Whereas an ethical critique of
war appeals to an ethical principle, typically that is against humans being
harmed, especially the innocent, a theological critique can be based on a
divine degree or on the nature of the divine in contradistinction to human
nature as anything but. That is, a distinctly theological critique of war itself
or people who wage war is typically based on some obfuscation of the divine and
human wherein the latter has sought to appropriate divine nature or attributes
to what is in Nietzsche’s famous phrase, human, all too human. Although Kant’s “kingdom
of ends” formulation of his categorial imperative looks a lot like Jesus’s
Golden Rule, for example, offending rational beings by treating them only as means
to one’s own goals is distinct from offending God by violating the divine command
of universal benevolence, or “neighbor love,” which is Jesus’s second
commandment, which is like unto the first (i.e., to love God). Having probably just
now lost, or “blown away,” just about every normal reader, I want to illustrate
my point of distinguishing the ethical from the theological by analyzing pertinent
comments made by Pope Leo, the first Midwestern (Illinois) pope, in April,
2026.
Referring to the war inflicted
on Iran by the U.S. and the state of Israel, the pope referred to the “delusion
of omnipotence.”[1]
The pope could have been referring to the hubris of power that had fueled Israel’s
Netanyahu into the delusion that committing a holocaustic genocide against the
people of Gaza was a just and proportional reaction to the attack by Hama in
which only about 1,200 Israelis died. The prime minister even said that Israel’s
deity had been good in helping Israel in being able to inflict a Nazi-level of
atrocity on the Gazans. The ease with which a human is willing to hurt other
humans is indeed troubling; to bring a deity into the equation in a favorable
light, as the U.S. Secretary of Defense did on the U.S. attacks on Iran and
Netanyahu did on Gaza surely must boggle the mind of any rational or genuinely
religious person.
The pope’s deliberate use of
the word, omnipotence, was no accident, for that word denotes a uniquely divine
attribute that human beings do not have because none of us is all-powerful.
Relative to a Creator, any creature is of relative power. It is not as though the
vast majority of us are under the delusion; some people with low self-esteem
even become sexually aroused by having their limited power showcased by a
dominating sex-partner as if being intentionally harmed and even humiliated
were deserved. People who set aside a room as a dungeon may even crave
powerlessness relative to the power of another person, which is just as
problematic in its own way because we are all made in the image of God and thus
are worthy of some self-love. Even though we are far from omnipotent, we
creatures are nonetheless worthy of being loved. It is out of love for the self-deprived
dungeon-lovers that efforts can be made to help them out of their plight so
they feel comfortable in their own limited, justified power and thus come to
love themselves. Guiding a person into the light of healthy self-love and away
from the darkness of selfishness and self-inflicted pain without any benefit to
oneself evinces genuine love consistent with Christian agape. Our species
is indeed capable of other-regarding, selfless love, which is antipodal and
thus antithetical to self-centered love, which is actually selfish greed.
Whereas the Jansenist Pierre
Nicole wrote scathingly of self-love, Augustine had maintained that self-love of
the image of God within is salubrious theologically. Such self-love is not that
to which Pope Leo referred when he said of the warmongers waging war against
Iran, “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of
power! Enough of war!”[2]
The pope was trying to guide President Trump away from selfish self-love to love
as benevolentia universalis. The idolatry of self is the placing of
oneself above love directed to God. Such misordered concupiscence enables
monetary and political greed and even war as a way of obtaining more, the love
of which is the definition of greed.
Both “omnipotence” and “idolatry”
are distinctively theological, or religious, words; they are not in the lexicon
of ethics because the words are sourced or related back to the divine, which
transcends the created realm, whereas ethical principles do not unless they are
part of a divine command. This is precisely the decisive way in which the
theological is distinct from the ethical. Put another way, God’s omnipotence
(i.e., being all-powerful) means that God cannot be limited to one of our
ethical theories or principles unless God itself has commanded them. As sure as
we may be that our ethical principles are solid, they are not eternal in
themselves. Rather, they are manmade. As such, they are of the created realm
unless they are commanded by God. To insist nonetheless that religion reduces
to ethical principles, as Unitarian Universalists typically have done since the
1970s, is thus to engage in self-idolatry.
In his remarks, the Roman
Catholic pope was proffering a snapshot of the idolatry and the related delusion
that distinguish warmongers far from the divine. A Nietzschean pathos of distance
separates the bullies from a deity of compassion and self-giving, agape love. I’m
sure the pope would appreciate being backed up by Nietzsche, the author of The
Anti-Christian whose father and grandfather were Lutheran ministers, but
the pope and I are fellow native Midwesterners from Northern Illinois so I’m
sure he would forgive me in the very unlikely event that he reads this essay—though
whereas he is a White Sox fan, I am an avid Cubs fan, but no one—not even a
pope—is perfect. Hence the distinction
between the creature and the Creator! To obfuscate the two, or, even worse, to
put ourselves above the condition of being and reality, is superbia writ large—nothing
less than arrogance on stilts during a sell-deserved flood—in the bloated
self-love of self-idolatry in contradistinction to selfless love even and
especially for those who reject us, for even children of lesser gods share in
being (God being perfect being) and thus, according to Leibniz, deserve to be
loved in spite of themselves. If the pope was placing Trump and Netanyahu in
their place, as situated relative to God rather than to their own hyper-egos, out
of love rather than just anger (which would be justified), then the pope could
get a sense of God’s perspective, albeit limited as per the perspective of a
mere creature. I hope I have demonstrated why this is qualitatively different
than the adoption of a distinctly ethical perspective, which in turn is
human, all too human.
2.Ibid.
