When one reads "What About Hitler?: Jesus's Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World" one is immediately struck by the amount of things going on at one time in this short book. The first thing that is important to note is the sheer honesty of this work. Not a conventional "academic" book, "What About Hitler" is revelatory in nature and takes the form of several "meditations" which usually contain a quotation of a Bible passage, Brimlow's prayer on that Bible verse and an anecdote from Brimlow's life (which are not usually flattering to him). All of this reveals Brimlow's inner struggle with the broader question posed by the book's title, "What About Hitler?"
The question posed by the title is meant to confront the Christian with the ultimate test of the call to nonviolence, namely, nonviolence in the face of ultimate evil - Hitler. On his way to answering to answering this question, Brimlow tackles the doctrine of "just war." In his analysis, Brimlow finds the criteria set forth to justify a "just war" to be too flaccid and easily malleable to justify even the most immoral "unjust" war. Brimlow also finds the theologicial justifications set forth by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and other theologians as consequentialist which do nothing more than weigh the costs and benefits and advocate an "ends over means" mentality.
Brimlow also addresses Michael Walzer's contribution of the supreme emergency" as a refinement of the "just war" theory. According to Walzer, "supreme emergency" is defined by two criteria: "the imminence of the danger and the second with its nature." For a "supreme emergency" to arise, the danger of the threat must be imminent and the nature of the threat must be "immeasurably awful." If such a supreme emergency arises, moral and philosophical concerns are trumped and man must do whatever is necessary to confront this ultimate evil and the rights of neutrals, innocents and noncombatants can under the right circumstances be overridden. However, in overriding the rights of innocents in the supreme emergency, Walzer asserts, "when we override them we make no claim that they have been diminished, weakened or lost."
Brimlow finds incoherent Walzer's assertion that it can be both right and wrong to kill innocents in the case of a supreme emergency. Brimlow does not do much to rehabilitate Walzer's construction of a "supreme emergency" though one gets the impression by reading the text that Brimlow could easily do so. Indeed, one need only to analogize the "supreme emergency" as a wildfire in order to better understand Walzer's meaning. A wildfire begins in the forest consuming the trees. In order to save the rest of the forest (humanity, civilization, etc.), the firefighters (those responding to the "supreme emergency") create "firebreaks" which consist of chopping down trees to cut the fire off from the rest of the forest. By cutting down the trees (the innocents), the firefighters save the forest.
Brimlow chooses not to rehabilitate Walzer in the way I did above because doing so is inconsequential to his ultimate thesis which is, "we must live faithfully; we must be humble in our faith and truthful in what we say and do; we must repay evil with good; and we must be peacemakers. This may also mean as a result that the evildoers will kill us. Then, we shall also die" (151). Moreover, if a "supreme emergency" arises it is the result of our failure to heed the call to nonviolence; in short (and to modify a line from Billy Joel), we DID start the fire.
There is much that is troubling in this trying work not the least of which begins with the title. If, as the title suggests, we live in an evil world, one is confronted by the probability that evil will continue to triumph over good and one's efforts at living in a way that Brimlow is advocating will likely not have a positive outcome. Brimlow shows that our focus on outcomes is misplaced but in so doing also shows that the call to nonviolence is as much an article of faith as it is an intellectual belief.
Brimlow's work is searching and insightful and is relevant to the events of today. Though it seems like a bitter pill to swallow, there is also a glimmer of hope in what Brimlow has to say. Though I may not necessarily agree with everything that Brimlow writes in "What About Hitler", I hope I am the better for having read it.
