Times of war often lead to increased fervency and appeals to god, the virgin saints, gods, religious leaders, or other divine figures for protection and victory. Europeans particularly favored calling upon the virgin for her help. The Rosary prayer that Catholics pray now was enshrined into official church doctrine in 1569 by Pope Pius V. Two years later, that same pope urged all of Catholic Europe to pray it against the Ottoman Turks, so to protect Venice from the Muslims. Shrines and churches to the virgin were often built in Catholic cities to thank her or god for their help in war, just as some monuments (such as the Basilique Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre) were built to ask forgiveness from those same beings after defeats.

Also, at least concerning the appeal to divine powers in war, monotheists have absolutely had no monopoly over such practices. In both Greece and Rome, special processions, offerings, feast days, and new temples were all part of cultus to gods of war or tutelary gods of cities. Celtic and Germanic paganisms likewise solicited the help of gods for victory and protection, while blood sacrifices were a feature of ancient Hebrew, Sumerian, and much later Aztec civic religious appeals for conquest.

Thus, if any universal generalization can be made about religions, we might say that they seem generally to feature reliance on divine powers for protection from and victory over enemies.

Of course, there are also deeply pacifist religions (such as Jainism), and, in more modern times, we’ve seen pacifist strands within Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christian sects. Many church leaders have increasingly urged less religious support for war. Last year, as reported by the Associated Press, Pope Francis:

“solemnly asked forgiveness that humanity had “forgotten the lessons learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two World Wars.”

“Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he prayed.

Many Orthodox leaders have called for an end to the blessing of nuclear weapons, though not always for an end of weapon-blessing itself. Protestants leaders remain equally divided on these matters, with some fervently praying for the complete annihilation of enemies, and others arguing for much less violent means.

All this brings up several questions regarding contradicting Christian supplications. Does that god particularly favor certain sides, or certain nations, or certain military causes over others? When a devout Christian asks god for protection, and yet is killed by the bullet of another devout Christian, was it because they didn’t pray enough — or as much — as the one who killed them?

Such questions have obsessed Christian theologians for centuries, especially because they are related to an even larger theological question within monotheism, that of the “Problem of Evil.” Why would the Christian god allow massacres, genocides, and catastrophic deaths in the world when, according to everything the Christians believe about him, he is more than capable of preventing them?

Answers to that question are quite varied and rarely satisfactory. Perhaps it is because of man’s fallen state that such evil must occur, or because the presence of evil ultimately glorifies and proves his perfect goodness. Other answers point to the necessity of evil and violence in order to ensure that humans have free will to choose salvation and grace; however, most often, one is likely to hear that god’s will is ultimately unknowable in such acts, that “god works in mysterious ways.”

“Just” War

As for the matter of military conflicts, Christianity very early elaborated upon the Roman doctrine of bellum iustum, or “just war,” to wrestle with these questions. In Roman paganism, all acts of war were considered against the will of the gods, because war polluted land, people, and could even threaten to pollute the gods themselves.1 However, despite this belief, the leaders of the Republic (and later Empire) of Rome sought relentless conquest. The Roman idea of bellum iustum came about both to restrain these imperial ambitions, while also providing a means of gaining the gods’ temporary favor by compelling generals and emperors to ask the them for permission.

Augustine of Hippo imported this idea from Roman paganism into Christianity, but in a rather inverted way. Though the Hebrew god had clearly said, “thou shalt not kill,” Augustine asserted this applied primarily to individuals. Augustine argued that governments were legitimate entities empowered by God to use violence, and thus, when the cause is “just,” a believer should not only support but also willingly obey orders to kill others. Through this, Augustine provided the religious foundation for subsequent political orders and their violence, asserting that god had specifically empowered them as agents of violence.

Later, Thomas Aquinas expanded just war doctrine with specific rules for the soldiers involved also: they must kill out of good intentions, rather than evil ones. In other words, providing you killed others out of a belief that you were doing a good deed, and provided your sovereign had officially sanctioned the killing, there was no need to feel remorse or regret.

These Christian beliefs justified the many crusades against Muslims and heretics, and then, later, the many wars of conquest in colonized lands. While maybe not the intention of Augustine nor Aquinas, the doctrine of just war has continued to function as justification for war — even in supposedly secular governments. In fact, just war doctrine has been invoked for all manner of military conflicts, from NATO’s bombing of Serbia to coalition involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. It’s also been invoked by Russia in its war with Ukraine. International law scholars continue to use the framework to determine whether any particular nation’s war against another was “just” or merely “criminal.”

While for supposedly secular theorists the question of whether or not war is justified tends to be situated within legal frameworks, the ultimate question behind these queries is really a matter of morality. We see this particularly in discussions about the use of the atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was the United States morally justified in their mass incineration of women and children, even if — as some suggest but others doubt — they were necessary acts to end the war?

Rather than trying to answer that question, we should ask another: “morally justified in the eyes of whom?” That is, the original question presupposes a judge who might, after being presented evidence in both directions, come to some sort of objective conclusion.

For much of Western history, that judge was the Christian god. Before him, as in Rome and Greece, it was specific tutelary deities rather than a singular god. Now, while theorists seem to pose the question to an apparently empty judicial bench, it’s hard not to suspect they — and perhaps we also — feel there is some divine magistrate who can decide the merit of their actions. In other words, and as I’ve written many times before, despite denials to the contrary: we regardless act as if gods are things that exist.

I say “gods,” and this is an important complication to the problem. When two nations opposing each other both claim the authority of the Christian god, which of them is correct? Does the Christian god actually give his authority and blessing for the slaughter of others, Christian or otherwise? According at least to his ancient priests, a god appeared to have repeatedly done so in the Old Testament, ordering the wholesale slaughter of Canaanites and others. If that god is the same god of the Christians and is reported to be unchanging (“I the LORD do not change,” as the book of Malachi has it), then certainly the Crusades and the atomic bomb should hardly give us pause.

On the other hand, quite a few Christians I know are pacifists. These same folks also report that the Christian god is a god of love, not of war and vengeance. Pacifism, or at least deep anti-war sentiment, has long been a feature of some Catholic and Protestant movements, and even appears to be the position of the current pope.

Entire schools of theology devote themselves to attempts to explain how a god of war and vengeance might also be a god of love and peace, though the complicated solutions they reach probably satisfy very few. But there’s always been a simpler way of looking at this question.

Which Christian god?

In an essay that appeared in the first issue of A Beautiful Resistance, a writer using the name Heathen Chinese wrote of the complicated matter of a god popularly venerated still in China. That god, Guan Di, is invoked both for protection from violence and also for success and strength in acts of violence. Also, he is venerated equally by criminal gangs, police, and protesters alike:

It seems reasonable to conclude that Guan Di has, at times, answered the prayers of both sides of a conflict simultaneously. It seems further reasonable to extend this pattern to the ongoing conflict that some call “the class war.” Guan Di has thousands and thousands of worshipers with whom he maintains relationship on both sides of said war.

There are a few theories as to why this is the case. Guan Di was said to have been originally a mortal revolutionary named Guan Yu who, after death, became a tutelary god for both Daoists and Buddhists. Later, Guan Yu was name “Di” (emperor) by the Ming Dynasty and became more often associated with imperial war. Those earlier aspects and the newer ones all seemed to merge, meaning he became a god of rebels and also those who oppose them. Such evolutions of gods were quite common throughout Greek and Roman religious belief: Apollo, most known for healing, was also known for bringing plague, disease, pestilence, and death.

Another possibility is that Guan Di was the Ming Dynsasty’s attempt to bring Guan Yu into imperial religion. Such things happened quite often in Roman imperial religion as well. In fact, there are very few “native” gods in the Roman pantheon; most were either added in through cultural expansion or sometimes through official ceremonies. These latter ceremonies were called evocatio, rituals to persuade a god protecting a foreign people to instead support Rome. Juno was one such goddess brought in this way.

A third possibility exists, of course. Perhaps Guan Yu and Guan Di are actually different gods. While in this particular case it seems unlikely, there are plenty of cases in Roman religion where two different gods were merged together, either through linguistic habits or direct attempts by the Romans to conflate foreign gods with their own. For example, Apollo and Maponus became Apollo Maponus, just as in many places the names of Minerva and Diana were added to local goddesses with similar (though not identical) qualities.

If such things happened elsewhere, and especially if they were quite common in the imperial religion of Rome, it might not be as blasphemous as it may seem to wonder if something similar might have happened with the Christian god. Regarding the first situation, that of gods changing over time, while this runs counter to the doctrine of his eternal unchanging nature, the Christian god certainly seems quite different from the Hebrew one. In fact, this was a very common belief in the early Christian church and even much later; bishops constantly fought off these ideas as outright heresy, yet they seemed to keep coming back regardless.

Such a possibility fits quite well with modern liberal Christian interpretations, though it’s not quite clear in their explanations how it was that the same god who ordered the slaughter of indigenous Canaanites (to make way for his chosen people) eventually decided genocide wasn’t really what he’d like his followers to do anymore. Similarly, what changed his mind on stoning homosexuals to death or not wearing mixed-source fabrics? While the Pauline explanation — that the law was fulfilled after Jesus’s execution — seems to work somewhat, it’s regardless quite odd that the Christian god happens to have the exact same politics as whatever is considered “liberal” at the moment.

The second possibility — the Christian god being imported into imperial religion — feels quite a bit more likely than the first one. Here, we need really only notice the emperor Constantine’s politically expedient conversion and immediate role as the state head of the church and its doctrines. He’d not done anything with that act that earlier emperors hadn’t; the only difference was that he then began the process of purging out all the other gods.

Perhaps, then, when a state or an empire invokes the Christian god and asks for his favor in war and conquest, they are also performing evocatio, ritually bribing him with increased devotion and a more prominent place in society in return for his abandonment of others who believe in him. If he indeed favored, say, the British over the French or both those peoples over the Germans and Italians, we might then wonder at his strange inconstancy. However, this seems a bit too politically convenient, as well as a divine rubber stamp on some of the worst acts committed by humans against each other.

The third possibility is probably too blasphemous for some Christians to entertain, yet also the one with the most logical sense. If we accept that there is such a thing as at least one god, and that many people have completely contradictory experiences of that god, then it’s not really much of a leap to wonder if maybe they’re experiencing different gods altogether.

Consider: is the American fundamentalist Christian who believes god wants to see nuclear armaments used against enemies really worshiping the same god as the pacifist Catholic who believes god wants her to chain herself to nuclear missiles to stop their use?

How could it be possible that both their gods would be the same one?

The usual responses to this contradiction is that either there is actually no god there, or that one of them must be completely wrong in their views of that god. But if we take the view that animist and polytheist societies might take, we can easily see these are not the only two options. The Hebrews’ god certainly seems the sort who’d support that former position (and here we can remember that Israel is also a nuclear-armed state), while the god described by the early Christians — excluding John of Patmos’s account — doesn’t seem he’d be so fond of such mass murder.

In fact, he seems quite rather opposed to it.

The problem is that this position undermines the core monotheist proposition — that there can and must be only one god. If we reject that proposition, then that would lead us to wonder what else is thought about the one-god which might not be fully true. But this doesn’t automatically lead to the conclusion that there is actually no Christian god; instead, perhaps there are at least two, and possibly many more.

If so — and this is my suspicion — then we might propose there is at least a Christian god of war and also a Christian god of love. This would certainly fit with how gods are seen in other cosmologies. In such cosmologies populated with multiple gods, gods of war are quite common. But here we need to clarify: very, very rarely are gods of war also gods of victory; instead, they are often gods of warfare itself. Such gods tend to be concerned with martial prowess, courage, valiance, belligerence, and other traits associated with soldiers and warriors. Often, they are said to be honored both when a person fights well and also when he dies well on the battlefield.

Within polytheist societies, gods of war were only one of many kinds of god. It would be absurd to ask for a war god’s help with your harvest, or for the healing of a sick child, or often even for protection from war. Instead, you’d ask other gods who were known to care for such things, gods who were sometimes in opposition to each other in certain matters. A god of the hearth or of family might not be so keen on the destruction of those things wrought by war; a god of learning and civil stability, however, might be less opposed if the war expanded territory and brought in new knowledge from foreign lands.

An important feature of war gods, though, is that they don’t actually take sides in wars. Consider how, in the Norse lore regarding Valhalla, Óðinn is said to welcome warriors who died nobly in battle. The consequence is that his faithful on both sides of conflicts would find themselves drinking together in brotherhood after death. Thus, despite the American “antifascist heathen” memes proclaiming “there are no Nazis in Valhalla,” such a statement has as much validity as an Irish Catholic saying “there are no English in heaven.”

Gods of victory, on the other hand, are most often tutelary gods, meaning they are gods of a people group, or of a location or city (for example, Athena). An important feature of them, however, is that they tend to care more about protection and defense rather than expansion, and it was often these gods who were the target of Roman imperial evocatio rituals.

Applying all this to the Christian god, we run into a few problems. The Hebrew god was certainly a tutelary god, but also quite expansionist. This makes him more like the Roman Jupiter than any gods of war or warfare,2 and fits quite well with the belligerent European Catholic and American Protestant Christian god. But again, this doesn’t square at all with the experiences of a loving god of peace and salvation to which many Christians attest.

Again, in other cosmologies, this is hardly a problem, since gods each had their own interests and fields of virtues. An expansionist god, a war god, a god of peace, and a god of love could easily co-exist within the same realm and be venerated by the same people, but they were different gods and balanced each other. Thus, we might find it strange that a singular god is thought to (or compelled to) care simultaneously for all such things.

He is expected to weigh every single value against every other, and thus appears constantly to contradict himself. Caring for and equally loving both the soldier who bombs a village and also the children killed by those bombs would be quite a remarkable feat. Perhaps this is really the case, since that god is assumed to be all powerful. Still, we mortals, frail as we are, might be forgiven for suspecting such an equal, universal love sounds much more like divine indifference.

Or, maybe, there’s more than one god there…