

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102 YODER

attack my wife or child; but I do know that what I should do would be

illuminated by what God my Father did when His "only begotten Son" was
being threatened; or by what Abraham, my father in the faith, was ready to
sacrifice out of obedience. Abraham could bring himself to readiness to give up
his son, the writer to the Hebrews tells us anachronistically, because he believed
in the resurrection. It was "for the sake of the joy that was set before Him" that
Christ himself could "endure the cross." My readiness- not in the contemplation
of my moral strength but in confession of the nature of the God who has
revealed himself in Jesus Christ- to accept as my duty that kind of love, is
founded in no craving for heroism and no self-confidence, not in pious
'enthusiasm nor in masochism. It is founded doctrinally- one could even say
dogmatically, in the proper sense of that term- in the confession that he who as
Vere Deus gave his life at our hands was at one and the same time vere homo,
the revelation of that true manhood which is God's instrument in the world.

NOTES

First presented as a study outline to a church workers' study conference

at the Daisetsu Seinen no le, Shirogane, Biei, Hokkaido, October 1968.
". . . Who shall say whether the child's life was more needed, was better,
than the other's life? Surely, if the non-Christian knows not God, and does not
see life's meaning to be in the performance of His will, the only rule for his
actions must be a reckoning, a conception of which is more profitable for him
and for all men, a continuation of the criminal's life or of the child's. To decide
that, he needs to know what would become of the child whom he saves, and
what, had he not killed him, would have been the future of the assailant. And as
he cannot know this, the non-Christian has no sufficient rational ground for
killing a robber to save a child" (Tolstoy, 1887?: 187).
Hypothetical alternatives may be needed to demonstrate that the game
can work both ways.
"For example, you arrive suddenly on a terrible scene. A group of children
are playing. A man is pointing a gun in their direction. If you shoot him, you
will save the children. If you fail, you may be responsible for their death. You
shoot. The man is dead. As long as it is hypothetical, however, why not add a bit
more? There was a ferocious bear coming up the hill, which the man could see
and you could not. He was actually going to shoot the bear in order to save the
children. Since your shot killed him, however, the bear mauled several children
to their death. Tragically you only had one shot" (Brown, 1970:113).

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 103

4Late in 1969 John Lee, Labor Member of the British Parliament from
Reading, advocated the replacement of nuclear weapons with highly skilled
assassination squads to kill only the statesmen responsible for a given military
offense. In addition to tying the punishment to the offense, such an approach
would favor democracies over against dictatorships. That such a concentration
upon the enemy politician as the finally guilty party is not taken seriously is a
demonstration of the inaptness of the parallel with the domestic invader.
War between nations is a business of calculation and debate, affording so
much time for reflection that men need not act from sudden and violent
impulse." David Low Dodge, War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ
(1815 in Brock, 1968:456).
6lt may also happen that being known to have a gun in the house may
increase the chances of burglary; some burglaries are perpetrated in order to
obtain weapons. Mr. Quinn Tamm, Executive Director of the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, told a Senate Subcommittee on 1 November
1971 that more people are killed accidentally by guns meant for protection
against intruders than are killed by intruders. (Cf. Overbeck, 1974.)
7Cf. note 6.
8"Let that man go through the world, among all nations, both civilized
and savage, and his person will be considered as sacred. This is a known fact,
which no one will controvert. He may meet with ignorant savages, who will
mistake him for a spy, or an enemy in disguise, and may take his life. But let
them once understand that he is perfectly harmless, and they will not hurt him,
but treat him with kindness. It must be allowed that they may sometimes lay
hands on his property by stealth, or by violence, and may on that account take
his life; but this is not common. A man known to be a son of peace, in China,
India, Persia, Turkey, Tartary, and among the rudest savages of Africa and
America, as well as through all Europe, is generally speaking, considered
inviolable, both in his person and property." Samuel Whelpley, Letters, cited in
Brock, 1968:464.
9 It is claimed
by some that the development of judo, as a reliably
non-lethal form of restraint, was motivated by Buddhist abhorrence of killing. It
is debatable whether such use of force, when the life and dignity of the aggressor
are safeguarded, should be called "violence."
10There is within the variety of possible interpretations much room for
weighing variously these options. For some, the designation of "martyrdom"
should be limited to cases where the victim, whether the original intended victim
or myself, voluntarily chooses to renounce defense. Then category II/A would
be limited to cases where the intended victim herself volunteers to renounce
being defended. We have just suggested that no suffering is without meaning in
the divine economy, so that from the Christian perspective it could also be
argued that category I does not really exist. Persons committed to a "closed

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104 YODER

system" vision of reality would deny by definition cases of category Ill/B, but
only to the extent to which they would also expand category Ill/A: the
inexplicable, the "fluke."
1lThe evangelical intent of this argument might be stated in another way.
The questioner is likely to assume that the pacifist's commitment is that of a
particular school of moral absolutism, which it is appropriate to test by
searching for loopholes or leaks. There is much to be said for a qualified kind of
principled ethic, as being indispensable to the moral unity of communities in
history; but we here testify to those who will not share our commitment, by
looking at cases freely and with confidence, that there is in our commitment to
serving and saving the life of the neighbor no impersonal legalism which will
shun the test of relevant applicability. The concentration on borderline cases,
exceptions, and extremes is not by my choice; it is the non-pacifist challenger
who has chosen this legalistic mode of discourse. I meet him here under protest;
yet I can meet him here as well. The language of legalism is not the most apt to
portray the uniqueness of Christian liberty; but the healing power of Incarnation
goes so far that even this unfitting idiom can be used if it must. As a
model-building exercise in religious ethics this text has its place: but in ordinary
human discourse the flippant earnestness of Joan Baez on the same theme
(1968) is probably a more fitting response to the negative casuistic questioner.
11
No one circumstance led me so much to doubt the soundness of the
sentiments of my opponents as their general want of faith in the promises and
providential protection of God; and when I laid aside my pistols, exchanging
them for the protection of the Lord God of Hosts, I was no more tormented
with the fear of robbers." David Dodge, Memorial, quoted by Peter Brock,
1968:451.
13"Very probably bad education, or his animal nature, may cause a man,
Christian or non-Christian, to kill an assailant, not to save a child, but even to
save himself or to save his purse. But it does not follow that he is right in acting
thus, or that he should accustom himself or others to think such conduct right"
(Tolstoy, 18877:187).

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"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF . . . ?" 105

REFERENCES

Baez, Joan
1968 "What would you do if?" Atlantic Monthly (August): 32.
Brock, Peter
1968 Pacifism in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Brown, Dale W.
1970 Brethren and Pacifism. Elgin: Brethren Press.
Burgess, Alan
1957 The Small Woman. London: Evans Brothers.
Childress, James F.
1973 "Nonviolent resistance: trust and risk-taking." Journal of
Religious Ethics 1 (Fall):87ff.
Fry, A. Ruth
1939 Victories Without Violence. London: Dennis Dobson.
Hamel, Johannes
1959 How to Serve God in a Marxist Land. New York: Association
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1960 A Christian in East Germany. New York: Association Press.
Hodgkin, Henry T.
1923 The Christian devolution. London: Swarthmore Press.
Lynd, Straughton
1960 Nonviolence in America; A Documentary History. New York:
Bobbs Merrill.
Manson, T. W.
1960 Ethics and the Gospel. London: SCM Press.
Oberbeck, Stephen
1974 "A gun in your home." Good Housekeeping (March):93ff.
Simmons, Ernest J.
1946 Leo Tolstoy. Boston: Little, Brown.
Skinner, Tom
1968 Black and Free. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Smith, Willard H.
1971 "The pacifist thought of William Jennings Bryan." Mennonite
Quarterly Review 45 (January) :33ff.
Tolstoy, Leo
1887? "Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby." Tolstoy on Civil
Disobedience and Nonviolence. New York: Bergman, 1967;
and Signet, 1968.
Yoder, John H.
1972 The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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