Why have so few Reformed Christians been pacifists? A plain reading of Jesus’s teachings would seem to commend a pacifist interpretation, at least at the individual Christian’s personal level. As he famously instructs us, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). Yet Christian pacifism has gained much more traction among Anabaptists, and among liberal Catholics and Protestants, than among Reformed believers.
If the Word of God is our final authority for faith and practice, we should be willing to ask why Reformed Protestants have tended not to be pacifists. While I can only offer tentative answers to this enormous topic, I suspect there are two major explanations: one admirable, and the other problematic.
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