War Is Not Hell

Last week I commented on the missed opportunity concerning the recent article on moral injury in Christianity Today to counter, or gesture to those who do, the position that war is morally injurious by its very nature. I argued that Christian pacifism, positioning itself against violence as malum in se, or morally evil in itself, is unable to allow for the critical observation that killing, because it comes in different moral kinds, is not necessarily a censorious act. Regarding moral injury, this deficiency is harmful because it does nothing to alleviate the clinical connection between killing in combat and soul wounds and, thereby, between killing in combat and suicide.