Christian Pacifism

I found a series of articles by the comparative religion scholar James Malcom Arlandson to be very well-written and argued. They reside on the www.answering-islam.org site. Thus, it is very relevant topic for the church in an age of Islamic terrorism that must wrestle with the Christian pacifist position. Here are the articles:
1. Jesus, Pacifism, and the Sword
2. Pacifism and the Sword in the Gospels
3. Soldiers, Officers, and God
4. Church and State - and the Sword
5. Should the State turn the other Cheek?
6. Questions and Answers on Pacifism and the Sword
7. Summary
8. Addendum - Fight or Flight?

My own thoughts reflect much of what Arlandson thinks, namely that there are two kingdoms operating in this world: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar. Each has its own warfare to wage: the warfare of the kingdom of God is fought spiritually while the one of Caesar is fought physically. Christians are part of both kingdoms and must muddle through the best they can with their ultimate allegiance to God. Thus, the church as part of the kingdom of God is 'pacifist' in that she does not raise armies or militias to wage war on her enemies or to enforce church doctrine and church membership rules. But at the same time, the state has the God appointed role as expressed in Romans 13:1-7 to wield the sword. No jihad for the church and no pacifism for the state.

And since military service, if done with integrity, remained a live option to several NT converts (see Arlandson's third article) to Christianity, then one is hard pressed to believe that the pacifist is correct in thinking that a Christian must leave such an occupation. A Christian could certainly leave, but he doesn't need to if it does not violate his conscience. Thus, whether or not a Christian should be a pacifist is really an issue concerning one's conscience and one's Christian liberty to live the way his conscience dictates.

A final thought on the use of the argument from silence that Arlandson admits is used quite a bit in his articles...it's not always a fallacious way to argue. Sometimes absence of evidence is evidence of absence if we would have expected otherwise. Imagine that I come home from work, and I see evidence that my family should be home (wife's car in the driveway, all the lights are on, food on the table, etc.). But after a thorough search of the house and the backyard, I conclude that nobody is home despite expecting otherwise. In this case, the absence of evidence (no kids and no wife) means exactly that (nobody is home). The point is similar when we notice that Jesus and the apostles never tell soldiers to quit being soldiers but instead focuses on them being soldiers with integrity.