ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the case for Christian pacifism on a biblical basis and the case on a rational basis that is intended to appeal to all rational agents, even those who are not Christians or even theists. The rational case for Christian pacifism has both a negative formulation and a positive one. The rational case will rely on both natural law and deontological reasons, which the chapter argues are still very much based in the Christian intellectual tradition. Some thinkers try to bridge the scriptural and rational approaches. For example, perhaps the most influential Christian pacifist religion has been the Society of Friends or Quakers, who arose in the seventeenth century in England under George Fox. Quakers believe, primarily on the basis of the image of God hypothesis in Genesis and the Gospel of John, that human beings are possessive of an inner light that makes them eminently worthy of respect.
