Just War and Statecraft in Paul Ramsey's Reading
of Luke 14:28-33
Adam Edward Hollowell
Duke University
Introduction
On April 9, 1967, Paul Ramsey delivered a sermon
at the National (Episcopal) Cathedral in Washington,
D.C. He titled it "Counting the Costs" and took as
his text the story of the builder and the king from
Luke 14:28-33. Later that year the sermon was
published in The Vietnam War: Christian
Perspectives.[1] The following year he
placed it as the concluding essay of The Just
War and then four years later similar exposition
appeared in "Force and Political
Responsibility."[2] Again in 1973 he
repeated the story in his contribution to
Strategic Thinking and Its Moral Implications
(which he then abbreviated and placed as an appendix
to Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism in
1988).[3]
Ramsey offered commentary on Luke 14 in at least
six publications on political ethics over the last
twenty years of his career. In appreciation of his
evident fondness of the story, and in recognition of
its prominent place in his later political writings,
this essay will explore Ramsey's reading of Luke
14:28-33. I argue that Jesus' description of the
builder and the king supplies, for Ramsey, a
scriptural rationale for theological conclusions
about the realities and possibilities of political
responsibility in a violent world. In addition to
illuminating how Ramsey reasons about war and
statecraft through Luke's Gospel, this investigation
also supplies one material response to the suggestion
that modern advocates for a Christian understanding
of justified war lack forms of scriptural
reasoning.[4]
A Plain Sense Reading of Luke 14
David F. Ford argues that within the practice of
scriptural reasoning "the first task of the
interpreter of scripture is to try to do justice to
its plain sense."[5] While Ramsey's work
predates the interdisciplinary movement Ford
describes, he begins his reading of Luke 14 with a
similar impulse to capture the kind of faithful
discipleship which is the "main point" of the
parable.[6] I reprint the wider
text from Luke 14:25-33 (RSV), which Ramsey takes as
his prompt:
Now great multitudes accompanied [Jesus]; and he
turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to me and
does not hate his own father and mother and wife
and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and
even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after
me cannot be my disciple. For which of you,
desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down
and count the cost, whether he has enough to
complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a
foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see
it begin to mock him, saying, "This man began to
build, and was not able to finish." Or what king,
going to encounter another king in war, will not
sit down first and take counsel whether he is able
with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him
with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other
is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and
asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you
does not renounce all that he has cannot be my
disciple.
Ramsey begins by distinguishing between disciples,
on one hand, and kings and builders, on the other.
Disciples are principally allegiant to the kingdom of
God, which "is not a pearl of great price; it is a
pearl of inestimable price for which one sells
all that he has."[7] The kind of
'calculation' required of discipleship is, in fact,
not calculated at all. It is impassioned, reckless,
and in radical service to those in need. It forsakes
family bonds and self-preservation. Against this
approach is that of the kings and builders who
"determine whether the costs are worth it in a world
in which nothing is worth everything."[8] Their
path is one defined by the need for precise
calculation and management of resources in an
imprecise world.[9]
The plain sense of these teachings from Luke is
found here, in their demand for the radical
sacrifices required of those who would be disciples
of Christ. As this section is often subtitled, it is
the cost of discipleship. It can be understood in
these particular verses as a general call to
surrender everything for the life of discipleship or,
more concretely, as the relinquishing of all earthly
(economic and material) possessions.[10] Thus Ramsey
notes that Jesus "remarks upon this world in which
the costs and expected goods can be
compared," yet he speaks "instead of man's
ultimate good and its inestimable worth."[11]
Counting Costs and Taking Counsel
Despite his primary recognition of this plain
sense meaning of the text, Ramsey also identifies and
appreciates a secondary distinction between the
tower-builder and the king. The differentiation
between these "two sorts of worldly wisdom" stems
from the fact that even within the realm of material
pursuits there are varying degrees of contingency and
various requirements according to one's social
role.[12] I will examine them
both, beginning first with the tower-builder.
Ramsey argues that what is required of the
tower-builder is a "comparatively simple calculation,
and one that can be tallied up ahead of
time."[13] He is "the builder of
a project that he can control or complete."[14] This
approach draws upon a kind of consequentialist logic,
and Ramsey speaks of the "ascendancy of technical
reason in cost-counting."[15] A builder weighs and
estimates each aspect of the project before
initiating construction. Furthermore, there is a
point at which the building is complete. Thus, in the
parable, Jesus indicates that those builders who fail
to calculate rightly will be mocked.[16]
In contrast to the builder who estimates the
costs, Jesus describes the king as taking counsel. In
one sense, this stems from the fact that the king
already operates within a world of pre-existing
political relations. Even though Jesus describes the
king "first" sitting down to take counsel, Ramsey
notes that, "a very peculiar 'first' that would be,
while he is already going to 'encounter' another
king!"[17] Thus he says that the
king operates "in the midst of the interaction and
forces already at play in the world."[18]
Additionally, the king takes counsel rather than
counting costs because statecraft lacks the control
and precision of tower-building: "In politics there
are no completed towers."[19] For this reason,
"Jesus spoke not of measurable calculation, or proof
or disproof of one's ability to finish an edifice,
when he mentioned the predicament of a king. Instead
a king or statesman needs wise 'counsel'."[20] While
both kings and builders operate in worlds that
require calculation, the radical indeterminacy and
unpredictability of political endeavors means that
kings can receive, at best, only prudent counsel on
the course they should follow.
Ramsey illuminates the unique predicament of the
king with reference to a line from former U.S.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Acheson, who was
also a furniture-making hobbyist, said, "a chair is
made to sit in: when you've made it you can tell
whether you made it right; there is no such
definitive test of the rightfulness of a political
policy-decision."[21] Ramsey found this to
be particularly helpful imagery for appreciating the
lack of 'completed towers' in the political realm. He
adds, "This is not the case with international
policy. Politics is a kind of doing. It is not
a kind of making—like building a
tower."[22]
Politics as a Kind of Doing
We must be careful not to overstate the
conclusions that Ramsey will allow us to draw from
his reading of Luke 14. He does not present a
conclusive argument for the New Testament witness
about justified war or pacifism, nor does he subvert
the fact that the radical cost of discipleship is the
primary aim of Jesus' teaching. After all, there were
no kings in Jesus' audience. However, he allows that
"in drawing one parabolic point from the
tower-builder and the king on his way to a larger
question, Jesus in some sense and even if in passing
commended their practical wisdom and took note of its
nature. This perhaps gives us warrant for focusing
attention ... upon the king—upon the direction of
statecraft as among the tasks of men, of magistrates
and citizens alike."[23] If we follow his
warrant and focus our attention on the king and on
the nature of political judgment, we can observe
three fundamental truths about statecraft and the
political realm that Ramsey draws from the
narrative.
First, the political realm is inescapably
temporal—that is, it is characterized and governed by
its movement through time. This explains why "Jesus
described the king as already in movement."[24] Ramsey
takes note of "the nature of the encounters coming
upon the statesman into which he is always going,"
and argues that statecraft requires "a ceaseless and
perhaps changing appraisal of the stakes at issue and
a ceaseless and perhaps changing appraisal of the
costs proportionate to what is at stake, going on at
the same time action is being put forth in the
context of the actions coming upon us, itself shaping
and shaped by those actions."[25] This is a complex
statement, but his aim is to capture the way that
temporal moral relations and a continual flow of
actions and reactions surround every new political
initiative. There are also matters of timing,
patience and expediency involved in prudential
determinations of justifiable action. Said more
succinctly, magistrates operate "in a world whose
steady state is that of encountering powers."[26]
Second, the political realm is characterized by
radical contingency. Ramsey observes that a
magistrate "must always, unlike builders of towers,
posit his decision and action in a world in which
there is always the action, interaction, and
counteraction of others and other forces and
influences coming upon him."[27] Even in situations
where the magistrate may judge rightly and in
accordance with principles of justified war, that
judgment does not necessarily lead to the desired or
intended outcome. In Ramsey's words, the magistrate
"is no builder of a project that he can control or
complete; he cannot very clearly count the costs
because he cannot—he simply cannot—predestinate the
benefits he seeks."[28] This sensitivity to
the radical contingency and indeterminacy of
statecraft is fundamental to his belief that politics
is a kind of doing.
It is crucial to hold alongside these two points
of emphasis Ramsey's heightened sensitivity to the
importance of political judgment. He is equally
suspicious of those who abandon political relations
to moral chaos or conflicts of unrestrained power as
he is of those who believe they can be controlled by
"technical reason."[29] Thus, his third
observed truth from Luke 14 is that the political
realm is governed by moral norms. He insists that
Jesus' commendation of the king points the way toward
limitations on justifiable war. The king's wise
judgment to send an embassy and ask terms of peace is
suggestive of the nature of political wisdom: "it is
largely a matter of correctly counting the costs in
relation to the goods to be obtained. This is, in
fact, a principal word that through all the centuries
Christians have addressed to the world, and to
themselves in their offices as magistrate or citizen
... the principle of proportion."[30] This
principle cannot, for Ramsey, erase the contingency
of political judgments. "It is simply not at all
clear that one may not be able with ten thousand to
meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand.
This is only what one should take counsel
about."[31] It does mean,
however, that even an indeterminate political realm
is subject to determinate moral limitations.
Notice that this reading of the text both
highlights the central role of practical reasoning in
the political realm and informs the content of that
reasoning with the principle of proportion. That is
to say, Ramsey reasons that the Luke 14 narrative
theologically underwrites not only his observations
about the contingency and temporality of war and
statecraft, but also the establishment of moral
limitations on political judgment. This is his way of
situating the "awesome responsibility of political
leadership" in relationship to the judgment of
God.[32] He frankly
acknowledges that "these words uttered by the Lord of
Heaven and Earth [in Luke 14] ... do more than point
the way politics should go. Those words also bring
under judgment the whole of humankind and they reveal
in one lightning flash that ours is a fallen
existence."[33] The two layers of
Jesus' teaching suggest that "A Christian will think
politically in the light of Christ, and he will think
politically in the light of the revealing shadow
thrown by the cross of Christ over our fallen human
existence."[34] Thus, for Ramsey,
Luke 14 offers an unavoidable message from Jesus
about the radical and inestimable cost of
discipleship: the plain sense meaning of the text.
Yet, in the shadow of that light Ramsey also
discovers wisdom about the nature of statecraft in
fallen human existence.
Conclusion
If we aim to investigate the role of scripture in
theological reasoning about war and political
conflict, "Counting the Costs" and its numerous
subsequent variations offer a significant example of
such reasoning. Ramsey reads the story from Luke 14
as a revelation on the nature of political
authority—its structure, purposes, and limitations in
a temporal and indeterminate world. I conclude this
discussion by suggesting how renewed interest in this
line of argumentation might stimulate further
conversation in scholarship on Ramsey, as well as
wider debates regarding the role of scripture in
Christian justifications of war and pacifism.
Despite frequent appearances in later
publications, Ramsey's reading of Luke 14 receives
scant attention in scholarship on his work. Direct
treatments of the role of scripture in Ramsey's
ethics are rare, and the most comprehensive of
these—in Jeffrey Siker's Scripture and
Ethics—does not mention the passage or its
influence.[35] Furthermore, the
common criticism that Ramsey's later work abandons
his early theological commitments in Basic
Christian Ethics often neglects to recognize
these later theological forms of scriptural
reasoning.[36] In this essay, I have
neither attempted to provide a comprehensive account
of the role of scripture in Ramsey's political
theology nor responded to these criticisms of his
later work; my task here has been narrower. For this
reason I emphasized the way his attentiveness to the
plain sense reading of the text warns us against
imposing a wider reading of his interpretation than
he wants to allow. I maintain, however, that
increased attention to his use of Luke 14 in future
scholarship on Ramsey could go some way toward
correcting these deficiencies.
More important are the wider implications of
Ramsey's interpretation for debates regarding the
role of scripture in Christian political ethics. In
most modern discussions of this sort, especially
those concerning the New Testament witness about war
and political authority, reference to Luke 14:28-33
is largely absent. For instance, mention of it does
not appear in Richard Hays' discussion of violence in
The Moral Vision of the New Testament, nor in
several lengthy recent exchanges on this topic in
Studies in Christian Ethics between Hays and
Nigel Biggar.[37] John Howard Yoder
does not mention it is his pacifist reading of Luke
in The Politics of Jesus (nor, according to my
modest survey, anywhere else in his writings). Roland
Bainton's seminal text only employs it (under the
heading of "Texts for the Just War") to note that "in
matters military Luke was also the most
favorable."[38] Perhaps most notably,
recent attempts to emphasize the significance of
practical reasoning for Christian political ethics
from Oliver O'Donovan and Daniel M. Bell, Jr. omit
reference to Luke 14.[39]
The lasting contribution of Ramsey's analysis lies
in the lingering questions it raises about the place
of Luke 14:28-33 in reasoning about war and
statecraft. As mentioned above, Ramsey reads this
story as a revelation on the nature of political
authority—its structure, purposes and limitations in
a temporal and contingent world. In doing so he calls
attention to the transcendent judgment of God
witnessed in the radical call of discipleship and
highlights the role of relative judgments in
political communities. Here we see the way that the
story both underwrites his emphasis on contingency
and temporality as inherent aspects of the structure
of political judgment and points the way toward the
principle of proportion and other moral norms. Ramsey
reasons through Luke 14 to argue that the challenge
of statecraft is not simply cost-counting or
tower-building, but instead a kind of doing that
requires taking counsel. In doing so he confronts us
with the most significant consequence of his
attentiveness to Luke 14: the challenge of
reconsidering its relevancy to scriptural reasoning
within Christian political ethics.
Notes
[1] Paul Ramsey, "Counting the
Costs," in The Vietnam War: Christian
Perspectives, ed. Michael Hamilton (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1967), 24-44.
[2] See Paul Ramsey, The
Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968; reprint, Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1983),
523-536; Paul Ramsey, "Force and Political
Responsibility," in Ethics and World Politics:
Four Perspectives, ed. Ernest W. Lefever
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1972), 43-73.
[3] Paul Ramsey, "A Political
Ethics Context for Strategic Thinking," in
Strategic Thinking and Its Moral Implications,
ed. Morton A. Kaplan (Chicago: University of Chicago
Center for Policy Study, 1973), 101-147; Speak Up for
Just War or Pacifism (University Park, PA: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
[4] See, for example, Stanley
Hauerwas, "Postscript," in The Journal of
Scriptural Reasoning: Special Issue on Reason,
Scripture, and War 8, no. 1 (January 2009).
[5] David F. Ford, "An
Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews,
Christians and Muslims," in The Promise of
Scriptural Reasoning, ed. David F. Ford and C.C.
Pecknold (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006),
14.
[6] Ramsey, "Force and
Political Responsibility," 49.
[7] Ramsey, The Just
War, 523.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Thus, he says, "the task
of the statesman and builder is, in a sense, a more
calculating one; it requires … more exactitude amid
less certitude and greater ambiguity in measuring
costs to goods that are irremediably relative."
Ibid., 523-524.
[10] See, for instance,
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New
Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New
Testament Ethics (San Francisco, CA:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 122, 465, 466.
[11] Ramsey, The Just
War, 524. In this quotation, as well as others
from Ramsey that will follow in this essay, 'man'
refers generally to humankind and is not intended to
be gender exclusive. Ramsey wrote in a period where
the universality of the term was assumed. Where
possible, I alter the quotation to avoid exclusive
language. Where unavoidable, I have elected not to
add "[sic]" to each occurrence.
[12] Ramsey, Speak Up,
193.
[13] Ramsey, The Just
War, 525. The builder has "a manageable
calculation to make." Ramsey, Speak Up,
193.
[14] Ramsey, The Just
War, 526.
[15] Ramsey, Speak Up,
194.
[16] Ramsey says, "in
tower-building your calculations can all be made in
advance; and if you fail to complete it you can
clearly be mocked, as Jesus said, by all those who
see the useless foundation you laid." The Just
War, 525.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ramsey, Speak Up,
194.
[20] Ramsey, "Force and
Political Responsibility," 49.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ramsey, The Just
War, 525. He made a similar point in an early
essay from 1960. He said, "in prudential calculation
... no greater precision can be forthcoming than the
subject allows." Ramsey, "The Politics of Fear,"
Worldview 3, no. 3 (1960), 6.
[23] Ramsey, The Just
War, 524.
[24] Ibid., 525.
[25] Ibid., 527.
[26] Ibid., 525.
[27] Ibid., 526. See also
"Force and Political Responsibility," 50. For a more
extended treatment of Ramsey's understanding of
indeterminacy as a feature of the political realm,
see Adam Edward Hollowell and John K. Burk, "Paul
Ramsey and Reinhold Niebuhr on a Public Theology of
Tragedy and the Problem of Dirty Hands,"
International Journal of Public Theology 5, no. 4
(2011), 458-475.
[28] Ramsey, The Just
War, 526.
[29] Ramsey, Speak Up,
194. Resignation will not be tolerated, even if
politics is a realm where there are no "solutions,"
only "outcomes." Ramsey, The Just War, 525. See also
"Force and Political Responsibility," 50.
[30] Ramsey, The Just
War, 524. He continues, "This entails that going
to war can only be as a last resort, because other
means of securing the good ... which in themselves
are less destructive should always be tried first. It
entails also that ... a resort to armed force ...
must in addition have a reasonable chance of success"
(524).
[31] Ibid., 526.
[32] Ibid. Or, as he notes
elsewhere, it is important to keep clear that when
the systemic ambiguity of political relations is
understood rightly, "decision and action can be what
they are worth." Paul Ramsey, "Turn Toward Just War,"
Worldview 5, no. 7-8 (July-August 1962),
9.
[33] Ramsey, The Just
War, 529.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Jeffrey Siker,
Scripture and Ethics: Twentieth Century
Portraits (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997). See also Michael C. McKenzie, "The Bible and
Paul Ramsey," in Paul Ramsey's Ethics: The Power
of 'Agape' in a Postmodern World (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2001), 27-44. McKenzie makes no reference to
Ramsey's interpretation of Luke 14.
[36] Paul Ramsey,Basic
Christian Ethics (New York: Charles Scribners
Sons, 1950). The most recent of these efforts, Shaun
Casey's argument that "Somewhere in his career
[Ramsey] allowed a form of political realism to trump
his theological commitments," omits all mention of
Luke 14. Shaun A. Casey, "Eschatology and Statecraft
in Paul Ramsey," Studies in Christian Ethics
21, no. 2 (2008), 173-193. Casey attempts to extend
arguments presented in Charles E. Curran,
Politics, Medicine and Christian Ethics
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973). For my response
to Casey and Curran see Adam Edward Hollowell,
"Revising Basic Christian Ethics: Rethinking Paul
Ramsey's Early Contributions to Moral Theology,"
Studies in Christian Ethics 23, no. 3 (2010),
267-283.
[37] Richard Hays, The
Moral Vision of the New Testament; Nigel Biggar,
"Specify and Distinguish!: Interpreting the New
Testament on 'Non-Violence'," Studies in Christian
Ethics 22, no 2 (May 2009), 164-84; Richard Hays,
"Narrate and Embody: A Response to Nigel Biggar,"
Studies in Christian Ethics 22, no. 2 (May
2009), 185-98; Nigel Biggar, "The New Testament and
Violence: Round Two," Studies in Christian
Ethics 23, no. 1 (February 2010), 73-80; Richard
Hays, "The Thorny Task of Reconciliation: Another
Response to Nigel Biggar," Studies in Christian
Ethics 23, no. 1 (February 2010), 81-86.
[38] John Howard Yoder,
The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI : Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972); Roland H. Bainton,
Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace
(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1960), 61.
[39] Oliver O'Donovan, The
Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003); Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just
War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the
Tradition in the Church rather than the State
(Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009).
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