What is truth – in life and war? From the trial of Jesus to trying war crimes

Obama and Raul meeting in Havana

by Rajan Philips-March 26, 2016, 5:48 pm 

This is not a spiritual reflection on Easter, but a secular reflection on politics in the spirit of Easter. The reflective question was asked on Good Friday two thousand years ago, during the trial of Jesus according to John, when Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, said to Jesus, "What is truth?" The question was asked after Jesus spoke of his kingdom not belonging to this world and of his coming into this world to testify to the truth. Pilate did not wait for an answer, but turned to the crowd and pleaded with them to let him release Jesus because, he said, "I find no guilt in him." But the crowd, egged on by their high priests, would have none of it and wanted Jesus crucified according to ‘their law’. So the trial of the most divine of all historical figures ended in the worst miscarriage of justice in history. There was neither search nor respect for truth in spite of the insistence about relying on the law. But the story of crucifixion and resurrection became the central tenet of the Christian faith and has informed all of the world’s most influential laws and customs in relation to life and war, including the notions of unjust laws and just wars.

The question, what is truth? - has preoccupied faiths and philosophers long before Christ and long after. It became the focus of Hinduism and Buddhism in the east and of the Greek philosophers in the west, before Christ, and it has continued to preoccupy later religions like Islam as well as both religious and secular philosophers in every century from the time of Christ to our present day. There are theories of truth in philosophy and applications of the notions of truth in our personal, social and institutional lives. Finding facts and establishing the truth are the purpose of all legal processes, however imperfect they might be in their functioning and their outcomes. And it is a modern day truism that "truth is the first casualty of war", as a pacifist US Republican Senator from California, Warren Johnson, first said in 1918.

All religions are against killing and war, Buddhism more unequivocally than others. It was the revulsion and rejection of war that was at the root of Asoka’s imperial conversion to Buddhism in the east that predated the more globally consequential conversion in the west – that of Constantine to Christianity, but in different circumstances. Even where wars are permissible, they have to be not only just but also lawful, and even those wars have to follow the laws of war – a human tradition as old as the Old Testament and the Bhagavad Gita. War crimes are committed when the laws of war are broken. But the enforcement of the laws of war, either during or after a war, is not as well established and as routine as the laws governing non-war situations.

Read More »