A Brief Theology of Violence

Evil wins when good men do nothing

Since Jesus is the Prince of Peace, is it ever lawful for Christians to use violence? That’s what this essay is about.

I’ll use two examples from recent years to set this up. The first one is Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine from Long Island who, in May 2023, restrained Jordan Neely, a homeless man acting erratically on a New York City subway train. Penny put Neely in a chokehold that lasted several minutes, during which Neely lost consciousness and later died. Penny said he acted to protect passengers from a perceived threat. He was charged with second-degree manslaughter and later acquitted.

The second example is Iryna Zarutska, a a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who fled the war in her homeland and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. On August 22, 2025, she was fatally stabbed aboard a light rail train by Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old man with a lengthy criminal history. Brown’s attack on Zarutska was completely unprovoked. Sitting behind Zarutska on the train, he suddenly stood up and brutally stabbed her in the neck multiple times. After this, surveillance video shows her looking up at him in utter terror and shock, before collapsing moments later in her seat.

Daniel Penny subduing an assailant (left); Iryna Zarutska looking in terror at her assailant after being stabbed (right)

In the first case, Daniel Penny used force to stop a threatening man on a subway train. In the second case, several passengers watched passively, doing nothing as Decarlos Brown, Jr. murdered an innocent woman.

The existence of violence is a brute fact in a fallen world. Righteousness and virtue restrains good men from committing evil, but evil men are not restrained by virtue. Thus, as the saying goes, evil wins when good men do nothing.

Is Violence Always Wrong?

The modern West has become morally confused about the nature of violence. Many Christians instinctively treat all forms of violence as evil, as if peace were the natural state of the world and force a regrettable deviation from God’s will. Yet the biblical witness tells a different story.

Violence is not merely a symptom of sin. God sanctions violence in some instances as a means of restraining sin. Wicked men, left unchecked, will use force to oppress and destroy. God, therefore, delegates lawful authority to restrain their evil, sometimes through the righteous use of force by good men.

In other words, violence is sometimes a lawful necessity in a fallen world. It can be a moral good when exercised under divine authority and for just ends. Far from contradicting Christian ethics, such force fulfills God’s mandate for justice and protection. Modern aversion to this truth reflects not biblical fidelity but the soft sentimentalism of a culture that has forgotten the cost of peace.

Violence in the Divine Order

From Genesis to Revelation, violence is part of God’s providential rule over creation. God is not a passive observer of human wickedness but an active judge who wields the sword of justice.

For example, God ratified his covenant with Abraham with the blood of animals, signifying that one who breaks covenant will incur violence and death. God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah demonstrated that divine wrath is not metaphorical but physical, catastrophic, and just. In Deuteronomy 20, the Lord commanded Israel to destroy the wicked nations of Canaan. While offensive to modern sensibilities, these acts reveal the seriousness of sin and the holiness of God.

Even in the New Testament, divine judgment retains its violent character. Jesus spoke of “light beatings” and “severe beatings” (Luke 12:47–48), warned of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30), and promised final judgment in which He Himself “treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God” (Rev. 19:15). The crucifixion, without a doubt the most unjust act of violence in history, was also the very means by which God achieved redemption. In this, we see that violence can be not only just but redemptive when wielded by the righteous hand of God.

Violence, therefore, is not alien to divine justice; it is intrinsic to it. God’s judgments reveal His moral order, and His delegation of authority to human beings extends that moral order into civil society.

The Sword as Delegated Authority

The delegation of lawful violence first appears in Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Human beings, bearing the divine image, are entrusted with the responsibility to avenge the shedding of innocent blood. This mandate establishes both the sanctity of life and the moral legitimacy of capital punishment. Violence, in this sense, becomes a form of justice.

The apostle Paul affirms this in Romans 13, where the civil magistrate is called “God’s servant, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” The sword is not a symbolic ornament but a real instrument of coercive force. Government exists not only to legislate but to enforce. The threat and, when necessary, the use of violence by lawful authority is therefore a means of divine grace in a disordered world.

This principle exposes the naiveté of modern pacifism. Pacifism presumes that evil can be restrained by reason, empathy, or diplomacy alone. But history and Scripture both teach otherwise. Evil men are not persuaded by appeals to conscience; they are restrained by the credible threat of force.

As Pete Hegseth recently said, “Pacifism is a luxury belief that only survives because braver men stand ready to do violence on its behalf.” Peace is not the absence of conflict but the fruit of strength under authority.

Lawful and Unlawful Violence

Of course, affirming the necessity of violence in some circumstances is not to sanctify all forms of it. Scripture consistently distinguishes between lawful and unlawful uses of force. Unlawful violence is selfish, impulsive, or cruel. It is violence exercised for domination, revenge, or gain. Lawful violence, by contrast, is measured, principled, and ordered toward the defense of the innocent and the punishment of the guilty.

This moral distinction underlies the Christian doctrine of Just War, which developed from Augustine and Aquinas and remains vital for moral reasoning today. Violence is just when the cause is righteous, the authority legitimate, the intention pure, and the means proportionate. These principles apply not only to nations but also to individuals. A father defending his family, or a citizen restraining an assailant, exercises the same moral logic as a magistrate punishing a criminal. The difference is not scale but authority.

Thus, when a violent man assaults a woman on a subway car and bystanders do nothing, their passivity is not moral neutrality. Their passivity is cowardice. It is failure to perform a basic civic duty for the strong to protect the weak.

When Daniel Penny restrained an attacker to protect others, his action exemplified the moral principle that lawful violence in defense of the innocent is not only permitted but required. Justice demands that good men be willing to use force when necessary.

In ordinary situations, lawful authorities are authorized to enforce justice on our behalf. That’s why police officers carry guns and are authorized to use them when necessary. But sometimes, extraordinary circumstances grant a temporary authority for private citizens to use force. This was the case with Daniel Penny. He wasn’t an officer of the law on that train, but the extraordinary circumstances granted him a temporary authorization to use force.

The Sin of Cowardly Non-Violence

One of the moral diseases of the modern church is the confusion of cowardice with faith. Too many Christians imagine that “trusting God” means refusing to act decisively against evil. But faith does not preclude obedience to God’s commands, and one of those commands is to protect the weak. To stand by while others suffer injustice is to betray both God’s law and one’s neighbor.

Jesus’ command to “turn the other cheek” applies to personal insult, not to criminal assault. It restrains vengeance, not justice. The same Jesus who forbade retaliation also commended the Roman centurion for his faith and never told soldiers to abandon their posts. John the Baptist instructed soldiers to act justly, not to lay down their swords. Scripture nowhere condemns the possession of arms or the exercise of force for righteous ends.

Modern Christian pacifism often arises from sentimentality rather than Scripture. It substitutes moral sensitivity for moral clarity. The result is a church that condemns violence in principle while depending on violent men in practice—police officers, soldiers, and ordinary citizens who risk their lives to keep evil at bay. Such hypocrisy undermines both the witness of the church and the moral foundation of society.

Masculinity and the Moral Burden of Strength

In God’s design, men bear a particular responsibility for the exercise of protective strength. Scripture calls woman “the weaker vessel,” not to demean her but to assign to men the corresponding duty of protection. Physical power is a burden of stewardship.

When men abdicate that role, women are left unprotected, families exposed, and societies destabilized. A culture that mocks masculine strength or condemns the use of force in defense of the good is a culture that invites tyranny. Feminized pacifism, cloaked in moral language, leaves the door open for violent men to rule unchecked. A biblical theology of violence calls men to recover their vocation as protectors. They must be strong, disciplined, and governed by righteousness rather than rage.

Ordered Love and the Limits of Peace

The command to love one’s enemies must be understood within the framework of ordo amoris, the proper ordering of love. We love our enemies as human beings made in God’s image, but that love does not override our duty to love and protect those under our care. A man who refuses to defend his wife or children in the name of loving his enemy does not love rightly; he fails to love those God has specifically entrusted to him.

Likewise, Christ’s title as “Prince of Peace” refers to His reconciling work between God and sinners, not to an earthly cessation of all conflict. Until His kingdom is consummated, civil order requires the sword. Jesus Himself warned, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). The peace of Christ in the heart does not eliminate the need for justice in society.

Conclusion

Therefore violence, in itself, is neither moral nor immoral. It is a tool, capable of doing wickedness when misused, but also capable of righteousness when governed by principles of God’s law. God Himself employs violence to execute justice, and He delegates that authority to human rulers and, at times, to individuals defending the innocent.

To deny this is to ignore both the biblical record and the tragic realities of life in a fallen world. Evil cannot be negotiated out of existence; it must be restrained by force. The theology of violence thus calls Christians, especially men, to reject both barbarism and cowardice. The first abuses strength for domination; the second withholds strength from duty. Both are sins.

The faithful path is disciplined strength under the rule of love. Violence, rightly ordered, is not the enemy of peace but its guardian. When good men are willing to act, justice is preserved, evil is restrained, and God’s moral order is upheld in a world that desperately needs it.